One of the things to understand when trying to comprehend what Japan is all about, is that it’s a formalised society, with multiple layers of rituals and traditions stretching back to a time when the Western world was still living in straw huts, making dung fires and thinking a distance of 5km was a long journey.
In the West, just about everything in reality is random — your behaviour, especially. In the East, and specifically Japan, it’s structured and very subtle. Politeness and nuance are everything. Even the rudeness is structured according to various scales of “slightly impolite” to “them’s fighting words, buddy!”. Most of these nuances pass Westerners by without them noticing a thing.
So, as I’m writing this at 9am, let me say “Ohayo gozaimasu!” . This is the morning greeting, valid only until about 10.30am to 11am at the latest. Thereafter, it becomes the more well-known “konichi wa“, which most people in the West, thanks to the TV series Shogun, believe equals “good morning”. Welcome to a reality that’s obsessed with precision, formality and ritual — as well as taking the best and worst of Western culture, and having fun with it.
To scare you, and to show you how a rigid society lets its hair down, browse through a selection of bizarre concepts for TV shows, at Japanarama. Intelligent? No. Entertaining? Absolutely!
It reads more like a surrealist work of fiction, but read about the TV show consisting of a naked man in a room, with only postcards and pens to enter competitions, in order to get food, clothes or anything at all: Nasubi!.
The point of all of this is that Japan (and the East) is what we will look like in the future. So it’s worthwhile taking a non-official and non-judgemental tour into what’s coming.
Now on to the important stuff. In Japan, there are vending machines for everything, and I mean everything. From eggs, fishing rods, bait and hooks to flowers, beer, frequent-flier miles and ice cream — pure mechanised convenience at Vending Machines of Japan. And in case you didn’t notice the last vending machine on the above page, just to slam you into the fun of a totally different worldview and mindset, take another look — yes, beginning as far back as 1993, there were (and are) Vending Machines Selling Schoolgirls’ Used Panties.
For more machines, selling everything from underwear and comic books to live shrimp, pizza, petrol, popcorn, condoms designed to match your blood type (seriously) and beetles, have a look through Vending Machines Notes and Explanations.
And because street addresses are fairly chaotic in Japan, the vending machines themselves are being systematically pasted with addresses, in order to help callers to emergency numbers detail exactly where they are. (So they don’t have to say “Help! I’m calling from beside the raw egg machine, just near the bags of rice machine” when reporting a fire.) Read Stickers to Rescue Confused Callers.
By the way, slightly off topic, I see that a few days ago, in France, the first vending machine was launched to Charge Your Cellphone Battery.
Back on track, read an oldish but interesting first-person diary of a comic-book fan going to Japan: Oniko’s Travel Diary.
There’s a “circa 1999” list of more vending machines, including a cute one of a “good fortune” dispensing machine outside a shrine (roughly the equivalent of a “church blessing” vending machine), here.
For another bird’s-eye view of what it’s like to exist in an alien culture — and be warned, it’s adult and anything but the sanitised view of Japan that you might have read or absorbed — dip into the all-too-short first two chapters of a classic work called Tokyo Daze.
You may have noticed that “beetle” mention earlier. Well, beetles and beetle collecting is a common hobby for kids and grown-ups in Japan, alongside all the usual game-console stuff, so naturally there are “beetle shops” specialising in everything you ever needed to keep your beetles happy. Have a look at a beetle fans’ “worship” page to get an idea of the enthusiasm these nasty, nasty, yucky crawling things can inspire: Japanese Stag Beetle Fan Page.
Stare in disbelief at this entrance “warning” page for a monthly magazine dedicated to Stag-Beetle-Crazed Fools.
Feel like browsing through still more vending machines? Go see what happens when you combine live lobsters and a coin-operated computer game at Vending Machine Heaven. And here’s More Vending Machines.
Far more well behaved are these pix from a 2003 long-weekend trip to Tokyo, giving a taste of the glittering neon and quirky architecture. Note the line of hairdressers togged up as Father Christmas, at Excellent Adventure.
Speaking of hairdressers, browse the pix (and note the frightening tangle of Japanese meets English known as “Ingrish” in the signs outside a Tokyo hair salon) at Tokyo Photo Journal.
To stumble on to more links and angles that you never imagined possible, begin your journey towards appreciation at The Quirky Japanese Homepage (it’s moving, so an alternative page to find it, if the first link is down, is here).
For often flame-ridden discussions, try to avoid the sleaze and warfare at Gaijin in Japan Forum.
Blogs are a good way to get a sense of life down on the ground in different countries. To throw a curveball at you, take a look at the blog equivalent from quite a long time back. Browse through Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan.
For a modern foreigner’s equivalent blog — and you might want to start at the very beginning of this extensive blog — try A Year or So in Japan. Out of Hiroshima comes Daniel’s Crazy Life Adventures Blog.
And from Kyoto comes another blogger — along with tonnes of links to other Japanese blogger sites. Spend some time at the often gorgeous pix at Alive in Kyoto. Last photo blog: there are many interesting things to discover at Frangipani: A Life in Tokyo.
To get a slightly Marxist taste of the bewilderingly fast Japanese street cultural scene, try Delinquent Subcultures versus Consumer Lifestyles (Read the comments below the essay as well, to get even more complexity.)
Slight gear change. As we are as cellphone-mad as the Japanese, read this older but still relevant article and browse pix of the latest goodies, most of which have yet to appear here, at Mobile Japan Gallery!.
If all this exotic focus has made you yearn for a tattoo to show that you’re an Eastophile, this site has appeared here before, but it’s worth repeating to show you that tattoos in Asian lettering do not always mean what “the guy at the tattoo shop” says. Learn something at Hanzi Smatter.
Just to offset all the urban photos, have a look at this quietly elegant yet functional restaurant, comprising a wooden deck built over a river, here.
Total gear change. As we’re in neon, gadget and alien-culture-obsessed mode — please note that Panasonic have new batteries that have been tested and proven to have twice the life of Duracell’s — read Twice the Life.
Until the next time, if bad sushi doesn’t get me.
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