Sundry and miscellany

Welp, a lot of stuff has happened since Tokyo, most of it boring, so I will abandon the narrative approach and talk/think out loud for a bit about stuff I've been meaning to talk about. I'm feeling pretty good, I was talking with my host mother the other day about Thanksgiving and how I was really sad I couldn't be with my family or have apple pie, and I guess I looked pretty sad doing it because today my host mom made some apple pie to go after dinner! It was not.. exactly.. apple pie, but delicious nonetheless (she used a storebought square, flat pastry shell and filled it with sliced apples.. really more of a turnover but there was no way to communicate this and I felt it would be a tremendously dick move and really ungrateful to 'correct' her about it anyway). She seemed to think it was a failure but I did my best to assure her it was still delicious (it was) and that honestly pies are hard to make in a microwave (Japanese houses do not have ovens, there's a 2-inch high broiler for fish under the stovetop and that's it). Anyway, happiness! Cannot replace the folks at home, but it was incredibly nice of her and made me feel much better.

This segues awkwardly into something I realized poring over what pictures to upload this time around: racism and Japan. I've sort of skirted around it a few times, and I'm sure other people have said things about it much cleverer than I can say, but this is a blog not an academic article and I am entitled to shout my opinions into the void, so here we go. Poring over pictures triggered this because in one there's a white guy on a bike in Kyoto and I immediately went 'oh hey a tourist.' It did not cross my mind for the barest second that he lived here.

I would say that this is because I have internalized the values of what is perhaps one of the most racist societies in the developed world. They don't have genocides or anything (any more, see: colonization of Hokkaido), but legally, in the media, and in general, the Japanese are very seriously and very strongly of the opinion that only the Japanese belong in Japan, and that you will never be Japanese unless you are really (ethnically) Japanese. They are much to polite to say this straight out unless they're one of the right-wing crazies, but if you press the vast majority of Japanese people you will discover this conviction somewhere.

You will never see this on a vacation; when you are clearly a tourist with no aspirations beyond that you are a customer and will be shown as much courtesy as possible. There are places you Shouldn't Be, but still generally the Japanese have to problem with you. They aren't racist in the sense that "all non-Japanese are smelly and I hate being around them (many are racist in this sense against the Chinese)," but if you make any sign of trying to naturalize all that goodwill will dry up faster than spit in the Sahara. They make every attempt to keep you in the tourist sphere; even in conversations that I start in Japanese and that I would be perfectly capable of managing in Japanese, servicepeople will vastly prefer speaking horribly mangled english to having to respond to a gaijin in their own language. This is an experience that happens across everyone in our program, which is especially frustrating for the kids in the top levels of language class who are basically fluent.

One of the worst things is that I've been realizing that when my friends complain about this, I not only defend the Japanese people's attitude but accuse my friends of being unfair. "You're holding them to American standards" I say. I automatically assume that because it's part of their society to be one tribe-one country-one family-one in-group, that this is acceptable and how things should operate. I'm still not sure how I feel about it. It's even self-destructive; Japan is aging rapidly (to put it mildly), and there are literally millions of Chinese and Southeast Asians that would love nothing more than to move to Japan and work, but the Japanese will have a single 50 year old in the workforce paying for the healthcare of a billion over-80s before they allow that to happen.

In a way, though, I feel they've 'earned it.' They are perhaps the only real nation-state in the world that didn't have to invent itself out of a coalition of ethnic groups pretending they had been one people forever. Sure they fudge a bit to get it into the BCs, but it is pretty much accepted that the majority of the main three islands of Japan has been one gene pool and one system of society under varying levels of central control since the 800s AD. There is no other developed nation that can claim anything reasonably close; Britain was invaded over and over, mainland Europe, Asia, and the Middle East are a stewing pot of migration, invasion, and the Modern National Boundaries are fairly arbitrary (made in the 1800s for Europe, with ethnic identities largely constructed after the fact to explain why you should listen to the shmucks in the Capital, and a little after for the rest of the world with ethnic divisions wholly ignored by colonizing powers drawing boundaries), and America is entirely a nation of immigrants. Maaybe Norway? I don't know very much about Scandinavia, I'll admit. But yeah, Japan honestly hasn't had anyone who wasn't Japanese on the mainland for quite some time, right up until the postwar period when the constitution we wrote for them forced them to play nice.

So we have a what, a who, a why, and a how. But what to do about it? Should anything be done about it? I had some vague idea of this whole issue before coming to Japan, and one would think that living here has allowed me to solidify an opinion; it absolutely hasn't. Having the experience of being stared at, "you speakku engrishu?" when I can clearly sort the business at hand in Japanese, and the general cold knowledge that I would never want to (be allowed to) live here has certainly soured me on it. But on the other hand, as broken as it is in many, many other ways, Japanese society only really works the way it does because it's Japanese. Being as inside it as they'll let me, watching the news, and seeing what they consider problems compared to us in the States, they have a pretty sweet thing going that only works because they're all so damn Japanese about everything. Having never lived in another country, I'll admit I sometimes have the problem of assigning things that are just different from the US and that are done the world over as things unique to Japan, but careful assessment shows that even after knocking those out there are a tremendous number of things that really only go on in this crazy place. Introducing alternate viewpoints or an actual mixing of culture would break it all. Now, Japan has always, always imported culture (civ class was basically 'ok, there's this thing the Japanese do, this is when they got the idea from China') but they always, always make it Japanese in the process. Mickey Mouse becomes anime, architecture is adapted, televisions are made amazing. When I say mixing culture I mean a large number of people who legitimately have a different culture coming to and living in Japan (not in army bases) and the two actually having to work out their differences in society- it would be totally disastrous.

