Out of all the chief towns from around the world, none is as fantastically carnival-like in ambience as the bustling megalopolis that is Tokyo, capital city to all the various Nipponese islands, which make up the Japanese land of the rising sun.
Simply stroll through Central Tokyo, under a multitude of scintillating neon signs and a sky so scraped it remains mostly in theory, and you might see an actual elephant, cruising the horizon; a beast ten times bigger than life, ambling from the virtual, vertical facade of one building to the next.
Just keep your eyes at street level, and the crowded pavement shall transform into a massive circus, big-topped by the towering edifices surrounding it. Occupying the ring are jugglers, with chains jiggling from their punk-suits; acrobatic business man, hastening their way through the crowd with remarkable feats of agility; clowns in puffy pants and big, red shoes and emo-gician, dressed in black from raven-hair to coal-toe.
Nevertheless, each and every performer belongs distinctively to one of the various social acts this greatest show on earth has to offer, as if even public diversity is strictly regulated by the Japanese collective. To the naked eye, it may feel as though Western social movements, such as metal, gothic or hippy, were first emptied of values, and then visually duplicated, in order to create the illusion of a contra-institutional diversity.
Follow any of the suited acrobats, and the odds are you’d end up surrounded by rows and rows of upright pinball machines, where metal balls cascade down through a dense forest of pins, triggering more and more balls, filling the pachinko hall with a symphony of clinking, ringing and beeping.
Follow any of the uniformed school kids, and you’re likely to find yourself at one of the numerous, multi-leveled video arcades. Amidst clangs, blasts and epilepsy-unfriendly flickering, anything imaginable can be either shot, driven, have the shit kicked out of or all three simultaneously. Tamed schoolboys suddenly become wild rock stars, while schoolgirls in skirts shorter than life expectancy among kamikaze pilots dance and giggle like true pop stars.
Often enough, while traveling the extensive, yet remarkably efficient Tokyo subway, one might notice elder men, in ties and briefcases, ogling said skimpy skirts in anticipation, eager to catch an accidental spreading of youthful thighs. The nationally dictated size of school uniforms in Japan sure does point to the fact that, deep down inside, all men are somewhat pedophilic by nature.
Then again, a culture so very puritan sex-wise; so very suppressed and tabooed, must also erupt around the edges. And indeed, one might mindlessly stroll into any convenience store, bookstore or video shop, and find oneself besieged by wall to wall pornographic material of the most X-agge-rated nature imaginable.
And in this hectic, span and rinsed urban jungle, all the rivers of lust, carnality and spunk flow into Kabukichō, Tokyo’s red-light district.
Among the bright neon titties, dark alleyways, florid hostess bars and cardinal love hotels, is where Tokyo’s working class comes to unwind, intoxicate and ejaculate. That makes this district a prime location for various smalltime vendors of all that is bright and shiny. Counterfeited jewelry and replica wristwatches sell like steaming Nikuman[1]; like candy to tipsy babies, living the Japanese consumerist dream.
One evening in Shinjuku, you step out of a Yoshinoya - a cheap chain of beef-bowl and fast Japanese food restaurants and a trusty friend to the budget traveler. As you hit the thronged pavement, you bump into a couple of young Israeli dudes, running one of these dubious stalls, under the protection of the Yakuza.
You get chatting about this and that; about Japanese gullibility and the Never-Never capital of their Land, passing time while in wait for your Korean sushi-barmaid to finish her long shift. From their experience you learn about Minowa, one of Japan’s only three existing slums, and about the only place where low-cost accommodation could be scored in this high-priced metropolis.
Though several hotels in Minowa are, in fact, mentioned in your guidebook, these specific, promoted and overweening establishments have meanwhile been steadily raising their prices, while lowering their standards. This form of slacking off is most common among those who manage to secure a following by making it into the Lonely Bible. Other establishments, on the other hand, still offer a coffin-size bed in a cubical-size room for an affordable price.
