Since I seem to have a neurotic obsession with the way people behave on public transportation, the first thing I noticed upon arriving in Tokyo station was that people stand on the left of the escalator. They do drive on the left side of the road there as well, so that kinda makes sense. But my roommate (from England) assures me that in Britain they stand on the right. I'm not sure which is weirder, actually. Anyone know what they do in India or Australia?
The evidence
The Tokyo subway is quite nice. However, it is not nearly as crowded as I was led to believe. I'm sure it's bad during rush hour, which I didn't experience I don't think, but almost every time we rode the train we got a seat. In Beijing that only happens late at night. Actually, by and large I was surprised by how Tokyo is not nearly as crowded as Beijing. Certain parts were packed, like Shibuya, where that have that enormous intersection with thousands of people, and Akihabara, where that guy stabbed and killed a bunch of people last Sunday (I was there on Saturday. Phew.) But sometimes we would walk around a pretty central neighborhood and there would be nobody. Here in Beijing there are people everywhere.
The back streets of Shibuya
Shibuya station
A jellybean octopus
I saw two shrines, Asakusa and Yasukuni. The first is just a nice shinto shrine with some touristy stuff around and a giant bell. I made a donation and got my fortune, which was good (but not great, apparently). The latter is the shrine for dead imperial soldiers, sort of like Arlington. The Chinese get really pissed when anyone from the government makes an official visit there, since it also honors a good number of war criminals(from the Chinese point of view) from WWII. Not surprisingly, the accompanying museum made little mention of events such as the rape and murder of tens of thousands of civilians in Nanjing.
Hard-core nationalism at Yasukuni
Yasukuni
Asakusa
The food was great. I asked my friend to take me to eat some more food that wasn't sushi or teppanyaki. So I had some tempura-style pork chops and stuffed eggplant, some good ramen, a burger with a bun made out of grilled sticky rice, and these chopped vegetable and meat pancake things topped with mayo and (I think) teriyaki sauce.
Ramen town in the Shinyokohama Ramen Museum
I-don't-remember-the-name being cooked
Done! and slathered with mayo and sauce
My first meal in TokyoOverall, Tokyo is extraordinarily modern and comfortable. Even without speaking any Japanese you can get around pretty well, it's all clean, you can get anything you need, the people are all beautiful, etc. But I really don't think I'd be as happy there as in China. There's a certain excitement that comes from being in China, and a certain edge that Tokyo just doesn't really have. Of course there's a lot of bullshit you have to deal as well, like government hassles, people trying to scam you, crowds and traffic and pollution. But I think it's well worth the trade-off. Plus I couldn't afford to live in Tokyo anyway.
Art in the alleys in Roppongi
Tokyo at night
1 comment:
Funny thing about people riding escalators in Japan: supposedly the side people stand on depends on the region you're in. Region generally has a pretty large effect on culture in Japan, but on the main island it's often divided into main two groups--east and west--east being from the Tokyo area all the way roughly to Nagoya, and the west being Nagoya-westward, including Kyoto and Osaka. In newspapers you'll see detailed maps showing a squiggly dividing line between two flavors of cup ramen, or the shape of mochi-rice, or what a certain thing is called. Riding escalators sort of follows this logic; so if people ride on the left in Tokyo, its probably the case that they ride on the right in Kyoto. Although I'm not quite so observant to remember what they do in the other region when visiting one of them, so I don't know how true this is. (I don't live on the main island.)
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