Finally getting a chance to write amidst the chaos that is the Tokyo orientation. 2000 foreigners in humid conditions in a single building is not a pretty sight.

With everything other than the departure and arrival times our flight from Sydney was pretty horrid. The hop from Perth to Sydney was exactly that, a hop, in a very modern plane with lots of legroom and a watchable movie it was over in a flash. Being stuck in the back of a jumbo, however, has never been a pleasurable experience at the best of times. I was aiming to sleep as much as possible on the Sydney – Narita flight to avoid crashing and burning on arrival to Tokyo at 6 in the morning. When you’re my size that’s pretty much a pipe-dream as by the time the person in front has put their seat back, the person next to you their light on and tray table down and Qantas’ ergonomic seats are jammed into your neck, you’re in a position that could be considered either a highly advanced yoga position or some form of medieval torture. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep much.

On the up-side though, the portable media revolution they’ve been promising in economy class for what must be 10 years now finally showed its head. Being able to choose from six crap movies instead of one, looking at the weather and being able to play Tetris wasn’t quite the earth shattering development I’d hoped for, but it certainly beats squinting at a fuzzy monitor twenty aisles away.

Anyway, being the first group of Jets to arrive in Tokyo meant that the massive infrastructure CLAIR had deployed to cope with an influx of nearly 2000 of us in a matter of hours was devoted entirely to us. So, we were shuffled from person to person, giving and receiving forms at a rate of about two a second. Soon sans luggage and on a bus bound for Tokyo we were available for our guide, a former Jet from Singapore, to bore to tears at her leisure. It’s not that she wasn’t a nice person, she was lovely, but she had an excruciating way of talking that had three main components. The first, number one, was that she like to break everything down into numbered lists even if they, my second point, number two, didn’t really need to be broken down. Finally, my third point, number three, would be that she explained everything in such extravagant detail that you could be assured that it would have at least 5 main points and probably an equal number of sub points, even if it was something as simple as explaining how long it was going to take to get to the hotel. Note to Singaporeans, life is not a bulleted list.

The real perk with being the first dudes at the hotel was the complete lack of lines and the fact that we got the best rooms. The Keio Plaza hotel in Shinjuku where we are staying is extremely swank, in fact it’s probably the swankiest hotel I’ve ever stayed in. Then again, considering I’m more your $10 a night youth hostel person that’s not really saying much. Our room has a toilet with more buttons than my mobile phone, complimentary kimono things and a view over the swimming pool. Swish. After quickly flicking through the TV channels while waiting for the aircon to kick in, it’s pretty clear that the Japanese have a fairly unhealty obsession with David Beckham. I think the fact that he was arriving in Tokyo airport with the rest of Real Madrid on the same day as us helped push the hype to a whole new level but when he’s featured on five of the nine available channels simulatenously, you’ve really gotta wonder. Has to be the hair.

So once we got out of traveling clothes, showered and freshened up, it was time to hit the town. I think at this stage the reality of where we were still hadn’t really sunk in. I mean other than the huge buildings everywhere, signs in kanjii and the oppressive humidity it was all very normal. Now that I think back to it, it probably was just my sleep deprived brain going – hey, they drive on the left hand side of the road and their cars have four wheels, it’s just like Australia with more short people. The realisation began to kick in at lunch though.

Ordering an random dish from a list written in Japanese by pressing a number on a vending machine and then walking inside to collect a soup containing udon piled high with thick slimy seaweed and unidentified crunchy things is something you can’t really do in Perth just yet. Tasted pretty damn good though until the crunchy things melted into the soup leaving it with the texture of slightly warm soy-flavoured weetbix. It took me a while to convince my stomach that eating something with the smell, texture and consistency of thick kelp was a actually quite a good idea. I’ve never had seaweed like that before in Oz, it’s generally a lot more innocent and less, “HAHA, I AM A THRIVING PART OF THE UNDERSEA ECOSYSTEM. THIS EXPLAINS MY UNNATTURAL THICKNESS, COLOUR AND VITALITY. EAT ME OR BE BRANDED A CULTURAL OUTCAST”. It’s all good though, all good indeed.

