A week in Tokyo closure

Kinichiwa!

Well, I’ve been here a week and experienced quite a lot…

Many things that I thought would be different are the same, other things are different where I was not expecting changes – as always, traveling opens the eyes to new things!

So much has been seen and felt, I can only summarize in bullets, so here we go:

manga:
– manga stores mega enormous; the biggest important section of book stores is dedicated to this national obsession!

Kinichiwa!

Well, I’ve been here a week and experienced quite a lot…

Many things that I thought would be different are the same, other things are different where I was not expecting changes – as always, traveling opens the eyes to new things!

So much has been seen and felt, I can only summarize in bullets, so here we go:

manga:
– manga stores mega enormous; the biggest important section of book stores is dedicated to this national obsession!
– everyone reads manga, even the old folks in subways; its like everyone lives in manga world!
– all the signs for things often are in manga – so you cant tell if its a pachino [gambling house], manga store, porno shop or some other thing before you get in.

finding things:
– finding a trash can is nearly impossible
– finding a street or a location is nearly impossible: the streets have NO names! Seriously! they use a system called: “area, district, region” so you get a code like 23-4-2 as an address! Even the Tokyo people can’t find anything- so I’ve spent MANY hours turning in circles looking for something; and then you have to find that sign in Kanji between the thousands of other billboards for a store that may very well be on the 23rd floor of a building behind you… [and you would never know] its like a city stacked on a city, within a city, within a labyrinth.

cosplay:
– cosplay [costume play] is cool! japanese people all dressed up in their favorite manga/charecter out on the streets; sometimes they are goth or punk! I got some good pictures! And bought a book on it too!

cool bars:
– yesterday I went to a bar where I entered a dungeon, past the crypt and zombies and aliens with the shaking floor and was greeted by a goreously petite red-latex japanese girl [in an ultra short miniskirt] who proceeded to arrest me, handcuff my wrist and bring me to my cell room by chain [SWEET]! There she locked the gate and handed me the menu! Haha! Fabulous! The lyche-kiwi-mango- liqueur drinks were good; as was the spontaneous arrival of monsters that paraded the cells to kill and scare all the guests… the only disappointment was the little red latex beauty didn’t stay in my cell with me! doh!
😉

cool hotels:
I have not visited there inside, but I have read and heard about them, you have:

– karaoke hotels: you check in with friends, order drinks/food and call up songs on the screen to sing. Any theme you can think of in terms of deco is possible; from girlish to fetish; to goth to las vegas etc. etc.
– love hotels: same theme ideas as karaoke except you can expect a proper bed and the idea is you and your loved one can go nasty for a few hours. Most Japanese people have no place to make love at home [or they live with their parents easily till they are 30 or 40] so this has made the love hotel very popular. You have rooms with transparent walls, transparent showers, rotating beds, massage beds, steam bath beds, los vegas style, gothic style, kinky-fetish equipped rooms, Cinderella-type beds, japanese classical rooms… etc. etc.
– capsule rooms: this is not so cool; and I have not stayed in one yet [cause it was not cheap, bizarely] but the idea is you don’t get a room, you get a shelf! you slide into your “capsule” and its just enough room to feel like you are in a cofin, close the door and fall asleep! its the ultimate dormitory [purgatory?]
– ok so its not for people, but there are car parks here that you don’t drive up in, you simply park the car on a crane-flat and the crane lifts and pushes your car into the building next to it- like a giant car-juke-box fork lift! quite impressive organizational thinking.

sex culture:
this is quite an interesting subject [at least for me] as the japanese do it somewhat differently than any other culture I have seen so far. There are similarities with Thai thinking and western influence, but only partially. for a very long time japan had legal prostitution [Geisha etc.]- but its something kept now a days secret. There are odd laws though, you can advertise sex/escorts on the metro or on billboards; and there are countless places for x-rated activities. Men and women partake in escort type services; but by far the biggest sexual images here are made by pen and ink: whats more hot than a naked chick? why a naked chick with big eyes, a gun and a speech bubble of course! Manga and porn blur together seamlessly, its often unclear where one ends and the other begins. You may get cute japanese innocent school girls buying manga in the front of the store, and seedy men flipping the xrated manga at the back of the store… they don’t seem to mind.

