You may have read about my journey in the Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel) You may have seen the photos of the trip at http://www.fishdragon.com/
You may have even heard my interviews on BBC Radio Wales.
Well, this blog is the (almost) complete story. Please remember, however, that you need to read it backwards. So the next entry - Epilogue - is the final chapter. To read the whole blog, click on 'blog archive' in the right hand column and start with the last item on the list, called 'Time Waits for Nomad.'
This blog is now finished but there are two more projects in the pipeline; the film and the book of the journey. I am currently looking for a production company and a publisher. Please contact me by email (gary@fishdragon.com) if you would like to learn more.
I have also started a new blog about Taiwan... http://taiwandering.blogspot.com/
And if you want to see the trailer for the proposed film of Six Trains, go to YouTube and search for 'six trains two boats.' Or just follow this link... http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=5xQ-mJs88PA
Finally, one piece of advice if you are tempted to travel by train and boat.... do it!
Bon voyage!
Sunday, 22 June 2008
Thursday, 29 May 2008
Epilogue - Past Tense and Present Calm
Wednesday May 28 - Taipei
In my cabin on the Hiryu early yesterday evening, as the Taiwanese coast loomed in the grey near distance, I packed my bag in my usual way. I go through the same procedure every time I enter a country, even if returning to the UK from a short-break in France.
I lay all my possessions out on the bed, as if a military kit inspection is imminent, and then meticulously check each item, make it as small as possible, pack it in the most appropriate place and then never let my bags out of sight until I am safely in the country.
There is nothing particularly odd about this, you might think. It is a way of making sure that nothing important has been accidentally left in a cupboard or kicked under a chair. It also means that the right things go in the right places and that space is used efficiently. But the main reason I do this is that I have a totally irrational fear that someone has planted a hideously illegal item in my baggage that will be uncovered by customs and guarantee me a long prison sentence.
I have no idea of the origin of this paranoia but it is real. Or rather it was real until I found an article that I’d ripped out of the Observer a few weeks before I left the UK. It was written by the famous travel writer Paul Theroux and I had totally forgotten about it. It was dog-eared and rumpled at the bottom of my small backpack. Mid-way through my packing last night I sat down and read it.
It was a rather pompous article and I found myself objecting out loud to some of Theroux’s statements. For instance, I took his 1975 book, The Great Railway Bazaar, with me on my journey because it includes an account of Theroux’s trip on the Trans-Siberian. I didn’t even get to the relevant chapter because I couldn’t believe that his accounts of experiences and, particularly conversations, were true to life; they were simply too detailed.
I know from my own experience that even if you make copious notes immediately afterwards, the best one can hope to do is recall key points and phrases, not whole conversations. Yet Theroux maintains that there is no fiction in his work; it is a faithful, accurate, verbatim and complete account of what he saw, heard, smelt and felt. My response to this was ‘bollocks!’
Anyway, I gave him the benefit of the doubt – largely because Theroux is regarded as the definitive travel writer by many – and read the article to the end. And I am glad I did because his final thought summed up how my trip has changed me. He wrote: ‘I think travellers are essentially optimists, or else they would never go anywhere.’
It suddenly struck me that the habitual unpacking, checking and packing of my bags before going through customs is an extreme form of pessimism. I have never carried drugs, firearms or endangered species across national borders, nor has anyone planted such things, so why the hell should I worry about it?
And my intense anxieties in the Eastern European leg of the journey, so severe that I very nearly turned for home, were further indication of my innate pessimism. As I tossed and turned in my bunk somewhere in Poland, I imagined that every possible nightmare scenario – from capsizing boats to rampant food poisoning – would afflict me at some point in my journey.
And yet, as I watched the dreary Taiwanese port of Keelung draw ever closer through the porthole of the Hiryu, I realised that my journey had been a breeze from start to finish. It had been plain sailing and everything had clicked beautifully into place. For the whole three weeks, for every one of the 8,500 miles, through the ten time zones and nine countries, nothing had gone wrong.
The most annoying part was undoubtedly getting out of Vladivostock (see day 15) but even that was bearable, thanks to the journalistic value and the great company. But for the rest of the time, the food was plentiful and edible; my health was fine; I didn’t get robbed, bored or arrested; the sea crossings were calm; the people I met were friendly, amusing and inspirational companions; I didn’t run out of money; my credit card was never rejected; and even with my minimal language skills, I managed to communicate effectively.
Some of my good fortune was down to planning, which obviously included meeting up with friends along the way – notably Jeremy and Tracey in Moscow, and Jimmy and Miwa in Tokyo, and of course, doing the Trans-Siberian with Fizle, all of whom assisted me immeasurably in dealing with foreign countries – but I realised that there was also a huge element of fate or positive coincidence, call it what you will.
The gods smiled on me from day one to day 22, and at every crucial step, it was new people that made the difference. Gerhard in Germany; Dimitris, Natalia and spooky Eddie in Eastern Europe; the inspirational Joe Cheng in Russia; Slavic in Siberia; William, Umon and the others on the MV Rus… I met all of these people without any prior planning, and in each case, whether they know it or not, they eased my passage and helped convert me from a pessimist into an optimist.
Final confirmation of the divine blessing of my journey appeared just before I began my paranoid packing on the Hiryu. I really fancied a cup of English tea so, with little hope of success, I dug into my small backpack and pulled out my emergency food bag. All that remained, among the wrappers, was a solitary PG Tips Pyramid tea bag.
Before I left Cardiff, I had grabbed a random handful; I hadn’t counted them and I had not rationed myself on the journey, but there was one left. I cannot begin to explain how elated I felt. This otherwise trivial piece of good fortune epitomised the trip; whenever I hit a barrier and needed something to happen, it did.
As the skipper of the Hiryu captain completed the nimble manoeuvring alongside the dock at Keelung, I screwed up Theroux’s article and tossed it into the rubbish bag. I drained the last of my last cup of PG Tips tea and jammed my plastic travel mug into my backpack. Through my porthole, I saw three hard-hatted Taiwanese dockworkers stub out their cigarettes, slip on their protective gloves and begin to move the walkway into position.
Three weeks earlier, almost to the hour, I was boarding a train from Cardiff to London, a journey I had done a hundred times before. With each subsequent phase of the journey, I went further out of my comfort zone and yet, once I had dealt with the anxieties in Eastern Europe, I felt increasingly comfortable within myself.
The concept of a physical, external ‘home’ – familiar places, faces, smells and language – evaporated and was replaced by an inner safety. No matter what tomorrow brings, I realised that it will be a positive experience and any problems would be surmountable.
The greatest revelation was that nationality is a largely ridiculous idea. National borders are human constructions and never in the whole course of history have they been static. What is permanent, however, is the innate ability of people to get along. My experience on the Cologne to Moscow train, the Trans-Siberian, the MV Rus and the Hiryu showed that, irrespective of the country’s name on the front of the passport, the people I met were, without exception, warm, helpful, compassionate and generous.
Yes, nationalities do look different and cultural differences do exist – the Russians, for example, seem to be rather reserved to begin with and the Japanese tend to be more deferential in comparison to Western Europeans – but, in the last three weeks, the similarities between nationalities far outweighed the differences. In my experience, so long as you can say ‘hello’ and ‘thank you’ in another person’s language, and combine these words with a genuine smile, the door to their heart will open and they will treat you with the same respect as anyone else.
‘Hello’ and ‘thank you’ are just about the only words I know in Chinese, the most impenetrable of any of the languages that I would experience on my trip. As I presented my passport to a lightly-perspiring immigration officer sitting with a colleague behind a glass screened booth in Keelung, I greeted him with a smile and ‘Nin hao, ma?’ He nodded and almost returned the smile.
He noticed that I hadn’t completed the section marked ‘date of departure.’ I explained that I have a two month extendable visa. ‘I might be here for six months,’ I said, ‘so I didn’t know what to write. Can you help me?’
He rubbed his chin, bit his thumbnail and said something in Chinese to his deadpan colleague. They conversed for a moment and then looked at me inquisitively. I smiled. The deadpan face smiled back, said something else in Chinese. In excellent English he then told me that I should take my passport to the Taipei immigration office two weeks before my initial visa expires and they will sort out the extension.
Three weeks ago I would have been infinitely nervous in such a situation. I would have imagined the cataclysm of deportation, probably with a night in a sweaty cell, all because I couldn’t tell the authorities when I’d be leaving. But now, with twenty-two consecutive days of positive coincidences under my belt, and having met numerous helpful, friendly and welcoming people, I just knew that these Taiwanese officials would look at me favourably.
The perspiring officer handed his colleague the official stamp. He then positioned it carefully opposite my visa, paused for a moment and then slapped the palm of his hand downwards. ‘Welcome to Taiwan, Mr Merrill,’ he said. ‘Enjoy your stay.’
I then lugged my bags the short distance to the over-staffed customs X-ray machine. I smiled at the four operatives and the most lethargic told me to put everything on the conveyor belt. As my possessions disappeared into the machine and successfully reappeared on the other side, I went through the body scanner and looked around the terminal at the unreadable signs.
I caught the eye of the most self-important of the customs officials – he with the smartest uniform – and raised an inquisitive eyebrow. ‘OK?,’ I asked as I picked up my backpack. He just waved me towards the exit.
Taiwan represents the end of this journey but it is simply the beginning of the next one. But I am a very different person to the one that left the UK. Although I didn’t know it at the time, I was then a habitual pessimist and, as Theroux noted, that is why I had not done any serious travelling since I spent seven months in the US way back in 1985. For the last 23 years, I much preferred the predictability of the known.
But now, as I walked out into the sticky chaotic streets of early evening Keelung, unable to speak more than a clumsy sentence of the local language, I knew that whatever happens tomorrow, optimistic fatalism will win the day.
In my cabin on the Hiryu early yesterday evening, as the Taiwanese coast loomed in the grey near distance, I packed my bag in my usual way. I go through the same procedure every time I enter a country, even if returning to the UK from a short-break in France.
I lay all my possessions out on the bed, as if a military kit inspection is imminent, and then meticulously check each item, make it as small as possible, pack it in the most appropriate place and then never let my bags out of sight until I am safely in the country.
There is nothing particularly odd about this, you might think. It is a way of making sure that nothing important has been accidentally left in a cupboard or kicked under a chair. It also means that the right things go in the right places and that space is used efficiently. But the main reason I do this is that I have a totally irrational fear that someone has planted a hideously illegal item in my baggage that will be uncovered by customs and guarantee me a long prison sentence.
I have no idea of the origin of this paranoia but it is real. Or rather it was real until I found an article that I’d ripped out of the Observer a few weeks before I left the UK. It was written by the famous travel writer Paul Theroux and I had totally forgotten about it. It was dog-eared and rumpled at the bottom of my small backpack. Mid-way through my packing last night I sat down and read it.
It was a rather pompous article and I found myself objecting out loud to some of Theroux’s statements. For instance, I took his 1975 book, The Great Railway Bazaar, with me on my journey because it includes an account of Theroux’s trip on the Trans-Siberian. I didn’t even get to the relevant chapter because I couldn’t believe that his accounts of experiences and, particularly conversations, were true to life; they were simply too detailed.
I know from my own experience that even if you make copious notes immediately afterwards, the best one can hope to do is recall key points and phrases, not whole conversations. Yet Theroux maintains that there is no fiction in his work; it is a faithful, accurate, verbatim and complete account of what he saw, heard, smelt and felt. My response to this was ‘bollocks!’
Anyway, I gave him the benefit of the doubt – largely because Theroux is regarded as the definitive travel writer by many – and read the article to the end. And I am glad I did because his final thought summed up how my trip has changed me. He wrote: ‘I think travellers are essentially optimists, or else they would never go anywhere.’
It suddenly struck me that the habitual unpacking, checking and packing of my bags before going through customs is an extreme form of pessimism. I have never carried drugs, firearms or endangered species across national borders, nor has anyone planted such things, so why the hell should I worry about it?
And my intense anxieties in the Eastern European leg of the journey, so severe that I very nearly turned for home, were further indication of my innate pessimism. As I tossed and turned in my bunk somewhere in Poland, I imagined that every possible nightmare scenario – from capsizing boats to rampant food poisoning – would afflict me at some point in my journey.
And yet, as I watched the dreary Taiwanese port of Keelung draw ever closer through the porthole of the Hiryu, I realised that my journey had been a breeze from start to finish. It had been plain sailing and everything had clicked beautifully into place. For the whole three weeks, for every one of the 8,500 miles, through the ten time zones and nine countries, nothing had gone wrong.
The most annoying part was undoubtedly getting out of Vladivostock (see day 15) but even that was bearable, thanks to the journalistic value and the great company. But for the rest of the time, the food was plentiful and edible; my health was fine; I didn’t get robbed, bored or arrested; the sea crossings were calm; the people I met were friendly, amusing and inspirational companions; I didn’t run out of money; my credit card was never rejected; and even with my minimal language skills, I managed to communicate effectively.
