Last week all my classes were canceled as a result of the earthquake, tsunami and fears about people being irradiated. I thought about what i could do to help and realised that i could do nothing apart from use less electric at home. So i went to Kyoto instead.
As Kyoto was the capital of Japan before Tokyo it’s a pretty historical place, half-filled with buildings and temples built and used hundreds of years ago and still standing proudly around the city. Kyoto is a bit of a battle ground. Old and new buildings compete with the skyline and tourist attention. Traditional kimonos trade blows with modern fashion and occasionally win. Old cosy bars and restaurants gently invite you down small alleys while neon blares out of shopping centres. When i was there, even winter and spring were locked in combat with the winter showers easily beating the occasional March sunshine. It was freezing.
I saw the understated Imperial Palace and the opulent Nijo-jo complex that was once home to Shoguns and the ruling elite. There was a breathtaking temple called Sanjusangen-jo which contained 1001 near life-sized Buddhist statues. There was the wonderful Kiyomizu Temple that sits on an impossibly massive wooden veranda overlooking the city with a thatched roof. It was busy when i was there so i imagine it’s a bit mental when spring finally wins the fight against winter and tourists invade the place.
I spent most of the time in Kyoto walking around trying to keep warm and was randomly stopped on the street buy a small camera crew who asked if i could speak Japanese. I lied and said “Yes, a little.” OK, can you be on a cable TV show? Two men, who i’m assuming were comedians but only because of the clothes they were wearing, started to ask me lots of questions and i stood there shivering looking like an utter idiot trying to respond to them. I can only hope i’ve been edited out unless the title of the show is Look, Foreigners Are Stupid in which case i might be top billing.
I stayed just one night and slept in a capsule hotel that was so minimalist and stylish it would make Steve Jobs blush. It was an advert in brushed steal, white plastic and being overpriced. Still, it was a place to crash after getting drunk in a little counter bar where i seemed to make instant friends for being able to use chopsticks and drink hot sake. The middle aged woman sat next to me seemed to want to always try and show me her cleavage, the barman giggled every time i said anything, a business man chatted to me about work and a nice woman with an medical eye patch kept winking at me (although, come to think of it, she could have been blinking but it’s nice to be optimistic).
I also managed to find another random museum - the International Manga Museum. Manga is massive in Japan. The cartoon book magazines are serialised with new editions and volumes being released at regular intervals. It’s a printed version of a soap opera with different manga written for and consumed by every inch of Japanese society. There’s sci-fi manga, comedy manga, political manga, school girl manga, crime manga, housewife manga, businessman manga. If you’re a person, then there’s probably a manga for you and as a result there’s manga everywhere in Japan. It doesn’t seem to matter where you go you always see somebody reading manga. The museum itself was an old school that had been converted into a manga library with walls filled with the magazines and displays in English and Japanese telling you about the history of genre and plenty of seats occupied by people with their heads buried in another edition. As it was international they also had manga that had been translated into different languages and so i sat and read the first three instalments of Ikigami which is a kind of dystopian story about people who know that they only have 24 hours to live. Unfortunately i only had a few hours before the train to Tokyo left and so i had to put down the little book magazine and promise myself that i’d return to Kyoto when the weather was warmer to sample more of its temples and nightlife.
I’m back at work now in Chiba and Tokyo which means that half my lessons begin by wasting at least fifteen minutes swapping earthquake stories and being politely asked why i haven’t left Japan. Greater Tokyo and the north east of the country is still being wobbled by occasional aftershocks and everybody is wondering when the power stations will be back online (Fukushima wasn’t the only plant to get knocked out by the tsunami, just the only one to leak tiny amounts of radioactive material) which means that the power saving and rolling powercuts could continue for a few more months and spring and summer could be a bit smelly and sweaty without air-con. Air-freshener, deodorant and icy ice-cold beer at the ready.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Friday, March 18, 2011
Myoden and Porridge
The dust has settled, the debris searched, the missing are still missed, the power plant is still thirsty and i learnt another Japanese word. Ji-shin.
