Tantalizing Tokyo

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Having grown up in Mumbai, I know what "A Citi of Contrasts" means. Swanky high rises surrounded by filthy slums. A sari-clad Indian bride touching the feet of her elders, a day after popping Dom Perignon in a Herve Leger at her Cocktail party. Every place has its share of contrasts, but in my book, Tokyo trumps them all. Read on to find out why...

The place defies classification. London: quaint. Miami: Sexy. Paris: romantic. Barcelona: Fun. Singapore: Modern. Prague: Fairy tale town. It is so tough to find one word that provides a broad flavor of Tokyo, that I have to settle for a term that says a lot without saying anything: exotic!!

Think of how much do you know about Japan: zen, gardens, bonsai, origami, ninja, samurai, Shinto, karate, kamikaze, sushi, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, tea, geisha, walkman, Canon, Toyota, manga, sumo, kabuki. All of this, and probably a lot more. Now make a list of places you have been to, or those you want to visit, or ones that your friends have recommended. Does Tokyo figure in any of them?? Why not ??

Maybe it's far, expensive, esoteric, or all of the above. Anyways, I got a glimpse of this fabulous place back in April-May 2002, when I interned with Merrill Lynch, between the 1st and 2nd year at Business School. The internship was 10 weeks, and I would be spending 2 of them in HK for an orientation program before heading to Tokyo for the remaining eight.

If you love your fish, Tokyo is heaven. And if you are vegetarian, well, you get the point...So like all sensible, home-food-loving Gujjus, I had to carry some food. And eager to make an impression on the job, I decided to carry some books which would help me navigate the world of fixed income markets and spreadsheets. By the time I was done packing, the 35 kgs of weight was equally split between shirts and trousers, theplas and packaged pau bhaji, and Brealey Myers and Fabozzi.

Clearing immigration is not a fun process anywhere in the world. At best, you still have to deal with a serious looking officer giving you a thorough look. Not so in Japan. The way I was welcomed, it felt like I was royalty. It is a small matter that the visa category in the passport said "House-Servant" (10 years later, I still haven't figured that out!). I exited the airport, changed money, and as per instructions given to me beforehand, took a shuttle bus to one of the major city hotels, where I hailed a cab and gave him the map of my service apartment (Besides the passport, this was the most important document I was carrying. Apparently, finding an address in Tokyo is tough even for Japanese cabbies).

After I checked in, I realized I needed to call home and tell my mom I had reached Tokyo in fine shape (Not that I have been ever lost or kidnapped ever, but she insists I always call).The hotel phone would probably have been quite expensive, so I headed to the next door convenience store. I probably sounded like ET when I kept repeating "India-phone","India-phone", till one of the storekeepers realized what I wanted and got me a card.

I felt lucky since there was a phone booth right outside, but there was a minor snag: the instructions were all in Japanese and I couldn't figure out how the system worked. I requested (i.e.probably mumbled "please", "home", "phone", "help" or something like that) a middle-aged woman walking on the road for assistance, and I kid you not, she spent the next 15 minutes, not one less, in understanding what I wanted, where I wanted to call and fidgeting with that phone in the booth till she connected me home. As they say, when you want to reach out to people, language is no barrier!

The next task was to figure out how to set the AC temperature. Complex Remote controls are standard now, but in those days I hadn't handled anything except a simple operating console attached to the main body. So I had to get help from reception to make sense of all the esoteric symbols inscribed on the sleek remote. I was impressed at the tech savvy of the Japanese, but this was only a primer. Later on I observed that everyone in Tokyo seemed to carry fancy phones better than the best I had seen back home. In 2002, you could transfer money from one bank to another at the ATM. There was one vending machine per twenty people on Tokyo: they sold everything from rice to condoms, toothpaste to porn. But the most amazing piece of technology I saw was in my own bathroom. The toilet commode had more features than a Mercedes S-Class: seat temperature control, a spray to wash your bottom (with adjustable pressure and temperature, and a different one for men and women!), and some timers, and other stuff I couldn't figure out, and couldn't ask. Fancy, given that the traditional Japanese loo is nothing more than a hole in the ground!

Next morning it was time to head to work. But before that, I headed to the coffee shop for complimentary breakfast. A 19-20 year old girl with the broadest smile I have ever seen in the hospitality business, or perhaps in any business, welcomed me. I managed to explain to her I only needed tea and some toast: no eggs, omelettes, ham and bacon sandwiches pls! It became a ritual for the next 8 weeks: they would bow, I would bow (there was a lot more bowing in Japan than I had imagined), they would ask me "tea and t-oast?" (pronounced as the Italians would), I'd say "Hai", and I would get my morning fill, complemented with that endearing smile that would kickstart my day in the cheeriest note possible. If only I could speak a little Japanese!

I feel the quickest way to peek into the soul of a society is to ride the train. Subways probably warrant a separate blog, but given the current European crisis making news every alternate day, I have to mention my experience on the Barcelona subway during a recent, pre-crisis trip: any time of day, any day of week, you take the train, you see a sea of young women dressed casually, with bikinis underneath, ready to hit the beach. What a life, I thought, until I realized later that almost half of the young workforce in Spain is unemployed.

The Tokyo subway is just the opposite. The world's busiest metropolitan mass transit system, ferrying 15 million passengers daily, is a sea of monotony. Everyone has the same reserved face, everyone is wearing a black or gray suit with a white or blue shirt and a featureless tie. And then when you see young men with streaked hair pub hopping in the glitzy neighborhoods of Omote Sando and Roppongi, you just dont know what to expect next.