Some of my good fortune was down to planning, which obviously included meeting up with friends along the way – notably Jeremy and Tracey in Moscow, and Jimmy and Miwa in Tokyo, and of course, doing the Trans-Siberian with Fizle, all of whom assisted me immeasurably in dealing with foreign countries – but I realised that there was also a huge element of fate or positive coincidence, call it what you will.
The gods smiled on me from day one to day 22, and at every crucial step, it was new people that made the difference. Gerhard in Germany; Dimitris, Natalia and spooky Eddie in Eastern Europe; the inspirational Joe Cheng in Russia; Slavic in Siberia; William, Umon and the others on the MV Rus… I met all of these people without any prior planning, and in each case, whether they know it or not, they eased my passage and helped convert me from a pessimist into an optimist.
Final confirmation of the divine blessing of my journey appeared just before I began my paranoid packing on the Hiryu. I really fancied a cup of English tea so, with little hope of success, I dug into my small backpack and pulled out my emergency food bag. All that remained, among the wrappers, was a solitary PG Tips Pyramid tea bag.
Before I left Cardiff, I had grabbed a random handful; I hadn’t counted them and I had not rationed myself on the journey, but there was one left. I cannot begin to explain how elated I felt. This otherwise trivial piece of good fortune epitomised the trip; whenever I hit a barrier and needed something to happen, it did.
As the skipper of the Hiryu captain completed the nimble manoeuvring alongside the dock at Keelung, I screwed up Theroux’s article and tossed it into the rubbish bag. I drained the last of my last cup of PG Tips tea and jammed my plastic travel mug into my backpack. Through my porthole, I saw three hard-hatted Taiwanese dockworkers stub out their cigarettes, slip on their protective gloves and begin to move the walkway into position.
Three weeks earlier, almost to the hour, I was boarding a train from Cardiff to London, a journey I had done a hundred times before. With each subsequent phase of the journey, I went further out of my comfort zone and yet, once I had dealt with the anxieties in Eastern Europe, I felt increasingly comfortable within myself.
The concept of a physical, external ‘home’ – familiar places, faces, smells and language – evaporated and was replaced by an inner safety. No matter what tomorrow brings, I realised that it will be a positive experience and any problems would be surmountable.
The greatest revelation was that nationality is a largely ridiculous idea. National borders are human constructions and never in the whole course of history have they been static. What is permanent, however, is the innate ability of people to get along. My experience on the Cologne to Moscow train, the Trans-Siberian, the MV Rus and the Hiryu showed that, irrespective of the country’s name on the front of the passport, the people I met were, without exception, warm, helpful, compassionate and generous.
Yes, nationalities do look different and cultural differences do exist – the Russians, for example, seem to be rather reserved to begin with and the Japanese tend to be more deferential in comparison to Western Europeans – but, in the last three weeks, the similarities between nationalities far outweighed the differences. In my experience, so long as you can say ‘hello’ and ‘thank you’ in another person’s language, and combine these words with a genuine smile, the door to their heart will open and they will treat you with the same respect as anyone else.
‘Hello’ and ‘thank you’ are just about the only words I know in Chinese, the most impenetrable of any of the languages that I would experience on my trip. As I presented my passport to a lightly-perspiring immigration officer sitting with a colleague behind a glass screened booth in Keelung, I greeted him with a smile and ‘Nin hao, ma?’ He nodded and almost returned the smile.
He noticed that I hadn’t completed the section marked ‘date of departure.’ I explained that I have a two month extendable visa. ‘I might be here for six months,’ I said, ‘so I didn’t know what to write. Can you help me?’
He rubbed his chin, bit his thumbnail and said something in Chinese to his deadpan colleague. They conversed for a moment and then looked at me inquisitively. I smiled. The deadpan face smiled back, said something else in Chinese. In excellent English he then told me that I should take my passport to the Taipei immigration office two weeks before my initial visa expires and they will sort out the extension.
Three weeks ago I would have been infinitely nervous in such a situation. I would have imagined the cataclysm of deportation, probably with a night in a sweaty cell, all because I couldn’t tell the authorities when I’d be leaving. But now, with twenty-two consecutive days of positive coincidences under my belt, and having met numerous helpful, friendly and welcoming people, I just knew that these Taiwanese officials would look at me favourably.
The perspiring officer handed his colleague the official stamp. He then positioned it carefully opposite my visa, paused for a moment and then slapped the palm of his hand downwards. ‘Welcome to Taiwan, Mr Merrill,’ he said. ‘Enjoy your stay.’
I then lugged my bags the short distance to the over-staffed customs X-ray machine. I smiled at the four operatives and the most lethargic told me to put everything on the conveyor belt. As my possessions disappeared into the machine and successfully reappeared on the other side, I went through the body scanner and looked around the terminal at the unreadable signs.
I caught the eye of the most self-important of the customs officials – he with the smartest uniform – and raised an inquisitive eyebrow. ‘OK?,’ I asked as I picked up my backpack. He just waved me towards the exit.
Taiwan represents the end of this journey but it is simply the beginning of the next one. But I am a very different person to the one that left the UK. Although I didn’t know it at the time, I was then a habitual pessimist and, as Theroux noted, that is why I had not done any serious travelling since I spent seven months in the US way back in 1985. For the last 23 years, I much preferred the predictability of the known.
But now, as I walked out into the sticky chaotic streets of early evening Keelung, unable to speak more than a clumsy sentence of the local language, I knew that whatever happens tomorrow, optimistic fatalism will win the day.
Day 22: Different But in the Same Way
Tuesday May 27 - Onboard the Hiryu, 100 miles from Taiwan
As I write, brown and white sea birds, with sharply-tipped wings, sabre-like beaks and arrogant aerial swaggers, are scooting alongside the boat. Every so often, they bank steeply to starboard and then splash with surprising inelegance into water.
The occasional freighter is in the near distance, slowly gliding north-east toward Japan. The sea is virtually blemish-free; except for the wake of the Hiryu and the sporadic clumsy landings of our escorts, the ocean is an endless expanse of deep sapphire silk, gently ruffled by the tepid breeze.
The Hiryu has docked twice today; once very early this morning, for an hour and 45 minutes, at Miyako Island, and then again at 1015 at Ishigaki Island. In both cases, passengers disembarked and now there are only six of us. I know this because at Ishigaki, we all had to go briefly ashore and pass through Japanese immigration. I was the only Westerner on the Japanese Immigration officer’s tiny list.
I was the last of the half dozen off the boat. I hadn’t heard the announcement on the ship’s PA – nor would I have understood it if I had – because I was listening to my MP3 player. So the purser came to my door and knocked politely yet loudly.
He told me to just bring my passport and guided me into the terminal building. Even though it was a stress-free process, the tiny security guard at the terminal made the most of this weekly event. His dark blue uniform looked like it had been borrowed from someone four sizes larger, but his hat was one size too small. The heavy gold braiding gave him an air of a 1950s cinema usherette and the tight belt merely emphasised the bagginess of his clothes. His trousers were far too long and concertinaed at the knees.
Even so, his misshaped clothes did not prevent him from doing his job correctly. As soon as I passed through the double doors into a sweaty yet spacious waiting area, I nodded and smiled to him. I’m sure that he was on the verge of saluting but simply returned my unspoken greeting. His eyes were fixed in a permanent, wrinkled squint and his stubbled, tanned face, Pacific Islander rather than Japanese, had a porcine sheen. He had collapsed lips which, as he smiled, revealed three rotten teeth and one surprisingly white one.
Once I was through the door, he hitched his trousers, pulled the hem of his jacket down assertively and, looking around for approval, dug in his pocket. He then noisily pulled out a huge bunch of keys, found the right one first time and locked the doors at the top, middle and bottom. Returning to the standing position, he scanned the room with a toothless smile, slowly dropped the keys back in his trouser pocket, adjusted his trousers with a wiggle and stood, licking his thin lips, with his hands behind his back.
The five Japanese travellers were pointed in the direction of the immigration room, where the Hiryu’s chief purser was discharging another of his many duties. Over his shoulder, I could see a uniformed Japanese immigration officer sitting at a makeshift desk in the far corner. An obliging, petite, grey suited woman appeared out of nowhere and told me without emotion that foreigners go last. When it was my turn the chief purser meticulously checked my passport details against those taken when I boarded the ship, just in case anything had changed. Naturally, it hadn’t but this is the Japanese thoroughness in action.
Then I took my passport and my smile to the official. Without a word being spoken, he checked my Taiwanese visa, tore out the Japanese embarkation card, stamped my Japanese visa, returned my passport and within five minutes, I was back in my cabin.
The atmosphere on the ship has now returned to the serenity that followed the departure from Osaka. At Okinawa, the passenger transfer bus made four journeys from the terminal, delivering some sixty people to the Hiryu. Most were Japanese but there were also a handful of Westerners.
I tried to engage one – a young American man called Ken – in a conversation but he seemed elsewhere. He had short reddish hair, freckles and an Abraham Lincoln-style paint-brush beard. He said he was from Colorado and had been working in Osaka for three years. He speaks Japanese and said he enjoyed living in the country yet his eyes darted around incessantly suggesting he was out of his comfort zone.
As we spoke, he asked me the standard questions about my life and journey, but his ‘OK’, ‘Right,’ ‘OK’, ‘Yeah’ answers displayed a lack of connection and interest. We boarded the bus together and as we approached the ship, his concerns became apparent. He had never travelled by boat before and was worried about sharing a cabin.
I told him that they are very civilised quarters and, even if he is with multiple strangers, my experience on the Trans-Siberian suggested that human beings have a innate ability to respect each other’s property, privacy and space, even if they are forced together. ‘Right,’ he said with total detachment. So I decided to add a postscript, just to see if he was listening. ‘Unless, of course, they are mass murderers.’ ‘Right,’ he said with the same tone as if I had told him that Washington DC is the capital of his country.
Also on the bus was a short, dark-haired voluble American man in his mid-twenties, wearing three quarter length cargo pants, a blue polo shirt and flip flops. He had a tiny bag and a huge surfboard. He had sloping shoulders and when he walked, he swung his arms slightly too far from his body in a gun-slinger swagger. When he stopped walking, he planted his feet apart slightly wider than normal and cocked his head combatively to one side.
He was accompanied by another American man – taller, blonder and anonymous - who occasionally said something rather quietly which would be the swaggering guy’s cue to launch into a loud, wise-cracking monologue, to which the swaggerer expected – and got – sycophantic laughter.
The third member of this group was a wide-eyed, soft lipped, slender, verging on anorexic, very westernised Japanese woman. She wore skinny jeans that were still baggy on her stick like legs, strappy, high-heeled sandals, and a white vest top. At first glance it appeared that she had large breasts for her frame, but the bulge was merely an ill-fitting wonderbra. She walked half a step behind her partner, the swaggerer, and said nothing while the male double act performed.
About 45 minutes before the ship was due to depart, three buses draw up on the dockside. They were illuminated within and every seat was occupied by a teenager. Sure enough, within twenty minutes the corridor outside my room was alive with the sound of aimless excitement. From the girls there were squabbles, reasonless screeches, incessant chatter, spontaneous sprints, and hysterical giggling. The boys simply shouted monosyllabically, grunted with their hormones and strutted.
Later in the evening, female noises settle outside my cabin. Then the sound of a hairdryer took over. More voices joined in and competed with the electrical whine which suggested a shortage of electric points in their cabins. I went for a cup of tea and sure enough, a queue had formed. It seemed that every girl in the party had decided to wash their hair and now about 15 Japanese teenage girls were impatiently waiting to use a single hairdryer. Some stood, others squatted, others took photos, others rubbed their hair with towels. But they were all talking, at the same time, and yet none of them, it seemed, were listening.
These were Japanese teenagers, but, as I listened to the tone and speed of their chat, I doubted whether British girls would be any different. I didn’t understand a word, of course, but I would wager that the main subjects of conversation were boys, music, movie stars, fashion, make up, teachers and families, all with a hint of bitchy humour.
Of course each nationality has its own way of doing things. Interaction with alcohol is a good example; the British tend to imbibe with much less restraint than the French, for example. And in my seven years teaching international MA students at Cardiff University, not once did I see a Chinese student have more than two halves of weak beer during social events.
There are also differences between cultures in terms of music, fashion, art and culture; attitudes to authority; relationships with family; courtship; and many other elements of life. But, core principles, seem to be very similar.
This became apparent last week when I was staying with Jim and Miwa. In August, they will be getting married in Hawaii and, while I was at their apartment, they had numerous discussions about the preparations. Jim and Miwa both speak Japanese and English and it was rather entertaining to hear them switch, sometimes mid-sentence, between languages. Sometimes, when they were speaking Japanese, even though I don’t understand a word, I could tell from the tone that there was tension.
On the Friday, Jim took a day off work and he drove me around Tokyo. We started off with a wonderful teppanyaki lunch at a hotel that appeared as a villian’s headquarters in an early James Bond film. The white-overalled chef had the tallest hat I’d ever seen and its height was only matched by his dexterity and mastery of his art.