Many of my friends think this would be a good disaster, but I'm really not sure. If nothing else, living here has given me a lot more to think about.

For further reading, a noisy gaijin trying to change Japanese opinions about how gaijin are noisy (I'm not a fan, but he's the biggest guy in this 'scene' such as it is. His big international moment was when he compared the word gaijin to the n-word. Again, nooot a fan.): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debito_Arudou

Tokyo FINAL

Back again! Almost a month to the day after I got to Tokyo, I will complete telling the internet about it. Good times.

So, we checked out of our hotel and headed with all of our earthly possessions to Tokyo Station, where we put them in a locker.. somewhere.. and left out one of the exits.. somewhere.. In order to get to the Imperial Palace! Now, my classes every day in Kyoto are a 10-minute walk from the old-school Imperial Palace is, but it really gives no context for the one in Tokyo. For one thing, the one in Kyoto was made in the old Imperial Shinden style, based off of Chinese capitals, while the one in Tokyo was build on the grounds of Edo Castle, built by Tokugawa Ieyasu, lest anyone doubt just how much of a baller he was. If anything, Nijo Castle in Kyoto is a more fitting comparison than the Imperial palace. On the other hand, there is hardly anything left of the castle, either; you can go stand on top of the foundation of the gigantic keep, but it burned down in the Edo period and was never rebuilt. Where the Emperor actually lives is a 50s concrete building (the one they build in the Meiji was totally obliterated by us firebombing Tokyo to the ground in World War 2). We got the tour, and it was very nice. They even gave us little mp3 players with an english audio tour on them. The Japanese know what they're doing with gardens, I can tell you. There are basically two levels of security; only tours go into the inner part where the Emperor lives, but there is a large ring of gardens and things around it that apparently you can go in and out of freely. A lot of people were eating lunch there.. pretty sweet break room, if you ask me. We also stumbled on a Police Brass Band playing a lunchtime picnic concert, so that was nice.



All gardened out, we headed just a bit north and checked out Yasakuni Shrine, because one of my companions has a boundless appetite for controversy. Meanwhile, I brought along only my hideously over-acute sense of "I am not supposed to be here." Yasakuni Shrine is a Shinto Shrine where the kami enshrined is the sum total of everyone who has died serving in Japan's military since the Meiji Restoration. It's a bizarre thing for a Shrine to be doing, and is a strange outgrowth of the Meiji-era re-invention of Shinto into something more resembling a "modern, Western" religion that could be used for Nationalism. At the same time, invented or not, I don't want to belittle a place meant to honor the dead. "Well," one would think, "What's so wrong with this? We have Arlington, and no-one minds.." The difference is that many of the Grade-A War Criminals that committed horrible atrocities in China and other places in East Asia are enshrined there along with everyone else that died in the war. Every time a Japanese Prime Minister visited the shrine to pay their respects (and the LDP ones frequently did, at least in part because one of their biggest power bases was veterans), China flipped out and there was an international incident. Prime Minister Hatoyama apparently has pledged not to do so, but the Shrine remains in any case.


Regardless of issues of war criminals, I just felt times a million like I shouldn't be there. Many of the Japanese there were elderly and perhaps paying respects to a brother, father, or friend; many of them might have been in the war themselves, and here is this jackass American kid flouncing around taking pictures of them because "it is so interesting." No thank you, I tried my best to rush the group through as fast as possible and I have very few pictures from inside the precincts of the shrine itself. We also didn't actually ascend into the main building, just looked from afar. They have giant imposing metal Torii; it gives a very brutal feel (though I got a picture of two doves cuddling on top of it which is like 18 billion symbolism points). I also managed to get a lot of thinking and looking in between trying to escape, it was interesting but I still felt bad because even apart from what the Japanese think, there I was at a shrine honoring guys that, no less than crimes in China and Korea, were trying their damndest to kill my grandfather and I'm not sure how OK I am with that. Anyway.



We spent the rest of the day in transit- wasted some more time lost in Tokyo Station looking for our stuff, and then we hopped a train for Nikko after being joined by a new member, bringing our team up to 4. Nikko is about 4 hours via local train to the northwest of Tokyo, and is a magical wonderland! We stayed at a place with little Japanese-style cottages (http://www.nikko-inn.jp/, I highly highly recommend it if you ever find yourself in Japan, it is run by a great couple that were extremely friendly and chatted with us for a while over tea, the cottage was fantastic, and it was fairly cheap!), two stops before Nikko itself. Getting off at the station was a bit scary.. the station was a platform only big enough to fit two cars, and the ticket booth was a porta-potty sized shack, and there was NOTHING IN SIGHT (later in the morning we learned there were a bunch of buildings around, the Japanese are just concerned about the environment or something and don't leave all their lights on everywhere with the blinds open). Fortunately the main building of the Inn was about 4 feet from the station so it was all ok.

