Tokyo

So.  Officially, the next adventure worthy of a blog post is a honeymoon trip, but all that mushy crap is not particularly Li Hi so for the sake of the blog I'll only passingly refer to the suave European man, the champagne and the sprinkling of rose petals when absolutely necessary.  The destination of choice was Japan, not Rome as we promised our wedding guests because we are fickle as people and also have spent a lot of our early summer on flights to and from Europe because we're just so international and the jetlag is a killer. 

Our first stop was Tokyo, and whilst there was a lot of prep and build up that mostly involved purchasing the entire stock of Muji and convincing Frenchie that matching honeymoon lightweight raincoats from Uni Qlo was a GREAT idea, I'll skip that bit so that we get to the highlights a little quicker just in case you are reading this on your coffee break. This photo probably best sums up the journey from Singapore:

We did many, many things in Tokyo and, determined to make like a Japanese and snap, I took photos of all and everything on my big grown up camera, not on my casual iPad (it just doesn't set the right tourist tone). We shall sit through all six million and four of them when I next see you and I will give you a detailed commentary about each one, including what I was trying to do with the different light settings and manual zoom but for now, let's focus on the highlights, accompanied by scant visual media...

Day One: Awesome Japanese Food (No English)

One really exciting thing about Japan is that, like the French, they consider themselves above the English language. I can't blame them: just the toilet seats are a simple symbol of how advanced this country is, everything is clean and well maintained, the citizens are enviably fashionable (in all senses of the word fashion) and I write this from my space capsule hotel room. Clearly, they are better than the Brits.  Sorry. Japan is really cool. Even more than this, they already have three forms of written language, so let's give them a break from bothering with another one, hey?

Of course, there are designated people at designated tourist spots like train stations and museums who speak beautiful English but unlike Vietnam where anyone under the age of 30 can have a pretty basic conversation with you on the street and wants to practice their English, the Japanese look at you with a kind, pitying look and continue to speak a lovely, trickling waterfall language and gesture very clearly. Then they nod, smile and bow and talk a bit more. Very effective communication because most things rely on tone and gesture anyway - that's mostly how Frenchie and I get by!

ANYWAY, on our first night, we decided to Be Cool and get away from the crowds in a district called Ningyong where there were lots of little dark streets illuminated by the occasional red lantern. We found the biggest red lantern and stepped confidently inside to find we had hit the jackpot: cool Japanese couples smoking and having intellectual conversations in the corner, a thick sakitori mist hanging in the old wooden beams, tiny tables and chairs, chefs on display with ninja headscarves, really loud, drunk Japanese men yelling at each other on the table next to us, vintage Sapporo adverts plastered on the walls, not another whitey in sight.  Yeeeaaahh.  That's the local eating we're talking about.

As we were feeling all smug and down with the Japanese locals, the nice waitress sat us down and handed us the menu. Ahaha. We smiled and asked for the menu in English. After a few more goes, once the waitress had figured out what we wanted, she laughed and shook her head.  No, no menu in English and no English on her side either. Why would she bother?  All we had managed to learn before the trip was konichiwa and arigato.  Silly tourists.  Luckily, the word 'beer' is universal and this bought us some thinking time whereupon Frenchie hit on the idea of disturbing the romantic couple next to us to politely request their help. They were under 30, thus they probably wanted to practice their English. This is good expat thinking. However, all this lead to was yet another fun exchange and a very embarrassed looking Japanese boyfriend who definitely did not want to practice his English.  Eventually, the aloof Japanese girlfriend blew smoke into the air, looking cool, and ordered us some pork teriyaki and they both finished their cigarettes and left, their hip evening probably ruined by lamo tourists. 

So.  Abandoned by our only friends, but very much enjoying the success of Frenchie's quick expat thinking, it became clear that we would have to adopt his approach of No-Social-Shame-Ask-Without-Fearing-Embarrassment over my preferred, and more British, Avoid-Drawing-Attention-Attempt-To-Depart-Through-Toilet-Window method.  Thus, every dish that came out of the kitchen that we liked the look of, whether we knew exactly what is was or not, we pulled the waitress to the side and pointed encouragingly, repeating 'one' with a very enthusiastic index finger and the smiles or idiots.  Other than the fact that it bothers other customers and the staff, this is a very effective way of getting fed and I highly recommend leaving your dignity at the door and employing it when in Japan.  We used it again at a grill place in Tokyo and a barbeque place in Kyoto except that in the first place, the chicken turned out to be offal and in the second, Frenchie ended up ordering tongue, which I then had to spit out into a napkin and hand back to the patiently unimpressed chef. 

