Observations   Before giving specifics of my days in Tokyo, I’d like to give some impressions and observations gained in these first days. Tokyo is a whirlwind, and a contemporary to anywhere in the West. Everything seems to “work” here. Things are done “right”. The place ticks like a Swiss watch (maybe better), which is why Japanese cars and electronics are so popular around the world. The incredible functioning of the rail system is just one indication of how everything seems to tick just right.

Tokyo is totally modern in every way. It’s all high-rises in the center city. It’s New York. Where I live in lower Manhattan there are a lot of Japanese, and quite a few live in my building, which even includes a Japanese (and Chinese) restaurant. The faces I see here in the lobby of the hotel could be the faces I see in the lobby of my building at home.

I found I had nothing to worry about as to finding my way--maneuvering about town was no trouble at all. A decent street map and knowing what you wanted to do and where you wanted to go was more than enough. Still, only major street names are marked, so a map is essential, but it’s amazing how well things function without knowing the name of the street you’re on. It’s a matter of “go two blocks, then turn right one”, and it works remarkably well. Beyond that, all rail connections are very clearly marked, with Japanese names in romaji, and explanations in English beyond that. All trains and subways had verbal announcements about the next stop or anything else, in both Japanese and English.

I never saw anyone check any rail tickets. On the subway, a turnstile eats your ticket, then shoots it out the other side, and at the other end, you go through another turnstile, which checks you had the right ticket, then keeps it. I had my prepaid Suica card I got that first night at the airport, so I just waved it over the automatic reader at each turnstile, and the fare was subtracted. The same turnstile thing goes for train tickets, except for the fact that, with my railpass, I have to instead show it to the guard at the end of the row of turnstiles, both going in, and going out. For Shinkansen trains, there’s a separate set of turnstiles even within the first turnstile area.

These new buildings to the southwest of Shinjuku station are built around a terrace, and the station has an exit named Southern Terrace, which makes it very convenient. The terrace highrises are on the west side, and on the east side above the track area is a lineup of several small buildings. One is an Eddie Bauer clothing outlet from Seattle. Another is a Starbucks, also from Seattle. A third is Krispy Kreme Doughnuts. I’ve seen people, Japanese office types in suits, walking into buildings carrying large Krispy Kreme boxes. On a few occasions I’ve seen a line of 15-20 people leading out of the door to Krispy Kreme. As a matter of fact, they must have long enough lines at times so that in front of the building there’s one of those waiting areas that makes the line snake between chains. Krispy Kreme is Tokyo?

Japan not only drives on the left, people also walk on the left, and I had to keep on remembering to change over to the left on a busy sidewalk to avoid bumping into people. I never remember walking problems of this sort in the UK or New Zealand. It was even worse on the numerous escalators where I had to remember to stand left so that walkers could go by on the right. Also, I’d heard about the Japanese use of surgical face masks to avoid breathing in bacteria, and face masks are a very noticeable item here. Walking down a busy street, there’ll always be 2-3 masks visible coming toward you. On the flight in, the woman next to me had one on much of the time.

I peeked into a convenience store on a day trip to Kamakura and saw a huge Halloween display. Then in Yokohama, still two days before Halloween, I saw small kids walking down the street holding their mothers’ hands, little girl witches in peaked hats and black dresses, a little boy in a very convincing skeleton suit.

Along the terrace they’ve strung little lights in the trees, cobalt blue on one side, white on the other, in preparation for Christmas. I walked into Takashimaya at the closest entrance, across a very wide footbridge over the track area leading from the hotel, and found myself in the Christmas department that was showing artificial trees, trinkets, ornaments. In the background was a recording. Of White Christmas. By Bing Crosby. That needs to be again. Takashimaya was playing Bing Crosby singing White Christmas. Over and over and over.

There remains plenty of Japanese tradition and customs, do not get me wrong. But if any readers envision a quaint little city with kimonos and pagodas, think again. (There are places I’ve found that, but it’s rare, almost on the level of finding wooden shoes in the Netherlands or Lederhosen in Germany.)

