Out on dates, my girlfriend cannot help remind me of my insatiable desire to watch people. They pass by us, in cafes, restaurants, just on the street, and I am always asking myself who these people are - that I will never meet - and what motivates them; why do they do the things they do.
I’ve been ski instructing in Japan. At the beginning of my trip I spent a week or so in Tokyo, sometimes alone, sometimes with friends, and there was 35 million people for me to observe. An addicts paradise, one might say. Here are some of the highlights from my short time there…
The Airport Nappers
Upon arrival, I expressed some anxiety to my friend about having to spend the good part of a night at Haneda Airport, in Tokyo. At some airports around the world, their authorities dislike travellers who use their airport as a hotel. He told me not to worry, plenty of people are using the seats at Haneda as beds, and so on.
But I was more than astonished to see, pressed up against a wall, an entire column of people, fast asleep, using jerseys and other clothing, as pillows and blankets. My first instinct was that of disgust. I imagined the slurpy, sticky floor; the millions - yes millions of mucky shoes - that must have preceded them choosing to sleep there..
But betraying that instinct was the sight of an enormous robot vacuum cleaner, hoovering up pieces of rubbish, and an army of human janitors, studiously wiping and mopping, and I realised - remembered - that Japan, despite its stupefying population size, is probably the cleanest country in the world. And that these travellers' decision to sleep on the floor, beside its hardness, was far from a bad one.
And so, I questioned my own decision to sleep on a single seat, my neck when the sun crept in the window, craned painfully at a ludicrously unnatural angle.
Even Pokemon Wasn’t Enough
On the train the next morning, I was mashed, with countless other people, into a carriage. But mashed isn’t the right word for the Japanese. It would be insulting to associate their remarkable ability to order and organise themselves with a Western side dish. More accurately, everybody, for the most part, stood or sat in the most reasonable and importantly, polite, position they could. It was as if they shared a group consciousness; a hive mind; that, inexplicably, placed everyone in the least offensive spots on the train. I just did what they did.
In acting out their roles, people aimlessly looked ahead, others were staring at their phones; there was barely a murmur from anyone.
But this one guy, standing behind me, leaning against the seat, was snoring. It was his snoring that alerted me to turning around.
He had his phone, resting his hand, with the screen facing outward, basically upside down. On it was a phone emulator, and I quickly identified the game as Pokemon Red or Blue. On the top of the screen (or bottom, depending the way you look at it), was the in-game text-narrator asking the player to take his next action. It was flashing, and at the end of the sentence the three dots ‘...’ kept repeating.
I wondered about this man’s life. He had a bag on his back, and another thrown over his front. His clothes were clean, but old. And he had on a black jersey covered with an enormous map of Los Angeles.
His sleeping on the train, in the middle of day, made me think he was incredibly busy, like most of the other Japanese in Tokyo. A low-level business man of some-kind that didn’t work for a big company - because of the lack of smart attire. Maybe he was travelling I guess; maybe for the small sales business he owned. Did he have children? A wife? Who knows.
He was definitely exhausted. Even the glory days of his youth, Pokemon Red and Blue, couldn’t keep him awake.
Don’t Expect Everyone to Speak English ... Or Japanese
I arrived at my hotel around 9AM, my only sleep the aforementioned craned neck scenario at the airport. Two nightmarish hours, incessantly invaded - but in seeming apology - by the ever-polite announcements of flight arrivals in Japanese over the loudspeaker.
The hotel was out of the way, if one could use that phrase for the seemingly infinite metropolis of Tokyo, down a relatively quiet alleyway not far from Shinjuku train station. Discussing the scale of the place with a friend a day later, also from New Zealand, we described Tokyo as “cities within cities”. You can be surrounded by cyberpunk skyscrapers, glittering public instalments, and flashing advertisements, get on a high speed train for half an hour, walk out of the underground, and be surrounded by cyberpunk skyscrapers, glittering public instalments, and flashing advertisements. The New Zealand brain is not prepared for the scale of the place, the size of buildings, the level of technology. Even getting on the train is a trip - In Dunedin, we don’t have trains. Public transport (the bus) sucks - and is reserved for school children, the elderly, and the homeless.
