So the first thing I would like to do with this final blog post is thank everyone for reading! I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. This was my first foray into blogging and it's not nearly as wack as I had assumed. Second, I have to admit that leaving is going to be difficult. Getting back to life in Toronto isn't going to be as easy as I had originally thought. There are many things about this place that I am going to miss. I even think that there will be some things back home that I didn't really notice before that are really going to annoy me...which brings me to...drum roll please...my final thoughts on Japan!!! Read on for things I'll miss, things I won't miss, and things Toronto and Torontonians could learn from the Japanese.
Actually, there's one more thing that needs to be said before I get into this. I spent the majority of my time in Tokyo and thus most of these observations are largely about Tokyo itself and shouldn't be taken as reflections on Japan as a whole. From the travelling around that I did do, I noticed that Tokyo is very unique in Japan. Surprisingly, even Yokohama, which I visited yesterday with an easy 25 minute train ride from my dorm, shows many differences such as less people, a more laid-back atmosphere, a much nicer waterfront, a more modern feel and one central downtown core. Here's a picture that sums up the differences in a nutshell, with the tallest building in Japan in the background.
Okay, so to start it off, Japan is NOT as modern as people assume. Tokyo is a mix of old and new. Some of the subways were ghetto and super old, others were very modern and impressive. That being said, I did notice a lot of cool technologies. A card that can be read through your wallet that can pay for train travel, vending machine purchases and shopping at convenience stores, RFID tags in plates, monster TVs everywhere, including on trains (the picture below is a TV I found on a subway platform in Yokohama), barcodes everywhere that cellphones can scan with their cameras, bringing the users to certain websites and...get this...hand dryers that DRY YOUR HANDS! *Gasp!*
I guess I'll talk about the train system next. This is one where Torontonians should listen up. People, $2.25 a trip is NOT EXPENSIVE. I repeat, $2.25 a trip is NOT EXPENSIVE. So please calm down. Yes, the TTC leaves much to be desired, but it is NOT EXPENSIVE. In Tokyo the train system is top notch. In all my time here, only once did a train not arrive at the exact minute that it was scheduled to. There are express trains of all sorts, you can get to anywhere from anywhere in the city in under an hour, and connections are seamless and easy. That being said, the Tokyo transit system is made up of several different companies and each company will charge you a fare based on the distance you travel on their trains, with a minimum charge of about $1.35 CAD. This means that if you take more than one company to get anywhere (which is the case more often than not), you're already paying a minimum of $2.70 CAD. Read that carefully Torontonians. When I take a single company to get to the closest downtown core in 20 minutes, it costs me $2.16. That's the absolute minimum I ever paid for a trip. So one lesson here is that you get what you pay for.
Another lesson comes from of the number of people that use the system. The roads here were actually designed to confuse invaders, are often very narrow, and highways have expensive tolls. So driving isn't really an option in the city. So the vast majority of the population relies on the train system to get around. This means that there are rarely seats available on a train (even when there are 12 cars running every 3 minutes!!) and you are often completely squished. I got on a train once and I actually said to myself: "Wow I am the very last person who is going to fit on this train." Before the train left the station a minute later, I was closer to the door on the opposite side of the car than to the one I had entered through. People climb in, grab the top of the door and literally push as hard as they can until they are in. This is common and acceptable behaviour. And remember, all these people are paying these high fares to ride. So here we have an incredibly dense city that relies primarily on the train system. Of course the system is going to be better than one where the density is very low and everybody drives. That being said, there's no excuse for the lack of professionalism among TTC drivers and the ridiculous unreliability of the system as a whole.
This brings me to professionalism. This is something that I think I'm really going to miss. Everybody here takes their job incredibly seriously, no matter what it is. While this might be hard on the workers (I know I couldn't handle it), it makes for wonderful experiences as someone who depends on people doing their jobs. Station staff are always friendly and helpful, service at restaurants is ALWAYS top notch (even without tipping!) and in any type of shop anywhere, the sales staff and cashiers are always friendly, polite and by the book. This by the book thing can be pretty annoying though, because the book often contains hundreds of little pleasantries that staff are constantly tossing your way. Every time you enter a store, leave a store, walk past an employee, walk up to the cashier, pay the cashier...you get the idea. It's a constant barrage of jibber-jabber and precisely dictated bows. The locals just ignore it, but I always found it super annoying because I was always wondering if someone was asking me something or was looking for a response.
While I'm still annoyed, let me tell you about jingles. There are two things that are everywhere here: cartoons and jingles. Even the most serious signs will have cartoons on them. It's just part of the culture I guess. I saw an ad in a subway that had Steven Hawking and a woman next to him, and on the side was a big cartoon girl's face. I had no idea what that was all about. Community watch posters have cartoon burglars, police signs around have cartoon police faces...weird. And everywhere you go there are jingles! Each convenience store chain has it's own jingle when you walk in, there are different door-closing jingles for different trains...and even the same trains have different jingles for different stops! Madness, and super annoying.
