OK, so this post has been a while coming, but today I finally have a breather so I can sit down and write.
I will be moving.
Not out of Japan, just out of Chiba. I'm not sure what to do with this blog, though. I'm sure I'll continue it, and I'll probably stick with the same name, but I will be living in Tokyo. Yes, I'm movin on up!
As I'm going to be no longer a resident of the great city of Abiko in a short while, I decided over the next two weeks in the lulls between frenzied packing and cleaning to write about my time here - not just Abiko but my life in Japan as a whole.
I think the best way to do this is to divide the topic up into a few posts, and as this is the internet the obvious answer to the question of how to arrange it is to make lists. So I'll start off with the one I've been thinking about most:
5 Things I Miss About Old Japan
1. The Crazy Mess of Tokyo
I first arrived in Japan early in the summer of 1998. So what was Japan like back then? In a word, messy.
My first impressions of Japan of course were colored by where I ended up - the conference for new English teachers was held at the Keiyo Plaza in Shinjuku (新宿). So we get out of a bus, jet lagged and then even more drained by a two hour drive from the airport in to town, to arrive at the west exit circle of skyscrapers. To get a view of sort of what I saw when I arrived, there's a great picture up at wikipedia here. Of course the view from the street level was a lot more hectic, and the mind-draining heat of summer combined with masses of shoppers and other random crazies you see in Tokyo just blew my mind.
Of course none of that has specifically changed. What has changed is the mess-like quality of the arcades you used to have all over the place. Just across from the hotel I was staying at there was this huge electronics bazaar - a mass of kiosks with people hawking cellphones like it was a fish market. Walk around a corner and you had the same thing with knockoff watches (I recall seeing a Rorex very vividly), men's jackets, perfume, everything. And if you went to Ueno (上野) nearby where I'll soon be living, there was another mass of shops like that clustered in the first floor under a huge beer hall.
There is still a lot of hustle and bustle, and the number of people in Tokyo is probably a lot more than it was then, but the randomness, the energy was just different. It was also a lot shabbier... but sometimes shabby is good.
2. Bargaining
This is a huge one. When I got to Japan you could really bargain here; especially when you were shopping for electronics it was almost expected. Ask for a few thousand yen off the price, for memory to go with your new camera, or for almost anything and you could usually get a better deal.
Nowadays when you're making big purchases, or during sale times you can sometimes do the same thing. I just got a new TV to put in my new place and I was (I'm happy to admit) able to talk the guy down about 15% off the base price. But back in the day you could bargain in a lot more places, and more people seemed keen on trying. Now most of the time if you even try the staff look at you like you just sprouted a second head.
3. Boring fashion for the Old, Crazy for the Young
OK, this wasn't something I saw right off the plane. I noticed it more over the first few years. Have you ever heard of ganguro (ガングロ)? That's when mostly young girls but some men go for a really crazy tan then die their hair either blonde or silver and do their eyes in matching makeup. Just crazy (for more info and pics check here). It was one of many gyaru (ギャル - like "gal" in English) styles that popped up at the time, almost as memorable as the ever-present super short skirts and loose socks look that was here before I arrived. All of these were fashions designed specifically only for the very young, and in many cases designed with the explicit intent of alienating adults.
Contrast that with adult styles at the time and you could see just how extreme youth fashion was. Now Japan has a lot of hipness with what people wear across all ages but back in 1998 especially the style for adults was plain colors, smart but also very plain suits, slacks, and loafers. Have you ever watched the Japanese Ring (wow, tried to find a link to the preview vid but I can't)? Yeah, what they're wearing in that movie is like how everyone over 23 dressed, constantly. When in doubt go with a brown blazer.
OK, for me, living here (and at my age) current fashion is obviously nicer to wear. But the ultra conservative vs ultra new was really cool at the time.
4. Summer
This one is simple. Summer in Japan, around 1998, was hot. Really hot and muggy. But it was livable, especially because it got cool at night. Now? Not so much. For people in some places the effects of global warming/climate change may not be so obvious, but in central Japan where I am it is. Back my first few years you could go an entire summer without keeping the AC on at night except like 2-3 nights the whole summer. But that's just a dream now - many years it seems like you need to keep it on from mid-July until halfway through September.
OK, that's probably exaggerating a bit, but it's definitely gotten worse. And this is coming from a guy who's gotten really used to the heat in general. And to make things more interesting I will soon be moving deeper into the concrete jungle. Yay me! I just hope the number of windows I'll have on the 2nd floor (did I mention I will have two floors?) will help keep the place a bit cooler. We'll see.
***
OK, this post is probably beyond any bearable length, so I'll keep the last one short.
5. The Dinginess - the Feeling of a Used World
Some people have talked about Star Wars as having a Used Future - the idea that Lucas' movie creation was made much more appealing and more believable by the worn, dusty and dirty look. The vehicles characters fly around in look high-tech, but also look very much like they've been used and abused.
When I first got to Japan, the massive rebuilding/remaking boom hadn't started yet. Well, maybe it had, but I was just lucky enough to get here before it was done. There were wonderful old apartments like the Dojunkai (同潤会 - Japan's first modern concrete apartments. Click here to see some images), some nasty, some dilapidated, but they all were tough and built to last and had character. You also had the magnificent Nishigokaikan (西郷会館 here's a nice blog post in Japanese that shows a lot of the building), home of a nice restaurants above, odd little drug stores below, and a grungy little theater (where I watched the first movie I ever saw in Japanese without subtitles).
And of course it wasn't just limited to a few examples.
But like what's happened in the US, things have been cleansed, polished over. I like new and efficient. I like some of the neat building designs even. But they often go too far, as you can see if you walk around any of the major stations lately.
Which, of course, this blog is about 1/2 my record of the old in Japan before it disappears.
At least it hasn't gotten quite as bad as in the US, but Japan could be heading the way of endless big box stores and strips of road 100 miles long that are indistinguishable from the next 100. I only hope not.
***
OK, that's where I'll end this post. Keep checking back for more soon. I'll be continuing this mini-selection of posts about my time here soon.
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