As he chopped and cooked and described the food with passionate restraint, Jim apologised for the morning’s argument between he and Miwa. It began at 0500 when Jim’s alarm went off at the usual time. He had forgotten to cancel it the night before and Miwa was woken two hours earlier than her normal time.
I told Jim there was no need to apologise but he still felt bad. From that poor start to the day, he and Miwa had heated discussions about various, relatively minor, parts of the wedding preparations. Top of the list was the invitations and whether they should be printed, if so, by whom, and what the wording should be.
As Jim offloaded, I smiled and thought back to the preparations to my first marriage. My wife-to-be and her mother planned, checked and double-checked everything with the precision of military strategists. Nothing was left to chance. I gladly took a backseat and left the women to it, but at times Sarah would ask me for my opinion. Invariably, this would be about a minor issue – for example, the seating plan – but my view was often different to the female’s consensus and a row would ensue.
It might be tempting to suggest that Jim and Miwa have such arguments because he is English and she is Japanese. But, as I said to Jim over another delectable dish, nationality and culture are irrelevant when it comes to weddings. The differences are between men and women.
As he sipped his mineral water, Jim watched the chef perform another dazzling act with his knife. ‘I guess so,’ he said. ‘What is important to me is that I am getting married to Miwa, but she…’ I nodded knowingly and finished his sentence, ‘She wants the day to be perfect.’
Miwa is Japanese but, more importantly, she is a woman too. Women of all cultures want their wedding day to be perfect. Depending on the country, some elements might be more important than others but, irrespective of nationality, the wedding is the most important day of a woman’s life.
This is by no means a chauvinistic statement; in my experience, it also applies to professional, post-feminism, career-minded women who are equal to men in every respect. And no matter how hard Jim or any other man tries, we will never fully appreciate that sorting out the minutiae, usually in partnership the woman’s mother, has a higher status than the act of marriage itself.
Miwa and Jim, the chattering Japanese schoolgirls on the Hiryu and the humble beggar in Tokyo may do their thing slightly differently to their equivalents in the UK. But ultimately, their lives, priorities and issues are the same. These everyday experiences in Japan confirmed to me that there is more that connects us as humans than divides us as nationalities. And on this basis, I have even less respect for racists whose sole argument seems to be that difference equates to inferiority.
As I write, brown and white sea birds, with sharply-tipped wings, sabre-like beaks and arrogant aerial swaggers, are scooting alongside the boat. Every so often, they bank steeply to starboard and then splash with surprising inelegance into water.
The occasional freighter is in the near distance, slowly gliding north-east toward Japan. The sea is virtually blemish-free; except for the wake of the Hiryu and the sporadic clumsy landings of our escorts, the ocean is an endless expanse of deep sapphire silk, gently ruffled by the tepid breeze.
The Hiryu has docked twice today; once very early this morning, for an hour and 45 minutes, at Miyako Island, and then again at 1015 at Ishigaki Island. In both cases, passengers disembarked and now there are only six of us. I know this because at Ishigaki, we all had to go briefly ashore and pass through Japanese immigration. I was the only Westerner on the Japanese Immigration officer’s tiny list.
I was the last of the half dozen off the boat. I hadn’t heard the announcement on the ship’s PA – nor would I have understood it if I had – because I was listening to my MP3 player. So the purser came to my door and knocked politely yet loudly.
He told me to just bring my passport and guided me into the terminal building. Even though it was a stress-free process, the tiny security guard at the terminal made the most of this weekly event. His dark blue uniform looked like it had been borrowed from someone four sizes larger, but his hat was one size too small. The heavy gold braiding gave him an air of a 1950s cinema usherette and the tight belt merely emphasised the bagginess of his clothes. His trousers were far too long and concertinaed at the knees.
Even so, his misshaped clothes did not prevent him from doing his job correctly. As soon as I passed through the double doors into a sweaty yet spacious waiting area, I nodded and smiled to him. I’m sure that he was on the verge of saluting but simply returned my unspoken greeting. His eyes were fixed in a permanent, wrinkled squint and his stubbled, tanned face, Pacific Islander rather than Japanese, had a porcine sheen. He had collapsed lips which, as he smiled, revealed three rotten teeth and one surprisingly white one.
Once I was through the door, he hitched his trousers, pulled the hem of his jacket down assertively and, looking around for approval, dug in his pocket. He then noisily pulled out a huge bunch of keys, found the right one first time and locked the doors at the top, middle and bottom. Returning to the standing position, he scanned the room with a toothless smile, slowly dropped the keys back in his trouser pocket, adjusted his trousers with a wiggle and stood, licking his thin lips, with his hands behind his back.
The five Japanese travellers were pointed in the direction of the immigration room, where the Hiryu’s chief purser was discharging another of his many duties. Over his shoulder, I could see a uniformed Japanese immigration officer sitting at a makeshift desk in the far corner. An obliging, petite, grey suited woman appeared out of nowhere and told me without emotion that foreigners go last. When it was my turn the chief purser meticulously checked my passport details against those taken when I boarded the ship, just in case anything had changed. Naturally, it hadn’t but this is the Japanese thoroughness in action.
Then I took my passport and my smile to the official. Without a word being spoken, he checked my Taiwanese visa, tore out the Japanese embarkation card, stamped my Japanese visa, returned my passport and within five minutes, I was back in my cabin.
The atmosphere on the ship has now returned to the serenity that followed the departure from Osaka. At Okinawa, the passenger transfer bus made four journeys from the terminal, delivering some sixty people to the Hiryu. Most were Japanese but there were also a handful of Westerners.
I tried to engage one – a young American man called Ken – in a conversation but he seemed elsewhere. He had short reddish hair, freckles and an Abraham Lincoln-style paint-brush beard. He said he was from Colorado and had been working in Osaka for three years. He speaks Japanese and said he enjoyed living in the country yet his eyes darted around incessantly suggesting he was out of his comfort zone.
As we spoke, he asked me the standard questions about my life and journey, but his ‘OK’, ‘Right,’ ‘OK’, ‘Yeah’ answers displayed a lack of connection and interest. We boarded the bus together and as we approached the ship, his concerns became apparent. He had never travelled by boat before and was worried about sharing a cabin.
I told him that they are very civilised quarters and, even if he is with multiple strangers, my experience on the Trans-Siberian suggested that human beings have a innate ability to respect each other’s property, privacy and space, even if they are forced together. ‘Right,’ he said with total detachment. So I decided to add a postscript, just to see if he was listening. ‘Unless, of course, they are mass murderers.’ ‘Right,’ he said with the same tone as if I had told him that Washington DC is the capital of his country.
Also on the bus was a short, dark-haired voluble American man in his mid-twenties, wearing three quarter length cargo pants, a blue polo shirt and flip flops. He had a tiny bag and a huge surfboard. He had sloping shoulders and when he walked, he swung his arms slightly too far from his body in a gun-slinger swagger. When he stopped walking, he planted his feet apart slightly wider than normal and cocked his head combatively to one side.
He was accompanied by another American man – taller, blonder and anonymous - who occasionally said something rather quietly which would be the swaggering guy’s cue to launch into a loud, wise-cracking monologue, to which the swaggerer expected – and got – sycophantic laughter.
The third member of this group was a wide-eyed, soft lipped, slender, verging on anorexic, very westernised Japanese woman. She wore skinny jeans that were still baggy on her stick like legs, strappy, high-heeled sandals, and a white vest top. At first glance it appeared that she had large breasts for her frame, but the bulge was merely an ill-fitting wonderbra. She walked half a step behind her partner, the swaggerer, and said nothing while the male double act performed.
About 45 minutes before the ship was due to depart, three buses draw up on the dockside. They were illuminated within and every seat was occupied by a teenager. Sure enough, within twenty minutes the corridor outside my room was alive with the sound of aimless excitement. From the girls there were squabbles, reasonless screeches, incessant chatter, spontaneous sprints, and hysterical giggling. The boys simply shouted monosyllabically, grunted with their hormones and strutted.
Later in the evening, female noises settle outside my cabin. Then the sound of a hairdryer took over. More voices joined in and competed with the electrical whine which suggested a shortage of electric points in their cabins. I went for a cup of tea and sure enough, a queue had formed. It seemed that every girl in the party had decided to wash their hair and now about 15 Japanese teenage girls were impatiently waiting to use a single hairdryer. Some stood, others squatted, others took photos, others rubbed their hair with towels. But they were all talking, at the same time, and yet none of them, it seemed, were listening.
These were Japanese teenagers, but, as I listened to the tone and speed of their chat, I doubted whether British girls would be any different. I didn’t understand a word, of course, but I would wager that the main subjects of conversation were boys, music, movie stars, fashion, make up, teachers and families, all with a hint of bitchy humour.
Of course each nationality has its own way of doing things. Interaction with alcohol is a good example; the British tend to imbibe with much less restraint than the French, for example. And in my seven years teaching international MA students at Cardiff University, not once did I see a Chinese student have more than two halves of weak beer during social events.
There are also differences between cultures in terms of music, fashion, art and culture; attitudes to authority; relationships with family; courtship; and many other elements of life. But, core principles, seem to be very similar.
This became apparent last week when I was staying with Jim and Miwa. In August, they will be getting married in Hawaii and, while I was at their apartment, they had numerous discussions about the preparations. Jim and Miwa both speak Japanese and English and it was rather entertaining to hear them switch, sometimes mid-sentence, between languages. Sometimes, when they were speaking Japanese, even though I don’t understand a word, I could tell from the tone that there was tension.
On the Friday, Jim took a day off work and he drove me around Tokyo. We started off with a wonderful teppanyaki lunch at a hotel that appeared as a villian’s headquarters in an early James Bond film. The white-overalled chef had the tallest hat I’d ever seen and its height was only matched by his dexterity and mastery of his art.
As he chopped and cooked and described the food with passionate restraint, Jim apologised for the morning’s argument between he and Miwa. It began at 0500 when Jim’s alarm went off at the usual time. He had forgotten to cancel it the night before and Miwa was woken two hours earlier than her normal time.
I told Jim there was no need to apologise but he still felt bad. From that poor start to the day, he and Miwa had heated discussions about various, relatively minor, parts of the wedding preparations. Top of the list was the invitations and whether they should be printed, if so, by whom, and what the wording should be.
As Jim offloaded, I smiled and thought back to the preparations to my first marriage. My wife-to-be and her mother planned, checked and double-checked everything with the precision of military strategists. Nothing was left to chance. I gladly took a backseat and left the women to it, but at times Sarah would ask me for my opinion. Invariably, this would be about a minor issue – for example, the seating plan – but my view was often different to the female’s consensus and a row would ensue.
It might be tempting to suggest that Jim and Miwa have such arguments because he is English and she is Japanese. But, as I said to Jim over another delectable dish, nationality and culture are irrelevant when it comes to weddings. The differences are between men and women.
As he sipped his mineral water, Jim watched the chef perform another dazzling act with his knife. ‘I guess so,’ he said. ‘What is important to me is that I am getting married to Miwa, but she…’ I nodded knowingly and finished his sentence, ‘She wants the day to be perfect.’
Miwa is Japanese but, more importantly, she is a woman too. Women of all cultures want their wedding day to be perfect. Depending on the country, some elements might be more important than others but, irrespective of nationality, the wedding is the most important day of a woman’s life.
This is by no means a chauvinistic statement; in my experience, it also applies to professional, post-feminism, career-minded women who are equal to men in every respect. And no matter how hard Jim or any other man tries, we will never fully appreciate that sorting out the minutiae, usually in partnership the woman’s mother, has a higher status than the act of marriage itself.
Miwa and Jim, the chattering Japanese schoolgirls on the Hiryu and the humble beggar in Tokyo may do their thing slightly differently to their equivalents in the UK. But ultimately, their lives, priorities and issues are the same. These everyday experiences in Japan confirmed to me that there is more that connects us as humans than divides us as nationalities. And on this basis, I have even less respect for racists whose sole argument seems to be that difference equates to inferiority.
Wednesday, 28 May 2008
Day 21: Driven to Confusion
Monday May 26 - Okinawa Ferry Passenger Terminal
If someone had asked me to describe the Japanese 24 hours ago, I would have used the following words: polite, deferential, welcoming, punctual, efficient, obliging, intelligent, industrious and meticulously organised.
In addition, I have also noticed that Japanese teenage girls tend to have very large thighs in proportion to the rest of their legs and overall body shape. The difference is so pronounced that I wondered if they are fed spinach every day; the last time I saw such muscular incongruity was on Popeye.
Call me a pervert by all means, but it is hard not to notice when the standard school uniform is a pleated mini-skirt (often tartan) and the girls walk around in groups. The thigh-calf disparity seems to disappear, however, when the girls become women. And, with a very few exceptions, Japanese women are petite and very slender. The men, however, are not so. Some are slim, some are tiny, some are athletic and some are enormous.
Anyway, enough about physique. What about the Japanese character? Well, I had two experiences today that at first confirmed my original thoughts, and then, this afternoon, blew the whole idea of national stereotypes out of the water.