After and extremely restful night (We got sushi delivered right to the room/cottage! And slept on futons on tatami! So traditional!), we headed out bright and early to experience the wonders of Nikko. Lemme tell you it was pretty wonderful. There were pagodas and temples and a reaaally nice garden that was right at the right time in terms of the autumn leaves. But all this paled next to one thing I experienced in Nikko.

The best thing in Japan. Hands down. This is the greatest thing the Japanese have ever made. It is one of the greatest things anyone in the world can ever make. I couldn't handle it I stood staring for literally minutes. This thing is off the hook. We paid 14 dollars for a combo ticket that got us into all of the temples and shrines in the area, and I would have paid 20 just to see this one thing. I would have paid 100.



Look closely at that picture. See that gate? That gate??



THAT GATE!



Tokugawa Ieyasu is enshrined here, and his successors decided he wasn't just going to be enshrined as a god, he was going to be enshrined as a god in STYLE. And what a style it was. Japanese Art Historians generally hate on it, calling it "Japanese Baroque (AS IF THAT WERE A BAD THING)" and saying it is "ostentatious." Japanese art historians mainly busy themselves with the subtle beauty behind a cup which is slightly lumpy one way and another cup lumpy another way, so I will forgive them for not recognizing the sweetest thing to ever happen in the world when they are looking right at it and complaining. It's like the Micheal Bay of architecture. Instead of "hey, there is a scene without an explosion, I'ma put in a helicopter and blow it up," it's "oh crap there is something not covered with gold, let's carve a SWEET DRAGON on it and THEN cover it with gold."


Who is that jerk all getting up in my picture of the gate? I don't know but his ugly mug is detracting from HOW AWESOME THE GATE IS.

I don't care what anyone says, I love that thing. The rest of the shrine was similarly gilded and awesome, and there are the hear no evil-see no evil-speak to evil monkeys carved (in painted wood, BO-RING) on one of the lesser buildings, I guess, but it's like being offered a 5-star restaurant meal while CONSUMING AND BATHING IN THE AMBROSIA OF THE GODS, except instead of that it's a gate. The best gate of any gate ever. I will forever be jaded at architecture, because I'm pretty sure nothing is going to measure up.


Above was one of the other temples in Nikko and hey look it's pretty I guess? What-EVER. Man, that gate.

Anyway, we ate food or whatever which I didn't taste because all I wanted to taste was the gate, we rode back on another long train (away from the gate...) and I stayed in CAPSULE HOTEL which was an experience and a half, and I dreamed all night in my tube of love of my life, that GATE. MM that gate.

I don't even remember what we did the last day. I know we didn't get onto the night bus until 11 PM, but being so recently parted from the only thing I ever truly wanted to see in my life was traumatizing. I think we went to Ginza and ate at that Chocolate Cafe (I got chocolate sandwiches! They also had strawberries and it was pretty good but not as good as THAT GATE). We may have wandered around Akihabara a bunch more and I got to be reminded of home by rummaging in bin after bin of random fairly worthless computer and electronic components (Fun idea for rich people: Fly to Tokyo, go to Akihabara, everyone gets 500 dollars to buy enough junk to piece together a functioning computer. At the end of the day you put them together and the best one wins!). Anyway, after another rousing jaunt on the misleadingly named dream bus, I was back in Kyoto!

Phew. Back to writing about my boring life, instead of my boring life surrounded by exciting things!

Tokyo threeee

Gather round, oh ye that desire to catch the pearls of wisdom that dribble from my keyboard like so many pebbles! Pearls incoming. These particular ones relate to the following day of Tokyo madness, though first I would like to digress on some now-stuff. It being a mere 40 or so days until christmas (and under the duress of enduring 3 hours a week of rehearsing christmas music in handbells), I have decided it is high time to begin my yearly ritual of listening to Handel's Messiah nonstop until maybe Februaryish. I feel like I've grown as a person; in High School, I could barely get excited about any of it except the part I was all 'oh hey I know that (the hallelujah chorus).' I thought I had grown when I discovered there were in fact OTHER choruses is this massive oratorio I had seen as a vast expanse of boring leading up to one song followed by boring. Yet finally, starting toward mid January last year (partially due to the fact that I was not alone in my ritual in my dorm, there were several kids in the University chorus singing it (they do a really great job every year, by the way, if anyone is in Chicago when it happens) and one other kid like me with no vocal talent whatsoever that just can't stay away from this stuff). Anyway, I now love every second of this two and a half hours.. even the recitatives! Even the Soprano recitatives!! My favorite part of them remains the "boop... boop!' from dominant to tonic that the organ does at the very end every time, but the rest is OK TOO I GUESS. Also, 'O thou that tellest good tidings to zion' is baaaaaaller. My favorite, though, remains and always will be "for unto us a child is born.." ah man classic stuff. For contrast, for Christmas the Japanese have so far put up vaguely christmas tree-esque things everywhere. From what I gather from friends and host families, the idea is that on christmas, you buy a "christmas cake" and hang out with your significant other in a bizarre confectionerally confused Valentine's day. I can't make this stuff up! Things are obviously different for Japanese Christians (of which there are several), but talking about that would ruin the 'hey man the Japanese are weird' vibe I've got going.