Day Two: Tsukuji Tuna Auction

Everyone knows that Frenchie loves fish, right?  Like, really likes fish.  They're his favourite.  Every time he comes food shopping with me, it takes twice as long because we have to stop at the fish counter, name every type of fish at the fish counter, confirm the names of the fish by engaging the nice Singaporean fishmonger in friendly fish banter, comment on the freshness of the fish according to the clarity of their eyes and something telling about their gills, bet on whether they are wild or farmed, double check with the fishmonger to see if we are right, nod knowingly and discuss the reasons that farmed fish are more expensive or why wild fishing is unsustainable... yadah yadah yadah and that's before I even ask him which fish he wants to buy for dinner and how he was thinking of cooking it (this then begins the 'how to fillet a fish' conversation).  We do the same thing when we go to aquariums or art galleries where there are fish in the paintings.  Frenchie's love for fish is probably only rivalled by Matt Watson's, a man who took it a step too far and actually joined the Fish Police (or founded them, I don't know). 

Understandably, then, Frenchie was SUPER excited about the Tsukuji Fish Market, the biggest fish market in - who knows? - the WORLD, and in JAPAN of all places, THE place for the fish industry and super high quality fish and octopus and shellfish. I'll admit, even I was perversely excited.  I mean, how many fish can you actually cram into one space?  What does it smell like?  How many varieties are there?  Are they alive?  Is there special equipment?  I needed to know.

So, Frenchie did his research and we set off at stupid o' clock to see the tuna auction, which started at 5am and lasted for an unknown period. We figured that rocking up at around 5:30am would be cool - don't want to look too keen, y'know, about fish (losers) - so we stalked a couple off the subway who were holding fish baskets (this is a thing) and were clearly destined for the fish market.  By this time, Frenchie was so excited that he was doing his fast, anticipating stride and ended up about twenty metres in front of me without even noticing I had lagged behind, struggling with decaffeination. 

Imagine my empathetic disappointment therefore when I caught up with Frenchie, who had stopped to talk to a friendly fish guard, and discovered that the tuna auction started at 5am, was now over, and the queue to be one of the lucky 120 people chosen on a first come, first serve basis as public members of the audience, started at 3am most mornings. I was genuinely sad. Poor Frenchie.  He put on a brave face and bought souvenirs with the fish market logo on them to console himself, and we ate sashimi for breakfast in a VERY cool alley restaurant, which did make things better. 

Three hours later when the market reopened for tourists, we were feeling a little more awake, so we dried our tears and took lots of photos of fish and fishmongers and I let Frenchie tell me all their names (the fish, not the mongers) to help distract him. There were some ENORMOUS lumps of tuna, and we stood and looked at them with a sort of subdued attitude of mourning, but then we saw the ice machine, which was AWESOME and looked like it had been invented in the 1860s for a Jules Verne novel and then we bought mugs with fish on them and by that time we'd forgotten all about the tuna. Phew. 

Day Two: The Dark Road to Sociopathy

Now, this counts as a highlight simply because it was culturally so far away from anything that Frenchie and I are comfortable with.  I am too old now to be polite about things that I see as clearly, inarguably, capital W Wrong (FGM, stoning, crack cocaine, polygamy etc.) so apologies if the following feels at all culturally intolerant: if you are a die hard Call of Duty fan, this is not the section for you, so fast forward to the Edo-Tokyo Museum. 

Japan is obviously famous for it's technology, computer games and manga. I don't have an issue with any of these things, really, but I feel pretty strongly about computer games that involve shooting things that are presented as alive.  I wasn't allowed to play computer games as a kid, and after being vaguely fascinated by Zelda at a friend's house, returned to books when I realised I didn't understand how the controls worked. Frenchie, on the other hand, had a healthy teenage boy and early twenties fixation with video games and knows what the x and the o button do, and at which point to hit the red and the green buttons. He was therefore very excited to visit a real life video arcade in Tokyo, the Mecca of gaming. 

The description of the video game district in the guide book sent chills down my child protection spine but, reminding myself that one should always be open to adventure and that not every man is out to destroy innocent children, I enthusiastically agreed to go to Akhibara and try out these arcades. There might be a dance machine, I reasoned, and I know how to use these and they make me feel like I can actually dance for real. 

When we arrived in Akihabara, I suppose it was really the 'living dolls' shop outside the station that started the alarm bells ringing again, but the bright lights were rather distracting and Frenchie was really excited by the thought of space age video game technology. The enormous posters of unrealistically proportioned manga girls in vadge-skimming school uniforms and the Japanese girls dressed as maids and made up to look like twelve year olds handing out leaflets was difficult to ignore, though. Marking this all up as 'cultural difference' and humming in a sort of passive aggressive way over the yelling feminist in my mind, Frenchie and I started hunting out our envisioned arcade and after a few false starts we found it!  There was a dance machine and a taiko machine. There were claw games, a whole floor of driving games, retro machines and touch screen football pitches, shooty games and - very cool indeed - space pods in which you could immerse yourself to shoot at aliens. I quite liked this one so we had a go and I was very bad at it. 

Next, we tried a shooty game because I was feeling all liberal and open minded but I got upset when I realised that all the male avatars were rugged and cool and made aggressive yelling noises and all the female avatars were in school uniform with their breasts hanging out (which stay completely still when they run and jump which is offensively unrealistic to anyone who has ever had to spend £30+ on a sports bra), have sparkly guns with star stickers on them, enormous eyes, and make sex noises when they get shot and fall in suggestive positions, normally face down. 