I had pictured this sea of railroad stations entirely differently. You do not see in any way the great temples of European or American rail stations, not Waterloo in London or Gare de l’Est in Paris, not Grand Central in New York or Union Station in Washington. The stations in Tokyo seem to be hidden behind and under buildings. They are purely functional and consist of a lot of underground corridors. For instance, huge Shinjuku is apparently nowhere to be found when looked at from outside. There are a cluster of department stores and other buildings, and somewhere within, or underneath, people scurry about within a station. It’s a huge, purely functional anthill, and you wouldn’t know it was a rail station until you saw the trains streaming in and out below it.

The trains, including the subways, have upholstered seats—I know some lines in London do as well--and are very comfortable, if you get a seat, which is usually so in non-rush hours. On the mornings I had to get started during morning rush hours, it was shoulder-to shoulder, just like in New York. But I never saw those platform attendants pushing people into trains that I’d read about. All trains, rail and subway, pull into stations in exactly the same spot every time, so that people know where to wait for the doors to appear. As a matter of fact, there are painted lines, and people line up politely in the right spot (this is Japan). I’d heard there are train cars for women only, but didn’t suspect I’d see it until one morning I was waiting to get onto the first car of a train until I saw the sign on the windows saying it was for women only, so I hoofed it to the next car. If I’d thought about it, there were markings on the platform that would have told me.

Public toilets are everywhere, and you never have a problem finding one. On the other hand, you never find public trash receptacles. There’s never any trash on the ground, and with virtually no receptacles, how do they do it?

Although for local use there’s another symbol, the international symbol for the yen is a romaji Y with two bars: ￥. The yen, for quick calculation, is worth about a US cent, so when I wanted about $50 from an ATM I withdrew ￥ 5,000. Although that rule of thumb worked well in the past, it’s only for quick calculation at present, since you have to add a bit, so the ￥ 5,000 cost me over $54. Not that long ago, it would have cost me under $50. Still, it holds for quick calculation, so a ￥ 300 entrance fee is about $3.00 and change.

Politeness is an essential Japanese quality, with a lot of smiles and thank-you’s. Respect is also shown by bowing, such as by a shopkeeper when you enter a small shop or by a guard or attendant in a public building. Cynics will misunderstand this and assert that it’s false sincerity, but they misunderstand. It’s just the oil that makes the society run well. Actually, Westerners do it too, but in a much smaller way. When being thanked, sometimes we respond with a silent head nod. Understand this as a mini-bow. In a situation or two where someone’s helped me, I get into it and do that mini-bow, but from the shoulders instead.

In Taiwan I will be going out for soup dumplings, xiao long bao, (remember your pinyin, where X=SH) at a famous restaurant there, Din Tai Fung, and will discuss the matter extensively then. But I’d read that Takashimaya runs branches of Din Tai Fung at its stores in Japan, so I went across the footbridge from the terrace a couple of times to their 12th-floor food court for dinner. Do not picture fast food when I use the term food court, since the 12th-floor consists of many comfortable, sit-down-inside restaurants. Anyway, the Japanese pronounce xiao long bao as shou ron bo—it’s fun to look at those sound changes—but there’s an English menu. The dinners were great there, and reasonable to boot. I also went to a Thai restaurant next door, Blue Lotus, where I had the same Thai tapioca dessert I’d had in Honolulu last year.

It was at Din Tai Fung, though, that I had my very first (minor) clash with the language barrier. The first time I went, as I was paying he gave me a bright orange coupon. It was obvious that it was some sort of discount coupon to get me to come back, but I could read nothing about details. Was it perhaps a percentage discount? He couldn’t tell me, so back at the hotel I had to ask at the desk. It turned out that next time I’d get either a beverage or dessert free. On looking at the top of the coupon again, I finally noticed two rows of hiragana, and in between, believe it or not, was the English word “OR”, that I just hadn’t noticed. I’d paid for my Mango Pudding dessert on my first visit, but on my next visit, my ￥ 400 Black Sesame Seed Milk Pudding was free. It was a gray color with white cream on top, and outstanding. Why can’t Western restaurants experiment more with a variety of desserts?