Over one of the weekends, I went to watch some Sumo wrestling. I had seen snippets on TV, but being in this huge stadium, watching people as they watched the sport, was eye-opening for me. It's less a sport and more a ritual: there seemed to be 5 minutes of bowing, and salt sprinkling, for every 30 seconds of actual wrestling. And you think American footballers and European footballers (er, soccer players) get all the girls? No sir, check out the Sumo wrestlers girlfriends, and you'll understand how the term "opposites attract" originated.

An interesting fact I observed among Japanese women was that there was an all too obvious increase in average height with every successive generation, more pronounced than I have managed to observe in any other culture. And what a study in contrasts they present! On a clear Sunday morning, I visited the Meiji Jingu shrine in the Shibuya prefecture. One of the top sites to see in Tokyo, the place is nevertheless quiet and austere. A traditional wedding procession was taking place in the courtyard. The bride, wearing a white kimono, was looking down with such shyness, she would put the most demure Indian bride to shame. And right outside the temple, by the Harajuku bridge, there were teenaged girls dressed up in the funkiest, sexiest, outfits, just hanging about, happy to pose with you or for you. From what I heard, these girls live alone in the far flung suburbs, have a tough work week, and unwind in this manner over the weekend.

A bigger problem than language was food. Vegetarianism disappeared from Japanese Buddhism a long time ago. For breakfast, it was tea-and-toast (would have got monotonous but for the pretty waitress, notwithstanding the fact that we only exchanged smiles), for lunch, it was a thepla-cheese sandwich, and for dinner it was again a thepla-cheese sandwich or perhaps the packaged pau bhaji. Even shopping for a packet of potato chips was a challenge: I couldn’t be sure if they weren’t made of bacon or prawns instead. But thankfully some of the stores stocked Pringles (written in Japanese, but the packaging tells you what it is), and so you could be sure they were potato chips. There were many Indian restaurants in Tokyo, but none close to office or work, and after long days at work, I didn’t feel like changing a train multiple times for a decent meal. (Cabs were ridiculously expensive. Even the MDs took the train to work).

One of the evenings I attended a Kabuki performance. Its very much like Italian Opera: the story is simple and usually above love, deceit, honor or revenge. The singing is fantastic: you love the music and have no clue of the meaning. The big difference is that only men perform Kabuki, some dressed as women, as the script demands. There might be a handful of non-Japanese, if at all, in the theater, and I got bored after a while, but its a charming art form. Talking of art, how does one even begin to describe the beauty of a Japanese garden? I didnt visit Kyoto, supposed to have the world's best gardens, but the ones I saw in Tokyo were ...... I could say amazing, wonderful, fantastic, but I think serene best describes it. They dont wow you, there is nothing grand or flashy. They are not large, and its not about having hundreds of plant and flower varieties. Its simply a patch of green with a little water here and a gentle slope there, but wherever you stand, and in any direction you look, its an opportunity to stay still and stare (and take a picture!)

Right outside these havens of peace is the madness that is Tokyo! For me, the energy of the city was at its crest in Akihabara. This is Japan’s, nay, the world’s, electric town. Imagine a Times Square that sells only electronics and anime! This place was a testimony to Japan’s leadership in the consumer electronics business. (till Korea started giving it a run for its money). I bought myself a nice Canon SLR, the non-digital variety, two lenses (28-80 mm and 70-300 mm) and a Sony Handycam. Unfortunately, they soon became useless with the digital revolution.

One of the evenings I strolled through Kabuki-cho, Tokyo’s famed red light district and Asia’s answer to the offerings in Amsterdam. There seemed to be massage parlors all over, but I couldn’t really tell what was on offer as, of course, everything was written in Japanese only. I couldn’t get my head around all of this: here’s a country where women are extremely family-oriented (as the phrase goes “Chinese Food, American Life, Japanese Wife”) and in rural areas do not even interact with their husband’s guests, while there are porn magazines sold in supermarkets and the capital’s sleaze district is a legitimate tourist attraction. A society where flashing wealth is looked down upon, but there are Ferraris zooming past its roads. A place where you expect, as per an article I had read, to encounter a Buddhist monk wearing a Rolex (I saw lots of monks and lots of Rolexes, but wasnt lucking with the combination). A people who are the politest in the world, but also the most reserved. An economy whose work ethic second to none, but was experiencing stagnation and deflation. A civilization that loves its modern gadgets as much as it reveres its King (The Japanese monarchy is the oldest continuous hereditary monarchy in the world, more than 2000 years old!)

I regret I did not explore more of Japan, except for a day trip to nearby Yokohama. Kyoto and Mount Fuji were within striking distance, but I never made it. I was doing well at the internship so half expected to get a full time offer and return soon (I got an offer, but one in NYC, and havent been to Japan since). Cost was a barrier too: it did not help that the Japanese approach to promoting tourism, at least in those days, was that if you buy 19 tickets, you get the 20th free. The other regret from the trip is that the FIFA World Cup was on at that time and I didnt attend a single game: I decided to put in more effort at work than in procuring tickets. How silly was that!

Tokyo is the last place in the world I would want to live in (besides Delhi of course, for obvious reasons), but if I am craving for sensory overload, looking to stare around in amazement, see a place unlike any else I’ve seen, and want to do it in a safe albeit ridiculously expensive manner, I would head straight back to Tokyo, and next time I do, see a lot of the rest of Japan as well.