I was crossing a busy-ish street last Friday afternoon just outside Tokyo surrounded by buildings that are about eight floors high. The ground started shaking and twitching and those buildings started to dance. I was stood outside a pharmacy watching stuff rattle off the shelves and fall on the floor. I was listening to people’s slightly scared voices. I was holding onto a post box steadying myself. I was watching the panic on an old lady’s face. “Shit,” i thought as the trees shook and the lampposts swayed and my feet moved beneath me. “If the old lady is worried, it must be a big one.”
I have since experienced earthquakes of varying magnitude whilst cooking, showering, sleeping, walking and drinking. It has changed the way i think about the ground i live on. I appreciate now that it isn’t solid. It’s just the thin crust on the surface of the hot liquid. A bit like cold porridge only not as tasty.
And life goes on. Tokyo and the cities around it are now trying to get back to something close to normal as the electric supply has been disrupted to the point where everybody is rationing electricity usage to avoid power cuts. Supermarkets, shops and businesses are using half their lights. Quieter Metro stations have stopped the escalators and lifts. Unfortunately a lot of food was bought in the unnecessary panic that followed and there’s been delays getting everything back to where it was before last Friday. But it’s not an apocalypse for anybody living in or around Tokyo. It’s just an inconvenience. The biggest danger right now is everybody’s imagination getting carried away with itself.
The nice man in my local bar last night had a vivid imagination. Either that or he was trying to wind me up. “You go England. London. Japan dangerous. Radiation. Nuclear. X-ray. No good.” Or maybe he’s tired of speaking English and listening to my shit Japanese and just sees this as an opportunity to get rid of me. He told me that he had to walk home last Friday from central Tokyo as the trains were stopped. It took five hours. “Very fun!” he said, smiling. “Many people. Like slow marathon!” Or perhaps he’s an aspiring comedian. We all told our little stories. One guy ran home (not screaming and panicking with his arms in the air, i mean, you know, jogging) which took him an hour and a half which he seemed pretty please with. One other guy was totally bemused by the fact that the English word for tsunami is tsunami. I told them my crap story about the pharmacy. Then the drinks bottles started clinking together on the shaking shelf, the stools shook slightly and for a minute the porridge beneath us lost its balance and stammered a little. Phones flipped open. Buttons pressed. Updates gathered. No problem. Just a three, inland. No tsunami threat. Just another little ji-shin.
I was crossing a busy-ish street last Friday afternoon just outside Tokyo surrounded by buildings that are about eight floors high. The ground started shaking and twitching and those buildings started to dance. I was stood outside a pharmacy watching stuff rattle off the shelves and fall on the floor. I was listening to people’s slightly scared voices. I was holding onto a post box steadying myself. I was watching the panic on an old lady’s face. “Shit,” i thought as the trees shook and the lampposts swayed and my feet moved beneath me. “If the old lady is worried, it must be a big one.”
I have since experienced earthquakes of varying magnitude whilst cooking, showering, sleeping, walking and drinking. It has changed the way i think about the ground i live on. I appreciate now that it isn’t solid. It’s just the thin crust on the surface of the hot liquid. A bit like cold porridge only not as tasty.
And life goes on. Tokyo and the cities around it are now trying to get back to something close to normal as the electric supply has been disrupted to the point where everybody is rationing electricity usage to avoid power cuts. Supermarkets, shops and businesses are using half their lights. Quieter Metro stations have stopped the escalators and lifts. Unfortunately a lot of food was bought in the unnecessary panic that followed and there’s been delays getting everything back to where it was before last Friday. But it’s not an apocalypse for anybody living in or around Tokyo. It’s just an inconvenience. The biggest danger right now is everybody’s imagination getting carried away with itself.
