Vicarious Tales:
Random
Traveler Tales
at Tokyo, Japan (March
25 - 28, 2010)
by P. Kristen Enos
(Originally posted April 12, '10.)
Back to the main page
for the Tokyo Trip
Parts:
Baka Gaijin
That Language Barrier
Meals For The Mute
The Blessing Of A Locker
You Have To Be F*cking Kidding Me!!!
Those Random Snapshot Moments
Note: This is the last part of my Tokyo
write-up. This page being practical travel
tips mixed with anecdotes and pictures since I'll
definitely check this page as a reminder for my own
next trip to the Land of the Rising Sun.
Baka
Gaijin
I have been to Tokyo
only once before and that was in March of 2006, when
I was during the height of my anime and manga
otaku-ness. I had chosen to make that first
trip a special tour that would focus on attending
the Tokyo International Anime Fair (and of course
general tourist spots in Tokyo.) It was an...
interesting trip to say the least. Many
memorable moments that included having Japanese news
crews follow us (or more precisely the non-Asian
contingent), getting into a "I know that anime"
pissing match with another otaku at Studio Pierrot
(yes, I'm ashamed of myself), and finding out over a
lunch of ramen on the last day that one of the few
non-otakus on the trip actually knew my best friend
at work.
Now what was critical
about that trip in relation to the most recent one
is that after a couple of days with the tour group,
I eventually ditched the regular tour parts to go
explore Tokyo on my own. No, I don't speak
Japanese and I had basic traveler's common sense to
guide me.
While the trip ended
with the richness of a trip full of stories and
experiences, I had not made any plans to go back to
Tokyo until this last February, which was to see
Hangry & Angry in their concerts in Osaka and
Nagoya. Even though I would not have been part
of a formal tour, I had expected to at least meet up
with someone with the expectation of doing part of
the trip together. Unfortunately, my work
schedule got a little crazy in that I couldn't go,
which was just as well in that I ended up pulling a
neck muscle the week before the planned event.
(Trying to look on the bright side of an otherwise
disappointing moment.
So when it was
announced that my two favorite singers, Rika
Ishikawa and Hitomi "Yossy" Yoshizawa, were going to
perform in their other singing act of Ongaku Gatas,
I was fully committed to going. But it also
meant that of all of my international trips, I would
be going alone and being there alone.
I had to admit, I was
a little bit concerned about that fact. After
all, this meant that I did not have a friendly face
that knew my language to greet me or help me out of
a jam. I knew full well that I would start
this trip completely in "baka gaijin" (stupid
foreigner) mode. But my challenge to myself
was to learn from my mistakes so that I would end
the trip with a lot of practical knowledge for
future visits. As long as I reminded myself
that this was going to be a real life Japanese
culture test where failure for me was if I made the
same mistake twice.
That
Language Barrier
I still don't speak
Japanese, but 10 years of watching anime and t.v.
shows plus reading manga, exposed me to the culture
in surprisingly real and practical ways. After
all, people usually write dialogue the way real
people actually speak, unless you only watching
fighting anime, which I don't. Plus, I would
on occasion try to teach myself some basic Japanese
lessons before I got distracted by my own other
projects and interests. So for example, I know
how to read most Hiragana and some Katakana, two of
the three Japanese alphabets.
Plus, while English
words are sprinkled throughout written and spoke
Japanese language, they really don't use English the
way Americans use English. In fact, their word
for English isn't "English", so keep that in mind. So I knew it would
be better to be prepared as much as possible.
And from my own previous international living and
tourist experiences, I know the critical words even
if I couldn't form them into elegant Japanese
sentences.
1. Know the
word for "toilet"! The universal signs of
female (or male) silhouettes don't help you if
you're not able to see them.
2. Know how to apologize because you'll
probably bump or bang someone with your luggage or
as you're trying to follow a map.
3. Know how to say "thank you" for any type of
assistance or help.
4. Know how to say "excuse me" because there
are times you will need to ask for assistance, even
if it just means pointing at something like the
village idiot.
5. And it doesn't hurt to learn to ask in
Japanese if
someone knows English or clarify that you only know
English
6. And if a sales clerk says something to you
during the course of a sale that sounds like a
question, chances are that they're asking if you
have a membership or point card, which of course you
can shake your head. Unless you're buying food
from a convenience store that might benefit from
being nuked in the microwave. That's probably
a time when you want to nod.
7. If you need to get somewhere, bring a print
out that's in Japanese. (I think this is an
obvious one after my Aoyama Theater fiasco.)
8. Oh, and the ever precious phrase book is a
must. Even though I only used it once, I kept
it with me as my own security blanket.
Now the great thing
about the metropolitan area of Tokyo is that they
really do try to use English whenever possible to
help you get around, whether it's recorded
announcement of stop on the train or major signs.
