Explorer of the Everyday

Japan was an explosion of unique experiences, from queuing up admirably to get on the train in the metro station to sampling unbelievably tasty street food and, cherry on the top, karaoke-ing in the back of a van for an audience I will fortunately never see again and vice-versa. And while I thoroughly enjoyed being there as a tourist for two weeks, taking it all in and getting lost in this incredible whirlwind of peculiarities that is Japan and its people, it did not completely win me over. I wanted to ponder on why that is.

Maybe I came with high expectations. Perhaps somewhere during my teenage-hood, presumably upon reading “Shogun” or from the stories about geishas, Onsen, manga and samurais I have heard from Japan enthusiasts, my imagination started to build a country of its own. Or maybe because Japan is simply so different from anything I have visited before. Or again, maybe because it severely lacks the level of mess that the countries I typically fall in love with have. Or else…it might be a simple matter of taste, or compatibility issue and lack of mutual attraction at fault. The truth is out there. But:

Do you fall in love with the polite, nice, clean, correct, strangely well-mannered and utterly servile or would you rather fall for the chaotic, colourful, certainly wild but bursting with raw life and infinitely interesting? Be honest: Isn’t it just a tad boring that everything is clean and annoyingly on time and nothing ever fails? Do you really enjoy the bending, the countless rules, the uniformed people? Oh, and why do they have to dress the same? I blame my lack of profound fondness on having visited India just before – a country I did fall in love with despite its myriad flaws. Chaotic, bewildering, excessive and incredible in every sense of the word India: Where else in the world does one get to see a monkey riding a stray dog – or was it a pig? – in the same street which accommodates a cow and a beggar washing his clothes at an old and barely functional tap water caught into a barely standing wall? It was hard to warm for formality after such fascinating disintegration and chaos.

Having obviously made up my mind to be critical about Japan, just because everybody loves it so much, I started to focus on the uncountable contrasts that shape this spotless country at every level. They go beyond the fact that one can smoke indoors but is not allowed to smoke outside in the streets, for example.

Scratching a bit beneath the surface, Japan is not one country I would choose to live in. Assuming they would embrace foreigners, which is reportedly not the case, polite and helpful as people are towards visitors. Being a woman and having had Japanese colleagues while working for various companies, I couldn’t help thinking it is not the best country to be one (although, without diving too deep into the topic, I do not know what that country would be nowadays). It is almost fascinating, and certainly puzzling, how reaching high levels of technological development does not rhyme with open mindedness and usually with concern for people. Try being a divorcee and deem yourself lucky of ever getting a promotion at work based on your knowledge and skills. It is rare.

I have a serious grump with the Japanese for their stubbornness to promote single use wooden chopsticks: How does one not realise that landslides – in a country where earthquakes are a daily occurrence– are very much facilitated by chopping down one tree after the other? My other big grump has to do with their fish market – the biggest in the world. No doubt a great place to stop and enjoy lunch, and literally rub elbows with the locals for it is hugely popular and hence extra busy. But wow the amount of fish that will never make it back into the seas and oceans alive! It is terrifying but also exhilarating to face today’s reality about underwater destruction in a gigantic heaven (or hell) where the fish sleep.

What I found utterly annoying were the fortunetelling notes you pay for at the temples (whenever belief and religion come free of charge…). Basically, you drop a coin, pick a note and what you get is a line prophesying how your future looks like. Mine didn’t look bright according to that tiny piece of paper and that was very upsetting. I was discouraged to pick a second one for fear of reading something even worse. It pretty much ruined my day. So if you are sensitive about being told you will become a beggar tomorrow and your family will die on a plane crash or a tsunami takes you away before the end of the trip, save your money and stay away from the notes. And the temples. Although that would be difficult, because there is one at every corner.

And then there is the traditional tatami – of which, out of an outburst of curiosity and desire to make the most of the Japanese experience I have tried one too many. Now, there is hardly anything worse than sleeping on the floor. The tatami proves that there is: Sleeping on the floor (almost) on a hard mattress with uncomfortable pillows is discomfort taken to a whole new level. This is guaranteed back pain the following morning, if you can stand up at all that is. Sadly, and for God knows what reason, I have made the tatamis a priority during my stay in Japan, jumping from one into the other, and never once did I exclaim “What a brilliant idea I had to book yet another room with a tatami!” Oh, the delight when I finally stretched my painful limbs into a king size, soft, real bed! Death to all the back-breaking tatamis!