The nice man in my local bar last night had a vivid imagination. Either that or he was trying to wind me up. “You go England. London. Japan dangerous. Radiation. Nuclear. X-ray. No good.” Or maybe he’s tired of speaking English and listening to my shit Japanese and just sees this as an opportunity to get rid of me. He told me that he had to walk home last Friday from central Tokyo as the trains were stopped. It took five hours. “Very fun!” he said, smiling. “Many people. Like slow marathon!” Or perhaps he’s an aspiring comedian. We all told our little stories. One guy ran home (not screaming and panicking with his arms in the air, i mean, you know, jogging) which took him an hour and a half which he seemed pretty please with. One other guy was totally bemused by the fact that the English word for tsunami is tsunami. I told them my crap story about the pharmacy. Then the drinks bottles started clinking together on the shaking shelf, the stools shook slightly and for a minute the porridge beneath us lost its balance and stammered a little. Phones flipped open. Buttons pressed. Updates gathered. No problem. Just a three, inland. No tsunami threat. Just another little ji-shin.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Myoden and Museums
After Yokohama and onsens i was trying to think of some kind of travelling to do in Tokyo itself and that’s when i remembered the Meguro Parasitological Museum. A few years ago i was travelling in Japan and managed to visit it and as a result i started an ill thought-out mission to visit other random little museums in Seoul and Beijing, without much luck, as i travelled through Asia. With the help of some friendly hints and a bit of research it turns out that the parasite museum isn’t alone in Tokyo in housing a small corner of quirky and different.
The Tokyo Kite Museum isn’t really a museum. It’s a cramped room on the upper floors of an old office block in central Tokyo dripping with kites and dust and colour. I stepped straight out of the old lift into a dark, dank room and was welcomed by a nice old lady reading a newspaper behind a reception desk who was trying not to fall asleep while a sign overhead on the wall asked me, “Have you tugged today?” My Japanese language skills were, thankfully, not sufficient for me to inform the lady of an answer. The large room was empty of people (although i did visit on a windy day so maybe the kite enthusiasts of Japan were already preoccupied) but it was utterly and completely crammed with kites. The only space that wasn’t used up to display some kind of flying contraption was the floor and two windows. All other space was kite-filled and bursting with colour in the dim light. There were kites from other countries, pictures of people flying kites, kites the size of stamps and kites the size of sofas, kites shaped like animals and people and dragons and i never even new or cared that such creations existed. It was amazing and crap all at once.
The Tobacco and Salt Museum was a bit different. For a start it was popular and was quite busy with old people and school kids on afternoon trips. It had also been cleaned recently and there were no signs questioning if i’d done anything that morning. There were maps and diagrams showing the history of tobacco and smoking but as all the signs and explanations were in Japanese i was spared the boredom of reading about it and instead just looked at old packets of cigarettes and pipes of various shapes and sizes before buying a postcard of a safety match advertisement and making haste for the Button Museum.
I wasn’t sure what to expect from the Button Museum (other than its contents, that’s quite self explanatory). Would it be covered in dust like the Kite Museum or old people like the Tobacco place? I figured it would be both. I’ll never know. I found the museum in a small building in the east of Tokyo but was informed that you need to call ahead to make a reservation for a guided tour and so i scrapped that one off the list. I’m all for finding stupid museums but i figured i should draw a line with guided tours of buttons. In a foreign language. On my day off.
However, that didn’t stop me visiting the Metro Museum, dedicated to the Tokyo Metro, which was a bit like a crèche with trains. In fact, i think there were more pushchairs than rolling stock but it did have some fancy looking models that showed you how they make the tunnels so it might not have been a total waste of 210 yen.
Next on the list was the Criminology Museum which was at Meigi University and had its home in a dark basement. It had some pretty grim looking contraptions that were once used for torturing people or slowly killing them and paintings of people being murdered in a variety of different and imaginative ways.
I also managed to find a Laundry Museum. All i had was a piece of paper with an address on it and a vague idea of which metro station i needed. After walking from the station the address turned out to be the headquarters for Hakuyosha Dry Cleaners but there was no hint of where the museum was – just a car park and few buildings. A woman in a lab jacket and a small group of grandmothers walked out of the building i was stood in front of and the women in the lab jacket approached me and asked if i needed help. I was stood in the car park of laundry company headquarters looking for a museum about washing machines after i’d spent a couple days seeing kites, pipes, salt, torture devices and trains in small crap museums in suburban Tokyo. I assured the kind women that i did indeed need help. She told me that the museum was on the third floor. On display in the brightly lit room was an old shirt press, a glass cabinet filled with old irons, some wooden tumble dryers, a couple of washboards and some paintings of women slapping clothes on a rock next to a river. I’m glad it was free.