How could one even begin to portray the fascinating outlandishness this potpourri of Eastern and Western cultures, filtered into the mind of this accidental gaijin[2], who’s still drooling at the mouth at the sight of perfect plastic duplicates of mouthwatering dishes, which restaurants display in their front windows.
Just stroll down non-smoking streets; along canals and bridges, where homeless people have constructed orderly neighborhoods of carton boxes; take in the old temples, rubbing shoulders with the new shopping centers; the variety of indoor and open-air markets, the multitude of odors, colors and flavors this funfair has for offer.
Most natives can’t spare the time required for noticing the very splendor within which they spend their ant-farmed lives. Very few urban dwellers ever do. Their minds are trained to regard their very own selves as low-ranking cogs in the cooperative machine, and life itself as a congested multitude of duties, responsibilities and obligations.
Could they be blamed for merely being driven by the traditional, tailor-made values their society subsisted and still thrives on? After all, isn’t a society dominated by blind obedience; a colony that is based on busyness, also genuinely efficient in subjugating the harsh nature that both surrounds it, as well as drives it from within?
In any case, even if people were to disengage for a minute, look around and rejoice in simply being alive, it’s probably neon signs and hi-tech adverts that would be catching their vertically challenged eyes. For, after all, I consume, therefore I am, is the name of the game.
Maybe it’s just me, a drifter who simply cannot seem to be able to take any of it too seriously. Values and traditions, with all due respect, belong to a time and a place in which they proved useful in overcoming obstacles. Nowadays though, so many of them seem to have become more obstructive than helpful, that society’s fanatic insistency on holding on to them feels like an absurdity.
Absurdity must be the glue that keeps up all together, building castles in the sky and achieving the unimaginable. For, this is Tokyo, a phoenix risen from its own ashes to have become the diamond you see before you. So, just dive right in, carpe the hell out of the diem, embrace what you like, reject the rest and rejoice in being alive.
In being a spectator in this greatest show on earth.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
[1] Steamed buns
[2] Non Japanese
Simply stroll through Central Tokyo, under a multitude of scintillating neon signs and a sky so scraped it remains mostly in theory, and you might see an actual elephant, cruising the horizon; a beast ten times bigger than life, ambling from the virtual, vertical facade of one building to the next.
Just keep your eyes at street level, and the crowded pavement shall transform into a massive circus, big-topped by the towering edifices surrounding it. Occupying the ring are jugglers, with chains jiggling from their punk-suits; acrobatic business man, hastening their way through the crowd with remarkable feats of agility; clowns in puffy pants and big, red shoes and emo-gician, dressed in black from raven-hair to coal-toe.
Nevertheless, each and every performer belongs distinctively to one of the various social acts this greatest show on earth has to offer, as if even public diversity is strictly regulated by the Japanese collective. To the naked eye, it may feel as though Western social movements, such as metal, gothic or hippy, were first emptied of values, and then visually duplicated, in order to create the illusion of a contra-institutional diversity.
Follow any of the suited acrobats, and the odds are you’d end up surrounded by rows and rows of upright pinball machines, where metal balls cascade down through a dense forest of pins, triggering more and more balls, filling the pachinko hall with a symphony of clinking, ringing and beeping.
Follow any of the uniformed school kids, and you’re likely to find yourself at one of the numerous, multi-leveled video arcades. Amidst clangs, blasts and epilepsy-unfriendly flickering, anything imaginable can be either shot, driven, have the shit kicked out of or all three simultaneously. Tamed schoolboys suddenly become wild rock stars, while schoolgirls in skirts shorter than life expectancy among kamikaze pilots dance and giggle like true pop stars.
Often enough, while traveling the extensive, yet remarkably efficient Tokyo subway, one might notice elder men, in ties and briefcases, ogling said skimpy skirts in anticipation, eager to catch an accidental spreading of youthful thighs. The nationally dictated size of school uniforms in Japan sure does point to the fact that, deep down inside, all men are somewhat pedophilic by nature.