After this game, Frenchie too, was beginning to get creeped out, so we made a hasty exit past the long lines of middle aged men and teenage boys, the miniature porn dolls in the glass grabbing-crane case and the sad-looking, but very talented young man on the taiko machine, and stumbled out into the street to be faced with a thirteen year old girl (or what looked like) dressed as a nurse and a sex shop. 

Now, really, I'll agree that this is probably the most extreme version of video games and sex fetishes in the (possibly) world but the link between teenage boys playing violent video games in impossibly loud arcades, interacting for hours with nobody but the characters in shooty games at the detriment of real people friends, the creepy middle aged men staring at child-women avatars, the sex worker industry and, well, very unhealthy people and serial killers is very clear to me. No matter how much a guidebook tries to insist that it's all 'innocent enough', there is something inherently upsetting about this whole subculture that is a little bit unexplainable until you're standing in a dark, loud and smoky arcade wondering what had happened to Sonic the Hedghog and Lemmings and waiting for the mass murder and gang rape to begin. 

So, in summary, video arcades produce sociopaths. It's a fact.  If you have children, ask them (calmly - you don't know what effect the games have already had) to step away from these emotionally and socially damaging things, have a conversation with them about the great outdoors and their perceptions of the opposite gender and themselves whilst setting light to the console and then sign them up for some form of team sports.

Day Three: The Edo-Tokyo Museum of Miniature Realities

Following this dark and seedy atmosphere (I mean, the space pod game was really quite cool, to it's credit), we realigned ourselves as healthy adults by visiting the famed Edo-Tokyo Museum, a massive concrete edifice in a district called Ryogoku, the sumo district.  It's not very pretty - few post war buildings are - but it really is quite impressive because it's just so colossal. A huge, open concrete courtyard is shadowed by an overhanging floor, the two joined together by a bright red, long, plastic elevator tube and nothing else. Who knows what this space was designed for? Maybe the queues for the sumo tournaments?

Anyway, in comparison to this, once you get inside the museum, you are greated with two floors worth of impossibly intricate miniature worlds of Edo Japan (1100s-1867 when the Shoguns were about). Even though we couldn't understand many of the plaques in Japanese, the detail and painstaking effort that clearly went into these models was simply fascinating and kept us amused for a very long time, especially when we discovered the binoculars provided by the museum to get a closer look at the expression on the little models' faces and to peek in through the geishas' windows, and then outlined the exact rules of the 'take-a-picture-that-makes-the-model-look-real' game. The final deadline for this competition isn't until September, so I know you'll be waiting in anticipation for that news. There were also some interactive displays.  You know I sat in the geisha carrying vehicle and had my photo taken. Ooh yeah. 

What was really interesting about the museum was that, in comparison to a lot of Asian civilisation museums that I have seen (six in total, so a totally valid evaluation), at absolutely no point was there a big section about the
Brits/French/Dutch coming over and stampeding on native culture and generally being the stimulus for struggle. In fact, I later learned that when Christian missionaries (historical Good Guys when compared with Colonialists) came to Japan, the Shogunate laughed at them and said something along the lines of 'where missionaries come, colonialism follows', kicked them out and promptly banned Christianity. Now, I'm a nice Christian girl, but you can't say the Shogunate were wrong on that one, can you?

What the Japanese did do was get screwed over for a time by some American called Matthew C. Perry who was responsible for some sort of trade deal (historians?) but in the process of doing so, had a look at Western culture and, like Frenchie in a museum shop, pranced around excitedly saying, 'Ooh, we'll have this!  And this!  Oh, and two of those!  And this will go sooo nicely with my kimono, don't you think?' so basically, by the middle to end of the 19th century, Japan was totally, culturally awesome because they'd had nothing imposed on them, but chosen freely which parts of their own and other cultures to adopt. Amazing.  A bit sad that the histories of other countries' experience of Westeners didn't run so smoothly. 

What was also cool was the sheer pragmatism with which the WW2 Tokyo Air Raids were handled. Firstly, this section of the museum was proportionately sized in comparison with the 900 years that the exhibition aimed to cover and mostly focused on cool reconstructions of the methods used to bomb proof a Japanese home (made entirely of wood). One plaque, which made me smile (in a sort of respecting, not amused-at-destruction kind of way) explained why the death toll in Tokyo had been so high during the raids, listing 'effective US bombing techniques' as just one factor in a fairly frank list of 'wooden houses that lead to the quick spreading of fires after the raids, the rule that citizens were not permitted to leave until an official evacuation order had been passed, insufficient bomb shelters and population density'. I just think that's fair, don't you?  Far more fair than some other museums I have seen in my time and walked out of to puke because of the stench of the horrific bias.  Thanks, Japan. 

So, that's all for Tokyo. We then took a REALLY fast train to Kyoto, which is up next...