One thing that for me was a super mixed bag here was food. I was definitely living the privileged life here. The pay was good enough for me to not worry about price. And food here is a big part of any night out. All my work related parties were heavy on the booze (more on that later), but also really heavy on great food. We would go to an "Izakaya" and order plates and plates of expensive sashimi, fried squid and various other fantastic dishes. Similarly, when out with my western friends, we would always stumble upon some great restaurant and eat fantastic raw salmon or the like. Oh, and then there were the sushi-go-rounds, where the chefs were constantly making little plates of sushi that you could pick and choose from at your leisure as they rotated around the restaurant. Those were always fantastic. It should also be noted that the quality of restaurants in general was very very high. There were only one or two places that I can think of that were less than stellar. You could usually pick at random and end up eating quite well. So now you're thinking, "what could be a mixed bag about that?" Well let me tell you. It's all Japanese food. While I did find some decent Italian and Indian, it was never even close to what I'm used to back home. By the end of this trip I was getting really tired of the same ol' same ol' every single day. That's not to say that going out wasn't still awesome, because it was. Just for every other night where I stayed in, my choices were very limited and that was really starting to bother me.
Another mixed bag is societal pressure. On the one hand, from what I can figure anyway, societal pressures are largely responsible for the cleanliness of the streets and trains (despite the total lack of garbage cans), the care people take to clean up after their pets (often even caring a bottle of water with them to wash away the urine when their dog pees on a pole), the quietness on trains (talking on your cellphone is heavily discouraged on transit) and the professionalism mentioned previously. However, often society isn't the best decision-maker. Women here are SKINNY. Most people think that's just in their genes, but it isn't. The notion of beauty here requires that women be extremely skinny. Everywhere there are diet drugs and such, every food item has the contained calories on it displayed clearly on the front, etc. Not good. Smoking is also still widely accepted, but eating/drinking/smoking on the streets is considered very rude, as is littering. So you have rules where there are only certain areas for smoking outside, not to benefit non-smokers (people still smoke in restaurants, bars, and clubs), but to avoid rudeness and cigarette butts on the ground. Furthermore, the pressures on people produce all sorts of crazy behaviour, from daily suicides, to abundant and way-over-the-top pornography that's widely accepted, read, and sold everywhere (I've definitely peeked over a shoulder or two on the train only to see animated nudity), to fondling and sexual harassment on trains that is so widespread that there are now women-only cars, to the alcohol issues that I'll talk about next.
People here work long hours, must be very polite to seniors in the workplace, and are under a lot of pressure to perform well and maintain employment. This results in the few opportunities for release being used for excessive binge drinking. Never before have I seen people in suits being carried out of trains by other people in suits, people passed out all over train platforms at 5am on a Saturday, grown men hugging rock gardens because they can't even walk (this guy was in khakis and a nice shirt and tie) and lab parties that result in someone being taken to the hospital for alcohol poisoning. That party had a mini-keg IN THE LAB SPACE. You would never see that back home.
I've been told that this ridiculous behaviour is largely accepted by co-workers and even bosses. I found it very depressing and actually kind of pathetic to see grown people in that state. The mini-keg was fun though, and GOD the sake here is good.
Finally, I'd like to briefly mention the city folk's relationship with nature. It's not good. They pave all their riverbeds, greenness is considered very important and yet is no where to be found. The campus I was on was very green with respect to the rest of the city, but even then they "pruned" a beautiful treed area to almost nothing. Why?! Here are two pictures to contrast it. The green area is further down the same street as the pruned area. The pruned area looked like the green area when I first arrived. I was also thoroughly disappointed by other "nature" areas, often meticulously maintained, with gift shops, pavement, people and stores all around. Often city parks have very limited opening hours and entrance fees. There is definitely natural beauty outside of the cities, but the cities are seriously lacking. When the density of buildings and people was making me feel claustrophobic, I truly yearned for some green space, but it was usually no where to be found.
I feel like I could go on forever. That's the thing about this place, the differences sneak up on you slowly. I wasn't really blown away when I first got here, I actually just thought it was somewhat of a Japanese version of the USA. I slowly found myself noticing and thinking about more and more peculiarities however, until eventually I had pages and pages of things to write about, ponder and consider. This is a collection of what comes to mind initially, but there is definitely much more. So if you are still interested, I would love to talk more about it...just ask me in person! But be warned, it's been a very lonely and quiet summer for me, with very little meaningful discussions and human interactions, so I'm probably gonna talk your ear off. You've been warned.
So long Japan...and thanks for all the fish.
