I saw a lot of interesting and beautiful places in Tokyo and Hakone. But more significant than the places were the people. There were those who spoke great English, like the wonderful Mr. Watanabe, and those who spoke no English at all, like the old ladies working in shops who invariably understood that I was asking for directions, and would draw maps and even step outside to point. There were even a few people who walked two or three hundred meters out of their way to take me to a place that would have been too confusing for non-verbal directions. It was also great fun to be walking around in a subway station (and you can do some walking around - to the tune of half a mile, if you're transferring from one subway line to another in a big station) and come around a corner and nearly bump into someone who would be startled that someone was there, and then more startled that it was a foreigner. This still strikes me as odd. Tokyo is a very cosmopolitan city, one that has English alongside Japanese on just about every sign of any significance. But people on the street and in the subway stations still seemed genuinely surprised to see a foreigner walking around. (Except for the people in Roppongi, which is crawling with foreigners.) Maybe it was because I wasn't escorted by a Japanese, or because I wasn't in a business suit. Maybe it was because I was taller than most people they usually see. (Not all Japanese are short, by the way - I'd say the people in their 20s and 30s are, on average, almost as tall as Americans. On the other hand, I saw plenty of old ladies who were, no exaggeration, four feet tall.) Maybe it was because they weren't seeing me at a shrine or other tourist location. No matter, it was still amusing.
I believe I've mentioned before that the people on the street are very aloof, until you get past sumimasen ("pardon me"). Then they're as friendly and polite as you can imagine. The aloofness comes as no surprise in an intensely crowded city of twelve million. Remember Crocodile Dundee walking down a crowded Manhattan street, trying to say "G'day" to everyone? Right. Two Americans I met on the bus to Narita Airport on my last day told me that the farther you are from the big cities, the friendlier people get. If I were to visit a village of 1,200 people up in the mountains, I'd imagine they'd be much more inquisitive than aloof. Whenever I go back, I plan to be speaking at least basic Japanese.
When I started out on this trip, I thought I was looking for the spirit of Edo. Kind of a fool's errand, when you consider that I don't have a true sense of what the spirit of Edo was. It's certainly romantic to look back on the Floating World and imagine streets full of samurai, Kabuki actors and concubines. But the reality is that this was but a small portion of the everyday life of Edo. Most of the people were solidly working-class: fishermen, low-level government functionaries, porters and longshoremen, construction workers and shipwrights and shopkeepers. But even at these lower social levels, there was a keen awareness of, if not participation in, an incredibly rich culture.
The flourishing of the Japanese culture during the Edo era has much to do with the Japan's isolation from the rest of the world. The only contact with foreigners was on a small island off Nagasaki. Portuguese and Dutch traders landed there but were not allowed onto the mainland. This allowed the arts and culture to develop much like the animals of Australia: without outside influence, Japanese society and its trappings evolved in a unique way. This was critically important in differentiating Japan from mainland Asia. Buddhism had come to Japan from China and Korea. The Japanese didn't even have a system of writing until the Chinese introduced theirs in the seventh century AD. And much of Japanese art and architecture was originally influenced by that of China. Without the isolation of the Edo period, Japanese culture might never have grown from what it co-opted from the Chinese. Maybe the spirit of Edo is most truly manifested in the uniqueness of the Japanese society and culture that exist today.
The reality of modern Tokyo is that it's a very westernized city. Part of Japan, to be sure, but there are places that could be mistaken for any major western city. It's the parts that don't look like the west that remind you where you are. Aside from the shrines and gardens, it's the out-of-the-way neighborhoods and their little houses and alleys that struck me as the parts of Tokyo that most resemble Edo. The shitamachi area of Yanaka, and Rieko's neighborhood of Ikegami, showed me a lifestyle that doesn't exist in the shadows of the skyscrapers. So maybe the spirit of Edo lives on in the remnants of the "low city." (Just to clarify: the historic shitamachi was immediately north and east of the Imperial Palace, while Ikegami was in the southern outskirts of Edo. But Ikegami has much of the same shitamachi atmosphere.)