The confirmation began at seven AM when the PA on the ship piped up with a lengthy, officious announcement. It was in Japanese but I knew that it was about our imminent arrival in Okinawa. After all, this was scheduled for 0800. After the first announcement, the purser helped us to wake with a continuous, gentle soundtrack of plinky-plonky Japanese music combined with twittering birdsong. He then reminded us of whatever the information was three or four more times.
I had woken up a few times in the night and could have really used some more sleep. So I read the rather ambiguous written translation of what happens when we reached Okinawa that the purser had given me on day one. I knew that I had to leave the boat at some point and be back at the Naha passenger terminal by 1915, but I still wasn’t sure whether I could leave the boat when I liked, nor indeed if I could return when I liked.
So at around 7.40, I went to the reception desk and asked the deputy purser. He was flustered. The phone was ringing, the walkie-talkie was buzzing and everyone else had packed their bags and was queuing for shore passes. He patiently and politely went through the schedule with me. Yes, I had to leave the ship. Yes, I needed to take my bags with me. Yes, I needed to come back at 1915, not ‘by’ 1915. But when did I have to leave? He got distracted by a more urgent matter, apologised and left the desk.
So I assumed that I could leave the ship any time I liked. I went back to my cabin, picked up my mug and a tea bag and walked back across the reception area to the café for hot water. The deputy purser called out my name: ‘Mr Merrill! Sorry. No tea. You must leave cabin. Eight o’clock.’ If this had been a British ship, I would have protested and asked for special dispensation. But it is no use in Japan. Eight o’clock means seven-fifty nine and sixty seconds.
Back to the cabin and mild panic set in. I hadn’t even packed my bags. Three minutes into this mission and the phone rang. It was the deputy, asking me ever so politely, but in a desperate voice, when I will be leaving my cabin. ‘Two minutes,’ I said as I pushed odd socks into an already crammed backpack.
At 0801 by my watch I left my cabin. One minute later and I was in the reception area. Walkie-talkie in hand, the deputy was apologising and bowing and yet there was a slight hint of annoyance on his face. He ushered me to the escalator and escorted me down to the dock. The horror on his face confirmed that the bus had already gone. Well, he did say 0800 and it was now 0804.
Thankfully, the man was obliging as well as punctual to the extreme. He had a quick word with a humourless dock worker, dressed in belted blue overalls and wearing a white military-style helmet with chin strap, and a lift to the passenger terminal was duly arranged. I thanked the deputy and apologised for the misunderstanding. He too apologised, blaming his poor English. He bowed and trotted back up the gang plank.
I spent much of the rest of the day in Naha, the main city of Okinawa. Desperately in need of a shower, an internet connection to upload my blog and photographic website, send emails and have a rest, I decided to see if I could find a reasonably priced hotel for ten hours. I took a cab to the tourist information office, where a tiny, elegant, grey haired woman with horn-rimmed glasses helped me in her excellent English. She suggested I visit a hot spa just around the corner. It sounded wonderful but it failed on the internet criterion.
So I decided to check out the hotels on the main street. Hunger pangs were biting – in my mad rush, I had forgotten to take my emergency rations out of the cabin’s fridge – and I was desperate for food. And, although Naha was cloaked by high cloud, the sun was tropically savage. Many women were carrying parasols and I decided to grab the first eatery with a shaded, outside table.
The above paragraph is my defence for eating at MacDonalds. OK, OK, I know. But it was the first time since I was in a similar predicament in France three years ago. And, I must report, the egg and sausage breakfast McMuffin was perfect. Two coffees later, I bough some factor 50 sunblock, slapped it on every bit of visible skin above the neckline and went to the nearest hotel.
For 8,500 yen (about £43) I got a spacious, air-conditioned room with broadband internet, a soft bed, a powerful shower and an automatic toilet. This one was less intelligent than Jim’s and all the instructions were in Japanese, so I used manual over-ride.
The hotel was worth every penny. After uploading several blog entries, sending countless emails and resting at pub cellar temperature (18 degrees centigrade), I left my room and spent an hour browsing in the nearby shops and the local market. In my short time in Naha, it struck me that the locals are much more varied in appearance than on the mainland. Some could be mistaken for Filipinos, others for Fijians and some look distinctly semi-European. I guess the large American military presence on the island since 1945 would explain such variety.
There was no way that I could miss the boat, so I grabbed some random snacks and hailed a cab. The driver hopped out and then stood and watched me lift my bags into the trunk. He was short and slight, he had a number four buzzcut with a distant hairline, and a pock-marked face. He wore a light-blue striped cotton shirt, grey polyester slacks, brown shoes and aviator shades. As soon as I sat in the back seat, I had a feeling that my preconceived ideas about universal Japanese efficiency and intelligence were going to be severely challenged.
I knew from the map that the woman at the tourist information office had given me, plus my experience of the taxi ride in the morning, that the destination was about a fifteen minute drive north-west of the starting point. Before we set off, I showed the map to the driver – it was labelled in English and Japanese – and pointed at the passenger terminal at Naha Shinko Port. He mumbled and grabbed the map for a closer look. He removed his aviator shades, held the map just beyond his nose and began to chatter to himself. Then he reached into the glove box and pulled out a spectacle case which he opened slowly while his eyes stayed fixed on the map.
My eyes started rolling. This was all I needed; a cabbie with bad eyesight who doesn’t know his way around his own city. He stared at the destination with incredulity. I read it for him: ‘Naha Shinko.’ He shook his head as if he’d never heard of this place and yet it is clear from the map that it takes up plenty of space in Naha. This morning there were four massive container ships docked there, plus the Hiryu. But judging by his reaction, it was as if he’d never seen a map before, never mind Naha Shinko Port.
Nevertheless, he started driving west. It was a good start but after about five minutes, at a traffic light, he turned around confused and asked me something in Japanese. I assumed that he was still not sure, so I showed him the map. This time, I pointed to our present location and said: ‘We are here.’ Then I traced a suggested route with my finger. Whichever way he went, it would involve turning right at some point.
At the next traffic light, he made a phone call. I heard the words ‘Naha Shinko’ and his tone was distinctly stressed. At the next traffic light, he grabbed the taxi radio and made a similar call to the controller. At the next traffic light, he spun around and beckoned for the map. Then, at the next traffic light, he turned left and looked far too relaxed for comfort.
It was at this point that I knew he’d got it wrong; he was heading south. I looked on the map and found why he was looking so smug: there is another wharf called Naha Port. At the next stop I tapped him on the shoulder. Using animated gestures and fingers I told him that I need to be there at six, in ten minutes’ time. He smiled, held up three fingers and pointed toward a dock in the near distance.
We duly arrived in three minutes. He stopped the car and turned to me with a beaming smile. ‘This is not it!,’ I said, map in hand. I pointed at Naha Port on the map and then at the floor of the taxi. ‘We are here and I want to be there…’ pointing to the north of the map. ‘Look,’ I said tracing the route from here to there, ‘it is near the fish market, over the bridge.’ He took off his shades and the smile evaporated. In desperation, I pointed to the icon of a passenger ship near the terminal with the destinations listed below. ‘I am going to Taiwan.’
A look of horror smacked all self-satisfaction from his face. ‘Taiwan!? Ah, Taiwan!’ He had finally got it. So he started up the car again, did a U-turn redolent of a 1970s gangster movie and headed north at a reckless rate. For the rest of the journey, he guiltily shook his head. At red lights, he turned to me and muttered apologies in Japanese, gesticulating with sweaty hands.
But that was not the end. We passed the fish market – I thought the trawlers and stacks of boxes were a bit of a give away – and hammered over the raised bridge. He then turned left prematurely and a huge container ship loomed before us. He stopped again and raised a hopeful eyebrow as he looked at me in the rearview mirror. ‘No! Look at the map! I want to be here,’ I said pointing at the building marked ‘passenger terminal’ in Japanese and English. He looked totally lost and I began to feel sorry for him. ‘It’s over there, mate,’ I said, pointing with a weary, conciliatory finger.
Finally, we arrived, at six-o-three to be precise. The driver looked shell-shocked as he opened the trunk. He tapped his heart repeatedly, rolled his eyes, shook his head and exhaled as if he was blowing out birthday cake candles. I smiled and told him not to worry. Despite his culpability, he still didn’t help me with my bags.
I asked how much and he wrote ‘1,000’ on a scrap of paper, the same as I’d paid this morning. Jim told me the other day that Japan does not have a tipping culture. But I decided to buck protocol and gave this cabby something that will hopefully change his life and bring him infinite wealth: a map of his city.
If someone had asked me to describe the Japanese 24 hours ago, I would have used the following words: polite, deferential, welcoming, punctual, efficient, obliging, intelligent, industrious and meticulously organised.
In addition, I have also noticed that Japanese teenage girls tend to have very large thighs in proportion to the rest of their legs and overall body shape. The difference is so pronounced that I wondered if they are fed spinach every day; the last time I saw such muscular incongruity was on Popeye.
Call me a pervert by all means, but it is hard not to notice when the standard school uniform is a pleated mini-skirt (often tartan) and the girls walk around in groups. The thigh-calf disparity seems to disappear, however, when the girls become women. And, with a very few exceptions, Japanese women are petite and very slender. The men, however, are not so. Some are slim, some are tiny, some are athletic and some are enormous.
Anyway, enough about physique. What about the Japanese character? Well, I had two experiences today that at first confirmed my original thoughts, and then, this afternoon, blew the whole idea of national stereotypes out of the water.
The confirmation began at seven AM when the PA on the ship piped up with a lengthy, officious announcement. It was in Japanese but I knew that it was about our imminent arrival in Okinawa. After all, this was scheduled for 0800. After the first announcement, the purser helped us to wake with a continuous, gentle soundtrack of plinky-plonky Japanese music combined with twittering birdsong. He then reminded us of whatever the information was three or four more times.
I had woken up a few times in the night and could have really used some more sleep. So I read the rather ambiguous written translation of what happens when we reached Okinawa that the purser had given me on day one. I knew that I had to leave the boat at some point and be back at the Naha passenger terminal by 1915, but I still wasn’t sure whether I could leave the boat when I liked, nor indeed if I could return when I liked.
So at around 7.40, I went to the reception desk and asked the deputy purser. He was flustered. The phone was ringing, the walkie-talkie was buzzing and everyone else had packed their bags and was queuing for shore passes. He patiently and politely went through the schedule with me. Yes, I had to leave the ship. Yes, I needed to take my bags with me. Yes, I needed to come back at 1915, not ‘by’ 1915. But when did I have to leave? He got distracted by a more urgent matter, apologised and left the desk.
So I assumed that I could leave the ship any time I liked. I went back to my cabin, picked up my mug and a tea bag and walked back across the reception area to the café for hot water. The deputy purser called out my name: ‘Mr Merrill! Sorry. No tea. You must leave cabin. Eight o’clock.’ If this had been a British ship, I would have protested and asked for special dispensation. But it is no use in Japan. Eight o’clock means seven-fifty nine and sixty seconds.
Back to the cabin and mild panic set in. I hadn’t even packed my bags. Three minutes into this mission and the phone rang. It was the deputy, asking me ever so politely, but in a desperate voice, when I will be leaving my cabin. ‘Two minutes,’ I said as I pushed odd socks into an already crammed backpack.
At 0801 by my watch I left my cabin. One minute later and I was in the reception area. Walkie-talkie in hand, the deputy was apologising and bowing and yet there was a slight hint of annoyance on his face. He ushered me to the escalator and escorted me down to the dock. The horror on his face confirmed that the bus had already gone. Well, he did say 0800 and it was now 0804.
Thankfully, the man was obliging as well as punctual to the extreme. He had a quick word with a humourless dock worker, dressed in belted blue overalls and wearing a white military-style helmet with chin strap, and a lift to the passenger terminal was duly arranged. I thanked the deputy and apologised for the misunderstanding. He too apologised, blaming his poor English. He bowed and trotted back up the gang plank.
I spent much of the rest of the day in Naha, the main city of Okinawa. Desperately in need of a shower, an internet connection to upload my blog and photographic website, send emails and have a rest, I decided to see if I could find a reasonably priced hotel for ten hours. I took a cab to the tourist information office, where a tiny, elegant, grey haired woman with horn-rimmed glasses helped me in her excellent English. She suggested I visit a hot spa just around the corner. It sounded wonderful but it failed on the internet criterion.
So I decided to check out the hotels on the main street. Hunger pangs were biting – in my mad rush, I had forgotten to take my emergency rations out of the cabin’s fridge – and I was desperate for food. And, although Naha was cloaked by high cloud, the sun was tropically savage. Many women were carrying parasols and I decided to grab the first eatery with a shaded, outside table.
The above paragraph is my defence for eating at MacDonalds. OK, OK, I know. But it was the first time since I was in a similar predicament in France three years ago. And, I must report, the egg and sausage breakfast McMuffin was perfect. Two coffees later, I bough some factor 50 sunblock, slapped it on every bit of visible skin above the neckline and went to the nearest hotel.