But what is especially confounding, is how the Japanese in Tokyo seem to live: On top of eachother. Stacked, piled - in exacting fashion - in enormous buildings, in tiny rooms. Personal space, though apparently a powerful virtue in the country, is not constituted the same way here. Their boundaries are a lot smaller - they appear to need less room. In New Zealand, much like other parts of the West, we grew up to believe we needed space - and lot’s of it. A spot of land, large enough to fit a decent sized house, with a garden outside, gated of course, so the barking dog doesn’t run out onto the road.
My hotel appeared no different to the classic Japanese living quarters. Squished between two four or five story buildings was a tiny entrance. Small cobblestones led to wooden sliding doors, where one had to duck under a cloth denoting in Kanji the name of the hotel.
My first thought was that this was a more traditional hotel than I was used to staying at in my previous visits to the country. And so I might as well use one of the about ten Japanese words I know upon entering: “Konichiwa”.
The man - or more aptly, boy - at reception looked at me with a pained expression. I tried English. He only moaned or squealed something. It wasn’t a word, I was sure of it. After a minute or two explaining - trying to explain - that I was here to check in, his eyes lit up at the sight of an arrival: A young woman.
She addressed me in broken English: I saw immediately the roles these two played in the business. She was front of house, she could speak to people in English and deal with clients, and he, like most men and boys, did the dirty work: He was holding a mop.
I found out later that these two were Vietnamese; that this Japanese styled hotel was run by people who - to the ignorant Westerner - looked and acted as if they were Japanese, but were likely recent arrivals from a country with vast differences: Vietnam.
I began to wonder how many East Asians from other countries were here living in the city. I don’t know the numbers, but I’m sure there were vast amounts of Korean, Chinese, Filipino, Thai, and other Vietnamese, who were commonly mistaken for being Japanese, that helped keep the city moving, running similar hotels, beauty parlours, and random shops.
There must be millions.
The Disfigured Leg
Japan appears to have a culture where everybody buys in. There is a social contract, evolved over millennia, enforced from above by the elites and politicians, and enforced from below by your average Japanese. Inside this contract are a series of doctrines the citizen should follow: Hard work, cleanliness, orderliness, respect of authority, politeness, political correctness, impeccable service, and so on.
The general buy-in of the populace can help explain why everything runs so efficiently in such an organised manner. The citizens have outsourced even simple decisions - like when to cross the road - to the state and to the culture. This is the essence of collectivism, in my eyes. What the individual wants and desires is secondary to what is best for the collective: The group hive mind.
Despite me personally having what some might call … an individuality complex - the strong aversion to being told what to do - I cannot help but remark at the impressiveness of their system. Although, like any country, Japan will have its flaws, here was a place that appeared to have somewhat eradicated corruption - to me the most important goal a society should aim for, whatever the social structure, collectivism or individualism or some hybrid.
And so, the mass of people in Tokyo all look and behave in this extraordinarily ‘correct’ way; that like on the train, they were acting out their various roles in society, with the knowledge that the doctrines that drive their society are good ones, that not only benefit the collective, but actually benefit them too.
But on the surface, to someone who hasn’t been here long, the collective buy-in of the Japanese can look like this swath of brilliant ‘sameness’. Yes, one could distinguish class, and identify common stereotypes: The exhausted businessman, the stylish young couple, the wise and serene older person, the ravaged - and dangerously young - prostitute; but the obvious lack of individuality was palpable. Until I saw something later that first day on the streets I recognised: Another Westerner. Man did they stick out.
And they didn’t just stick out like a sore thumb. They stuck out like a horribly disfigured leg. Most of them were tourists, often European, but not always; way taller than everybody else, walking way slower than everybody else, looking around in a state of confused awe. On their mind in those moments, was likely the thoughts I was having: “What the … that thing is … extraordinary (looking up at a skyscraper); I can’t believe how clean everything is (looking down at amazement at the ground); now … how do I get to my hotel (looking at Google maps on their phone)?”
I could imagine that like me, they were overwhelmed at the sheer brilliance of the place. It was like going to the future. Stimuli from a cyberpunk novel were assaulting their senses to a degree a human cannot cope.
And importantly, it was not only the ‘sight-seeing’ - the buildings, the old shrines, the VR lounges - that astonished them. It may have been subconscious, but it was the culture shock of being teleported, suddenly, into a society that values individual freedom less. That, if they were to live here, their insatiable desire to ‘express themselves’ was going to be quietly mocked.