In the end, I think it all comes down to finding the ways in which Edo evolved into modern Tokyo. The framework is still there - the Floating World is replaced by the entertainment districts and those who inhabit them, the common laborers are now the salarymen and office ladies. The gardens and shrines are still there, and not just as a Japanese version of Disney's "Main Street U.S.A." While most of the shrines have been rebuilt after the cataclysms of the 20th century, they're faithful to their historic structures and purposes. And they're not just there as tourist attractions. Aside from Senso-ji and Meiji Jingu, I found that most of the people at the shrines were Japanese who had come to pray and appreciate the beauty of the places.
There's still the "high city" (Roppongi, Shinjuku) and "low city" (as mentioned above, Yanaka and Ikegami). There's still a "shogun" (Prime Minister, his cabinet, the Diet). And there's still Edo Castle (its ruins actually, but the site is now the Imperial Palace, inhabited by the royal family instead of the Shogun). With enough imagination, I'm convinced that I can shoehorn all of Edo into Tokyo.
It's easy to read the history and stories of a bygone era and get caught up in the romance of it all. I was certainly guilty of this, to some degree, regarding Japan and Edo. Actually visiting the place in question is a sure cure for this condition. Maybe the true measure of a place can be figured from the amount of romance that remains when one returns home - "the morning after," so to speak.
Short answer: I'm keeping Japan's phone number. I found enough of Edo to feel that some of its spirit still exists. And modern Tokyo is a fantastic city, full of culture and excitement. I didn't have a single bad experience in two weeks there. But next time I visit, I'll take along some Japanese language skills and better walking shoes.
And there was Rieko. In my considerable experience, the person you get to know online isn't always the person you wind up meeting. But Rieko was very much like the warm and interesting person I'd pictured through more than a year of emails. We were both a bit nervous the first time we met, but by the end of two weeks we were joking around like old friends. There were only one or two occasions of language difficulties, which we quickly got past. She was directly responsible for me seeing Mount Fuji and walking on the Tokaido Road. She got me to the Ando Cloisonne shop in Ginza and the Harley dealership in Shibuya. And she took me to the pachinko parlor where I won so much money. I would have had a great time in Tokyo on my own, but the entire experience was greatly enhanced by sharing some of it with her. She's a great friend.
Once again, I'd like to thank everyone who sent me email about the site. It has been gratifying to know that so many people kept up with it. Now that it's done, I plan to completely forget about it for a month, and then come back to it for a good long look. It's nice to know it'll always be here to refresh my memories of Japan.
Just to wrap up - a few quick items that made an impression:
- In Japanese baseball, the count is strikes-and-balls, not balls-and-strikes.
- Not all Japanese cars are tiny. But the ones that are, are really tiny.
- People almost never cross a street against the lights, and they never jaywalk.
- You always carry a pocket pack of tissues. Some public restrooms have no toilet paper.
At every subway station, there's at least one young person handing out advertising flyers.
In almost every case, advertising flyers are handed out along with pocket packs of tissues. - Japanese people will eat almost anything that lives in water.
- It seems that you can buy anything smaller than your head out of a vending machine.
- Japanese paper currency gets slightly longer as the denomination gets higher.
- Japanese 5- and 50-yen coins have holes in the middle.
- Although the Japanese consider "4" the unluckiest number, buildings still have a 4th floor.
- About 1/3 of the people in any subway car are asleep.
The rest are reading or sending text messages on their cell phones. - Shinkansen tracks are not bolted together, they're welded together. No clickety-clack.
- Inside the entrances of many public buildings, there are locking umbrella racks.
Raw data, in no particular order:
- Miles walked: conservative estimate, about 50.
- Subway fare: roughly $90 over 12 days.
- Exotic foods eaten: raw horsemeat, squid sushi, and a couple of things that I honestly couldn't identify.
- Pictures taken: over 900, with roughly 390 appearing on this site.
- Server disk space occupied by the website: approximately 47 megs.
- Hours spent working on the website, including this recap: about 70.
Finally, below are some pictures of the trinkets and treasures I brought back. Enjoy!