For 8,500 yen (about £43) I got a spacious, air-conditioned room with broadband internet, a soft bed, a powerful shower and an automatic toilet. This one was less intelligent than Jim’s and all the instructions were in Japanese, so I used manual over-ride.
The hotel was worth every penny. After uploading several blog entries, sending countless emails and resting at pub cellar temperature (18 degrees centigrade), I left my room and spent an hour browsing in the nearby shops and the local market. In my short time in Naha, it struck me that the locals are much more varied in appearance than on the mainland. Some could be mistaken for Filipinos, others for Fijians and some look distinctly semi-European. I guess the large American military presence on the island since 1945 would explain such variety.
There was no way that I could miss the boat, so I grabbed some random snacks and hailed a cab. The driver hopped out and then stood and watched me lift my bags into the trunk. He was short and slight, he had a number four buzzcut with a distant hairline, and a pock-marked face. He wore a light-blue striped cotton shirt, grey polyester slacks, brown shoes and aviator shades. As soon as I sat in the back seat, I had a feeling that my preconceived ideas about universal Japanese efficiency and intelligence were going to be severely challenged.
I knew from the map that the woman at the tourist information office had given me, plus my experience of the taxi ride in the morning, that the destination was about a fifteen minute drive north-west of the starting point. Before we set off, I showed the map to the driver – it was labelled in English and Japanese – and pointed at the passenger terminal at Naha Shinko Port. He mumbled and grabbed the map for a closer look. He removed his aviator shades, held the map just beyond his nose and began to chatter to himself. Then he reached into the glove box and pulled out a spectacle case which he opened slowly while his eyes stayed fixed on the map.
My eyes started rolling. This was all I needed; a cabbie with bad eyesight who doesn’t know his way around his own city. He stared at the destination with incredulity. I read it for him: ‘Naha Shinko.’ He shook his head as if he’d never heard of this place and yet it is clear from the map that it takes up plenty of space in Naha. This morning there were four massive container ships docked there, plus the Hiryu. But judging by his reaction, it was as if he’d never seen a map before, never mind Naha Shinko Port.
Nevertheless, he started driving west. It was a good start but after about five minutes, at a traffic light, he turned around confused and asked me something in Japanese. I assumed that he was still not sure, so I showed him the map. This time, I pointed to our present location and said: ‘We are here.’ Then I traced a suggested route with my finger. Whichever way he went, it would involve turning right at some point.
At the next traffic light, he made a phone call. I heard the words ‘Naha Shinko’ and his tone was distinctly stressed. At the next traffic light, he grabbed the taxi radio and made a similar call to the controller. At the next traffic light, he spun around and beckoned for the map. Then, at the next traffic light, he turned left and looked far too relaxed for comfort.
It was at this point that I knew he’d got it wrong; he was heading south. I looked on the map and found why he was looking so smug: there is another wharf called Naha Port. At the next stop I tapped him on the shoulder. Using animated gestures and fingers I told him that I need to be there at six, in ten minutes’ time. He smiled, held up three fingers and pointed toward a dock in the near distance.
We duly arrived in three minutes. He stopped the car and turned to me with a beaming smile. ‘This is not it!,’ I said, map in hand. I pointed at Naha Port on the map and then at the floor of the taxi. ‘We are here and I want to be there…’ pointing to the north of the map. ‘Look,’ I said tracing the route from here to there, ‘it is near the fish market, over the bridge.’ He took off his shades and the smile evaporated. In desperation, I pointed to the icon of a passenger ship near the terminal with the destinations listed below. ‘I am going to Taiwan.’
A look of horror smacked all self-satisfaction from his face. ‘Taiwan!? Ah, Taiwan!’ He had finally got it. So he started up the car again, did a U-turn redolent of a 1970s gangster movie and headed north at a reckless rate. For the rest of the journey, he guiltily shook his head. At red lights, he turned to me and muttered apologies in Japanese, gesticulating with sweaty hands.
But that was not the end. We passed the fish market – I thought the trawlers and stacks of boxes were a bit of a give away – and hammered over the raised bridge. He then turned left prematurely and a huge container ship loomed before us. He stopped again and raised a hopeful eyebrow as he looked at me in the rearview mirror. ‘No! Look at the map! I want to be here,’ I said pointing at the building marked ‘passenger terminal’ in Japanese and English. He looked totally lost and I began to feel sorry for him. ‘It’s over there, mate,’ I said, pointing with a weary, conciliatory finger.
Finally, we arrived, at six-o-three to be precise. The driver looked shell-shocked as he opened the trunk. He tapped his heart repeatedly, rolled his eyes, shook his head and exhaled as if he was blowing out birthday cake candles. I smiled and told him not to worry. Despite his culpability, he still didn’t help me with my bags.
I asked how much and he wrote ‘1,000’ on a scrap of paper, the same as I’d paid this morning. Jim told me the other day that Japan does not have a tipping culture. But I decided to buck protocol and gave this cabby something that will hopefully change his life and bring him infinite wealth: a map of his city.
Day 20: Bunged Up and Sailing By
Sunday May 25 - Onboard the Hiryu, en route to Okinawa
My greatest concern when walking up the steps of the Hiryu last night was the weather. In Osaka, the rain persisted down. There was no wind but I wondered if the shelter of the harbour was masking something more ominous out at sea.
My mind was put at rest to an extent when I saw the inside of the ship. It is a much more modern vessel than the MV Rus – launched in 1995, to be precise – so I guessed that it would cope well with the sea conditions around Japan. Navigation systems, weather detection and avoidance and attention to general passenger comfort must surely have improved over the years, I reasoned.
The spacious reception area was akin to an ambitious hotel with a fake polished, checked floor and a huge, amorphous nautical, fibreglass sculpture, like a mis-shaped totem pole, covered with shells and a spiralling sea-serpent, disappearing up a hole in the middle of the room. At the desk, a courteous purser welcomed me, took my boarding card and directed me to cabin 115. ‘First class,’ he said with a smile. ‘Outside cabin, sea view.’
The cabin was fine. The dominant colour was a calming pale green. Plenty of cupboard space (not that any passenger would ever use it all), a large porthole, a small TV, fridge, en suite bathroom, four bunks and a sofa that could also be used as a berth. Wearing shoes in a house is against Japanese domestic protocol, even so I was surprised to see two pairs of slippers. They were not in my style, size or colour so, dumping my bags, I opted to go bare foot.
With so few people in the terminal, I expected to be the only occupant of the cabin. Sure enough, as the boat started to move just before one AM, no one else had joined me. I walked on deck, watched the boat nudge its way around the harbour and said sayonara to mainland Japan.
After a few hours writing, I took to my berth and my fears about a rough voyage began to grow. This was not, after all, a short-hop on a cross Channel ferry, nor a journey across the largely-enclosed Sea of Japan. We were in the far west of the Pacific Ocean.
The cupboards creaked as the ship swayed and bucked, gently at first, but then more convincingly. I consoled myself that it is just like a train’s movement, but a ship’s rocking is much less rhythmic and it can be much more dramatic. My sub-conscious doom-monger pictured images from TV of the Atlantic convoys in WWII battling the massive swell and bow-crashing waves. The movement of the Hiryu was nowhere near as pronounced, nor were we in the sights of U-boats, so I finally fell asleep just as the first morning light began filtering through the curtains.
A few hours later, I awoke and the ship was lurching with greater conviction. I bravely opened the curtains and expected to see a menacing swell in the near distance, several metres higher than the ship. But, rather disappointingly, it was relatively calm and way below the level of the porthole. There were no waves to speak of and only a gentle swell. Feeling rather foolish at having my anxieties disproved for the umpteenth time since leaving the UK, I went back to sleep.
Later, looking at the map, and remembering the route chart at the sea terminal, I guessed that the first part of the journey would be the worst because we were traversing the east coast of Japan, with the full might of the Pacific to the port side. The route would then take us to the west of the Ryukyu Islands and into the East China Sea which, hopefully, means that we are protected from the enormity of the Pacific. But there again, what do I know about the effect of topography on sea travel?
I do know, however, that the view from my porthole will be pretty mundane until the early hours of tomorrow, when we dock at Naha in Okinawa. We stop for twelve hours and, according to the schedule, all passengers are requested to go ashore and pass through customs. I am not sure how this works precisely but when we leave Okinawa at 2000 on Monday, the next port of call is Keelung in Taiwan, so I guess I will have my visa stamped and this will mark my official departure from Japan.
I only spent five days in the country but this was enough time to get a flavour of the place. Flavour is the operative word because the most striking memory is the food. Every meal I had was excellent and I ate many things for the first time. Even so, for the first time on this trip, I have used some medication – my laxatives.
I am not sure exactly why I am bunged up; maybe it is the copious amounts of sticky, white rice that I’ve consumed (as opposed to the brown rice I religiously ate every day in the UK) or maybe it’s the raw fish, or perhaps the relative lack of vegetables and roughage. Whatever the cause, the taste and variety of the food in Japan made up for the mild discomfort of waiting for peristalsis to complete its mission.
While mentally encouraging nature to take its course, this afternoon I spent half an hour on deck taking photos and video footage of the ship and the view to the west of the island of, I think, Kyusyu. This is the southernmost of the large islands of Japan. Whichever island it is, it was difficult to photograph because the haze made it an insipid subject. Still, it was a pleasant afternoon; a gentle breeze, an even gentler sea, high, innocuous clouds, and a very calm atmosphere on the ship.
The Hiryu seems to run on a shoestring. I have only seen four crew members – the head purser; his deputy; a very young, nervous underling who speaks no English at all and keeps nodding and apologising to me; and a guy with a permanent smile who works in the dining room. There is no bar, only drinks machines, and the sparsely stocked shop is looked after by the pursers. Maybe the four of them sail and maintain the vessel, too.
The ship certainly doesn’t have many passengers and I doubt if it makes much of a profit. Earlier, a handful of people were sitting in wicker armchairs looking aimlessly east across the Pacific Ocean. Up on deck I saw a Japanese guy sitting cross legged playing a wooden flute. He had his hair tied in a loose knot on the back of his head, a goatie beard, a blue long-sleeved t-shirt, white shades and the sort of deeply creased face that I associate with old-school hippies. We saw each other, smiled and waved. Maybe he noticed my deeply-creased face as well.
A few other people are milling around but there were only three of us at lunch. Meals operate under a rather bizarre system by which the purser calls people to the desk over the PA at 1000 precisely with reminders every 15 minutes until 1100. You choose one of eight dishes from the menu – typically priced around 800 yen (£4) – receive a meal voucher marked with your choice and then go to the dining room between 1200 and 1230. The smiling man – the fourth crew member - takes your voucher and, minutes later, brings a tray to your table.
I ordered beef curry today. It came with an iced tea, a small bowl of lettuce, tomato and shredded cabbage with a vinegary dressing. The curry itself had a sizeable portion of sticky rice and tasted fine. The chunks were, however, ninety percent potato and I could only find four tiny pieces of beef.
I am certainly the only Westerner on board and the other passengers, who all look Japanese rather than Taiwanese/Chinese, either nod and smile when I walk by or just ignore me. Before I came to Asia, people back home said that I would be stared at, or natives would approach me in the hope that I would help them practice their English. In Japan and on board, neither has happened. I am simply accepted as just another person, which suits me fine.
With air travel so cheap and fast these days, it makes sense that the Hiryu is quiet. It is marketed as a ‘cruise ferry’ so I wonder if it is busier in the summer. There are several function rooms on board – all of which are locked – which suggest that it is (or perhaps was) a proper cruise ship. On the aft deck, there are about twenty vehicles so maybe – like the MV Rus – it earns its keep as a cargo ship.
Whatever the reason for the quietness, it is a very enjoyable voyage so far. Last night’s choppy ocean has given way to gentle undulation and the benign weather is comforting. That said, conditions at sea can change with alarming rapidity so I am not counting any nautical chickens until we dock at Keelung in two days’ time.
After dinner this evening – a very large meal of miso soup, beef and vegetable stir-fry, sticky rice, a tiny bowl of slimy, stringy seaweed and an even smaller pot of ice cream, all for 900 yen (£4.50) - I joined four other photographers on the upper deck for the sunset. We were passing between two islands and the sun was very obligingly falling behind the one in the west.
Three of us snapped away incessantly. A third man – young with a white hoody tight against his head, wearing glasses and a focused scowl – squatted, camera in hand and waited for the perfect moment. I am not sure if it arrived because he only lifted the camera to his eye once, didn’t click the shutter and quickly returned to his scowl.
One of the men was the guy with large ears and bald patch whom I saw in the terminal. After the sun had set, I saw him tracing our route with his finger on the nautical chart near the dining room. His head was tilted back and he was mumbling to himself as he read through the bottom half of his glasses.