But again, you can't always rely on that. My
Hiragana knowledge was a great fallback when I
didn't see any Roman letters at all.
During my last day, I
stood in the Shibuya train station and looked up at
the English language map to figure out how to plan
my remaining time. A couple of feet away were
a young British couple who were staring at the map
in complete bewilderment because it was huge (like
large wall-size) without any reference of "You Are
Here".
Even though I had the
earplugs of my mp3 in, I could hear that they were
trying to figure out how to get to the place that
was written on their piece of paper. I took a
peek and saw that the top read "Ginza" and "Things
to do on the first day". Since they weren't
trying to find a place off in like Hokkaido, I felt
a little assured that I could help them find their
destination. But I didn't want to just
randomly stick my nose into their business, having
had a couple of experiences with people who took it
badly. (I'm hardly scarred by those incidents;
I just figured it was their loss, not mine.
Like refusing to stop and ask for directions.)
Well, I kept making
eye-contact with the guy, because I learned that in
doing this, it will trigger them to ask you for help
in English. And I was right.
So when he pointed
out the top line on his paper and asked if I knew
how to there, I simply asked if this was the station
they were looking for a general location. If
he was surprised that I spoke, he got over it
quickly and said he wasn't sure. Meanwhile his
companion watched our exchanged quietly.
When I saw the stop
and pointed it out to them, they both looked
incredibly relieved. The young women then
declared, "You speak very good Eng--" And then
she stopped because something in our eye contact
must have told her that the sentence wasn't quite
right.
I simply replied,
"I'm American," to which we all laughed. Plus,
they seemed genuinely relieved and assured that I
directed them to the right place and didn't
misunderstand their intent. We then said our
farewells and went our separate ways.
Meals
For The Mute
From my 2006 trip, I
knew that some restaurants operated with a vending
machine ticket system. And I relied on that
knowledge to feed myself since I really wanted to
actually speak as little as possible to people.
All you had to do was
find a usually hole-in-the-wall restaurant and see
if they had a small vending machine by the front
door where you could purchase meal tickets.
It's a simple system where you purchase a ticket,
hand it to the host, get in line for the food (or
have it brought to you) and sit down.
Now unfortunately,
unless you really know your the kanji versions of
Japanese food, you're not always sure of what you'll
get. Sometimes you'll be lucky and have
pictures so you'll know what you're getting, but
that's not guaranteed. This is especially
critical for someone like me who is lactose
intolerant, or another person who might have food
issues like vegetarian/vegan diets. Still, it
was better than nothing -- unless you want to eat
convenience store food the entire time, which even I
was not about to do.
Now I knew that the
Japanese are known for being very efficient and
practical, which was one of the reasons why their
culture is fascinating to a laid Southern
Californian like me. It just didn't occur to
me just how ingrained this was to their way of
living.
I was in a small
restaurant in Akihabara and got a meal ticket for a
lunch set of a soba bowl and a mini-bowl of rice
with salmon that were hardly gargantuan proportions.
But I swear in the time it took for me to eat my
meal, three different types of Japanese people sat
down, inhaled their food and left.
I think I was
surprised with having seen years of footage of
members of Morning Musume having food-gasms, which
is something that cannot be rushed.
The
Blessing of a Locker
I decided to spend
the morning of my first real day running around
Akihabara in the hopes of getting some good bargains
of anime, manga or j-pop goods. So armed with
my backpack and sneakers, I took off with a high
hopes. My first stop of was in Animate, where
I proceeded to purchase several manga and manga
magazines.
It was the stupidest
purchase I ever made. Three and a half hours
later, I felt and walked like Quasimodo.
My legs and feet were
cramped up so bad that both calves felt like they
imploded, luckily at separate times. One time
was when I was stepping off of an escalator and I
almost collapsed. I had to skip off to the
side and work out the cramp in both my leg and foot.
So I admit there were
two things I could have done: the obvious was
to purchase my shitload of books LAST, or to make
use of possibly available lockers at Akihabara
station to dump things while I wandered around.
The only bad thing about the last option was that
you paid for every time you accessed the locker,
plus you weren't guaranteed you'd find one available
in the size you need -- with other locals and
tourists having similar uses.
Now, if you read my
write-up on the Ongaku Gatas concert, you'll know
that I was a bit wiser to take advantage of the
lockers at the venue. Though the trick was
that these were simple, non-automated lockers that
required exact change. Lesson learned from
that was make sure you had a couple of 500 yen or
several 100 yen coins for such occasions.
On my final day, my
flight wasn't until 4 in the afternoon but checkout
was 10 in the morning. I realized the benefit
of using a locker for my luggage on a low traffic
day like a Sunday would allow me a final tourist
fling in the city.
The great thing about
fully automated lockers in the train stations is
that they offered computerized instructions with an
English language option. However, when I chose
that option, the volume blared out through the low
traffic lobby to let everyone know I was a stupid
tourist.