Apparently, Tokyo is also home to a beer museum, a noodle museum, an electrical energy museum and a museum designed by famous animation director Hayao Miyazaki. I guess they can wait a few months as i’ve had my little fix of random crap for now.
The Tokyo Kite Museum isn’t really a museum. It’s a cramped room on the upper floors of an old office block in central Tokyo dripping with kites and dust and colour. I stepped straight out of the old lift into a dark, dank room and was welcomed by a nice old lady reading a newspaper behind a reception desk who was trying not to fall asleep while a sign overhead on the wall asked me, “Have you tugged today?” My Japanese language skills were, thankfully, not sufficient for me to inform the lady of an answer. The large room was empty of people (although i did visit on a windy day so maybe the kite enthusiasts of Japan were already preoccupied) but it was utterly and completely crammed with kites. The only space that wasn’t used up to display some kind of flying contraption was the floor and two windows. All other space was kite-filled and bursting with colour in the dim light. There were kites from other countries, pictures of people flying kites, kites the size of stamps and kites the size of sofas, kites shaped like animals and people and dragons and i never even new or cared that such creations existed. It was amazing and crap all at once.
The Tobacco and Salt Museum was a bit different. For a start it was popular and was quite busy with old people and school kids on afternoon trips. It had also been cleaned recently and there were no signs questioning if i’d done anything that morning. There were maps and diagrams showing the history of tobacco and smoking but as all the signs and explanations were in Japanese i was spared the boredom of reading about it and instead just looked at old packets of cigarettes and pipes of various shapes and sizes before buying a postcard of a safety match advertisement and making haste for the Button Museum.
I wasn’t sure what to expect from the Button Museum (other than its contents, that’s quite self explanatory). Would it be covered in dust like the Kite Museum or old people like the Tobacco place? I figured it would be both. I’ll never know. I found the museum in a small building in the east of Tokyo but was informed that you need to call ahead to make a reservation for a guided tour and so i scrapped that one off the list. I’m all for finding stupid museums but i figured i should draw a line with guided tours of buttons. In a foreign language. On my day off.
However, that didn’t stop me visiting the Metro Museum, dedicated to the Tokyo Metro, which was a bit like a crèche with trains. In fact, i think there were more pushchairs than rolling stock but it did have some fancy looking models that showed you how they make the tunnels so it might not have been a total waste of 210 yen.
Next on the list was the Criminology Museum which was at Meigi University and had its home in a dark basement. It had some pretty grim looking contraptions that were once used for torturing people or slowly killing them and paintings of people being murdered in a variety of different and imaginative ways.
I also managed to find a Laundry Museum. All i had was a piece of paper with an address on it and a vague idea of which metro station i needed. After walking from the station the address turned out to be the headquarters for Hakuyosha Dry Cleaners but there was no hint of where the museum was – just a car park and few buildings. A woman in a lab jacket and a small group of grandmothers walked out of the building i was stood in front of and the women in the lab jacket approached me and asked if i needed help. I was stood in the car park of laundry company headquarters looking for a museum about washing machines after i’d spent a couple days seeing kites, pipes, salt, torture devices and trains in small crap museums in suburban Tokyo. I assured the kind women that i did indeed need help. She told me that the museum was on the third floor. On display in the brightly lit room was an old shirt press, a glass cabinet filled with old irons, some wooden tumble dryers, a couple of washboards and some paintings of women slapping clothes on a rock next to a river. I’m glad it was free.
Apparently, Tokyo is also home to a beer museum, a noodle museum, an electrical energy museum and a museum designed by famous animation director Hayao Miyazaki. I guess they can wait a few months as i’ve had my little fix of random crap for now.
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