I asked him if he could tell me where we were. I used sign language – pointing at the floor to denote ‘here’, for example – but I needn’t have worried about his comprehension; he spoke excellent English and pointed to the two islands that we had just bisected. At midnight, he said, we will pass another large island, then bisect two more at 0400 and then arrive at Okinawa at 0800 tomorrow. I thanked him for his help, using one of my limited number of Japanese words, and he bowed slightly.
Until I came to Japan, the idea of bowing really offended me. But now, I see it in a different light. I guess I’d seen it in an English context; it is what commoners – like me – are expected to do to show deference to royalty and other noble people. I have never met a lord or a knight of the realm but if I did, I would be determined not to bow, curtsey, avoid eye contact or walk out of the room backwards, or whatever else protocol demands. I was brought up to believe that we are all equals and I intend to stick to that principle, even if it means offending a supposedly superior being.
In Japan, however, the bow seems to have a subtly different role. No doubt people would bend lower to the emperor, prime minister or the chief executive of Toyota, but it is amazing how many people bow to others. The security guards at Jim’s apartment; the police outside government buildings; and office workers bidding goodnight to their drinking partners, all bowed to some extent. On the Shinkansen from Tokyo to Osaka, the blue uniformed carriage attendants bowed as soon as they entered and just before they left the carriage, even if no one was watching.
And on Friday evening on our way to dinner, I experienced bowing for myself. Jim and Miwa were in the bookshop at the foot of their apartment building. I had bought a phrase book and was waiting for them outside, leaning on a wall, smoking and watching people meander in the still, warm evening. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a diminutive, shuffling white haired man with a carelessly trimmed short beard and a blue plastic carrier bag. He was wearing flip flops, rolled up jeans, a white V-neck sweater and a pained expression. He edged toward me with hopeful eyes.
He stopped and then very deliberately bowed, so low that I could see his balding crown. He returned to his normal position and said something pitiful in Japanese. Then, with pleading eyes and a rub of his tummy, he said: ‘Hungry. Please. Hungry.’ Something about his approach really touched me. Maybe it was his manners, or the bow, or perhaps his attempt to speak English, but I smiled and dug in my pocket.
I gave him a 500 yen piece (£2.50) and he thanked me, bowing repetitively. I felt a little mean so I then gave him a handful of smaller change. More shallow bowing followed and I began to feel uneasy; I dislike being the object of deference as much as I loathe being deferential. He might be down on his luck and hungry but we are still equals. So I told him it was OK. He asked if I was American. ‘No, English,’ I replied. He smiled and, after more gentle bowing, he shuffled away, counting his money.
My greatest concern when walking up the steps of the Hiryu last night was the weather. In Osaka, the rain persisted down. There was no wind but I wondered if the shelter of the harbour was masking something more ominous out at sea.
My mind was put at rest to an extent when I saw the inside of the ship. It is a much more modern vessel than the MV Rus – launched in 1995, to be precise – so I guessed that it would cope well with the sea conditions around Japan. Navigation systems, weather detection and avoidance and attention to general passenger comfort must surely have improved over the years, I reasoned.
The spacious reception area was akin to an ambitious hotel with a fake polished, checked floor and a huge, amorphous nautical, fibreglass sculpture, like a mis-shaped totem pole, covered with shells and a spiralling sea-serpent, disappearing up a hole in the middle of the room. At the desk, a courteous purser welcomed me, took my boarding card and directed me to cabin 115. ‘First class,’ he said with a smile. ‘Outside cabin, sea view.’
The cabin was fine. The dominant colour was a calming pale green. Plenty of cupboard space (not that any passenger would ever use it all), a large porthole, a small TV, fridge, en suite bathroom, four bunks and a sofa that could also be used as a berth. Wearing shoes in a house is against Japanese domestic protocol, even so I was surprised to see two pairs of slippers. They were not in my style, size or colour so, dumping my bags, I opted to go bare foot.
With so few people in the terminal, I expected to be the only occupant of the cabin. Sure enough, as the boat started to move just before one AM, no one else had joined me. I walked on deck, watched the boat nudge its way around the harbour and said sayonara to mainland Japan.
After a few hours writing, I took to my berth and my fears about a rough voyage began to grow. This was not, after all, a short-hop on a cross Channel ferry, nor a journey across the largely-enclosed Sea of Japan. We were in the far west of the Pacific Ocean.
The cupboards creaked as the ship swayed and bucked, gently at first, but then more convincingly. I consoled myself that it is just like a train’s movement, but a ship’s rocking is much less rhythmic and it can be much more dramatic. My sub-conscious doom-monger pictured images from TV of the Atlantic convoys in WWII battling the massive swell and bow-crashing waves. The movement of the Hiryu was nowhere near as pronounced, nor were we in the sights of U-boats, so I finally fell asleep just as the first morning light began filtering through the curtains.
A few hours later, I awoke and the ship was lurching with greater conviction. I bravely opened the curtains and expected to see a menacing swell in the near distance, several metres higher than the ship. But, rather disappointingly, it was relatively calm and way below the level of the porthole. There were no waves to speak of and only a gentle swell. Feeling rather foolish at having my anxieties disproved for the umpteenth time since leaving the UK, I went back to sleep.
Later, looking at the map, and remembering the route chart at the sea terminal, I guessed that the first part of the journey would be the worst because we were traversing the east coast of Japan, with the full might of the Pacific to the port side. The route would then take us to the west of the Ryukyu Islands and into the East China Sea which, hopefully, means that we are protected from the enormity of the Pacific. But there again, what do I know about the effect of topography on sea travel?
I do know, however, that the view from my porthole will be pretty mundane until the early hours of tomorrow, when we dock at Naha in Okinawa. We stop for twelve hours and, according to the schedule, all passengers are requested to go ashore and pass through customs. I am not sure how this works precisely but when we leave Okinawa at 2000 on Monday, the next port of call is Keelung in Taiwan, so I guess I will have my visa stamped and this will mark my official departure from Japan.
I only spent five days in the country but this was enough time to get a flavour of the place. Flavour is the operative word because the most striking memory is the food. Every meal I had was excellent and I ate many things for the first time. Even so, for the first time on this trip, I have used some medication – my laxatives.
I am not sure exactly why I am bunged up; maybe it is the copious amounts of sticky, white rice that I’ve consumed (as opposed to the brown rice I religiously ate every day in the UK) or maybe it’s the raw fish, or perhaps the relative lack of vegetables and roughage. Whatever the cause, the taste and variety of the food in Japan made up for the mild discomfort of waiting for peristalsis to complete its mission.
While mentally encouraging nature to take its course, this afternoon I spent half an hour on deck taking photos and video footage of the ship and the view to the west of the island of, I think, Kyusyu. This is the southernmost of the large islands of Japan. Whichever island it is, it was difficult to photograph because the haze made it an insipid subject. Still, it was a pleasant afternoon; a gentle breeze, an even gentler sea, high, innocuous clouds, and a very calm atmosphere on the ship.
The Hiryu seems to run on a shoestring. I have only seen four crew members – the head purser; his deputy; a very young, nervous underling who speaks no English at all and keeps nodding and apologising to me; and a guy with a permanent smile who works in the dining room. There is no bar, only drinks machines, and the sparsely stocked shop is looked after by the pursers. Maybe the four of them sail and maintain the vessel, too.
The ship certainly doesn’t have many passengers and I doubt if it makes much of a profit. Earlier, a handful of people were sitting in wicker armchairs looking aimlessly east across the Pacific Ocean. Up on deck I saw a Japanese guy sitting cross legged playing a wooden flute. He had his hair tied in a loose knot on the back of his head, a goatie beard, a blue long-sleeved t-shirt, white shades and the sort of deeply creased face that I associate with old-school hippies. We saw each other, smiled and waved. Maybe he noticed my deeply-creased face as well.
A few other people are milling around but there were only three of us at lunch. Meals operate under a rather bizarre system by which the purser calls people to the desk over the PA at 1000 precisely with reminders every 15 minutes until 1100. You choose one of eight dishes from the menu – typically priced around 800 yen (£4) – receive a meal voucher marked with your choice and then go to the dining room between 1200 and 1230. The smiling man – the fourth crew member - takes your voucher and, minutes later, brings a tray to your table.
I ordered beef curry today. It came with an iced tea, a small bowl of lettuce, tomato and shredded cabbage with a vinegary dressing. The curry itself had a sizeable portion of sticky rice and tasted fine. The chunks were, however, ninety percent potato and I could only find four tiny pieces of beef.
I am certainly the only Westerner on board and the other passengers, who all look Japanese rather than Taiwanese/Chinese, either nod and smile when I walk by or just ignore me. Before I came to Asia, people back home said that I would be stared at, or natives would approach me in the hope that I would help them practice their English. In Japan and on board, neither has happened. I am simply accepted as just another person, which suits me fine.
With air travel so cheap and fast these days, it makes sense that the Hiryu is quiet. It is marketed as a ‘cruise ferry’ so I wonder if it is busier in the summer. There are several function rooms on board – all of which are locked – which suggest that it is (or perhaps was) a proper cruise ship. On the aft deck, there are about twenty vehicles so maybe – like the MV Rus – it earns its keep as a cargo ship.
Whatever the reason for the quietness, it is a very enjoyable voyage so far. Last night’s choppy ocean has given way to gentle undulation and the benign weather is comforting. That said, conditions at sea can change with alarming rapidity so I am not counting any nautical chickens until we dock at Keelung in two days’ time.
After dinner this evening – a very large meal of miso soup, beef and vegetable stir-fry, sticky rice, a tiny bowl of slimy, stringy seaweed and an even smaller pot of ice cream, all for 900 yen (£4.50) - I joined four other photographers on the upper deck for the sunset. We were passing between two islands and the sun was very obligingly falling behind the one in the west.
Three of us snapped away incessantly. A third man – young with a white hoody tight against his head, wearing glasses and a focused scowl – squatted, camera in hand and waited for the perfect moment. I am not sure if it arrived because he only lifted the camera to his eye once, didn’t click the shutter and quickly returned to his scowl.
One of the men was the guy with large ears and bald patch whom I saw in the terminal. After the sun had set, I saw him tracing our route with his finger on the nautical chart near the dining room. His head was tilted back and he was mumbling to himself as he read through the bottom half of his glasses.
I asked him if he could tell me where we were. I used sign language – pointing at the floor to denote ‘here’, for example – but I needn’t have worried about his comprehension; he spoke excellent English and pointed to the two islands that we had just bisected. At midnight, he said, we will pass another large island, then bisect two more at 0400 and then arrive at Okinawa at 0800 tomorrow. I thanked him for his help, using one of my limited number of Japanese words, and he bowed slightly.
Until I came to Japan, the idea of bowing really offended me. But now, I see it in a different light. I guess I’d seen it in an English context; it is what commoners – like me – are expected to do to show deference to royalty and other noble people. I have never met a lord or a knight of the realm but if I did, I would be determined not to bow, curtsey, avoid eye contact or walk out of the room backwards, or whatever else protocol demands. I was brought up to believe that we are all equals and I intend to stick to that principle, even if it means offending a supposedly superior being.
In Japan, however, the bow seems to have a subtly different role. No doubt people would bend lower to the emperor, prime minister or the chief executive of Toyota, but it is amazing how many people bow to others. The security guards at Jim’s apartment; the police outside government buildings; and office workers bidding goodnight to their drinking partners, all bowed to some extent. On the Shinkansen from Tokyo to Osaka, the blue uniformed carriage attendants bowed as soon as they entered and just before they left the carriage, even if no one was watching.
And on Friday evening on our way to dinner, I experienced bowing for myself. Jim and Miwa were in the bookshop at the foot of their apartment building. I had bought a phrase book and was waiting for them outside, leaning on a wall, smoking and watching people meander in the still, warm evening. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a diminutive, shuffling white haired man with a carelessly trimmed short beard and a blue plastic carrier bag. He was wearing flip flops, rolled up jeans, a white V-neck sweater and a pained expression. He edged toward me with hopeful eyes.
He stopped and then very deliberately bowed, so low that I could see his balding crown. He returned to his normal position and said something pitiful in Japanese. Then, with pleading eyes and a rub of his tummy, he said: ‘Hungry. Please. Hungry.’ Something about his approach really touched me. Maybe it was his manners, or the bow, or perhaps his attempt to speak English, but I smiled and dug in my pocket.
I gave him a 500 yen piece (£2.50) and he thanked me, bowing repetitively. I felt a little mean so I then gave him a handful of smaller change. More shallow bowing followed and I began to feel uneasy; I dislike being the object of deference as much as I loathe being deferential. He might be down on his luck and hungry but we are still equals. So I told him it was OK. He asked if I was American. ‘No, English,’ I replied. He smiled and, after more gentle bowing, he shuffled away, counting his money.
Day 19: Ships in the Night
Saturday May 24 - On board the Hiryu, Osaka Port
At nine-thirty PM this evening, I was sitting on the back of nine rows of mustard coloured plastic chairs in Osaka Ferry Terminal. The room was just like any other ferry waiting room anywhere else in the developed world; there were signs, photographs of ships, timetables, vending machines and a flat screen TV showing a programme that features beautiful people having avoidable dramas to sugary music. Naturally, it wasn’t quite like Vladivostock ferry terminal; that place was similar but it didn’t have the timetables or signs.