I stopped at Tokyo station to check out the locations of Shinkansen connections I’d need when leaving Tokyo, and used the time to check out the mini-Shinkansen. You’ll remember that there are two routes in the north that upgraded the tracks from narrow to standard, but kept all other dimensions for smaller trains, and I’d heard that there are mini-Shinkansen trains with standard undercarriages supporting a petite train body. Well, I found out exactly what I wanted to know, and how clever these engineers are. I went to a platform where the back of the train, full-sized, was scheduled to go all the way north, then walked up to the point of coupling, where two sleek-nosed car bodies touched nose-to-nose, ready for later uncoupling, then came to the mini-Shinkansen section up front that was scheduled to go onto the Akita branch line. You could see it was petite, since there was a substantial, dangerous gap between the train and platform of maybe 25-30 cm (well over a foot). This was solved in two ways. There was a railing along the platform all along the way, with gaps at train doors. Then there was a step protruding from the train to close the gap. As I watched the train leave, I saw those steps under each door flap downward and blend into the car body, much as a plane retracts its landing gear once it leaves. Clever.

Day 3: Shinjuku; Harajuku to Aoyama   On my first morning, I woke up very early, since my body clock said it was really evening. The rain had stopped, and I saw a very clear sunrise on my first day in the Land of the Rising Sun. Actually, since my window faces 東, I shouldn’t be surprised to see the 日本, should I? I saw it also the next day, when it rose through thick haze on the horizon, giving it an oversized, red disk-like look, which reminded me of the red sun on the Japanese flag.

I recently (2009/32) repeated Wikipedia’s quote of a headline from the Asahi Shimbun, the leading Tokyo newspaper. On my hotel door each day was hanging a copy of the English Edition of the Asahi Shimbun under the further heading of the International Herald Tribune, “The Global Edition of the New York Times”. Small world.

I tried the hotel breakfast buffet, heavily western, but Japanese as well, with rice and fish dishes. Particularly pleasant was a bowl of miso soup. Smaller soups like this are served in a cup-like bowl, which one holds in two hands and drinks directly.

And I had one more surprise. I never get to see mountains, it seems. I know Mount Fuji, known locally and respectfully as Fuji-san, lies to the west/southwest of Tokyo in the direction of Osaka. I read that it’s usually visible only on the clearest days, usually under winter weather conditions. I went to the hotel lobby this first morning which faces both east and west, and there, beyond sprawling Tokyo and some dark foothills, big as life, was the white flat-topped volcanic cone of Fuji-san, glistening in the 日. (Actually, I read in the paper that the 20th typhoon of the season had just left the area the night before, which is why our flight had had such a bumpy landing. I suppose it really was good timing, since this next day it returned to clear, crisp weather.) When I saw Fuji a few hours later from another building it was starting to gather clouds, and by late afternoon from my hotel it was socked in, even with blue sky around it.

I had scheduled three full days to see what I wanted to see in Tokyo, then a fourth day for a day trip south to Kamakura and Yokohama. I logically decided to start with the city centers of interest on the west side of the Yamanote loop, close to home, first Shinjuku in the 9 o’clock position, then Harajuku at 8 o’clock, and cutting over to Aoyama located a bit inside the loop.

Shinjuku was a 1698 post town for travelers between Edo (over on the east side near Tokyo Station) and the provinces that, in the 1990’s, turned into an upstart business district with high-rises: Shinjuku & Fuji-san. This view of Fuji is perhaps from the Tokyo Station area over lower buildings in the center of the loop to Shinjuku’s high-rises in the west. I believe my hotel is probably the bright, white building under Fuji’s right flank. Shinjuku station is lost under the tangle of lower buildings before the hotel, but note the tall twin towers just to the right of Fiji. The two towers are actually on the same building, the 1991 Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building (essentially, City Hall), and has a free observation level on the 48th floor, which was really my only destination, since the rest of the neighborhood is just a lot of contemporary high rises. I learned a few things here besides seeing the view.

There was a slight backup of a few minutes for those waiting for the elevator to the deck. It was there that I watched a digital readout on the wall that said 10月 27日 which puzzled me for a moment until I remembered that the sun and moon characters not only also refer to days of the week, but also to days and months. So it said 10-month, 27-day, so it was October 27. There followed another readout with hours and minutes in the same fashion, but I didn’t know those kanji. Still, it’s one cultural step ahead to grasp just the slightest bit. Then the elevator attendant let the next set of people on, with a slight bow, as I continued to wait, and observe.

While waiting, I found more. I spotted this pair of signs. Both were marked in English as well, but why did they mean what they did?