“It’s all good” is a phrase I seem to have picked up from my roommate Nick and I can’t stop fucking saying it. How was you meal? It’s all good! Enjoying Tokyo? It’s all good! Will you please stop saying that? Dude, it’s all good! I’m going to punch you in your damn annoying mouth! It’s all goof. Note: D becomes a sucking F sound as teeth are punched down throat. Ah, but I jest. I think the best thing about the trip so far is that the people heading across from WA are all fantastic people and it looks like we’re well on the way towards forming a pretty close knit group. Thankfully, most of us are in Hyogo prefecture so we’re at most an hour or two from each other. Hopefully we’ll be able to organise some get togethers over the year or whatever. I think I’m getting ahead of myself in any case, so back to Tokyo.

In the afternoon we headed out and about, slowly fracturing into smaller and smaller groups. The group I was with decided to head out around Shinjuku and see what was to be seen as far as shopping was concerned and then go check out the world famous freaky fashions of Harajuku. I found this record shop in Shinjuku called Tower Records that is apparently a world-wide brand but I’ve never heard of it before. Anyway, on the top floor I found the motherload, an entire level stuffed to the gills with design books. I basically started hyperventialing, rolling my eyes and mumbling “ahh, my precccccccioussssesss” much to the amusement/shock of any Japanese people near me. Seriously though, this place was fantastic, I recognised a couple of the books from shops in Perth but most of the stuff you just can’t get over there. If I had a couple hundred thousand more Yen I think I might have had a small buying frenzy and grabbed at some of the more mindboggling awesome books. In the end I satisfied myself with a free magazine and a parting glance of yearning and allowed myself to be dragged forcibly off by the others.

>From there we navigated the subway system to Harajuku. This is no easy task, given that the map of the Japanese subway system looks something like what would happen if you gave bunch of four year olds rulers, compasses and a stack of coloured markers and told them you wanted them to draw spagetti. To add a whole new level of fun to the equation all the signage on the map is in Japanese characters. However thanks to some quick thinking by Nick “the second kanjii of harajuku will be the same as shinjuku, and it’s on a circle line” and Rati’s mad-phat Japanese speaking skills we made it there without too much drama.

Harajuku is something else entirely. It’s packed full of trendy shops and young Japanese people dressed in ways that make Perth’s goths look like rank amateurs. Ripped vinyl and tartan, chains and piercings, enormous shoes and a whole lot of attitude seem to be the order of the day. However the effect is kind of spoiled when you get close enough to read the scribbled, stencilled or slashed slogans across their chests. Stuff like “We savor the happy god of darkness” or “Slashing danger is no bother” in gothic letterforms doesn’t exactly inspire terror. To go with the dark goth look, there’s about an equal number dressed entirely in white with stuff ranging from bonnets and frills, to really fucked up and torn white t’s. An awesome place for people watching, that’s for sure. After staggering around in the searing heat for a while longer, we headed back to Shinjuku and our hotel for a well deserved sleep.

The evening was free as well, and by the time I regained conciousness the sound of loud american accents had began to echo up and down the halls of the hotel. Great. Quickly gathered (well as quickly as humanely possible when girls and showers are involved Actually come to think of it, it wasn’t really that quick at all. The words molasses, slow and as seem to spring to mind although I can’t seem to figure out why, probably something to do with the years I aged while waiting for the others to come down to the lobby) the group headed out to find food, which arrived in the form of a restaurant serving a main (i had mini katsudon), a bowl of noodles and a salad for 800 yen and mugs of beer for 350. Awesome. I thought on paying I’d try out some Japanese for the first time and was quite pleased with my effort which came out something like: “Er, mini-katsudon and WHEN BEER?!?!?!”. I swear the counting word for one round thing and the word for when sound very similar. Something tells me this is going to be happening a lot.

Dinner concluded and stupid gaijin status established, we wandered around for a while looking at the pretty lights and marvelling at the fact that Tokyo has more huge buildings in a single block that probably all the cities in Australia stuck together. Oh, and Starbucks coffee anywhere in the world is just plain bad and yet somehow every time I go overseas I seem to end up ordering the stupidest beverage on the menu and regreting it for days. Rhumba Frappacino is obviously a cross cultural translation for horrid carob drink.

Will have to remember that one.

Posted in Japan on Tuesday August 5, 2003.

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