Issue 23 - overlooking view
A possibly weekly email about what's been going on in my brain
23 - 29 April 2023
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That's it. I have a final full day in Tokyo and then it's the long (15 hour plus) flight back to the UK. I don't have the words yet to describe my 12 weeks here as I've not the perspective, it's a bit like trying to describe a forest while you're in it: "lots of trees, wouldn't mind seeing the hills".
Once I'm back in the UK my sabbatical rumbles on for another week then I'm back at work on Tuesday 9th May (a crusty old white guy is getting some gold baubles which apparently demands a Monday bank holiday). That means plenty of time to reacclimate and try and remember what it's like to cook and clean for myself.
Nagoya
Nagoya was the buffer city between my time in the back of beyond on the trails, and the sensory onslaught that is Tokyo. This was another recommendation from my travel agent and likely had a lot to do with their offices being based nearby. All of the guides I read on the city said that it wasn't on many foreigners' itineraries. I really want to tell you that they're right, and everyone is sleeping on Nagoya as a tourist destination, but unfortunately the reality is more mundane. Despite it being Japan's fourth largest city and perhaps because it's not frequented by tourists, Nagoya by comparison to Kyoto and Osaka seemed very calm. Still bustling with people on the streets and the subway, but in an ordered, expected kind of way.
My day of sight-seeing started with the Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology which traced the Toyoda company's history from producing automatic looms through to cars. The early days (1920's) of the company were fascinating to sift through as they pilfered designs and techniques from Ford and GM to create their first car then iterated and refined to create something distinct and Japanese. The later year exhibits were probably more interesting for car buffs and machinery nerds but for just 500 yen, this was a phenomenal museum.
So far so good right? Well, then I visited one of the "must see" sights of the city: Osu Kannon. And this is where I sound wearily jaded and say I wasn't impressed with it. It felt like more of a "working" temple than many of the others I've been to: functional and busy rather than ostentatious and imperious. That feeling carried over to the shrine I visited - Atsuta Jingu - which was set in a lovely wooded park and, when I arrived, was hosting a gorgeous Shinto wedding as well as various other little ceremonies. Perhaps it was just my state of mind at the time, but I've seen better.
Which perhaps reveals where Nagoya should sit on an itinerary: right at the start rather than at the end of a tour of some of the best that Japan has to offer, as a taster or even an accessible, quieter alternative to the more frequented stops. I definitely don't regret visiting, and maybe if I'd gone to the Tokugawa Art Museum, the other "must see" of the city, my opinion would be different.
Tokyo
I do love Tokyo, but crikey is it a lot. When I stayed in an AirBNB in London, the owner there told me that it took her several months to get used to the energy of that city. I feel the same is true of Tokyo. The city is unbelievably massive, an urban sprawl that can take you literal hours on a train to escape from and the concentration of people is frankly overwhelming. But it's also a city designed for that kind of continued use, so a few tourists aren't going to make a dent like they do elsewhere. Any amount of time I spend in the city isn't going to cover off even a fraction of the things to see, which paradoxically takes the pressure off sight-seeing. I'm never going to see it all, so I may as well take my time and enjoy what I do see; especially as sights that I've been to before (Tsukiji et. al.) have now disappeared or are unrecognisably changed.
Shinjuku
My first hotel was on the edge of Kabukicho - known for its bars, eateries, neon, and the red-light district. A minute's walk from my accommodation were love hotels offering prices for "rests" as well as stays. I arrived on a Sunday afternoon, and Shinjuku station is already an intimidating place to navigate, so weaving through moving clumps of pretty young things with my luggage and getting to my hotel (it has a Godzilla statue on the outside, of course) was a minor miracle. Unlike my time in Osaka, my room was far down a corridor, meaning I was spared the usual clamour of a city centre hotel. But unfortunately not from the noise of a 24-hour entertainment district: ambulance sirens, indistinct shouts and screams, the throb of lights that blinds don't quite block out. Just stepping out of my room needed a deep breath and total focus.
I still loved it though, the tumult, the constant movement of different people. Just waiting for the crossings to turn green gave me a moment to people watch. Something that carried through to the district's largest green space which was now long past the cherry blossom bloom but still had families and and groups of all ages enjoying the greenery. There was a greenhouse, a Japanese garden as well as a "formal" garden that I didn't visit as I didn't have my tuxedo with me.
The opposite side of Kabukicho is Nishishinjuku (West Shinjuku) or the skyscraper district with the headquarters of large corporations and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government building which, unlike practically all of the other tall places I've visited, let you go up to its top floors absolutely free.
After four nights in Shinjuku I had a worryingly good sense of the cavernous station (with its reportedly 100+ different exits) as well as the best routes to take through the neon maze of streets. I absolutely loved my time there, though as I wasn't actively sampling the nightlife, a couple of nights would have been plenty.
