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United States, North Carolina, Carrboro, English, Paul, Male, 56-60, All Music, All Food.

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Saturday, March 27, 2004

Hotel Snack Relapse DEMITASSE: Since the establishment in 1960, Tatsu-ya has always been thinking over the same theme : the smiles seen over the merchandise. Attaching great importance to the quality and safety of goods is a matter of course. The abundance in the items of goods which meet the requirements of the customers is also important. However, we don’t think all we have to do is make things and sell them. We consider the smiles of the customers beyond these goods are more joyful to us than anything else. (I ripped open the package, snarfed it down, and smiled) 1:08:59 PM    comment []

There are no homeless people in Tokyo (and no crime). This is the official position, though it is unstated. In reality, it is more like denial. For a brief time, leading up to the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, the problem that doesn’t exist was briefly confronted. The inhabitants of the corrugated cardboard city that infested the entrances to cavernous Shinjuku Station were banished by fiat. The problem that did not exist was solved. The subway entrances were cleared of unsightly feral humans for a high-visibility world event. The non-people are not beggars. They have jobs, only they are low caste jobs such as street cleaners (grok the irony of that for a moment) and other custodial services. The street and sidewalks of Tokyo are nearly always immaculate, so they do a very good job, like little unkempt scrubbing bubbles. When they are not working, you rarely see them. They just don’t get paid very much and rents in Tokyo dwarf those in New York. People who have homes do not own the land it is on because it is worth millions for even a modest sized home. They lease the land on a contract for 100 years or death, non-transferable. During Nagano, and briefly thereafter, the diaspora took them to city parks and rarely traveled back alleys. Last year when I was here, they were in permanent residence in the area surrounding the Meiji Shrine. Little boxes, on the hillside, little boxes made of corrugated cardboard that never had to be folded up. In that setting, the residences began to acquire some of the adornments of a home, be it ever so humble. Artwork from magazines on the folding entrances, plants surrounded by motorcycle tires and covered with secured cages to prevent theft, makeshift grills made from pieces of stone covered by scrap metal. No plumbing however, no laundry facilities, so these guys get quite grubby. Now they are finding their way back to Shinjuku. They live in another Shinjuku, the one that exists only after midnight when the trains stop running. About 11 PM, a few of the braver ones make their way into the station to get early squatting rights on valuable areas near warmth. Saves on fuel costs, you know. The last passengers correctly ignore them in this brief interface between the real world of Tokyo nightlife and the night kitchen world of a fungible city. The late-nighters are correct to ignore them, because they do not exist. If they existed, there would be a problem. If there were a problem, something would have to be done to address it. That would waste precious resources for a city still struggling to unearth itself from the disastrous bursting of “The Bubble,” as they nostalgically call it, of the 1980s boom. Tokyo is clean, it is immaculately clean, the streets are clean and the sidewalks are clean. There are no homeless people, but ghost resembling them are slowly retaking Shinjuku. 1:01:59 PM    comment []

I misunderstood the objectives for Saturday. Both TLC and our friendly Tokyo guide JG had taken me up on my Google inspired suggestion of a visit to the Japanese Sword Museum. I thought they might like it since they both have a fascination with knives in general. I did not expect the level of expertise I heard, which made this stop one of the most culturally enriching museum stops in y memory. Over 8 centuries of samurai swords were represented and my guides know what to look for in size, curvature, tempering mark, markings at each of the fourteen named parts in each of the basic types tachi, katana, wakizashi, and tanto. And that’s all before the handle is attached. I picked up some manga (Japanese comic book) tutorials as a present in the morning before the museum and some bento boxes and T-shirts (more presents) afterwards. Mostly we just walked around and talked in suffocating crowds. A day after doing that has left me exhausted. For lunch, I had “carbonara” at a restaurant simply and lovingly named Garlic. My carbonara had no carbon, no pepper, and had a tomato based sauce without cheese, but it did come with the omnipresent raw egg. My companions joked that it might be good if it was cooked, but I explained that it wasn’t too far off base – you cook the egg by stirring it into the spaghetti to coat the noodles with the sauce, so that was one thing they got right. I did that, and then was faced with the task of eating it with chopsticks. I managed by twisting, fork style, onto the tips of the chopsticks and then shoveling and slurping Oriental style so that my eating style matched the cross-cultural inspiration of the dish itself. I t did have loads of garlic, in fact the place reeked of garlic and that was nice. 7:18:59 AM    comment []