Japan is 3 hours behind New Zealand, roughly the same size and shape, similar green country side with occasional mountain ranges and it even has those days with summer, winter, spring and autumn all rolled in to one. Yet, it really couldn’t be a more different place. To start with, while sharing a similar land area, Japan has over 30 times the population of our own. This makes it crowded. From the airport to Kawasaki where I would be staying, everything building was packed as closely to its neighbour as physically possible; most of the streets are one way, as there isn’t the space for wider roads.
4 hours, but only 50 kilometres, after arriving in Tokyo, I was in Kawasaki, a city possibly the size of Auckland that is about 30 minutes from the Tokyo Metropolitan Centre. I was staying with the Hanaokas, family friends of my Japanese teacher from school. We had a traditional meal that night, Tamagoyaki, a variant on a stir-fry in which cooked vegetables and meat are dipped in raw egg just before eating. Not your average meal, but it turned out to be quite tasty.
The next day was busy. We started off by visiting the famous Tokyo tower, from which you have a 360 view of the sprawling concrete jungle of the Tokyo Met.
Following this we visited Akihabara, also known as Tokyo’s ‘Electric Town’. The shop below is Yodobashi camera, an 8 story building with an entire floor dedicated to a particular type of electronic. Floor 4 for TVs, floor 5 for cameras etc.
After a good work out of the credit card, we headed to the NHK headquarters. This is the Japanese broadcasting agency, much like England has the BBC. While not a particularly interesting building, I managed to get some cute Domo-kun memorabilia.
Lastly was Shibuya, a rather classy part of town that contains many department stores and up market shops. Shopping in Tokyo is as much of an experience in itself as anything else. Upon entering, your ears are bombarded with praise from the various employees repeating ‘Irrashaimase’ which doesn’t have any particular English translation, but the gist of it is that you’re a very nice person, and it would be very kind, extremely kind in fact, if you were to patronise us lowly store employees by buying something.
The photo above is a segment of the insides of another electronics shops, Bic Camera. Here one could purchase a mobile phone for a mere $15. Unfortunately all it allowed you to do was make phone calls. So much for the country of robots and high technology.
That evening we dined at a local sushi restaurant where I tried such delicacies as salmon eggs, crab eggs and sea urchin (all raw, of course). However let’s just say you won’t be finding me queuing up for them anywhere.
Prior to arriving in Japan, I was lucky enough to have had a visit arranged to an NEC research laboratory, thanks to the father of one of my friends. NEC, or Nippon Electric Company, is the largest technology company in Japan, with around 150,000 employees worldwide. Throughout the morning I was shown an assortment of demos ranging from face recognition to automatic obstacle avoidance in cars. It was a fascinating experience, and I met some very intelligent and fun people.
That afternoon I left my lovely host family, who were extremely kind and for the experiences I had with them I am very grateful.
As my flight the next morning required me to be at the airport at 6:30am, I had planned to stay somewhere a little closer.
I was staying in a district of Tokyo called Asakusa, a place I had visited previously on a school trip in 2004. The youth hostel I was staying in was entirely quintessential, with an assortment of American and European backpackers. I had a wander around the town and was very pleased to stumble upon a lovely market we had been to 5 years ago.
After a $12 big mac at Makudonarudo (try saying it aloud), I headed back over the river, past the fabulous Asahi beer brewery building, and down a nice quiet street to where the hostel was.
After a 4am start, I managed to navigate the slightly overwhelming Tokyo subway/train system to Narita Airport from where I would be flying to Frankfurt, Germany.
All in all, I had an amazing experience. I feel a lot more confident with my Japanese now, and sometimes have to stop myself from replying in it when someone says something in German (my knowledge of German is severely limited, mainly to my favourite types of food and not much else).
I have no doubt that I will be back to the land of the rising sun in the (hopefully) near future, and I strongly recommend it to anyone with even the faintest inkling of a desire to go.
