Life Where I'm From

I shouldn't watch YouTube.  I keep finding more and more stuff on Japan.  Here's one for Louise and Isabel featuring Aiko, a girl about 10, showing her audience what life is like in Japan.  She'll even show you how to eat natto in What Japanese Breakfast is Like.  Her father is a Canadian so she speaks perfect English and her mother is Japanese so she speaks that perfectly too!  There are videos on lunch and dinner as well.

You can learn about the Golden Poop (also known as the Asahi Golden Flame) when they walk the streets of Asakusa, or see all the fun they have at a family sushi restaurant (aka conveyor belt sushi) where they get a chance to win a gacha gacha prize (gotcha gotcha?) for every 5 dishes they eat.

They didn't win any prizes but they ate 35 plates for 4700 yen which sounds pretty reasonable to me.

As you can see, Aiko has a younger brother called Shin and he narrates the episode on What a Japanese Family Restaurant is Like.  The restaurant, Yumean, has kids' menus and Sebastian would love what he orders: edamame, chicken nuggets, french fries, and tempura udon.  It all looked pretty good to me and they got to sit on the floor on tatami mats.  Maybe Juan and Mandy would like to take Louise!

OK. I'm Cleaning Up.

I mentioned before that I had requested the book Tokyo: a certain style by Kyoichi Tsuzuki.  It is a small book, 6 x 4 inches, consisting only of photographs of Tokyo apartments with tiny annotations in the corners.  It has 400+ pages and I only managed to look through 138 of them before I had to come up for air.

The apartments featured aren't really apartments of normal families but mainly those of single persons, often students, and you know how they live.  I guess Tokyo isn't any different except that the apartments are smaller so they are even more cramped and less airy.  You have to have money to be a minimalist.

This isn't the only photography book featuring messy rooms in Tokyo.  The Tokyo Weekender has an October 20, 1916 article entitled: Peek Inside Tokyo Apartments which features the second book of another photographer Shiori Kawamoto called Onago Room. His first book,  Daraku Room, featured the "infamous dormitories where female [teen, pop] idols were living together, with messy rooms so chaotic they were nicknamed daraku beya, which translates best as “depravity rooms.”"

"With “Onago Room,” he builds on his previous work, this time with a diverse spectrum of women from a selection of professions including underground idols, artists, musicians, housewives, and company employees. Each is photographed in her home – and these include everything from minimal studios, stylish monochrome pads, and pastel pink hideaways to sprawling nests of eclectic knick knacks."

You see?  There are lots of apartments in Tokyo ripe for Marie Kondo.

Hand Towels, Head Scarves and Handkerchiefs

What to buy in Japan?

Looking for Japanese traditional head scarves I ended up on the Japan Monthly Web Magazine page on "Tenugui" or cotton hand towels.  Everybody is going to get a tenugui, a furushiki, or a pen.

For myself, I'm going to pick up some handkerchiefs.  I haven't been able to replenish my supply at second hand stores or yard sales and making my own handkerchiefs with a rolled hem is a bit daunting.  I have read in multiple places that a handkerchief is essential for Japanese women and it would be kind of nice to have one with the Tokyo subway on it.  BUT I can't blow my nose with it (there are tissues and a particular etiquette for that), just wipe my brow or dry my hands after a visit to the washroom.

In Japanese it is called hankachi (ハンカチ) which leads me to believe that it was originally a European import.  Turns out it was a replacement for the tenugui.  The Tokyo Weekender also claims that the handkerchief is essential since many public bathrooms don't have hand dryers.  "In the warmer months especially, handkerchiefs are available literally everywhere: they come as a freebie with fashion magazines, and rows of designer editions are displayed at department stores."

Or maybe an O-mamori, a Shinto or Buddhist amulet, if I can determine what the ones I buy are for, whether health, money, love, academic success, pets or protection against traffic accidents (maybe instead of trip insurance?).

I would pick up a souvenir apron but the Asians don't allow for large Western breasts.

Comic and Coffee Table Books on Japan

In addition to Tokyo on Foot, I picked up Cool Japan Guide: Fun in the Land of Manga, Lucky Cats and Ramen in the Teen department of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh (a Librarian had to help me find it...).  It's another graphic version of a Tokyo guidebook and it's great because its chapters cover all the things I'm interested in: Food, Houses, Onsen and Parks, Shrines and Temples and Shopping.  And because it is written for young people without much money its recommendations are "spot on", as the British (whom the Japanese revere) would say.