It kind of reminded
me of how people treat foreign speakers as if
they're deaf by simply speaking louder. But at
least this was in my own language and was worth the
momentary embarrassment.
And the fair thing
about it was a few minutes later some Japanese
people were trying to figure out the lockers
themselves and chose the Japanese language
instructions, which were just as blaringly loud.
You Have
Got To Be F*cking Kidding Me!!!
Be prepared that if
you walk into a public restroom it may NOT have
paper towels or soap for washing up. Key
lesson: bring a small towel or handkerchief
and your preferred form of soap in a small
container.
It also doesn't hurt
to bring tissues... just in case. At
worse, you can always take the free tissues given
out for promotional items at large public areas.
In my case, the one tissue that I accepted turned
out to have two sultry women posing together on the
cover as part of some service. How
appropriate.
Of course, my biggest
lesson happened in the very last 10 minutes before I
had to get on a train to begin my trek back to
Narita Airport. Before retrieving my luggage
from the lockers, I realized I had better use the
restroom. This was at Osaki Station, where I
had previously used the sink to wash my hands
(without paper towels or soap) but not the other
part of the facilities.
When I walked into a
stall and saw a squat toilet on the floor, my face
fell.
If you do not know
what a squat toilet, imagine an oval hole in the
floor where you... squat.
At the time, I was
seriously limping due to three days of chronic leg
and feet cramps. And I was also wearing my
best jeans with less than 10 minutes to head to get
on several trains to the airport. Failure was
not an option.
Now, I knew how to
use those toilets in theory. But it was soooo
not the moment to learn how to use one for real.
And it wasn't like I could ask any of the locals to
explain or demonstrate. Even if we spoke the
same language.
If I was a spiritual
person, this would be the time for me to bargain
with some higher power that I would start exercise
regularly again and losing weight just as long as
some invisible power kept me from falling in.
I would also wonder if this was my punishment for a
past life transgression, like being a serial killer
or something.
This is where my
years of being an I.T. Analyst who did research and
problem solving became critical. There were
two priorities: protect myself, and protect my
clothes.
The first thing I did
was make myself as light as possible: put the
backpack and jacket on the shelf nearby. I
even took off my hat. Then I noticed that
towards the front area were two bars sticking out
from the wall, apparently for you to hold on.
One was horizontal, the other was vertical. It
was considerate of them to give you a choice.
And at least there was toilet paper.
Yes, my legs and feet
were in complete agony. I couldn't help but
think this was my personal equivalent to those
stories where you hear people who, in a time of
extreme crisis, would suddenly gain the strength to
lift cars off other people.
Now that it's over, I
can safely summarize it as "Squat as low as possible
and hang on for dear life."
Those Random Snapshot Moments
Those of you who knew
my past life as a published photographer know that I
specialized in candid shots. Unfortunately in
Japan, it is extremely bad manners to take pictures
of someone without their permission and I think even
illegal to video tape them.
Since I really don't
like posed shots, that left me without my preferred
subject matter. But I did find a few things
worth keeping an eye out for, most of which probably
just amuses only me:
My first sign that I
really was in Tokyo: Using western stars for
ads that would never be seen in the U.S. otherwise.
(Nico, this one's for you.
Congratulations on your promotion!)
Another
Western Star in Advertising. (I know, Nico,
you'd rather I'd have dedicated this one for you but
the "Boss" was much more appropriate.)
An ad in
a subway station promoting an upcoming Takarazuka
show. (Yes, Rachel, this one's for
you.)
A Western company
serving local cuisine. I'd heard the Japanese
love corn on their pizza; it was just a different
thing to see evidence of it in real life. And
by the way, the rest of the ingredients are
asparagus, bacon and a basil cream sauce. See:
learning to read Katakana can be very handy.
I hadn't realized
that the movie "Nine" had just opened in Japan
(after being in -- and out -- of U.S. theaters in
December.) It was fun to see all of the stars'
names in Katakana. Also the fact that being
nominated for 4 Academy Awards would be an
advertising point in Japan.
And finally, some
pics of the cars at the Tokyo car show that was next
to the Zepp Tokyo venue at Palette Town.
1. Cars can be
really cute by adding all sorts of things that you
would normally drive with:
2.
Yes, there is a bow on this car too.
3.
And to be even more hip, put English phrases on your
car. In this case: "That's Hot" and
"Amen to That".
And then
there's the driver's side. In case you wanted
to make it absolutely clear what you're about, or if
you just want to be a subversive (beep) like me:
And
special thanks to Rachel for pointing out that I
referenced the wrong side of the car, to which I
replied: "Yes, it's the passenger's side.
That's what I get when I rush to post and get it off
my plate. (All I had to do was look at the other
pic to see where the steering wheel was.)"
So on
that note, I am done with my Tokyo write-up.
Thanks for reading this far!
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