There were four counters in the room and all had their roller-shutters closed. The only other person in the room was a young Japanese man in blue dungarees, with a tight headscarf, flip flops, a blue bicycle with small wheels and three panniers, and a wooden musical instrument case. He was also sitting on the back row. The man was noticeably darker-skinned than other Japanese, had a goatie beard twisted into a small point and feathery sideburns that finished half-way down his cheeks.
Soon after I arrived, I approached him and asked if he spoke English. He said no. We shook hands anyway. His was warm and soft. He said his name is Yosikawa. I grabbed my Japanese phrase book and, unfolding my map of the world, I showed him my journey using exaggerated sign language. His eyes widened, he shook his head in disbelief and he exclaimed in Japanese.
Yosikawa is 25 years old. I found the word ‘job’ in the phrase book and he nodded while using his fingers to snip an imaginary flower in the air. I inquisitively pointed at ‘garden’ and he said ‘Hai!’ Using the map, speaking in Japanese and employing sign language and sound effects, he showed me that he had travelled by ferry from Okinawa and bicycled and camped around the southernmost of the large Japanese islands, Kyusyu. I asked him how far. Over two weeks, he had covered 1,300 kilometres. I flexed my muscles in comic style, he beamed a toothy smile and humbly shook his head.
I asked if I could see his instrument. He nodded excitedly and opened the case. It was a caramel-brown, eight-stringed mandolin with a small flower transfer on the sound box. He started to talk in Japanese and I passed him the phrase book. He pointed at the word ‘difficult’ and then to the instrument. I mimed playing it and nodded. I retook the phrase book and managed to ask how old is the instrument. Seventy years, came the reply, and it was made in Germany.
Two more men arrived in the waiting room, each pulling suitcases on wheels. One was about fifty and had black trousers, a pair of glasses hanging out of the top pocket of his blue shirt and a light brown jacket. He had little hair at the back and large ears, and idly paced the room and read every notice in sight. The other man was younger and wearing combat pants, a fawn shirt and a blue baseball cap. He just slumped in a chair and watched TV.
I went for a cigarette and stared at the rain pounding on the terminal car park. Two lorries without trailers pulled up and the drivers, dressed in rubber boots and yellow oilskins, ran inside. I nodded and they nodded back.
When I returned to my seat, Yosikawa came over and gesticulated for the phrase book. While he flicked through, I dug in my bag and found two cans of beer. I offered one to him. He looked startled but quickly accepted. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Kampai!,’ I replied as I pulled the ring and clinked my can with his. He looked delighted that I at least knew the Japanese word for 'cheers!'
He continued looking through the phrase book and finally found the word ‘taikutsu.’ He acted out a yawn. I agreed, ‘Yes, waiting is boring.’ I dug in my bag again and found a random snack that I’d bought at Osaka station. It was a soft, unidentified, log-shaped white roll about 10 cm long. I ripped open the plastic packet, broke it in half and offered some to Yosikawa. He made an exclamation of appreciation and accepted. As I chewed, I asked him what it was. He flicked through the phrase book, couldn’t find the word and asked for paper and a pen.
He then drew a triangle with several wiggly lines coming from the base. Looking puzzled, I took the phrase book and pointed at ‘mushroom’. He shook his head and wrote the word ‘ika’ next to it. I was still baffled. Then out of nowhere he said ‘octopus.’ I laughed loudly, took the pen and drew a cartoon octopus, with a big, round head, eight long legs and a smile. He giggled and nodded his head. I then wrote ‘English octopus’ next to my drawing. Yosikawa laughed again, pointed at his drawing and said: ‘Japanese octopus.’ He asked if we ate octopus in England. I said no, but wondered why we don’t; it is very tasty.
I said that his octopus looked like a rocket. ‘Ah, rokketo,’ he said with a nod and a smile. He took the pen and paper and studiously drew an elaborate mushroom, some exploding fireworks and a three dimensional rocket. He is quite an artist, but octopi are not his strong point.
Returning from another cigarette, Yosikawa met me before I sat down. He had a piece of carefully folded newspaper in the palm of his hand. ‘For you,’ he said as he opened it. Inside were three tiny seashells, the largest no bigger than a pea. One was pearl-colour, another white with black spots and the third was dotted in brown. ‘From Okinawa. For friends,’ he looked at me and we both smiled.
I was touched. There are billions of similar seashells on the beaches of his island, each one has no intrinsic value and yet the fact that he presented them to me as a symbol of friendship meant more than if he’d given me a million yen. Desperate to return the gesture, I dug in my pockets and found some small change. I gave him three euro coins to match the three shells. He exclaimed approval and inspected them carefully. Seeing that one had a tree on the reverse side, his eyes lit up. ‘A tree for a gardener,’ I said. ‘Hai! Hai! Thank you, Gary-san.’
By now, the time was 1100. The booking desk had opened at ten – just as the sign had said – and the few passengers, including myself, had checked in and received boarding cards. In half an hour, we would be boarding the ship, the Hiryu, which we could see brooding in the orange dock-side floodlights, through the rain streaked window.
A group of six teenage girls, each with orange tints in their carefully styled hair, sat in the two rows in front of my seat. They took endless photos of each other on tiny cameras and mobile phones. As soon as one camera clicked, they all demanded to see the result with the subject animatedly gesturing that it wasn’t good enough.
Then three women, one carrying a moon-faced, heavy headed baby with a yellow dummy, and a man with a red and white striped shirt, jeans pulled up to his middle and a very long umbrella walked into the hall. One of the girls jumped up excitedly, greeted them and waved to the others to take photos. They were happy to oblige. I couldn’t resist and snapped a couple of shots too. The group noticed, pointed at me and laughed. ‘A beautiful baby,’ I said with a smile. ‘Yes,’ said one of the women, ‘She is a very beautiful baby. Good photo.’
As the clock approached eleven thirty, the man with the large ears stood up, stretched and reached for the handle of his bag. Sure enough, within seconds, the PA sprung into action and the other passengers rose wearily from their seats and started to move toward the door. I picked up my bags, looked over to Yosikawa and nodded inquisitively toward the exit. He shook his head, said something in Japanese and pointed to his bike. I guessed that he needed to put it in the cargo hold, so I saluted, he waved and I trudged out into the orange rain of the quayside toward the Hiryu.
At nine-thirty PM this evening, I was sitting on the back of nine rows of mustard coloured plastic chairs in Osaka Ferry Terminal. The room was just like any other ferry waiting room anywhere else in the developed world; there were signs, photographs of ships, timetables, vending machines and a flat screen TV showing a programme that features beautiful people having avoidable dramas to sugary music. Naturally, it wasn’t quite like Vladivostock ferry terminal; that place was similar but it didn’t have the timetables or signs.
There were four counters in the room and all had their roller-shutters closed. The only other person in the room was a young Japanese man in blue dungarees, with a tight headscarf, flip flops, a blue bicycle with small wheels and three panniers, and a wooden musical instrument case. He was also sitting on the back row. The man was noticeably darker-skinned than other Japanese, had a goatie beard twisted into a small point and feathery sideburns that finished half-way down his cheeks.
Soon after I arrived, I approached him and asked if he spoke English. He said no. We shook hands anyway. His was warm and soft. He said his name is Yosikawa. I grabbed my Japanese phrase book and, unfolding my map of the world, I showed him my journey using exaggerated sign language. His eyes widened, he shook his head in disbelief and he exclaimed in Japanese.
Yosikawa is 25 years old. I found the word ‘job’ in the phrase book and he nodded while using his fingers to snip an imaginary flower in the air. I inquisitively pointed at ‘garden’ and he said ‘Hai!’ Using the map, speaking in Japanese and employing sign language and sound effects, he showed me that he had travelled by ferry from Okinawa and bicycled and camped around the southernmost of the large Japanese islands, Kyusyu. I asked him how far. Over two weeks, he had covered 1,300 kilometres. I flexed my muscles in comic style, he beamed a toothy smile and humbly shook his head.
I asked if I could see his instrument. He nodded excitedly and opened the case. It was a caramel-brown, eight-stringed mandolin with a small flower transfer on the sound box. He started to talk in Japanese and I passed him the phrase book. He pointed at the word ‘difficult’ and then to the instrument. I mimed playing it and nodded. I retook the phrase book and managed to ask how old is the instrument. Seventy years, came the reply, and it was made in Germany.
Two more men arrived in the waiting room, each pulling suitcases on wheels. One was about fifty and had black trousers, a pair of glasses hanging out of the top pocket of his blue shirt and a light brown jacket. He had little hair at the back and large ears, and idly paced the room and read every notice in sight. The other man was younger and wearing combat pants, a fawn shirt and a blue baseball cap. He just slumped in a chair and watched TV.
I went for a cigarette and stared at the rain pounding on the terminal car park. Two lorries without trailers pulled up and the drivers, dressed in rubber boots and yellow oilskins, ran inside. I nodded and they nodded back.
When I returned to my seat, Yosikawa came over and gesticulated for the phrase book. While he flicked through, I dug in my bag and found two cans of beer. I offered one to him. He looked startled but quickly accepted. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Kampai!,’ I replied as I pulled the ring and clinked my can with his. He looked delighted that I at least knew the Japanese word for 'cheers!'
He continued looking through the phrase book and finally found the word ‘taikutsu.’ He acted out a yawn. I agreed, ‘Yes, waiting is boring.’ I dug in my bag again and found a random snack that I’d bought at Osaka station. It was a soft, unidentified, log-shaped white roll about 10 cm long. I ripped open the plastic packet, broke it in half and offered some to Yosikawa. He made an exclamation of appreciation and accepted. As I chewed, I asked him what it was. He flicked through the phrase book, couldn’t find the word and asked for paper and a pen.
He then drew a triangle with several wiggly lines coming from the base. Looking puzzled, I took the phrase book and pointed at ‘mushroom’. He shook his head and wrote the word ‘ika’ next to it. I was still baffled. Then out of nowhere he said ‘octopus.’ I laughed loudly, took the pen and drew a cartoon octopus, with a big, round head, eight long legs and a smile. He giggled and nodded his head. I then wrote ‘English octopus’ next to my drawing. Yosikawa laughed again, pointed at his drawing and said: ‘Japanese octopus.’ He asked if we ate octopus in England. I said no, but wondered why we don’t; it is very tasty.
I said that his octopus looked like a rocket. ‘Ah, rokketo,’ he said with a nod and a smile. He took the pen and paper and studiously drew an elaborate mushroom, some exploding fireworks and a three dimensional rocket. He is quite an artist, but octopi are not his strong point.
Returning from another cigarette, Yosikawa met me before I sat down. He had a piece of carefully folded newspaper in the palm of his hand. ‘For you,’ he said as he opened it. Inside were three tiny seashells, the largest no bigger than a pea. One was pearl-colour, another white with black spots and the third was dotted in brown. ‘From Okinawa. For friends,’ he looked at me and we both smiled.
I was touched. There are billions of similar seashells on the beaches of his island, each one has no intrinsic value and yet the fact that he presented them to me as a symbol of friendship meant more than if he’d given me a million yen. Desperate to return the gesture, I dug in my pockets and found some small change. I gave him three euro coins to match the three shells. He exclaimed approval and inspected them carefully. Seeing that one had a tree on the reverse side, his eyes lit up. ‘A tree for a gardener,’ I said. ‘Hai! Hai! Thank you, Gary-san.’
By now, the time was 1100. The booking desk had opened at ten – just as the sign had said – and the few passengers, including myself, had checked in and received boarding cards. In half an hour, we would be boarding the ship, the Hiryu, which we could see brooding in the orange dock-side floodlights, through the rain streaked window.
A group of six teenage girls, each with orange tints in their carefully styled hair, sat in the two rows in front of my seat. They took endless photos of each other on tiny cameras and mobile phones. As soon as one camera clicked, they all demanded to see the result with the subject animatedly gesturing that it wasn’t good enough.
Then three women, one carrying a moon-faced, heavy headed baby with a yellow dummy, and a man with a red and white striped shirt, jeans pulled up to his middle and a very long umbrella walked into the hall. One of the girls jumped up excitedly, greeted them and waved to the others to take photos. They were happy to oblige. I couldn’t resist and snapped a couple of shots too. The group noticed, pointed at me and laughed. ‘A beautiful baby,’ I said with a smile. ‘Yes,’ said one of the women, ‘She is a very beautiful baby. Good photo.’
As the clock approached eleven thirty, the man with the large ears stood up, stretched and reached for the handle of his bag. Sure enough, within seconds, the PA sprung into action and the other passengers rose wearily from their seats and started to move toward the door. I picked up my bags, looked over to Yosikawa and nodded inquisitively toward the exit. He shook his head, said something in Japanese and pointed to his bike. I guessed that he needed to put it in the cargo hold, so I saluted, he waved and I trudged out into the orange rain of the quayside toward the Hiryu.