A few of her tips:
About homes:
'One thing you won't find is an oven!  They just aren't common in a Japanese kitchen.  [oh, oh, Fernando can't bake bread...]

"Most Japanese homes don't have central heating, so devices like the heated carpet and kotatsu are very handy to keep everyone warm. "  BUT she also says "Winter in Japan is quite mild (at least compared to winters in America's Northeast)".

"Another thing you won't see in most homes is a clothes dryer."  [Despite having all that RAIN!]

About trains:
"One thing you have to remember is that while Japanese trains are wonderful, they do NOT run 24 hours!"  (as if we were staying out late at night...)
On the other hand, most combini (convenience stores) are open 24 hours, despite some being 7-elevens...

About hotels:
"Vending machines with beer are something we've seen in every hotel we stayed in [yay], and often the hotels are close to combini too [our is above one].  Usually, the rooms will include slippers and nightgowns/nightshirts, so packing night clothes isn't even necessary!"

I also picked up a coffee table photography book called Tokyo megacity.  I didn't expect much from it but the text is surpisingly informative and it profiles many neighborhoods, beginning with the low city (Shitamachi).  Shitamachi includes Asakusa (asaksa), Ueno, Yanaka, Akihabara and Tsukiji (tskiji) and was where the merchants and artisans lived and is one of the older sections of the city.  The author calls the Tokyo style of architecture "slash and burn" and there is very little in the city that is ancient, also in part due to the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 and the U.S. firebombing of 1945.

The Upper City (Yamanote) to the west of the Imperial Palace was where the daimyo and their samurai resided but with the Meiji Restoration in the late 1800s I think a lot of them went home.  The author of Tokyo megacity, Donald Richie, divides the area into the Mid City and the High City, probably alluding more to the height of the buildings than to the height of the land.  Our first hotel in Tokyo will be in Shinjuku which is in the "High City" but at least we aren't staying in Shibuya or Harajuku which are the young people's hangout.  I don't want to feel too ancient...

(Travel) Books on Japan

I still like to read print books even though there is a tremendous amount of useful information on the Internet.  Unfortunately when I take out print travel guides on Japan and Tokyo and start reading, I find them extremely boring.  I don't really want to know what museums, shrines, temples, castles and historic locations I should see.  I'm much more interested in everyday life in Japan, the convenience stores, supermarkets, department stores that Japanese visit.  Maybe that is why I like the Japanology documentaries.

I've read two travelogues on Japanese food: Super Sushi Ramen Express which is an entertaining account of a British food writer and his family's stay in Japan (with two boys aged 4 and 6 how can it not be entertaining?); and Rice Noodle Fish, Deep Travels through Japan's Food Culture, whose author takes both himself and his food more seriously and so is harder to finish.  I think I'm prepared for Japanese food although I'll have problems with the slimy soybean natto and dipping things into raw egg.

I picked up a couple of books with short essays on Japan: To Japan with Love, A Travel Guide for the Connoisseur, which contains little vignettes on living in Japan by foreigners; and Living Japan, Essays on Everyday Life in Contemporary Society, a collection of often amateurish short essays by Japanese.  Both books are much easier to read than a Lonely Planet travel guide because they tell stories and aren't just a list of the top 10 sites or the top 10 restaurants where I can only anticipate encountering tourists.

And then there is The Japanese House: Material Culture in the Modern Home by Inge Daniels, a Belgian anthropologist, which is pretty easy to read considering it is a scholarly work.  Contrary to what all Americans think, the Japanese have as much trouble with "stuff" as we do.  The Japanese have a strong gift culture so that they end up with lots of souvenirs and mementos which are hard to throw away and that don't fit into their small houses and apartments. The Japanese Design Institute considers the current state of affairs a "domestic disarray" and since the woman is in charge of the house, of course it is her fault...  What I find most interesting is that after 40 years, the family tears down their house and builds a new one [Correction:  the average is 26 years].

More books are coming:  Tokyo on Foot and Tokyo: A Certain Style.  The latter book "shows how, for those living in one of the world's most expensive and densely packed metropolises, closet-sized apartments stacked to the ceiling with gadgetry and CDs are the norm."

Stay tuned.