ANYWAY back to Tokyo! So for that fateful day we decided to see some more electronics, so we headed down to a big old area of reclaimed land in Tokyo Bay, joined to the city by Rainbow Bridge and that I think is called Odaiba? Though that might just be the bit of land at the beginning of the bridge that's a park now, that was originally made as a precaution against the danger of Commodore Perry coming back and bombarding the hell out of Edo. IN any case, this place was weird as I can describe. It wasn't even like being in another city; it was like being in another world. We went on the special train line that starts in Ginza, heads over the bridge, and circles this miracle land that Should Not Be. We got off pretty early on the train to hit up the Panasonic Center, but ever from the train this place was ridic.. I don't know how to describe it. There were no actual businesses or living spaces or shops- it was all convention halls, gigantic high-rise hotels, museums, and corporate showrooms. Giant, flat space with gigantic buildings just erupting out of the empty landscape almost at random. On top of this, there was literally NO-ONE THERE. Especially after being used to fighting through a packed crowd to get down the rest of the tiny tine streets of Tokyo, it was really disturbing coming to this place of massive, spacious promenades with no-one on them. Pretty sad, really.



So after confirming there had been no apocalypse and it was just Tokyo being ridiculous as usual, we hit up the Panasonic center to see if they had anything interesting to sell us. They had some cool exhibits about learning about science, a lot about how they were developing new energy efficient things (why we are not all using induction stoves baffles me), yadda yadda. Then a representative lady accosts us! "oh no we thought this was public" we think, "are we being kicked out?" but thankfully thanks to our slick Japanese skills we learned that in fact we were being asked if we wanted a demonstration of the latest incredibly expensive gadget Panasonic is actually pouring all of its research dollars in while they prattle about 'energy efficiency' and other unimportant things. Yes we did want a demonstration, and boy did we get one. This thing is called the "Life Wall." Remember Fahrenheit 451? The TV that's actually the entire wall of your living room? Yeah it's that. Except it's also a computer, and can recognize you when you walk up to it. The representative walked close to the wall, and it popped up a gui right in front of her.. if she chose something like a video or music, it opened at just the right size/volume for where she was, and if she moved it followed her and adjusted size/volume accordingly.. pretty cool. She could also control what the whole wall was doing with vague gestures (that were apparently as frustrating as one would imagine, but hell the thing's a prototype and you are changing channels on your wall-TV by waving your arms around). It's also called the LIFE WALL. Pretty cool!

We left the center depressed that we never in our lives will have enough money for one. To cheer ourselves up, we walked across most of the island-thing to basically the biggest ferris wheel in the history of the world ever. The walk was, again, distressing.. giiiiant boulevards, no people. To get to the ferris wheel we went through 2 stories of empty parking and 1 story of toootally empty arcade in this building, the footprint of which was easily a football field or two. Luckily there were employees to run the thing, so we went up on a terrifying 15 minute journey into the sky and back (my companions insisted on the clear cabin.. wonderful).




Unfortunately, it was a pretty humid day so the view was somewhat limited. Still worth it, though.. got to stare at the Pacific ocean and all the warehouses/cargo ships in between us and it for a while, and the skyline as seen from the Bay. Disembarking, we resumed wandering, and stumbled on a Toyota exhibition hall where they had a car magically driving itself, as well as a chair for disabled people that had (I kid you not) giant robot legs. Other highlights include about 200 square feet of random quaint 17th century Italian village. After the initial confusion, we got down to some sign reading and discovered this whole thing, shops, fountain, and quaint chapel, was available for rental on a weekendly basis for weddings. Absurd! Wedding village! Extravagance!! Speaking of extravagance, also along the way was a shopping mall known as THE VENUS FRONT, which was made basically to be an ideal italian city at night. If only they didn't have 'poker face' pouring in over loudspeakers, the effect was really good.. the ceiling was all night sky, the storefronts all lovingly crafted from the very living plastic in the traditional style. We had no interest in shopping though, so we headed to the Miraikan (literally means 'Future hall') to check out what people would show us about cutting edge technology when they weren't trying to sell it to you. It was pretty cool.. couldn't hold a candle to the MSI in Chicago or the Boston Science Museum, but they try. There's a walk-through model of one of the ISS modules, a big series of tubes to simulate the internet (you create 'packets' with arrangements of black and white balls and send them in, watch them go around, then someone gets your message at the other end. Pretty cool, but hah hah series of tubes). They had one of those '3d virtual reality rooms' that are always disappointing that was disappointing, some really really cool light stuff (strips of LEDS that just look like they're a flickering line when you look right at them, but draw a picture when you look from one side to the other quickly, which I thought was way cool and spent like 5 minutes taking photos of by spastically jerking around my camera on semi-longish exposures whilst children pushed their ways past me and my companions sighed and checked their watches loudly), and a giant globe covered in active LED displays to show the world from space in reeeaaal tiiiime. They also had ROBOTS! They even have ASIMO, only the greatest robot of all. We got there after his last show of the day (they have a little like glass presentation case that they take him out of 4 times a day to perform), though, so we only got to take pictures of him standing there and being boring. That's about it I guess!

