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cwmoss · 8 years ago

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40 Notes on Japan (or How I Forgot to Wipe in the Land of the Rising Sun)

Around the New Years that transitioned between 2016 and 2017, I went to Japan with my girlfriend. These are things I noticed or thought worth noting…

The Japanese don't have a phrase they say after someone sneezes.

They have bootleg Kanye items with @caramelbobby-esque designs. (Which reminds me of people always jokingly saying, "I'm huge in Japan.")

I'm quickly realizing that if wearing fuzzy things were a religion, my girlfriend would devote her life to it.

Though the culture is very respectful and serious, a river of playful and adorable things run through the culture. Even animations on the subway are cuddly-looking.

In a restroom, a sign said: 'Please flush only toilet paper and what nature provides.' Which is the most poetic way I’ve ever heard that said.

I’m tall-ish, so I expected to hit my head in more places in Japan. Though I only ended up hitting my head in 2 places: leaving the Delta flight to Tokyo and on a stairway lamp in a shop in Daikanyama.

My girlfriend and I sat for an hour in Tsutaya Books' lovely upstairs cafe trying to figure out what is in a gimlet. We weren't able to remember, but it was the best drink we had in Japan.

I wish I had a guide for Japan called 'Places to Sit for an Hour'. It would feature wonderful places to feel a city's pace. Somewhere between visual feasts and a city's symphony, one could bathe in everything that isn't water. No photos because you should create your own picture of a place. Descriptions as encryptions, where each word helps you know more and less about each place. If I were to write a place, I'd start with the second-story Cafe of Tsutaya Books in Daikanyama. Each person gets surrounded by a kaleidoscopic background littered with literature. Text halos in sunshine, bound outlines in moonlight. Your ears meet taps, and trumpets, and loose pianos, and free fingers. Even the clanks of cups and steps of strangers keep time with the songs stretching out through the speakers. Darkened mirrors looks into other universes. 5000 yen gets you an hour of pleasure and a couple drinks.

Walking 12.7 miles in one day shouldn't he humanly possible. It definitely isn't humane. (Note: After this full day of walking and being fully exhausted, I considered walking down to the front desk to ask where I could get water. I had forgotten it came out of the faucet. And is after I just after showered.)

In Japan, noise feels like an art form. Studied, noted, and fully aware: it feels like everyone coos at the same frequency creating a friendly hum. People never really shout or boisterously laugh. Noise is almost always kept around a small choral swell of voices. Even stores that played Muzak seemed to never lose themselves to the human voice. When entering stores, the greetings from the salespeople seem to come out just barely above a whisper. The only truly loud noise I heard was a Lamborghini that seemed like it had lost its mother and was crying out. I'd assume even their chiseling jackhammers sound like lullabies that could put infant to sleep.

Small Coke bottles are the heaviest I've felt at the size. They seem like they're at least twice the thickness of American bottles, and a few pounds each.

The taxis of Tokyo are like the Catholic's idea of the Holy Spirit, they are ever present. And when a door is opened to you, seemingly with magic, it is brightly lit with colorful LED beams.

My father would love this place because it's quiet, clean, and respectful.

The Japanese wear a lot of doctor’s masks for hygienic purposes. For that reason, it’s hard to feel as if you could be friends with anyone wearing one.

Though people who wear the masks are only supposed to be doing so when they are sick (I was told it was to protect others from their sickness), I haven't seen one person wearing a mask cough yet.

In the same way that people who wear doctor's lab coats perform better on tests, I wonder if people wearing doctor's masks here also feel smarter.

The masks aren't as stylish as I'd hope they'd be. Maybe because they throw them away after each day. Though, near the end of our trip My girlfriend found a store that sold animal-style masks that resembled their faces. I assume their for children and kid-ults.

New Years celebrations at the Shibuya Crossing were akin to NYC's Times Square.

Smoking still has its hand on the throat of Japan. It’s everywhere, but in a restrained way. There are smoking sections in trains and restaurants and coffee shops. Thankfully their sealed in little glass and metal bubbles. Except in bars, where it is everywhere.

All of their transit will say the directions in Japanese, then repeat them in English -- which makes getting around impossibly easy.

The babies of Japan seem to mostly be carried kangaroo-style in little front-side pouches, and almost exclusively by the men. (Also, my girlfriend noticed that they don’t see to support the child’s neck. The baby’s head just seems locked back, and all of the necks of the youth look fully normal. So there’s that.)

