I landed back in London near 7am and thankfully both my bags came through, as one of them had my contact lenses in and I was tired. A careful drive back from the Gatwick long stay car park, on the left side of the road. That’s one of the things we have in common with the Japanese right now.
There’s a great deal that is very different over there, of course. It’s the other side of the world. I’ve already touched on this but cash is still king and it really highlights how arrogant we are about technology that in such an incredible tech country they respect the fact that it could all go to the wall. Attack London with something that stops all the card machines working, and everyone will go into screaming panic. If they notice in Japan they’ll just shrug. They’ve got plenty of yen around the place. I got to know the coins very well. Lucky 5 for throwing at the shrines. “It’s got a hole in it!” So does the 50. My dad showed me these coins. They haven’t changed since he was there in the forties and they are still in heavy use. I love the connection aspect, the counting, the sorting. It feels more like an exchange than *boop*. You can keep an eye on it. I had two 500 yen coins left and tiny bit of shrapnel and so I went and found a bowl of noodles for Y1225 which pretty much cleaned me out of coins. I spent the last few hundred on silly gacha for gifts.
Slot machines are a big part of culture here. Again this is informed by the cash use. Shinto shrines are activated by throwing a shiny thing into the box. Doesn’t matter what denomination. Some without boxes have so much money in piles in front of them. If everyone in England gave me a penny I could buy a house. Someone must occasionally go around, a priest, blessing the shrine, removing all the old shiny stuff that the spirits won’t need anymore because look at all the smoke and the chanting and now there’s NEW shiny stuff. So you chuck money in a box for worship. Then to relax you chuck money in a box and fire shiny pachinko balls. In the morning you chuck money in a box for a coffee. They have them hot in vending machines as well as cold. The can is cooked into the coffee, but you get your aluminium shot with caffeine.
Take your shoes off indoors and in the temples. Again the religion informing the secular, but also for practicality because tatami is basically straw and you’ll ruin it in wet boots. Every home provides slippers for guests. There are even special ones in the loo so you don’t wear the loo slippers in the home space. And the loo seat is almost always warm and can be calibrated to bumgun you with warm water if you can read kanji. Or make sense of some pretty clear pictures.
Bowing. We bow a lot. To the spirits and to one another. Smoke. There are smoking cafes and non smoking cafes. Hate smoke? Just go to a non smoking place. The smoking places don’t mind losing your custom. Everyone wins and the non smokers don’t have to look at someone’s horrible tunour on the table, or some actor pretending to blow smoke at kids or whatever some valueless committee has decided will be the thing to save the world from smoke. Also incense. Everywhere. I can get behind that. I’ve loaded up on the stuff. It’s strong and good and will key specific memories.
You might suddenly hear a merry tune coming from loudspeakers, like a much less demanding call to prayer. I usually got this at 5pm in rural towns but that might have been to do with the fact I was normally walking from 7 to 3. It seems pointless until you examine it and remember that Japan has all the lovely hot springs because it is volcanic, on loads of fault lines and very prone to earthquake. This is why they are so clever with living space. They can’t build high. The speakers are there as a tsunami warning, or quake or bears or North Korean Nuke. If they play that happy tune, the warning system is still working and everything is ok.
They eat very well. They eat everything. I had some pretty hairy food experiences. But even I drew the line at raw horse.
It’ll take a while for my stomach to settle now though. An onslaught of strange flavours and very little familiar. My happy place, but there is such a thing as too much variety. I’m craving fish and chips at the moment.
Naked public baths, gender segregated… but I love the onsen culture. Get clean. There’s a stool in the shower. Sit on it and scrub the hell out of yourself. You are being judged. When you are demonstrably clean, get in the onsen. You can hold a towel casually in front of your todger like it’s just a coincidence and then just leave it on the side. No tattoos. That’s yakuza. Bandage if it’s small. Not your todger, the tattoo.
Wait for the green man. Even if there is no car for twenty miles, you will be JUDGED if you walk on red man. And NEVER TALK ON YOUR PHONE IN PUBLIC.
If it was brought in after the war when they started to merge more with our culture, chances are they use English or American terms, slightly Japanesified. So even if you speak no words, you can try things and they might work. “Hotto cohee” is what I want every morning. A hot coffee. I already told you about deruggo setorro for pharmacy. Birru after a long day, or maybe aisa kirimu if you want to cool down. I got a lot of buses, so “Busu?” with a point was helpful to find the stops. There are SO MANY loanwords. And some of them work in different ways. At Imperial I learnt that cheating when you’re doing an exam can be called “kanningu”. Is that a coincidence? Maybe not when a state of massive anticipation is referred to as “hai tenshon”. Their religions absorb and merge, and so with language, creating Shakespearean joy and the possibility of new directions because nobody is the language police, tryeng too kil owr langwedge und tel uss dess onli wan wey 2 spel tings. That is a way of thinking that only leads to dead expression. I jump at bad grammar and spelling just for that it is that my brain to prosess it alot finds it, anoyingly hard?.
As with religion so with language I appreciate the Japanese way. They nicked kanji from the Chinese too, and then just totally rejigged it all for their purposes. Open, straight down the line, odd creative noisy fun people. I’ll be back.
Here’s the Japanglish song. Found it trying to keep self awake. It’s late enough now. zzx
AlBarclay 