Narita airport. My boss and I walk to the immigration counter and hand out our passports. John is invited to proceed without further questioning but the immigration officer keeps my passport, browsing through the pages with his impeccable white gloves. “Sir, please follow me.” I ask if there is a problem. “Just wait here sir.” Here is a white room full of empty seats facing a counter – no one behind it. I’ve been through second-level immigration control in the US but this land, its customs and its language are totally foreign to me. Intimidated, I wonder if someone is watching me through the video surveillance cameras. A man enters the room holding my passport. “What business do you have in my country, sir?” Prospects of a warm welcome to Japan are shrinking fast. I explain my scheduled meetings with several Japanese companies including X and Y, and I show my business card. The man leaves without a word. After a few minutes he comes back: “You have a French passport but you work for an American company. Do you have a permanent resident card?” I nod and show my green card. He grabs it and leaves the room again. As I wonder about flight options to return to San Francisco, the man appears again. He hands out my passport, green card, and immigration forms with the coveted approval stamp: “Thank you sir, you can go now”. I guess this is welcome – the Japanese way.
***
The limo bus driver also wears shiny white gloves – does everyone here have those? Before starting the bus he bows to us clients and speaks a few sentences in Japanese – maybe introducing himself and expressing how honored he is to drive us around. I don’t have a clue. As the bus leaves the curb the girl who collected our tickets bows several times towards us. I watch her in a distance and wonder how much she hates bowing to buses all day long. All the limo bus riders are men, as enforced by a sign that seems strangely inappropriate in one of the world’s most developed countries: a masculine silhouette in black, a feminine silhouette in red. Women are not allowed on board. They just punch the tickets and bow.
***
I am still pissed at our Tokyo coworkers who made the hotel reservations: John, the executive, got a room at the luxurious Marunouchi hotel overlooking the famous Shibuya Station whereas I, simple minion, am staying at the Marriott in the outer part of the Ginza district, overlooking… nothing of interest. The room is nice though a bit small, and the toilet looks like a star wars spaceship. It talks, makes music (or nature sounds: select whatever inspires you most), warms up the seat so your cheeks don’t get cold, and washes your butt with a water jet at the optimal temperature. That is if you can figure out how to make it work. I guess the Japanese love to have their butt pampered, and they don’t hesitate to use advanced technology to indulge.
***
Hungry from a few hours of wandering the streets of Tokyo, John and I find a skyscraper with panoramic views of the city and a variety of restaurants. We get seated in a dark and classy ambiance. In a finger snap our coats disappear while hot tea, water and some delicious edamame beans appear at our table. The menu in Japanese is sprinkled with scarce and dubious English translations. Scratching his head, John ventures: “We just want a snack. What kind of sushi do you have?” The waitress freezes for a few seconds then explains: “I am so sorry sir, we do not serve sushi here. This is a restaurant.” John and I look at each other, realizing our cultural faux pas. For sushi there is only one way: the doorway. We feel a bit awkward but this seems nothing in comparison to the embarrassment of the waitress and the rest of the staff who keep bowing, smiling and repeating “so sorry”, as if the mistake was theirs and they had to be embarrassed, not us.
***
Sunday morning. Running shoes and headphones on, I am going for a jog. Start in the high-end shopping district of Ginza among thousands of shoppers wearing Vuitton, Gucci, Chanel and every other luxury brand you can think of. Soon I reach the beautiful gardens and rivers surrounding the Imperial Palace. I just hit the place where wealthy and healthy Tokyo dwellers like to run on Sunday mornings. Enjoying the scenery and the people-watching as much as the workout, I follow a group of visitors going uphill towards the Palace. An unfriendly voice breaks through my iPod’s music. “Sir … sir … no running here, only walking!” An Imperial guard is speed walking (not running) after me. I imagine Japanese prison cells as super clean hotel rooms with high-tech toilets but I’d rather not verify these assumptions first-hand, so I walk back to the unrestricted area to resume my run with the locals. Some runners wear race bibs, and soon I reach the finish line of a race, trying to sprint faster than the guy ahead of me in the hope of getting my picture in the local newspaper. I will never know if I did get my face in Tokyo Times but I know this guy was much faster than me.
Later that day I meet up with John and we stroll in another part of the Imperial Gardens, in awe at the sheer size of this prime location estate in one of the most densely populated cities on the planet. An old man engages the conversation in English. Like the immigration officer, he is interested in knowing “what business we have in his country”. We work in solar energy, we come from San Francisco in California, blah blah blah. Completely out of the blue, the man stares at me and enquires: “Are you gay?” I remain speechless but John cracks up laughing and replies: “No he’s not gay, he’s just French.”
***
That night I am on my own, and I realize how lucky I am to be at the Marriott Hotel: within a few minutes of a random stroll I come across elevated train tracks underneath which restaurants and bars are nestled. The night is dark, steam comes out of vents in the ground, I can’t read any of the signs around me. This feels like a scene in “Bladerunner” – I’m expecting Harrison Ford to pull out his gun and shoot a runaway Replicant any minute now. I pick a restaurant quite randomly and go down the stairs to sit at the bar (like all the others, this place is slightly below ground level because of the train tracks above). Not knowing what I am ordering, I end-up with a big piece of raw tuna fish in my plate, a spoon, chopsticks, and no idea how to eat this thing. A businessman in a suit is sitting alone at the other end of the bar. He stands up, walks to me and in a perfect English he asks if I need help. Yes!!! His trained hands grab the spoon, scoop the tuna meat from the skin and remove the bones in a few surgical motions. The Samaritan wishes me good appetite, congratulates me for having chosen this dish, returns to his seat and finishes his dinner as if nothing happened.
***
Walking the streets of Ginza I am filled with mixed emotions. This city is so big, so beautiful, so modern, so clean, so vibrant, so busy, so organized… but a tide of sadness is rising inside me, flooding my soul. Some say that every city can be boiled down to one word, one single thing that captures the essence of the place. For me, the word for Tokyo is ‘order’. And it drives me nuts. I want to scream on top of my lungs, make weird faces, take off my clothes and run around slapping people until they wake up and start acting like human beings, not robots. Instead I just observe, take some beautiful night shots of Ginza and rejoice that I am flying home to San Francisco tomorrow. Tokyo, you are a beautiful and amazing city and I am sure you have a heart too. Maybe 48 hours were too short to find it.
Cedric, 8/01/2011
(Trip to Tokyo in December 2010)
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