Departing, we resolved to walk back across the bridge to soak in some views, and I took some pretty ok views with my trusty camera. We decided also that, as it was getting sunsetty, it would be nice to stand on the bridge and watch the sun set and the lights come on in Tokyo. It was, in fact, really nice. I have pictures to prove it!



We then hopped the train to the trendiest place to be in Tokyo at night, Roppongi! We managed to dodge the Nigerians telling us 'yeah yeah come into this club your friend is right inside I saw them yeah saw your friend (in english),' and check out some cool stuff. We had dinner at a not-bad-at-all Pan-Asian place (not-bad is the best thing I will ever say about Pan-Asian, as I am morally and philosophically opposed to such trendy things), and checked out the absurd amounts of swank and class that adorn the Roppongi Hills complex. They have some reeeeally sweet architecture around, and a big ol sculpture of a spider. Tokyo in general has crazy architecture.. like no-one is keeping track, they can just put whatever building they want wherever they want and it will fit in because it's not like any of the other buildings make any sense. It's fantastic! Speaking of tall buildings, we caught a bunch of the city by walking for a while to get to Tokyo Tower, then caught even more of the city from the observation deck. Getting there was pretty trippy.. we walked through some real neighborhoods, which was a nice break from touristland, but it meant we ended up approaching the Tower from the wrong side.. and for some reason there was a gigantic white oblong.. land-blimp.. thing with "100% New Zealand 2011" written on it, what sounded like a club going on inside, and men in business suits all rolling in. We still have no idea what it was all about, and I feel like knowing would only detract from the TOKYO EXPERIENCE, which just isn't the same without that special 'what.. the hell' feeling. Also before ascending the tower (I'm not going to talk about the view because I mean it's a view from a tower what do you want flickr it maybe (OH hey there was one weird thing, there's like a little Imperial Shinto shrine at the top what is UP with that (or, why is that shrine UP with what), ah Tokyo you never disappoint)) Anyway, after descending from the tower, we found the nearest subway station and returned to the hotel, for our last night in that particular base of exploration.

OH HEY so I also totally forgot in the day before this (right before shinjuku gardens), in the post before this, we went to sensoji/asakusa that I could have said a lot about but like the moment is totally past and can serve only to confuse you. Nothing particularly special I gueeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesss..

NEXT POST: Imperial Palace, Seriousness (we went to Yasakuni Shrine, I want to talk about it but it's not something that I'm willing to be a snarky ass about), and if there is time maybe I will delve into our time in the magical land of Nikko!

Tokyo TWO

What's that you want to know more about that wonder of wonders, that city of cities, that den of sin which is known to the world as Tokyo? I suppose I can indulge this desire, dearest reader, but just this once (I'm only playing coy this will take several more posts to eat through). Having awoken in our incredibly budget hotel, we ventured forth into the blinding sunlight to pound out another day of touristing. Well, we would have, if there wasn't a typhoon going on; as such, we ventured out into driving rain (this is the moment when I finally broke down and bought an umbrella, my jacket having finally proven insufficient beyond the level I was willing to admit such a thing) and touristed COMPLETELY UNDETERRED. We had plans by Jove, and Mother Nature could take her typhoon and shove it up her nose. Our MAIN EVENT of the day was the Ghibli Museum (explanation forthcoming), which we had tickets in advance for. It was waaaaay on the other side of the city, though, so we planned to hit a spot halfway before continuing our journey. This spot happened to be none other than Meiji Jingu, the shrine dedicated to the eponymous Emperor. There was a lot of Nationalism around, making me vaguely uncomfortable. They had the biggest wooden Torii in Japan (= the world), though, so that's pretty cool. The shrine itself was goodly sized, but pretty chill compared to Heian Jingu. It used regular shrine architecture instead of pretending to be a mad old school Imperial Palace, though, so that might be biasing me. This is Chrysanthemum time, and as that is the flower of the Imperial family, there was a gigantic exhibition of flowers on display all along the walkway before the shrine proper, which was nice. Also, under a little makeshift roof which was also nice. In probably a bad decision, but based on 'come on we'll never be back ever again,' we bought the tickets to enter the gardens, which I'm sure would have been absolutely gorgeous had the wrath of the skies not been intent on exacting recompense for our sins by eradicating all non-aquatic life. Not everything can be perfect!