My logic worked this way. What could a mouth have to do with this? Well, it’s an opening, so presumably that’s the exaggerated meaning: mouth < opening, hole. Later checking proved my guesswork right. I misinterpreted 入 at first. It must be a person, right? So an opening for a person to go in is an entrance, don’t you think? Well, almost. I checked later, and this character actually means to go in. Look at it this way: it’s a person whose hair is flying behind him as he goes in. So a 入口 is a “go-in opening”—an entrance.

But the other stumped me. Sure it’s a mountain, but doubled, so maybe it’s a mountain range. But how does that fit? I found out shortly.

I finally got in the elevator to go up to the observation floor. The view was good, both of the city and of Fuji (already starting to cloud up). We were maybe twice as high as in my hotel—but I’d just seen both views from my hotel. However, there were other distractions. There was a temporary exhibit of Japanese crafts. Normally, I couldn’t care less, but these were Japanese crafts. One table showed origami, Japanese paper-folding. There were dozens of cranes, a popular subject that I also saw elsewhere. A young woman was having both adults and kids do wood-block prints, and tamping paint on paper around the edges of real leaves. It was interesting to watch, but since she was teaching, I wondered if she could teach me the one kanji I had written down, 出. She started to say in halting English something about a mountain, but then I said there were two, so she sweetly explained to an obtuse Westerner that two mountains indicated “out, outside”. So at that point an exit to me was an outside opening, although later checking proved that 出 actually means “GO out”, so 出口 indicates an opening for going out: an exit. This is one instance where I thanked her with a smile, but also with a slight bow. When in Rome …

Actually, not always is there an English translation for some of these things. I saw a parking lot with the international P followed by 入口, and no other words. At one shrine in Kamakura there was a short cave you walked through. Granted, you couldn’t have gone wrong, yet it was fun to recognize 出口, and no other words, as you found your way out.

The day was coming along very well, but I was on conceptual overload. The normalcy of walking around and NOT getting lost, the addition of the odd kanji to the travel experience, the perfect autumn weather, all contributed to crowding the brain. But a lot more was still to come.

My only other goal in Shinjuku was to see Takashimaya, not outside the rail loop where I’d been, but on the inside, near the station. The New York outpost on Fifth Avenue is quite small and sedate, and shows a bit of Japanese furniture, dishes, clothes, but Takashimaya Times Square here was fourteen floors of glitz, Macy’s, Bloomingdales, Nordstrom’s and more put together.

The other half of my day was to go south from Shinjuku at the 9 o’clock position on the loop to Harakuju at 8, and to walk inward down to Aoyama along a shopping boulevard. On the way was a shrine in a wooded area, so I walked south from my hotel near and along the rail line for about ten minutes through a contemporary-looking local neighborhood until I came to an intersection where I stopped for the traffic light. I didn’t realize at this point the transformation I was about to experience, adding to the conceptual overload. As I was waiting to cross the street to the park area I had to my left train after train running along the rail line, which continued along the side of the park ahead. High above me, running left-to-right was a major expressway, full of traffic.

Then the light changed, I crossed the street, and entered the park. Within the first minute, the sounds of the city diminished. After 2-3 minutes more, I’d totally left Tokyo. I was Alice’s rabbit down the hole. I’d been in many city parks before, and on following days in Tokyo visited a number of parks and gardens. But this was different. It was other-worldly. It was a forest, one in which you might expect to find Hansel and Gretel around the next bend.

The trees were hugely tall and full. The upper branches rustled loudly in a sudden wind and blotted out much of the bright sunlight, just leaving a dappling affect on the ground. Added to that, at this end of my walk there was loud cawing of deep-throated birds, either crows or ravens. Just the contrast from a busy city to a quiet park can be startling, but this was more than a park, it was a forest in the middle of nowhere. It was the vast grounds of the Meiji Jingu (Shrine).

I visited a number of shrines later in my first week in Japan, actually it was a shrine-a-day, if not more. Some were more interesting than others, and you may suspect I was impressed with the Meiji Jingu more since it was my first, but I don’t think so. It’s isolated location in this forest made it unique, as did its simplicity. To my conceptual overload was being added a sensory overload.