Women in general have it tough here, from what I have learned from speaking to some Japanese friends of mine [hi Kyoko and Yum!] – I’ve met them via Bruce and Kathy [from NZ] and they are both really-really sweet. There is nothing like knowing someone where you are traveling to make it much-much more real! [and in my case, being a vegetarian, mega easier!]. Back to women issues: As you may know, women here are still very much second class citizens; and men hold the power. In normal everyday activities people are very busy and so making contact with each other doesn’t seem to occur very easily… but in a night club, the women who go to these and are single are known to go all out. I haven’t gone to any clubs yet, so I am speaking now from what I have been told: but apparently its quite common here for women to approach men in clubs. This seems so counter-intuitive based on what I have seen that I’m skeptical. There is a lot more I could write here but its still abstract, so I might get back to this subject on another day.

imperial power:
the government is quite powerful here; but I supose thats quite normal when you have this many people. Millions of people pass through the gates of various stations here every day of the week; its the biggest city on the planet [more than 36 million people, if I am not mistaken]. People are obedient, but questionably to a fault at times. I’ve read a few times that people will allow deviant behavior to occur around them and do nothing but observe it – on the flip side, you can drop anything on the floor [even your wallet] and the chance someone will run after you to return it to you is nearly 100%: honor is of high value to nearly everyone; daring acts of individual heroism, is perhaps not.

imperial art:
After 8 or 9 museums [I’m sooooo museum overdosed at the moment!]; I’ve taken lots of notes on what art is like here. One thing that is worth discussing is the fact that art here has been very much a thing of royalty for many-many millennial/centuries. Perhaps its the same in all countries, but here I really feel like art was/is something done by the royal shoguns, the upper class, an aesthetic of poetry. Its also got me thinking how history that we are taught is the history of nations: not the history of people. I’m not dissing Japanese art: its exquisite; what I am trying to say though is that this “art” is very tightly linked to political power, a “art-design” for the development of harmony.

classical conservatism:
Who is the Tokyolite? Well they wear suits during the day, often with masks for protection from germs, smog etc. And at night or on their time off they put on their most expensive cloths and prance their new style. There is something very French going on here. An obsession with fashion, staying in “la mode” and spending stop-dollar on your image from shops with perfect lighting and sexy western blond girls as model types to aspire for. Cloth shopping is expensive, and conservative. The whole population seems to be generally hyper-conservative and very pop-image orientated. The youth follow in suit by being other set sub-types like goth, punk, manga/cosplay or aspiring business-yut [aka nerdy types] – but somehow these other sub genres seem just as contrived and just as image-based as the main stream culture. They involve expensive cloths, trendy image and an obsession with perceived appearance. This is the negative perspective.

For the positive perspective let me say that although I’m not 100% for this kind of consumerist obsession, what they do, and how they look is truly stunning. They are a beautiful people and they look ravish in their unique ways. Although they are quite obsessed with being westernized [a bit too much for my blood] – their unique twist adds sparkling colors.

One can see their historical art influence in their modern clothing: I’ve noted a list of things that make Japanese art unique, and this is reflected in their [people driven] fashion trends. The ones who seem to do it right are generally the cosplay people, though the goths and punks have a unique flavor too. Flowing patterns of design intermixed with defined lines give a modern samurai feeling twist to what would be a real fashion faut pas. You’ll have to see pictures to understand, since I lack the art-critic language of some of my better friends
😉
but basically clashing patterns combined with hard color breaks really do it.

addiction:
the japanese are an addicted culture… on every train you can look left and right and see: 5 people on their cell phones sending messages, 4 people playing portable games, 3 people playing games on their cell phones, 8 people sleeping [from their 12 hour day] the other 50% are staring into space.

there are gambling centers everywhere… usually pachino games [you gable with this ultra noisy pinball type slot]. the addition is so intense, people are seen waiting in long lines at 9:55am waiting for 10am for the place to open its doors! [in areas where the pachino don’t run 24/7 of course]

video games also feel like addition houses, and its made me a bit scared of the whole thing. They have some cool games here, but I was some how expecting it to be even more futuristic. Though I must say they have this interesting “magic the gathering/pokemon meets arcade game” type console which looks cool [but a bit repetative] and some dome bubble mech warrior simulators which look cool [capture the flag battles type thing]. I found r-type in one arcade! I can’t tell you how happy i was to find this game- it reminded me how much I LOVED r-type!!! aaaaah r-type you are my sweetness! [what is r-type? why just one of the most elegant shoot up side scrolling games ever!]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-Type

there are 20 million variations on street fighter here, which seems a bit excessive – and some of them are really beautifully rendered like manga cartoons with soft forms and crips edges.