A near cousin of the very hateful tatami, the Japanese have also invented the small, very low table which invites one to cross their legs on a thin mattress and crouch like this trying to look comfortable during dinner. Past 10 minutes, a numbing pain cripples into your legs to the point to which you slightly lose focus on your amazing food or pretty much anything else around you. Desperate to regain some sense in the legs, you try to change positions, but the setting only allows you to place your legs underneath your bottom for few additional minutes, until they start to feel painful and numb again and try the lateral position. By that time, you probably wish you could at least lie down on your tatami and trade the pain in the legs for some pain in the back or neck. Either way, Japan will make you see what having pain all over feels like and will certainly make you appreciate your return home.

Which reminds me of: the toilet flush. Can such an intimate act such as flushing the toilet be more complicated? Why oh why do the Japanese have to put so many buttons and decorate the toilet with so many useless features? And why would they want to stay in there forever while they discover how every single one of them works? As for the basic tourist, he/she is bound to spend a good part of the journey pressing on everything only to discover he/she still hasn’t found the one which is meant to flush the toilet. Boyfriends, when in Japan, do not ask yourselves why the other half is taking so long to come out of the toilet. She’s probably still looking for the right button.

When talking about pain, I have a vivid memory of some bills being quite painful too. While Japan is not a cheap destination (but one can easily find affordable food and accommodation), you can end up paying quite a lot for your plate in some places. Tired of eating small bowls of rice and of hearing my stomach rumble in the dark while lying on the tatami, I decided to treat myself with some steak one week into my Japanese adventure. I ordered the hida beef, famously a local delicacy. While the hida did not come in abundance and did not, as a result, generously fill my hungry belly, it nonetheless copiously emptied my pockets.

Similarly, fresh seafood costs a small fortune. But I will leave my grump aside the time to tell you that the hida is worth paying the money for. Once.

Beware of yakitori! It is a complete rip off – but you’d be missing out on one of the most authentic hang-around with the locals there is. First you go there for a drink. Then the beer makes you hungry, for you have been on a diet of small bowls of rice for several days. And besides, they prepare finger food of dubious parts of animals right in front of you. They smell delicious and look so tempting. They also go exceptionally well with the beer. So after you had 5 of them bites, you’d like some more. What you do not know by that time is that a substantial fee is already adding up to your final payment (not to mention that beers are somewhat a luxury judging by the price). And at the end of it all, you’ll go out slightly tipsy, poorer than you came in and still hungry.

To celebrate my last day in Japan, I drank 5 beers and thus spent all the money I had been so cautiously saving by eating cheap and scarce until then. It helped to forget for a little while that I could have done with more food and that a tatami (my very last one) was quietly waiting for me in the room.

One thing I am happy I did not waste my money on, though, is the tea ceremony which is often ranked as one of the top things to do for tourists. I had the opportunity to watch a very detailed show explaining the in-depths of this very sophisticated and praised practice (which is serving tea, really) while I was still in Japan, AirBnb-ing and sleeping on a proper bed. I stopped from whatever I was doing and looked intently at the television, absorbing the presenter’s comments and the supporting images of face-painted geishas performing the act and I…almost fell asleep, had it not been for that little voice dancing in my head congratulating me for not having chosen to entertain myself with something like this while in Kyoto, which is apparently the place to do it. There were free bags of tea on the table from the host. I used one and went straight to bed. Highly recommended show if you experience frequent insomnia.

Up for experiencing most of what Japan promised to offer by means of guidebooks and internet research, I happily booked two nights, not one, in a capsule hotel. The idea seemed of course very exciting when I had made the booking (so as with the tatami). It was slightly less gratifying after the first night, which would have been largely sufficient. If ever you wondered what it would be like to lie down in a coffin while alive, by all means, give the capsule hotel a go. They do not come cheap either – what does in Japan? But they do display a variety of comforts that I myself couldn’t care less of. You have a TV screen and a remote control and many, many buttons, again. The toilet experience taught me it is wise not to press on everything, so I refrained from it in my capsule, too. I probably realized that even though I have room enough to stretch my legs, I do not fancy being in a box for too long.

Aside from all this, I truly enjoyed my travels in Japan and while I would not go back in a hurry, I am perfectly willing to test some more aspects of this utterly out of this world country. When I am fed up with disorganized administration, delayed means of transport, people pushing me in all directions to get something, dirt in the streets and I start to have an inexplicable crave for rice, I know where to head to. It might, however, take a little while.