When approaching a Shinto shrine—as I learned—you always encounter a ceremonial gate called a torii. It consists of two posts, with two high crossbars, the upper one seeming to sag in the middle. Each path in this forest leading to the shrine had its own torii, so when I later left, I knew I was about to re-enter the modern world when I walked under a corresponding torii. Take a look at one of the Torii at the Meiji Jingu. Note the density and height of those evergreen trees, and their effect on the sunlight. There are some 120,000 trees of 365 species, donated from all parts of Japan when the shrine was established. This ancient torii is made of huge cypress logs.

Simply put, the historic event called the Meiji Restoration of 1868 was as major a turning point in Japanese history as was any revolution elsewhere. The 265-year-old feudalistic shogun period of history came to an end, given a push by Commodore Perry in 1854, and a new governmental and societal structure was put in place, one that remains to this day, with all the modernization and fundamental changes involved in the past century and a half. The Edo Period ended and the Meiji Period commenced. Meiji means “Enlightened Rule”, and the emperor that initiated that period is now referred to by the name of his period. Emperor Meiji died in 1912 and Empress Shoken in 1914, and this jingu—shrine--was built in 1920 to pay respect to what was considered their deified spirits. As was most of Tokyo, the original shrine was destroyed in the air raids of WWII and has been restored.

I hadn’t fully anticipated the difference of this shrine. Most have only religious significance, but this one is fundamental to the history of the country. It’s as though George Washington were buried here. Better, pick Abraham Lincoln, since he’s of the same time period as Meiji. Take the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, plus the tomb of Lincoln and his wife in Springfield IL, add a cathedral, and that’s what the Meiji Jingu signifies. Earlier this year, when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a visit to Japan, before meeting with leaders she visited Meiji Jingu to show respect for the history and culture of Japan.

[Under some circumstances you can write Meijijingu as one word, which results in a startling sequence of five dotted letters in a row.]

I continued for about ten minutes until a short side road brought me to the shrine complex, which is entered by several gates. The shrine is at the far side of a central courtyard. Note the traditional Japanese roofs, and the simple, understated, minimalist style of architecture. The people at the far side are standing at the sanctuary. This is as close as you get to what I assume are the tombs, across this inner courtyard. Those large boxes in front of the woman are for offerings of coins, and are in every shrine. A pamphlet explained the proper way to show respect at a shrine. After tossing in a coin, first you bow twice, then you clap twice, then bow one final time. You bow either with arms at the side or with hands together. I found that the final bow might be delayed by a prayer, but not necessarily. The claps vary according to the personality of the individual—some are resounding, others are mere taps of the hands. You do not only see little old ladies doing this, there were businessmen in suits, teenagers in--what shall I say--teenage attire, all sorts of people. It was very interesting to watch.

Finally, in the courtyard, I was surprised to find something I ended up seeing at all shrines. There were racks of postcard-sized wooden blocks hanging from strings, all with messages in black felt-tip markers. A sign explained these were votive tablets. Anyone could buy one, write their own message, and add it to the racks. I would have expected that only Shintoists and Buddhists would be doing this, so that everything would be in one Asian script or another. Indeed, I saw Japanese, Chinese, Korean, even Thai writing. But I was surprised to see that maybe a quarter were in Western languages.

Since I am a reader—and transcriber—of signs, I found this all very interesting. Only a few could be interpreted as prayers. There were wishes and hopes, or just comments or observations, some personal, but most general, for the benefit of all. I took down only the first few words on some of the tablets.

That last Italian has the soul of a true traveler, having finally made it to caro Giappone. After all, Marco Polo never did.

Continuing south in the forest, the path swung toward the rail line, and passing the torii, I was suddenly back in bustling Tokyo, right at Harajuku Station, in the neighborhood of the same name. A pleasant European-style boulevard called Omotesandi Dori (Avenue) cut inward from the rail line toward the next neighborhood, Aoyama, maybe 8-10 short blocks away. It was petite, yet had trees down both sides, and was a major, trendy shopping street. It was pleasant enough, but a letdown after Meiji Jingu. The only thing on my map that I was looking for were the headquarters of Hanae Mori, to see where my cologne came from and what other things she designed, but the building was closed, and they had apparently moved, with explanations only in Japanese. This second instance was one of the very few times that a sign only in Japanese stymied me; otherwise movement around was so simple.

A long first full day had come to an end, and it was time to use my Suica pre-paid card to ride the subway. I found on my map several Tokyo Metro lines that connected well without depending on Toei lines that would have required a second fare, and enjoyed my ride back to Shinjuku.