All iin all though the games are very repative based… i’m missing brain power games: these are all button-mania type things. I guess now I know what its like here to be a gamer.

density:
its super busy here, mega packed, ive never experienced so many humans in one place! the worst was actually at one museum… imagine entering a museum only to find it MORE packed than the busiest metro you’ve ever been in! People walking 5cm a minute in a line along the windows to look at art and the 4 meters of space between the two walls are shoulder to shoulder with several thousand people! It was horrible! I didn’t even bother looking at the art as I didn’t have the patience to stand in this snail line of movement and look at [in this case] boring bits of stones from old walls. Harsh!

photo crazy:
i’ve been going manic with my camera! i’ve taken SOOO many pictures! now I just need to find a chance to actually upload some! lots of pictures means lots more work to select and upload, so ironically this means its harder to get around to doing it and thus less likely you will see anything anytime soon…
😛
frustrating for you i am sure!

art books:
i love the art here, and Ive been hunting for cool art books! though its dificult to know what is good cause they [you guessed it] warp all the comics in tight plastic! so you can’t open them to see what is good or not! how AGRIVATING! sigh… this is the most disapointing aspect of the art-hunting here I have to deal with; potentially beautiful art packed away so I cant even look at it to see if I want to buy it! doh!

tourism:
japan doesn’t need tourists, infact, we are annoying! we are only 0.01% of their income, and we dont speak very good japanese… so its best to not deal with tourists much if you can help it… this means a lot of the cool things are hard to be accepted into, or helped by. not that the japanese aren’t overly polite [they sure are!] but beyond the extreme politeness its hard to find someone who is willing to think with you to provide options you haden’t thought of from their own initiative [naturally they will answer your own questions perfectly well]. for example: I asked a shop to recommend some manga to me; especially since I can’t open the plastic wraps… but this turned out to be quite an undertaking! japanese people are also under high pressure to perform, if they are late or not working at 100% efficiency at all times they can loose their job straight away – so spending more than a few seconds with you to help you is all you can expect in tokyo… sadly.

Japanese balls in American fingers:
i’ve read more on the japanese history, and what I didn’t realize was how much this country is [secretly] under american control since WWII. I thought america was fighting Japan and the war was undetermined until the US droped the two A bombs [I knew about the pre-surender letter though]. But what is more clear to me now is that America basically already had japan under its bombs for quite a while before the A-bomb was dropped… Tokyo was bombed more than 80 times, and dozens [if not more] cities were completely flattened. It seems to me that the USA was not after a defeat, they wanted the government to surrender completely to american control. This was a war between the upper class of the states vs. the upper class of japan [at least in the end game it was]. The US upper class wanted the Japanese upper class to shift underneath their power… and I think they got what they wanted.

You can see the hints of this control shift by what happened in post-WWii history… education system changed to be more “american” and part of their curriculum was pro-american education: they have been teaching children to love and adore America. The media, movies etc. are all pro-american. I’m njot saying that everything is American controlled; but its more like they hold certain key aspects of the system under a leash, at key places necessary to ensure economic dependence, flow of monetary capitals and the propagation of american control. The Japanese are aware of this and jokingly call themselves sometimes the “51st state of America”.

This whole thing has surprised me cause I knew Japan was defeated and now on coalition with the USA; but I thought it was more in the past than it really is; I didn’t realize that one of the main reasons Japan is pro America is because of lingering American-puppet strings, instead of self-induced-solidarity: choice. The reliance on American military to provide Japanse protection from [potential invasions] from China and Korea is key in this debate… and its one that is often brought up by the government. Thought 80% of the people apose a Japanese military being formed separate of the American one: for good reasons too mind you; though this discussion is far from simple.

racism:
interesting things to say here too… some people here [based on their last name] are not even granted a public education! the literacy rate is 95%; it should be 99.5% but the missing 4.5% come from the people who are not seen as “1st class people” based on their tainted family name! most of these people live around Osaka; I have not been there yet [more info to follow is I learn more]

ok, this is a lot for now! i hope some of this was intereing to read, sorry I have not written to many of you in a while, its been VERY busy!!!!!!!!!

xxx to all,

love,

sebastian.

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2 Comments

  1. comment
    Quite an adventure! sounds like reality is mixed with dreams, fantazy and virtual world.
    Must be incredible to experience such a diffrent culture with such a rich ancestry.
    You are really using your time to the most as usual and this shows through this amazing description of discovering as much as you do in such a short time.
    Merci, Sebastian for sharing your experiences in so much details, that it really made me imagine how life is within the Japanese culture.
    Wish you lots of more amazing moments!
    Xten

  2. comment
    Wow- Sebastian, you’ve written heaps! How did you find the time? You are having a full-on time, with so many new experiences! 36 million people in Tokyo – no thanks. I thought Israel was the 51st state of USA, not Japan.
    Its really interesting what you write – thanks.If you’re into sexuality and titilation then it sounds like you’re in the right place!
    Cheers
    Jane P (NZ)

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