So we slogged out of there and hopped back on a train for a good long while until we arrived at the GHIBLI MUSEUM. You know how Disneyland seems to a child, back before you can see all the wretched, bloated greed underlying every single piece of invented Americana, pining for your wallet and overcome with elation at every extra dollar they extract from you in exchange for living an ideal that they themselves created with this very end in mind? Yeah well that's how I see the Ghibli Museum. For those of you who aren't all into the children's (though they have produced some very serious older-person movies too) films of other countries, Studio Ghibli is the animation studio begun by Miyazaki Hayao, and responsible for some of the greatest animated films ever made. They're probably best known for Spirited Away (which remains my favorite) in the US. They also made My Neighbor Totoro, Nausicaa, Princess Mononoke, and whole bunch of quality quality stuff. One thing that these films do best is capture a sense of innocent wonderment, reminiscent of a time when you could believe wonderment was a word. For only a one-time, reasonable admission fee, you get access to a building that has exactly the same feeling. Everything about that place is fantastic- it is constructed like something straight out of a child's dream, all whimsical, curving adobe with a wrought-iron external spiral staircase to get to the rooftop garden. The inside has 3 stories, with a giant open central atrium which makes the initial entry a really special feeling. The exhibits themselves were interesting- my only complaint is that they focused (really can't blame them, with limited space and given the timings) on Totoro, which is having its 20th anniversary, and their new film Ponyo. One room was exhibits entirely about animation in general, which I honestly learned a lot from. The coolest thing was a big glass box with a maybe 3 foot rod in the middle, which had several layers of spokes coming out of it. Each spoke had a character from Totoro in the process of a repeatable action (i.e. the cat bus running), and this action advanced a 'frame' for every spoke. Every 30 seconds or so, the whole contraption would spin up, and a strobe light inside would turn on making it appear as if all the characters were suspended in the box doing their thing. VERY COOL. Admission also bagged us free admission to a screening of one of the special shorts they show only in the museum- I was worried because obviously they would see no need to provide subtitles, but it turned out to be one of those movies that had no words at all. It was super super adorable though.. I'm wasting so many words on this so I'll simply say I never thought I would find a spider cute, but this made me. The other highlights of the museum include a life-size plush cat bus from Totoro (children only..) and walk-through dioramas of Miyazaki's offices, which I could have spent daays in. Each office was set up like it was when he was working on a specific project- seeing the stuff he used for references, the sketches, storyboards, giant piles of cigarette butts- it was very special. ANYWAY I am done being enthralled for now, I will avoid mention of the gift shop because it will only make others feel the same disappointment I did when I realized I had not enough money to get gifts for everybody, much less myself. Oops I just did there uuuuuuh



Next, feelin pretty good, we traveled back into the heart of Tokyo, to the Ginza area, to look at neon lights. There were neon lights! We were happy. We attempted to visit a '100% chocolate cafe,' but they were apparently having a private party who gave us really dirty looks. Avoiding them deftly, and still a little bit in childhood mode from our previous experiences, we traversed a famous 6-story toy shop, which was pretty fun. They have cool little robots, but everything is absurdly expensive! Welcome to Japan. That done, we began to hunger and seek out dinner (lunch was eaten at a train station at some point in there, Japanese Spaghetti which is an experience but not a particularly interesting one).



I am hungry and easily misled by my companions, who say 'here get on the subway we'll go to food.' UNSUSPECTINGLY I follow. UNWITTINGLY I get off at Akihabara. UNKNOWINGLY we go into a variety 7 story building which has an arcade, what is basically a department store, and a maid cafe. GUESS WHICH ONE OF THESE THINGS WE WENT TO WITHOUT MY FOREKNOWLEDGE.

If you guessed maid cafe, you would be right. If you don't know what a maid cafe is, you would be just like me on that FATEFUL DAY. Fortunately for you, you have me to tell you, and double fortunately, you aren't going to one. Imagine if there was a place where it would be a cafe, but the waitresses (NO WAITERS) are all "18 (read: There are strict child labor laws in Japan and honestly it is difficult to tell with Japanese women sometimes but I'll be damned if those girls were out of 9th grade)," dressed as maids, and selectable from the door, there is a $7 (I automatically convert from yens for your convenience!) seating fee, pictures are forbidden, and the maids regardless of which you picked fawn over you with wild and over-the-top cutesy abandon. Are you imagining? Is a little bit of vomit appearing in the back of your mouth? WELL now you know the situation I found myself in. Apparently this has become A Thing in Japan, driven largely by depictions of girls in anime and manga. It is basically prostitution, but instead of sex you get to participate in this absurd fantasy world of squeaky, strangely dressed women that like to talk to you. My friends were much more into it than I was (from an Academic standpoint, which I had a hard time activating over my desire to run away and cleanse myself in the nearest available volcano), and they happily participated in the hand-motion-chant we had to do to bless our food prior to eating, as well as shelling out the $5 each to take a picture with our maid. One even went so far as to pay an additional additional $5 to play a children's game with her, which he said was 'cool and kind of flirty' and which I thought was pretty embarrassing for everyone involved and this country as a whole. Before our 60 minutes (oh did I mention your $7 seating fee only lasts 60 minutes, after which you are kicked out) were up, we were supplied with our cards. OH yes a MEMBER'S CARD. Technically, it is a 'licence [sic] of your majesty (written in English),' certifying that I am a 'Lv. 1 MY MASTER.' On the back it has boxes for them to mark on our subsequent visits; after only 3 more one could become a Lv. 2 my master I suppose! This is one aspiration I do not have. Basically, all those things that everyone has told you about Japan being incredibly weird are true SOMEWHERE in Japan at least. Definitely not everywhere, but definitely where we went. My friends think I 'have a huge stick up my butt' or 'embarrass way too easily' or '[am] totally closed-minded' but I will never accept this as anything but a horrible symptom of a broken society (Disclaimer: Not saying that American society isn't broken too, but like I have the mental toolkit for dealing with our brokenness; this is just totally out of my ability to handle).

