| -- Tokyo Adventures -- |
 |
|
|
| As interesting as coming and going can be, Tokyo itself is a fascinating place. I've already mentioned how ugly Japanese cities are, and Tokyo is the ugliest of the ugly. But in that ugliness hides a lot of beauty, if only you know where to look, and like Paris, the city sprawls out a long way in every direction. I stayed in Tokyo twice; Two days at the start of my trip and two days at the end. I am fortunate enough to have relatives living there, so accomodation wasn't a major issue, since they were kind enough to offer crash space. The expectations I had of Tokyo weren't too far off. Parts of it are crowded, noisy places, full of flash, fakery and glitter. That isn't bad in itself, and Tokyo definitely has its own atmosphere that makes it unique among cities. One familiar thing about Tokyo is how the city is broken down first into regions, then into neighborhoods, like Chicago is. The difference is that Japanese neighborhoods are smaller, and are broken down even further, into areas of only a few blocks, called chome. This seems to be simply to make finding a particular address easier, since Japanese street addresses are not neccesarily consecutive, and are often assigned according to when the building was constructed. My relatives live in Nishieifuku, which seems to be primarily a residential area. It's not what people generally imagine when they think of Tokyo: there are very few tall buildings there, and there is definitely a more relaxed air.. There are even some small parks, and several shrines of varying sizes. The most interesting of the shrines in the area is the local Hachiman shrine, which also seems to be the largest around. It was my first shrine visit, with my cousin Kimie the night I arrived, that really got me interested in seeing more of them, and I spent the rest of the trip popping in and out of shrines and temples. I will cover the more interesting ones in other installments of this account. I think they're fascinating places. The day I returned to Tokyo before my plane trip home, my cousins and I attended a small matsuri celebration at a small local shrine in an adjacent neighborhood. While these are nominally religious in nature, celebrating the kami (local spirit) of an area, they have a small-town street carnival air, with the shrine grounds are filled with booths selling food, knick-knacks, sweets, and all kinds of other things. The big attraction is the local men parading the god of the shrine through the neighborhood streets, making quite a racket as they go, shouting and bouncing their way to their ultimate destination. Once they get there, there is more celebrating, usually including some sort of dancing. The matsuri that we attended had a somewhat disappointing program of the local middle-aged ladies doing non-traditional dancing to the sort of enka (Japanese country music) ballads that are so popular in karaoke bars throughout Japan. We had hoped for something a bit more traditional, but a good time was still had by all. I hadn't budgeted a lot of time to Tokyo. Since the stated goal of my trip was mainly to hike and see the countryside, I was anxious to get out and see stuff a bit off the beaten tourist tracks. On future visits to Japan, I intend to spend a little more time exploring the city. I did see a few notable things, though. My second day in Japan started with Kimie, Norie and I wandering through the grounds of the Imperial Palace downtown. You can't see much of the actual palace buildings; they're cleverly hidden from prying eyes by ingenious landscaping... but you can walk through the public parts of the gardens, look at humongous koi , and have a look at the massive stone fortifications, and some of the lesser palace buildings, such as former samurai barracks, stables, and a small but exquisite tea house. Probably the highlight of my time in Tokyo was on my second day in the early afternoon, when my cousin Norie and I attended a performance of Kaidan Botan Doro at the Kabukiza down in the Ginza.This is an Edo-period kabuki play, and is 7 acts long (they are short acts, the play is just a little longer than 2 hours long). It was really fascinating to see live kabuki.. I admit that it isn't for everyone, and Americans who are used to Hollywood fare may find the plot pacing rather glacial. Kabukiza offers English-language translation earphones, and I tried using them, but found the simultaneous translation somewhat distracting, and only used them when the scene was too static to really tell what was going on. I enjoyed being able to hear the nuances of the actors' voices more than having to know exactly what they were saying. Overall, I enjoyed the experience immensely! Many thanks to Paul Fukuda for providing us with tickets! After kabuki, Norie and I did some shopping in Shibuya on the way back home. I had an interesting mission in Shibuya: One of the Toasties had requested that I try to find a gag gift for a friend of his, to whit, a Hello Kitty vibrator. One shouldn't be surprised that such a thing exists, since Hello Kitty's face is plastered across about anything you can imagine. This quest gave me an opportunity to see some interesting hidden parts of Shibuya.. the dark alleys and seedy corners that are not obvious from the neon-plastered streets. Thankfully, we were able to find the "specialty item" of question in the first place we looked, and didn't have to go through the trauma of having to ask for one at a dozen sleazy little stores... As I told Lon later, "You owe me $15 for the vibrator and a couple thousand for the humiliation of having to buy the damn thing.." -- Norie just stood nearby, amused... This shopping excursion was also my first look at a large Japanese bookstore. I love bookstores. The big difference with the larger Japanese ones is that they often have an entire floor dedicated to manga! (Japanese comics, for those not in the know)..Shelf upon shelf of manga collections (almost all of them in Nihongo, sorry) arranged by subject matter in some stores, by publisher in others. I did end up buying a "boy's love" comic, also known as yaoi, they're homosexual male love stories written for teenage girls --quite an extensive genre in Japan. The female equivalent is called yuri, and is also meant for female readers, I got the comic for a friend of mine here in Chicago, but nothing for myself. Maybe next time, as the genre is intriguing. On a tangent here, isn't it interesting how the vast majority of the popular anime and manga titles here in the US are geared towards 8-12 year old boys in Japan? No wonder anime fans have a reputation for being a bit "special". |