Then again, a culture so very puritan sex-wise; so very suppressed and tabooed, must also erupt around the edges. And indeed, one might mindlessly stroll into any convenience store, bookstore or video shop, and find oneself besieged by wall to wall pornographic material of the most X-agge-rated nature imaginable.
And in this hectic, span and rinsed urban jungle, all the rivers of lust, carnality and spunk flow into Kabukichō, Tokyo’s red-light district.
Among the bright neon titties, dark alleyways, florid hostess bars and cardinal love hotels, is where Tokyo’s working class comes to unwind, intoxicate and ejaculate. That makes this district a prime location for various smalltime vendors of all that is bright and shiny. Counterfeited jewelry and replica wristwatches sell like steaming Nikuman[1]; like candy to tipsy babies, living the Japanese consumerist dream.
One evening in Shinjuku, you step out of a Yoshinoya - a cheap chain of beef-bowl and fast Japanese food restaurants and a trusty friend to the budget traveler. As you hit the thronged pavement, you bump into a couple of young Israeli dudes, running one of these dubious stalls, under the protection of the Yakuza.
You get chatting about this and that; about Japanese gullibility and the Never-Never capital of their Land, passing time while in wait for your Korean sushi-barmaid to finish her long shift. From their experience you learn about Minowa, one of Japan’s only three existing slums, and about the only place where low-cost accommodation could be scored in this high-priced metropolis.
Though several hotels in Minowa are, in fact, mentioned in your guidebook, these specific, promoted and overweening establishments have meanwhile been steadily raising their prices, while lowering their standards. This form of slacking off is most common among those who manage to secure a following by making it into the Lonely Bible. Other establishments, on the other hand, still offer a coffin-size bed in a cubical-size room for an affordable price.
How could one even begin to portray the fascinating outlandishness this potpourri of Eastern and Western cultures, filtered into the mind of this accidental gaijin[2], who’s still drooling at the mouth at the sight of perfect plastic duplicates of mouthwatering dishes, which restaurants display in their front windows.
Just stroll down non-smoking streets; along canals and bridges, where homeless people have constructed orderly neighborhoods of carton boxes; take in the old temples, rubbing shoulders with the new shopping centers; the variety of indoor and open-air markets, the multitude of odors, colors and flavors this funfair has for offer.
Most natives can’t spare the time required for noticing the very splendor within which they spend their ant-farmed lives. Very few urban dwellers ever do. Their minds are trained to regard their very own selves as low-ranking cogs in the cooperative machine, and life itself as a congested multitude of duties, responsibilities and obligations.
Could they be blamed for merely being driven by the traditional, tailor-made values their society subsisted and still thrives on? After all, isn’t a society dominated by blind obedience; a colony that is based on busyness, also genuinely efficient in subjugating the harsh nature that both surrounds it, as well as drives it from within?
In any case, even if people were to disengage for a minute, look around and rejoice in simply being alive, it’s probably neon signs and hi-tech adverts that would be catching their vertically challenged eyes. For, after all, I consume, therefore I am, is the name of the game.
Maybe it’s just me, a drifter who simply cannot seem to be able to take any of it too seriously. Values and traditions, with all due respect, belong to a time and a place in which they proved useful in overcoming obstacles. Nowadays though, so many of them seem to have become more obstructive than helpful, that society’s fanatic insistency on holding on to them feels like an absurdity.
Absurdity must be the glue that keeps up all together, building castles in the sky and achieving the unimaginable. For, this is Tokyo, a phoenix risen from its own ashes to have become the diamond you see before you. So, just dive right in, carpe the hell out of the diem, embrace what you like, reject the rest and rejoice in being alive.
In being a spectator in this greatest show on earth.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
[1] Steamed buns
[2] Non Japanese