Japan's Otherness

Japan’s Otherness

Japan impresses right on arrival. At Kansai International Airport, a breathtaking space, sparkling, an engineering marvel as a man-made island, an efficient, organized, ultra-modern terminal designed by Renzo Piano.High tech amenities abound. On a personal level in the rest room, heated toilet seats and control buttons for water temperature for bidet or spray and music or flushing sound to muffle the revealing sound of your body functions. Arrival and customs processing was easy to navigate with Kanji signs and English subtitles, and immigration staff bowing profusely and guiding you with a smile.
And this bowing is universal and so part of their natural gesture. A hard hat worker at a road repair site bows deeply at the waist before giving the crossing sign to pedestrians. A waitress bows before handing you a menu, serving your meal or saying good bye when you leave. Every greeting is accompanied by a bow and a smile. Our bus driver bows as we get in the bus, no matter how many times a day. Every interaction with another is preceded by a bow. This respect and politeness is a national characteristic. In the metro, I embarrassed myself when I just hopped in, not noticing beforehand that everyone automatically falls in line to board the train, and waits for passengers to disembark first. Nobody turns away if you approach with a question even if they can’t speak English. If they can’t decipher anything they go out of their way to find someone who can help.
They are very tidy and clean, obsessively so. In many restaurants there are baskets or nice bins on the floor for your purse and things. In Japanese restaurants where there’s tatami or polished floors, you take off your shoes but slippers are provided and there are cubbyholes for your shoes. There are separate slippers for the toilet. In public toilets, there are big and small hooks to hang your stuff, or wide ledges or compartments for your bag, sanitizer dispensers, a baby seat so you dont’ have to sit the baby on the floor. There is no urine smell in the metro and no graffiti. The toilets are spotless.They wear surgical masks in public to protect themselves from pollen and others from their cold. There are umbrella caddies, and if there is none, they will hand you a plastic sock for your wet umbrella.

The vending machines can blow you away. At rest stops on the road, there is always a bank of vending machines that dispenses everything from beer to toys. The coffee vending machine dispenses fresh ground and brewed coffee and you can control the brew strength and can fix it with cream or sugar or espresso or cappuccino, and while it is preparing the coffee, there’s a digital timer to tell you when it will be done and in the meantime the machine plays a rumba to entertain you while you wait and when the coffee is done, it tells you and it opens the serving box automatically. Too much! I like the rumba though. If you don’t have 2 minutes for individually brewed fresh ground coffee, there is canned pre-brewed coffee dispensed hot. It also dispenses a warning to be careful, because the coffee is hot. Big brother is everywhere.

Japan is in the details. Meticulous, orderly, structured, everything in its place. The lunch boxes are wrapped in beautiful paper, and have many compartments to organize each food item, it looks like a gift box. Meal items are served in individual unique dishes that look like works of art. With the cherry blossom in abundance, they are present in floral arrangements in very elegant ikebana style. It appears simple but design is actually governed by principles derived from understanding nature. This can be appreciated fully in the classic Japanese garden. The formal tea ceremony is indeed a ceremony with protocols and etiquette to be followed. And kabuki theater is enjoyed more if its conventions and principles are understood.

Japan is discipline. There are rules of conduct posted all over for the public, the underlying theme being consideration for the public good and to not interfere with another person’s comfort. These rules are verbose as it usually explains why a particular behavior is prescribed using very polite suggestions. Next to a coffee vending machine, “ Please be careful, your coffee is very hot”. In the Metro, “Please turn off your cell phones and do not talk on the phone , it may disturb the person next to you. On a balcony ledge, “Please do not engage in dangerous acts such as leaning over, as it might cause an accident”, In the theater, “ Please do not take photos during the show, the flash may distract the performer and disturb the show for others” This discipline and consideration for the common good is displayed so powerfully following the 3/11 tragedy. An observer remarked that the people acted in concert as if trained to behave this way, like an army. It has defined a cultural characteristic of the Japanese, and had served the country well at a time of adversity.

Boarding the metro during rush hour I felt spooked surrounded by all these men in black, I felt I was in a funeral caboose. Japan dresses formally. Men and women go to offices in dark suits, and children go to school in uniforms. Female broadcasters dress conservatively, no cleavage showing. There’s a group of young people who have developed a distinct subculture, the otaku, as a rebellion to all this constriction of self-expression. They dress in costumes, play roles, have developed quite a following and reputation that they have become tourist attractions in the places they congregate, usually in the districts where manga, anime, and video games are sold, such as Akihebara, Takeshita dori, Harajuku. Adult males with a large bank account can relax with geishas and kick off their shoes, and the ordinary salaried men can go to bars after work and hang out with other guys or visit Shinjuku’s Kabukicho(red light) district or Ueno’s Ameyoyokocho for adult role play. Alas Japanese society is male-dominated, and women’s roles is still to serve, but it is slowly changing as evidenced by the increasing popularity of maid’s bars. Here for a sum, a guy can hire a “maid” dressed in uniform of a short skirt, ruffled apron, cleavage, high boots, and engage in master/servant fantasy. The maid will call him master, may groom him, even clean his ears, serve him tea, pamper him, etc. But even here, they can’t escape from rules, in fact there are 10 rules they have to observe in this game. There are some of these maid’s bars catering to women, where the men become the servants and do the woman’s bidding.

Japan has the romance of a long past. Medieval and feudal lores of the samurai, of ninjas, of royalty and chivalry are oft repeated and beloved. Its art and culture, and science go back over 2000 years. Yet Japan is very young. It did not have a coming out until the Meiji restoration in the 19th century, the beginning of modern Japan. While it’s feudal relics and structures are well preserved or faithfully restored, its cities have been reduced to rubble by modern wars, by earthquakes, and the atom bomb, and recently the tsunami. Entire cities have been rebuilt, and they have the sleek and futuristic ambiance of modern architecture. It’s infrastructure is impressive, overpasses and bridges, and sky-ways, interlocks and loops over cities. It’s railroads carry trains that run with the speed of a speeding bullet, its roads cut through mountains with tunnels instead of going around it. Driving from Takayama to Lake Suwa, one of us counted 29 tunnels, one of them was 11 kilometers long.

The Yoschino cherry blossoms were magnificent, they are the color of the lightest blush and transparent against the sun, when the wind blows and scatter the petals they float like snowflakes, breathtaking to behold. They’re ephemeral, lasting only 2 weeks, but then the Kansai cherries take over, and the Iris, azaleas take their turn. And when fall arrives, the landscape is a brilliant red with the Japanese maples in full color and the Ginko trees turn yellow. These 2 times of the year it seems all of Japan is out to view their grandeur. There are numerous festivals throughout the year to celebrate nature’s beauty and bounty. In the spring, they stage hanami viewing parties under the cherry blossoms.

I enjoyed Japan, it is kirei and subarashi, but it is too much of another world than of my world.

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