I was in Japan for 12 days and it wasn’t until 2 days before we left that I heard a baby cry for the first time there..

Lots of poster boards menus line the crowded streets. To keep the outer casing of the lights from burning passerby that bump the lights, they wrap the lights in aluminum foil (which doesn't keep heat) to keep people from burning themselves.

In the whole of the trip, I only heard one car honk its horn.

Cars don't have dents in Japan. Or rust. Or bumper stickers. Sometimes, they'll have stickers on their back window, but none seem humorous or accomplishment based (like Americans proud of running half-marathons).

The restrooms in all public train stations don't have soap.

I've noticed that Japan, like the USA, dances deeply with alcohol and energy drinks. They're everywhere and advertised as much. I wondered how a country so deeply seeped with tea would handle things like Monster Energy drinks -- and it appears they've given them the full embrace. They're in every shop and convenience machine I've seen. (Though I haven't seen Red Bull anywhere.) At our Ryokan, we were going to take a calligraphy class led by monks and they requested that we not have any alcohol before. But there were not limitations for caffeine, which I think equally shifts my mental-state, though obviously in a different direction.

I have a feeling in my gut that when I leave Japan, the thing I'll miss most is the silence. The Japanese seem to respect the Quiet in a way that I've never seen before.

The bullet trains of Japan can take you across the country in only a few hours. It's truly magical and slightly perplexing, especially since this is my first time riding one. The insides of each cart resemble essentially an airplane's economy-class on steroids. Leg room for Paul Bunyan, and windows the size of a manhole cover. The ride is absurdly smooth at all times, but at night the effect is even more stimulating. Lights—neon, iridescent, street corners, et cetera—fly by at an incredible speed. It’s like springtime for blossoming filaments. Black and then a hundred blips of warm and cool light with a few dashes of color, then black again with only your reflection in the window. The rural emptiness and jumbled metro, each expressed in moments as small as a few seconds. All across a horizon that can't be met but does feel known, filled with lights waving goodbye from a city previously visited. And because the tracks outside the bullet train aren't visible, it almost feels like you're riding on a bizarro air plane, being piloted by the a penultimate Yves-Klein bluest-of-blue Blue-Angel of aeronautics only 80 feet above the ground. It's sublime in the way only the most terrifying things can also be equally, if not more so, beautiful.

I haven't seen anyone kiss. I've seen a few young couples holding hands, though they could be foreigners visiting. Love is not in the ocular-air.

Slurping is accepted and encouraged with noodle dishes. What I want to know is: can someone be considered attractive for how well they slurp? (And is all slurping accepted, e.g. finishing a drink through a straw?)

I saw a visiting white traveler run out of pure excitement that he found a sparingly seen public trash can.

The only construction I've seen is for towers. Nothing on the ground or near it.

When you call somewhere, the ringing of the phone that the caller gets to hear sounds like a cooing pigeon.

People look good. Because 99.9% of them are svelte, their clothes look great on them. Bright colors are rare in fashion. I don't know if this a recent thing or something they've been at for a while. While in Japan, I wore a bright red coat and, at times, I felt like a garish sun burst.

Snoopy and Mickey and Minnie Mouse are everywhere. Mario is nowhere. I saw one Mario Run ad while I was here on the subway, and that was it. People don't even wear him on clothes. I didn't understand this at all.

Most major cities I’ve visited smell pretty bad. Especially in downtown areas. Piss, trash, spoiled food. Tokyo had none of that, at least where we were.

As an English speaker, adjusting to Japan phonetically was a little tough. None of their words remotely resemble ours.

It's a Coca-Cola country. It's everywhere, and in most restaurants. Whereas Pepsi is only found in vending machines.

The country is filled with toilets that handle everything for you (except for the actual going). The seat is warmed. Water is sprayed. Lots of options and mild initial confusion, but it was great once I accepted the toilet’s offerings. Though, when I returned home to Los Angeles, restrooms felt odd. Somehow, when confronted with the challenge of wiping, I'd forgotten what to do. Or at least lost my natural, well-practiced motion. The self-cleaning toilets of Japan left me too rectally adventurous, and now I had to pay for my own sins.

If you enjoyed this list, in some ways I wrote it because of Jan Chipchase’s 61 Glimpses of the Future.

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