Too Cool
Later that first day, I was waiting at a train station in Ikebukuro - the ‘city’ over from me - to meet up with my friends from New Zealand and Australia. I was sitting inside a high society department store several stories from the ground, scabbing off their wifi. Around me were jewellery shops, designer clothing - things well outside my price and class range.
My friends, predictably hungover, had decided to take their time. So I sat back, and through my hazy vision, which had failed to be focussed by a recent caffeine shot, watched the browsers of this fancy place.
A man, tall and broad for a Japanese person, ascended the escalator in front of me. He had long hair, tied up, and a beard - like a samurai I thought. He was wearing what appeared to be a bathrobe, in an incredibly vibrant red. In front of him was a slim and short woman, her extraordinarily long hair (down to her buttocks) platted all the way down. She had a baby on her front. I realised, instantly, that these were the coolest people I had ever seen. That was something I had noticed immediately when walking around Tokyo - the Japanese know how to do cool. The West just tries.
I watched them walk toward me. The man, as many cool people do, gave me the ‘you’re not important enough for my time’ look. I imagined that this guy must be … I don’t know, some musician or artist of some kind. Maybe an actor. He could get any woman he wanted. They would be obsessed with him. Just look at what he had beside him, a beautiful, and almost fantastical looking, wife.
I watched them walk away from me, and I noticed something curious. He reached out to hold her hand. He managed to snaffle her forearm. I kept watching. After about ten-slow steps, side by side, she pulled her hand away, to her chest, and turned right down a hallway. He stood there, defeated, and walked the other way.
Huh, I wondered. Had he done something? Was he bringing her here to make up for his indiscretion? Was his exterior just a front?
For all his oozing coolness, he could not keep it locked down at home.
What a shame.
They Look A Little Young
After a ludicrously long sleep, I found a simple cafe down a side alley where I could read. It was around 7.30AM, and surprisingly, it wasn’t that busy. Business men and women were having their morning coffee, reading newspapers, and - oddly to me - playing games on their phone.
I was listening to music, and taking notes from the book I was reading, Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart. Gradually, the place began to fill, but I barely noticed; until slicing through my calming and sometimes brooding ambient playlist on spotify, was several piercing shrieks. I looked up.
There were three girls getting ice-cream. All had miniskirts on. Very short miniskirts, criss-crossing, like a school-girl’s. One had fishnet stockings on. They also had low v-neck tops. Their make up was dense, and had begun to slide off their faces. They were obviously drunk.
They were prostitutes, or ‘service-girls’ of some kind. They barely looked sixteen.
Around me, I noticed older Japanese glancing - as harsh a glance could be; the way a parent does at their child when they are disappointed. These girls not only were acting inappropriately - being drunkenly loud in a public place in the morning when people were going to work - but they were members of a subclass of Japanese society likely shunned by everybody else: That of the sexual favours industry.
The industry, at least around the Tokyo suburbs (or more aptly - ‘cities’) Shinjuku, Shibuya, and Ikebekuro, appeared to be booming. Later that night when out with friends, the various red-light districts offered up some fascinating viewing.
Down tiny alleys, layered on top of each other on separate floors, were neon signs, flashing images of tantalisingly young Japanese girls above Kanji characters. On street level appeared to be the exact models from the screens, cutely holding up signs. Signified in Japanese Yen, were the services they offered. Although I couldn’t read the Kanji, one was under no allusions as to their specifics of the services. They ascended from a happy ending massage, all the way to the full sha-bang.
Incredibly, the place was still organised and clean, and beside the odd drunken Westerner - us - relatively quiet. None of the women aggressively approached - or approached at all - they stood underneath their respective buildings, a shy little smile on their faces, saying nothing. My friend remarked, “I just give them a smile you know, because of the shit lives they must live. It’s pretty sad.”
The only people to give us any sort of irritation - well, more accurately moderate amusement - was a fleet of North African men. Many of them, at least in the areas we were, owned and operated the sex parlours, and, understandably, were motivated in getting clients. On the street, they did aggressively approach, sometimes clipping your arm, and informing us in broken English that their institutions had the best girls in the business.
My friend told me that two nights previous, he had been approached by a Moroccan man. He began, sermon-like, to describe the qualities of life, our place on Earth, and what our existence means. He concluded that the best way to achieve ever-lasting happiness was “through the titties maaaan.”
Here was a salesman with a comedic flair. We hoped he got his business.
Chur,
The Delinquent Academic