After that we went to a nearby arcade and played some videogames, which went a long way towards calming my nerves. I played some DDR, fortunately it was fairly late at night on a weeknight so there weren't many Japanese around to totally show me up. It was fun! We then returned home, and thus ended Day Two of the Fantastic Tokyo Adventure Fun Time Action Vacation Trip Week Extravagant Extravaganza.

Day Three is pretty boring because we woke up late, went to the Shinjuku Gardens (you can hear me talk about how incredible they are all day and you still won't understand, so I won't try), then wandered around that very same neighborhood (they have big buildings!) for a long long time, while my companions shopped and I was told to keep my grubby urchin hands away from the glass whilst I pawed impotently at various things. We also ate some really good tempura in a classy joint! Then we went to Shibuya, saw SO MANY PEOPLE AT A STREET CROSSING JEEEEZY CREEEZY and that statue of a dog (Hachiko! He has a wikipedia page if you want to know his story, I cannot tell it lest I display emotion and thus pierce the impenetrable facade of manliness I have maintained thus far in my life). By that time lights and neon signs were on, so I had something else (something sparkling, bright and wonderful) to be distracted by while my companions reveled in consumer culture (my one buddy bought what is basically no joke the sweetest jacket ever. I shouldn't be so sarcastic about the shopping because this really is the greatest jacket made by man (this is one thing I will be dead serious on: that jacket is the kind of jacket which a man will spill blood over. In divorce proceedings, by possessing this jacket a wife could concievably exchange it with the husband for uncontested custody of three to seven children, depending on the ages and constitutions of said children. Rather than lay this jacket down so a lady could walk over a puddle, a gentleman would take this jacket off, hand it to the lady to hold, and himself lay down in the puddle so she could carry herself and more importantly the jacket to the other side unsullied. This is a Sweet Jacket. (but then, you say, why did you not buy one for yourself? Well, it was like 200 bucks and hell if I pay that much for a jacket (why yes, if you boil it down, I did just value 200 dollars above three to seven children. Don't question it and I won't have to add any more parenthetical statements. Deal? Deal.)))).

Another successful day completed, we retired to the safety of home base and plotted our next excursion. Prepare For: Panasonic changes your life.. WALL, Post-apocalyptic wasteland, me being even more amazing at photography than you are used to (or ready for), and the Japanese one-upping the French's pathetic attempt at compensatory architecture by like 20 meters.

TOKYO.

Tokyo. It's been so long since I updated. This is largely because, first, I was on my autumn break, and then because I have found no way to write about my autumn break, during which I went to Tokyo with 2 friends. Tokyo is absurd. Absurdly big, and also straight up just absurd. Now I ain't no country bumpkin; I've lived in Chicago for three years give or take, and when I was growing up we'd go to NYC every now and again. Maybe it's the novelty of being in another country, but Tokyo blows them both out of the water in sheer incomprehensibility of size and variety. One of my companions was a fine young lady with a GUIDEBOOK and PLANS (which was good for me personally, because my vacation plans generally involve sleeping late and then going in a vague direction that I leave to be decided), so we went relentlessly to every place that the Rough Guides book deemed notable in that city. There are many. As I said at the time, we touristed the HELL outta that city. I'll try to talk about some of them in the way that I remember it: Totally discombobulated and with little sense of orientation or conception of what links them together, because trying to organize in my brain has delayed this post long enough already.

One person says anything about postmodernism and I swear to high heaven I will reanimate Robert Maynard Hutchins to devour them.

Anyway! So I lied about being unorganized: this will go pretty much chronologically with tangents wherever I feel appropriate. In order to get to Tokyo, because we are poor college students, we forwent (forgoed? forgoned?) the iconic Shinkansen (bullet train) in favor of its humble cousin, the highway bus. This is euphanistically named "Dreamu bassu." Nightmare would perhaps have been more appropriate.. I kid! Seriously though, the ride was from 11 to 6:30 and they had the unpleasant habit of stopping at least once every hour and a half or so. This was for reasons I never woke up fully enough to comprehend beyond that special kind of unadulterated hatred that being woken up at 12:30 (and 1:30 and 3 and 4:30) can bring. We arrived at Tokyo Station (which requires a separate special mention for being a giant, absurd, incomprehensible building- that had construction detours on top of it. I'd say we spent about 3 hours over the course of the trip in that building, 1 of them simply being lost. This is compounded by the subway/train network it connects to. Here I am going to detail the designing of Tokyo's mass transit system for you in a dramatic scene:

INT: a conference room. Smartly-dressed BUREAUCRATs gather around a table with a map of Tokyo on it. The MINISTER is present, chowing down on some soba noodles.
Bureaucrat: Alright sir we need some mass transit up in this business
Minister of Transit: Very well!
MINISTER casts his soba noodles onto the table roughly
Minister of Transit: WHEREVER THEY FALL, THERE SHALL THE SUBWAYS BE BUILT
Fade to black, I get about 15 cinema awards, and this is why the transit map looks like a horrible tentacle monster (my awards give me the right to mix metaphors)) (hey I bet you forgot this entire parenthetical phrase is actually in the middle of a sentence, this pretty much makes me a terrible writer, if it were not for awards (see above))

at about 6:30 and started our touristing RIGHT OFF THE BAT by heading up to Ueno, stashing our stuff in a train station locker there, and sinking our teeth into the park there by around 7:30. Good way to ease into Tokyo from Kyoto.. very empty so early in the morning, and there were things we could deal with, like temples and shrines and crazy homeless dudes singing ohwaitnotthelastone. Kiyomizu hall, a part of former Kaneiji, was something I was looking forward to and totally let down by. Something I was not looking for at all but loved was, as a map labelled it, the FOUNTAIN OF FROG. Pretty underwhelming but hey what a name.



North of Ueno is the National Museum, which we hit up because they were having an exhibition of priceless treasures that have been hidden away in the vaults of the Imperial Household, in addition to their already considerable collection. Lemme tell you, I'd be hard pressed to put a price on any of those things.. it was a lot of Edo period stuff, folding screens, screen paintings, pottery, and sculpture. It was all just totally incredible- extremely well preserved, beautiful stuff. The centerpiece for me was a series of screen paintings by an artist whose name I wrote down on the back of my reciept (which I can't find) so I wouldn't forget it. He went through and did a tree and a bird for each month, a lot of really sublime stuff- also did some cool scenes of just random animals around, a lot of chickens.. dunno. Pretty fantastic. The rest of the museum was great- the whole thing is basically a piece of art, very much late 1800s impressive Nationalist architecture. Not sure if it was burned down in any of the earthquakes/fires/firebombing that separates the early Meiji from now, but that's definitely the style. As for the works themselves, if you see a piece of art that gets put in a history class powerpoint to describe a couple centuries at a single go, it is probably here. The totally sweet fire jomon pot? In there. Picture scroll with the animals parodying humans that's considered to be the progenitor of all manga? Oh it's there. Really cool stuff everywhere you look. After a few hours the museum foot was hitting us pretty hard so we hoofed it outta there to our next destination: Electric town Akihabara! This was probably our most visited location (after the Ueno/Asakusa area, but that's where our hotel was).

Akihabara, for the uninitiated, started as a loose collection of guys hawking electric parts under the JR tracks, and grew to be the gigantic mecca of all things involving lights, electricity, radio, computer, and later video games, anime, manga, and the horrible perversions these things create. On this trip, we only spent a little time wandering around, popping into a shop here and there. General observations were made, though: The gender ratio on the street was approximately 100:1 m:f, and the ratio in regards to advertisements/huge posters/sides of buildings was totally opposite. In shops this time around the highlight was probably the pillows shaped like a woman's lap and legs, which you could buy in school girl skirt and high socks, office lady stockings, or the less subtle but more honest lingere varieties. On the one hand there is no denying this is weird as all get-out, but I feel kind of bad playing it up because it was really only in one shop, and like I feel like people always always apply these ridiculous excesses of Japan to the whole country.

Man who am I kidding that place was weeeird. Anyway after that we went to a whole different kind of weird, because it was a Sunday and that is when the serious cosplayers (people who dress up) come out to show off in Harajuku. We went to check it out as there is apparently one particular spot on a bridge to go to, and there were indeed people in some seriously interesting get-ups. The most awkward part of this is, surprisingly, not the costumes themselves. Those were indeed interesting.. a lot of hair gel, a lot of bandages, a lot of unlikely applications of coats and zippers etc. The most awkward thing, though, is that we were not the only tourists to have heard of this.. there was probably an equal number of gawkers and people in costumes, and there were not many Japanese people amongst the gawkers. The worst were the ones that would get right up in the poor cosplayers faces to take pictures without so much as saying hello.. I felt so uncomfortable about the whole thing I didn't take any pictures myself (poor all of you). I did take a picture of one of the main shopping streets in Harajuku though so feast your eyes on this absurdity.



Then we went to the hotel and SLEPT. Anyway I've gotten through one day, after a huge post, so I'll leave off there for now. There's a whole week left folks! I guess it's good as I don't plan on doing anything terrifically interesting in the near future (visiting some more temples for my BA research tomorrow, but honestly who wants to read about that when you could read about the GHIBLI MUSEUM, MEIJI JINGU, and A TRIUMPHANT RETURN TO AKIHABARA FOR A MAID CAFE? All of these and maybe more coming next time!). Hang on to your hats and/or alternate preferred headgear, dear readers!