Ways in which Japan changes you - Part One

We'll save you the tedious platitudes for not blogging about our antics recently and simply say: We've been busy having an awesome time. Booya!

So we've been here over a year now and it's quite interesting to reflect on ways in which Tokyo can change a person. Here are a few of these reflections.

I can't eat this! Where's my bloody oshiburi? 

So with pretty much all meals here you get a moist towelette, kind of like you do on the plane.  They're called oshiburi. When you first get here you read warnings in guidebooks etc not to wipe your face with them and that they're only for your hands prior to eating and so on and so forth. But in all honesty, they're just a bloody hand towel--do what you want with em. Turn em into a floppy paper-plane if you want.

And so you use these things all the time, almost every meal, whether it's a dirty little salad from the combini or a lovely, all you can eat okonmiyaki joint, there are loads of em.

And then, one day, they don't come, there are none on the table and you find yourself aghast saying:

"Where . . . where is my oshiburi? I - I can't eat this!" and in your mind your hands and fingers are teeming with bacteria and horror, all manner of beasties waiting, lurking, at the ready to give you X. 

As a fallout you slowly gather unused oshiburi (they're usually wrapped in plastic) and keep one in your briefcase, backback, purse, just in case. Note the word cleanliness - a central principle to Japanese life.

Today in Tokyo, 1,000,000 brollies lost their lives because of a bit of wind

Coming from Windy Wellington you can imagine my opinion on umbrellas: Bloody useless. In fact, forever etched in most of our Wellingtonian minds are images of splintered umbrellas stuffed disdainfully into bins. But the truth is, in Welly, we all just wear jackets if it's rainy and I think it creates a hardiness in us, right? We weather the weather.

The sheer volume of brollies in Tokyo, is unfathomable and they are just so expendable. I think it's because most Japanese seem to harbour a rabid fear of the rain. Many a time you can see people in the slightest of drizzle charging through the rain as if satan himself was in pursuit. And so when the occasional (very occasional) windy day does come or - heaven forbid it - a typhoon, 13,000,000 people need to use an umbrella. But the funny thing is, these nutters will also try valiantly to use a 100 yen (NZD 1.50) umbrella in a tree cracking gale and in the wake of any storm you will find the horror, the massacre of multitudes of brollies thrown into the street, naked, shameful in - literally - piles the height of very tall dwarfs.

But anyway, dramatic holocaustic imagery aside, you get involved with the brolly culture here and the weather report becomes your best mate as you too now endeavour to avoid any possibility of finding yourself running through the satanic rain. In the end we adapt to fit in with our environment.

"Walk ya ####s!"

There are so many people is probably the most tedious observation you can make about Tokyo. But it's true and man, it changes you.

Walking here is slow, real slow, they all just dawdle along, which is pretty logical really as there are loads of people - but dear me it can push your patience. Even when I was on my crutches I was overtaking people. And it's not so much an impatience thing, it is that some people walk INCREDIBLY slowly - too slowly - and are also, at times, extremely inconsiderate with it; you know, a group of six standing and lolly gagging in 10,000 peoples way on a tiny walkway, that kind of thing. So you end up really having to manage your serenity and patience because if you don't... well if you don't this kind of thing happens. 

Just a few weeks ago I was walking up a major road in Shinjuku with an Aussie. I was happy plodding along to tell you the truth, we were yarning and I had nowhere to be. But then out of the blue the Aussie hollers "WALK YA C###S!"at the group of four people dawdling in front of us. They obviously didn't really understand and thus it didn't help our situation, but I found it interesting as it highlights this propensity to exist within your own bubble here, saying things or muttering things out loud, because nobody understands you anyway. If you don't manage your serenity you can become a bit of a mutterer or dare I say it - a nutter.

A well-spent day brings happy sleep - Leo da Vinci

If that's the case, Leo, how do you explain all the sleeping going on in the Japanese rail system?

Many of you will know of my brief interest in train sleeping, but what is interesting is that we fall into the same behaviour. I would never have dreamed of sleeping on a train in Welly, just wouldn't really. Life didn't, well, life didn't need it.

Here, it does. Escape? Maybe. Rest? Maybe. Who knows why, but sleeping on the train here is the norm and more than once now I have found myself quietly dipping into meditation and then bam, I'm sleeping. Not long and deep enough to miss stops or anything - just escaping briefly, an abiltiy to ignore that fat smelly salary man's ass nudging ever closer to my face.