Day 18: Dense and Intense
Friday May 23 - Roppongi Hills, Tokyo
There were two train journeys on Wednesday. The first was on a standard Japanese Rail train which put even the best British train to shame. Naturally, it arrived and departed bang on time. The sleek, silent white and red-striped beast sped through the flat coastal plain of Western Japan, past hundreds of perfectly rectangular paddy fields with just a few centimetres of green shoots, in geometrically precise rows, sprouting above water level. Some fields were no larger than British allotments, others were many acres in size, all were painstakingly maintained.
After about an hour, what looked like mis-shaped, pointed white clouds in the distance turned out to be the last remnants of the winter snow in the ravines and peaks of mountains. The bases of the mountains were the same colour as the sky which played a cruel trick on the eye. The summits seemed to be suspended in mid-air.
As we headed inland, the scenery changed. The paddy fields gave way to steep, wooded slopes and the train passed through numerous long tunnels. The terrain made the achievements of Japanese railway engineers even more impressive.
We arrived at Echigo-yuzawa and had just ten minutes to change platform and find the Shinkansen (Bullet Train) to Tokyo. It was four o’clock and the station was busy. But Dominic and I managed to find the platform, and even had time to grab a snack. True to his British roots, he grabbed a ham and egg sandwich. I took pot luck and chose a soft, rectangular item wrapped in clear plastic and a can of Asahi beer.
The Shinsanken drew into the platform and we found seats. The rectangular snack turned out to be rice with tuna in the middle, wrapped in a sheet of dried seaweed. It was the perfect compliment to the beer.
An hour and ten minutes later, we pulled into Tokyo Central, found the right exit and waited for Jim. He arrived on time, suited with a backpack slung over his shoulder and mobile phone pressed to his ear. We shook hands, I introduced him to Dominic. Before Dom and I wished each other bon voyage, Jim took us to a Citibank ATM – which definitely accepted MasterCard – and Dom withdrew some cash.
As we watched Dominic head down the steps of the subway station, I hoped that his luck would continue on the rest of his journey to visit his sister in Australia. There were times over the previous ten days when I shuddered at his lack of organisation and wondered how he had made it this far without a major crisis. He had no money belt or folder for his vital documents, merely a nylon duffel bag into which he would thrust a hopeful hand whenever he needed money, passport or an important piece of paper.
Dominic is a bright lad and good company but he plays the travel game fast and loose. Yet somehow, I am sure he will be fine; he has that rare combination of cheek and charm that will get him out of many a sticky situation.
Jim flagged down a cab and pointed out Tokyo landmarks on the way to his apartment. As we sped through the surprisingly fast-moving rush hour traffic, it struck me how well I know him and yet how long it has been since I spent any time with him. We met 28 years ago when we were doing our A levels. At the time, he was more interested in drinking, smoking and sport than studying and yet, even after messing up his education, he has become very successful in his career in the finance industry.
Jim has lived in Tokyo for 10 years, speaks excellent Japanese, has a Japanese partner, Miwa, and is a manager in equities at Mitsubishi Bank. His apartment and lifestyle is testament to his success and yet he remains as much a faithful, witty, hospitable and engaging friend as he was in our late teens. He no longer smokes or drinks, and he is much calmer than I remember him, but he is very much the same lad I met all those years ago. Indeed, I enjoyed his company even more than I did in the past. I just hope that I have matured as well as he has.
On Wednesday evening he took me out for a Korean meal, and we were joined by one of his friends, Mio, a diminutive, charming and attractive Japanese woman in her mid-thirties who speaks excellent English. Mio doesn’t drink alcohol; she is an enthusiastic yoga practitioner and exudes that serene, spiritual dignity that, in my experience, is so common among Asian women and so rare in their British counterparts.
We discussed cultural differences over delicate slithers of tongue cooked on a table-top barbeque, pickled radish and other Korean delights. Mio remained diplomatically non-judgemental throughout the conversation. This is another Asian trait that I admire immensely. I am not sure what Mio’s romantic status is but there is a very lucky guy out there who, one day, will capture her heart and, hopefully, not try to change her.
Thursday was a day of rest. I bumbled around Jim and Miwa’s apartment, wrote my blog, caught up on emails and slept some more. I sporadically leaned over the rail on the balcony, cigarette in one hand, coffee in the other, and tried to make sense of Tokyo.
It is an incredibly densely-packed city; modern, high rise buildings as far as the eye can see with not a square metre wasted. Compared to other capital cities, notably London and Paris, there is little evidence of history or open spaces. The reason is that the city was mercilessly fire-bombed by 300 B29s of the US on March 9th and 10th 1945 and all of Tokyo's traditional wooden buildings - and an estimated 100,000 civilian lives - were lost in the inferno.
Post-war rebuilding was very utilitarian and the rapid industrial expansion that followed made use of every available piece of ground, much in the same way that farmers can seemingly make rice paddies out of postage-stamp sized patches of land. Cities on the east coast just blend into each other. Yet somehow, in this human zoo, Tokyo is a peaceful place. Crime is very low and the atmosphere on the streets is non-threatening, even after dark.
This was evident on Thursday night when Jim, Miwa and I took a short subway journey to meet some of my ex-students – Mari, Jinmi and Kohei - for dinner. I smiled when I saw that Mari had booked a table at an Italian restaurant and then suggested we went to an English pub for a drink afterwards. But the lack of Japanese food and drink was irrelevant. It was great to see graduates earning a good wage and happy in their work, although none of them have yet got jobs in journalism.
At around midnight, Jim took me on a stroll through the harsh lights of downtown Tokyo on the way home and I was struck by how many people had obviously gone straight out from work. Suited office workers, mostly men, many carrying briefcases, were still going strong without the rampant drunkenness that characterises British cities. The staying power of the Japanese office worker is even more impressive when one considers that many people commute for an hour or so to get to work, and the start time is often seven or eight in the morning.
Many shops were also open at midnight. After dinner, very late on Wednesday night, for example, I bought a network cable for my laptop from a narrow-aisled, multi-storied and very busy shop called Don Quixote, which sold everything from cosmetics to televisions. Some, including the bookshop at the foot of Jim and Miwa’s apartment block, are open 24 hours.
Tokyo, like New York, is a city that never sleeps. This may suit some people but for an insomniac like me, who also needs space and appreciates peace and quiet, Tokyo is too intense. I can see the attraction for people like Jim and Miwa who enjoy the endless choices of shops, restaurants and experiences, and the city's incessant vibrancy, but I much prefer the sedate atmosphere and clean air of a small city like, erm, Cardiff.
There were two train journeys on Wednesday. The first was on a standard Japanese Rail train which put even the best British train to shame. Naturally, it arrived and departed bang on time. The sleek, silent white and red-striped beast sped through the flat coastal plain of Western Japan, past hundreds of perfectly rectangular paddy fields with just a few centimetres of green shoots, in geometrically precise rows, sprouting above water level. Some fields were no larger than British allotments, others were many acres in size, all were painstakingly maintained.
After about an hour, what looked like mis-shaped, pointed white clouds in the distance turned out to be the last remnants of the winter snow in the ravines and peaks of mountains. The bases of the mountains were the same colour as the sky which played a cruel trick on the eye. The summits seemed to be suspended in mid-air.
As we headed inland, the scenery changed. The paddy fields gave way to steep, wooded slopes and the train passed through numerous long tunnels. The terrain made the achievements of Japanese railway engineers even more impressive.
We arrived at Echigo-yuzawa and had just ten minutes to change platform and find the Shinkansen (Bullet Train) to Tokyo. It was four o’clock and the station was busy. But Dominic and I managed to find the platform, and even had time to grab a snack. True to his British roots, he grabbed a ham and egg sandwich. I took pot luck and chose a soft, rectangular item wrapped in clear plastic and a can of Asahi beer.
The Shinsanken drew into the platform and we found seats. The rectangular snack turned out to be rice with tuna in the middle, wrapped in a sheet of dried seaweed. It was the perfect compliment to the beer.
An hour and ten minutes later, we pulled into Tokyo Central, found the right exit and waited for Jim. He arrived on time, suited with a backpack slung over his shoulder and mobile phone pressed to his ear. We shook hands, I introduced him to Dominic. Before Dom and I wished each other bon voyage, Jim took us to a Citibank ATM – which definitely accepted MasterCard – and Dom withdrew some cash.
As we watched Dominic head down the steps of the subway station, I hoped that his luck would continue on the rest of his journey to visit his sister in Australia. There were times over the previous ten days when I shuddered at his lack of organisation and wondered how he had made it this far without a major crisis. He had no money belt or folder for his vital documents, merely a nylon duffel bag into which he would thrust a hopeful hand whenever he needed money, passport or an important piece of paper.
Dominic is a bright lad and good company but he plays the travel game fast and loose. Yet somehow, I am sure he will be fine; he has that rare combination of cheek and charm that will get him out of many a sticky situation.
Jim flagged down a cab and pointed out Tokyo landmarks on the way to his apartment. As we sped through the surprisingly fast-moving rush hour traffic, it struck me how well I know him and yet how long it has been since I spent any time with him. We met 28 years ago when we were doing our A levels. At the time, he was more interested in drinking, smoking and sport than studying and yet, even after messing up his education, he has become very successful in his career in the finance industry.
Jim has lived in Tokyo for 10 years, speaks excellent Japanese, has a Japanese partner, Miwa, and is a manager in equities at Mitsubishi Bank. His apartment and lifestyle is testament to his success and yet he remains as much a faithful, witty, hospitable and engaging friend as he was in our late teens. He no longer smokes or drinks, and he is much calmer than I remember him, but he is very much the same lad I met all those years ago. Indeed, I enjoyed his company even more than I did in the past. I just hope that I have matured as well as he has.
On Wednesday evening he took me out for a Korean meal, and we were joined by one of his friends, Mio, a diminutive, charming and attractive Japanese woman in her mid-thirties who speaks excellent English. Mio doesn’t drink alcohol; she is an enthusiastic yoga practitioner and exudes that serene, spiritual dignity that, in my experience, is so common among Asian women and so rare in their British counterparts.
We discussed cultural differences over delicate slithers of tongue cooked on a table-top barbeque, pickled radish and other Korean delights. Mio remained diplomatically non-judgemental throughout the conversation. This is another Asian trait that I admire immensely. I am not sure what Mio’s romantic status is but there is a very lucky guy out there who, one day, will capture her heart and, hopefully, not try to change her.
Thursday was a day of rest. I bumbled around Jim and Miwa’s apartment, wrote my blog, caught up on emails and slept some more. I sporadically leaned over the rail on the balcony, cigarette in one hand, coffee in the other, and tried to make sense of Tokyo.
It is an incredibly densely-packed city; modern, high rise buildings as far as the eye can see with not a square metre wasted. Compared to other capital cities, notably London and Paris, there is little evidence of history or open spaces. The reason is that the city was mercilessly fire-bombed by 300 B29s of the US on March 9th and 10th 1945 and all of Tokyo's traditional wooden buildings - and an estimated 100,000 civilian lives - were lost in the inferno.
Post-war rebuilding was very utilitarian and the rapid industrial expansion that followed made use of every available piece of ground, much in the same way that farmers can seemingly make rice paddies out of postage-stamp sized patches of land. Cities on the east coast just blend into each other. Yet somehow, in this human zoo, Tokyo is a peaceful place. Crime is very low and the atmosphere on the streets is non-threatening, even after dark.
This was evident on Thursday night when Jim, Miwa and I took a short subway journey to meet some of my ex-students – Mari, Jinmi and Kohei - for dinner. I smiled when I saw that Mari had booked a table at an Italian restaurant and then suggested we went to an English pub for a drink afterwards. But the lack of Japanese food and drink was irrelevant. It was great to see graduates earning a good wage and happy in their work, although none of them have yet got jobs in journalism.
At around midnight, Jim took me on a stroll through the harsh lights of downtown Tokyo on the way home and I was struck by how many people had obviously gone straight out from work. Suited office workers, mostly men, many carrying briefcases, were still going strong without the rampant drunkenness that characterises British cities. The staying power of the Japanese office worker is even more impressive when one considers that many people commute for an hour or so to get to work, and the start time is often seven or eight in the morning.
Many shops were also open at midnight. After dinner, very late on Wednesday night, for example, I bought a network cable for my laptop from a narrow-aisled, multi-storied and very busy shop called Don Quixote, which sold everything from cosmetics to televisions. Some, including the bookshop at the foot of Jim and Miwa’s apartment block, are open 24 hours.
Tokyo, like New York, is a city that never sleeps. This may suit some people but for an insomniac like me, who also needs space and appreciates peace and quiet, Tokyo is too intense. I can see the attraction for people like Jim and Miwa who enjoy the endless choices of shops, restaurants and experiences, and the city's incessant vibrancy, but I much prefer the sedate atmosphere and clean air of a small city like, erm, Cardiff.
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