Jinbocho
My first full day exploring Tokyo and Jinbocho is where I started. Also known as Book Town, this area is like it sounds: the best place to explore sometimes weird and wonderful book stores. The most interesting ones are either specialists - dealing in old theatre scripts, manuscripts, and hard to find first editions - or the "everything" stores that have computer science manuals from 1974, Hollywood who's who from 1980, Japanese encyclopedias... Some stores even focused on movies with posters and leaflets from the golden age of Japanese cinema through to, ahem, Jupiter Ascending; if I ever redecorated my cinema room, this is where I'd come. In short it was a quiet, enthralling way to spend a morning, sporadically coming across gems like a back issue of "Eat" magazine: "Shit music for bad people".
Akihabara
Akiba is widely known as the mecca for anime nerds though it started off as the place to pick up electronics, evolving from fridges and washing machines pre-WW2. The last time I came (2018) I felt a profound sense of disconnection that I hadn't felt the previous times (2006 and 2009), I haven't actively kept abreast with modern anime for years so that wasn't unexpected. This time I steeled myself and popped on my anthropologist hat, ready to see the area now as an outsider.
Starting with the warren of electronics stalls, I poked at LED lights, security cameras, GPS handhelds, plug adapters and more. And then, out of nowhere, a woman was speaking to me in English saying that she was from a Japanese news station and they wanted to interview me. I didn't even ask what they wanted to talk to me about before saying a crisp "No thank you!" and making a bee-line for somewhere, anywhere else. That is definitely not the kind of noise I want.
In all the different otaku stores I went into, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I did recognise, but definitely showing my age: it all felt a bit shabby, a little seedy. What always strikes me about places like Akihabara is that more than any other place in the world I know of, Japan is somewhere you can be obsessed. If you flipping love trains, or airsoft, or medieval bath houses, or anything really, you can find your subculture here and it'll have models, magazines and a store just for you. There is obviously a darker side to that coin of acceptance that can bleed through, but for a little while at least, it can be charming. Then you make a wrong turn and end up in the "Adults only" section of a store and wow does that facade drop away quickly.
Photography
I spent one day indulging in my love for photography museums and visited the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum and the Accidentally Wes Anderson exhibition.
The former, "TOP", had three collections on display: Domon Ken - A Pilgrimage to Ancient Temples, a Masahisa Fukase retrospective, and Serendipity - Wondrous Discoveries in Daily Life. All three were fantastic, the first took statues and idols from Buddhist temples around the country and photographed them like you would a portrait, forcing you to look at them divorced of context; the second covered the life and work of a deeply gifted but tragically eccentric photographer; while the third was a mix of different photographers, subjects and styles, all thoughtfully and whimsically displayed.
The latter, "AWA", took photos, primarily from Instagram, that evoked the style of director Wes Anderson. They varied in quality but it was an extensive (300+ photos) collection and a lot of fun, even if I did start to tire of the visual pattern by the end. Also, it may have been the time I arrived, or perhaps where the exhibition had been advertised, but all the other visitors were young, twenty something women who insisted of taking smartphone photos of, well, all the photos.
Tall places
As well as the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, I also visited the Tokyo Sky Tree and Tokyo Tower for some absolutely stunning views of the city at night. The former is a relatively new addition to the skyline opening in 2012 and clocking in at 634 metres with viewing decks at 350 and 450 metres. The Tokyo Tower meanwhile was completed in 1958 and apes the Eiffel Tower's design and height (330 metres) despite being much lighter due to newer construction methods.
Both provide a similar elevator that made my ears pop with their rapid ascents. The Sky Tree's view is certainly the more commanding one, but at such a height what you see loses any sense of grounding - cars are moving dots of light and people are all but invisible at that height. It definitely gives a sense of scale to the city though as even from there you can't see the edges. The Tokyo Tower's view on the other hand still lets you make out details of the buildings and see people rushing around below while still being overshadowed by other surrounding skyscrapers (part of the reason the Skytree was built).
And a final, unexpected view turned out to be the one from my final hotel room. Located on the 33rd floor, other nearby buildings are taller, but you really can't beat being able to sit by the window and watch the sun set and listen to the trains rumble by below.
Looking forward
My newsletter before I bobbed off on this trip was a little more unstructured - thoughts I'd had, random photos I'd taken, videos I'd watched, links I'd found interesting. I may in the short term fall back to that format while I find my stride again in these upcoming post-Japan times. I'll wrap up some odds and ends next week, and then slowly start developing my photos more fully so that I can get back to the kind of quality I had before my laptop succumbed to whatever ailment it's suffering from.
Hopefully everyone has enjoyed reading and following along, if not then the unsubscribe link was there as an escape hatch. People have said some lovely things about this newsletter which has been a joy to receive, and if you were just along for my Japan travels, I understand and I'll only be a tiny bit upset if you unsubscribe.
This was hand-crafted by John.