Tokyo Girl

First of all, apologies. We’ve been home from Japan a week, but in between doctor’s appointments, a flood under our sink, and doing all our holiday laundry before the washing machine broke down again (which it did, last night) I don’t seem to have got around to blogging. I did manage to upload our holiday photos though, which hopefully many of you have seen by now – if not, I’ve put a link at the end of this post.

Anyway, we’re back. Peter is slowly getting used to Two-Home Syndrome – otherwise known as ‘Oh no, all my trousers appear to be in the wrong city’ – and I’m mostly sitting around knitting while waiting for men to come and fix things, and occasionally going out and getting incredibly frustrated with taxi drivers who have no idea where to go. I’m now refusing to leave the house until we can get a piece of paper which actually tells them where to get off the elevated road so that they don’t take me a mile past the house every time.

So, as it’s all quiet on the Shanghai front, here are ten facts you didn’t know about Japan.

1. They drive on the left. This was a surprise. I thought it was only the former British colonies who retained this (to the rest of the world) oddity. I can only assume they chose the left at random – as we must have done – at the time when such things came to be decided and formalised. When was that anyway? We just take it for granted, but it occurred to me that I have no idea how it came about. Who decided, and how? I imagine that it happened relatively late in the history of motoring, so if there’s anyone out there who can enlighten me, I’d be fascinated to know. Yes, I know, I’m a bit of a saddo.

2. The Japanese really are unbelievably polite. And they really do bow. A lot. In fact hotel staff don’t so much bow as scrape. Taxi drivers bow. Shop staff bow as you enter and again as you leave, all the while thanking you profusely even if all you’ve done is walk around, realise everything is ridiculously expensive, and walk out again (which was mostly what we did). Drivers bow to you from behind the wheel if you let them go. But more often than not they stop to let you cross. Together with the driving on the left it takes all the fun out of crossing the road.

3. And don’t even get me started on the queueing. Nobody pushes or shoves. They queue for the toilet. On subway platforms they queue in orderly lines at marked points to enter specific carriages. We got ordered to the back of a bus queue for pushing in – Chinese-style - with our luggage when we first arrived at the airport. I never thought I’d find a nation more anal about queues than the Brits, but there we are. It exists.

4. Everyone wears a suit and tie to work. Dark suits with almost exclusively plain white shirts for the guys, and often for the girls too, complete with clumpy black or navy court shoes of the kind favoured by the late Queen Mother. One or two of the younger guys had made a daring foray into subtly striped shirts, but I bet they were the trouble-makers who got passed over for promotion. Even taxi drivers (unless they’re in a chauffeur’s uniform) wear suits. Kids wear western-style school uniform, often with kilts. By contrast, the studenty, arty types could be seen sporting the most bizarre of attire, ranging as far as a pink crinoline with pink bobby-socks and a straw hat (I kid you not). And every girl under 30 – and most of the boys too – had dyed hair cut into a hyper-trendy style. Hairdressers abounded, seemingly on every corner, to cater for this necessity.

Contrast this, if you will, with Chinese fashion style, which goes something like this. Business attire for men: a black jumper with a zip at the neck, probably with jeans or maybe tracksuit bottoms. For the more senior/modern businessman, possibly a suit, but never a tie. For women of all ages: anything goes. Denim or leather shorts are popular, often with thigh-high boots. School uniforms are generally turquoise shellsuits. Hair is stuck in an 80s timewarp, with the bouffant and the poodle perm being the hairstyles de choix for males and females respectively. What a difference a few hundred miles and half a century of open government makes.

I must say a final word about the dogs. Like the Chinese, they like 'em small, but where the Chinese dog of choice is the chihuahua - the tinier the better - for the Japanese it’s the long-haired dachsund. Preferably dressed up in a silly outfit. Who knows why.

5. Nobody says ‘Konnichiwa’ or ‘Sayonara’, any more than people in Britain say ‘Good afternoon; how do you do?’, to the confusion of EFL students the world over. I didn’t catch what they were saying in greeting, but for Goodbye they generally either just thank you (if they’re in the service industry and you’re a customer), or amongst themselves they often say ‘Bye-bye’ in English. The Chinese do this too. I can only guess it’s acquired some kind of sophisticated cachet, like the British saying ‘Ciao’ to each other. I should like to point out, by the way, that I have never said ‘Ciao’. But I did get to use one of the two phrases I know in Japanese – ‘Arigato gozaimasu’, which means ‘Thank you very much’, a great deal. Strangely, I didn’t get to use the other. It’s ‘Niwa de e o kaite iru hito wa ripa na ekaki desu’, which means ‘The man painting a picture in the garden is a splendid artist’. Don’t ask.

6. Japan is a great place to be pregnant. All the subway trains had seats specially designated for those with bad legs or bumps, and everyone is so well trained in excessive politeness that even teenagers leapt back to allow me to sit down the minute they saw me. In China, nobody gives a sh**. It did get us into the ‘Special Lane’ at immigration at Shanghai airport – thus bypassing a queue of several hundred other foreigners last Sunday – but only after I asked and they’d just let someone less pregnant than me go through, and so could hardly refuse.

7. It’s also a great place to have diarrhoea. Yes, once again my constitution – ox-like in the face of Chinese supermarkets of dubious cleanliness and occasionally unidentifiable items served in Chinese restaurants – failed me on arrival in a supposedly ‘westernised’ country where you can actually drink the tap water, and I got a case of Delhi Belly. Or let’s call it Tokyo Tum. Anyway, if I had to pick a country to have the trots, I’d pick Japan on account of the toilets, nearly all of which have a built-in bidet with adjustable spray. Some even have a ‘back or front wash’ option. They also have heated seats, doors that lock, and somewhere to put your handbag – and even, in many cases, your baby, in a special ‘baby rest’ on the wall.

The one unfortunate exception was the public toilet in a park which was the scene of one of my more dramatic diarrhoea episodes. I’ll spare you the details, but suffice to say this was NOT one of the modern, all-dancing, all-spraying Japanese toilets, but was a Chinese-style one.

Now this is where I have to confess, dear readers, that I’ve been protecting you a bit up until now from the unpalatable reality that is Chinese public toilets. But I think you’re ready. Not that I wish to deter any of our potential visitors, but the Chinese have squat toilets. That’s holes in the ground, with a sort of horizontal urinal built into the tiles. For women. You find these everywhere except in private homes, 5-star hotels aimed at westerners, and some – but by no means all – restaurants. Even offices, mega-posh shopping malls, and the western fast-food chains can’t be relied upon to provide proper toilets. You’re generally ok in Starbucks and Pizza Hut, but not Macdonald’s or KFC (er, not that we frequent these places much, honest!).

I’ve yet to fathom out exactly how one’s supposed to use them without getting wee all over your clothes and shoes – and that’s even without a baby bump. Also there’s nowhere to put your bag except in a puddle, the doors don’t lock (or are deliberately left unlocked by people using the toilet so that it’s easy to walk in on a lady in a compromising position), and there’s generally no paper, at least not in the individual cubicles. If you do use paper, you’re not supposed to flush it down the toilet but to put it into a bin instead, along with everyone else’s. As you can imagine, it gets a bit stinky. They tell you the reason is because of poor plumbing, but really it’s because they spread human excrement on the fields as fertiliser and don’t want paper mixed in with it. Which probably also explains why they discourage the use of tampons.

Ok, I’ll stop now. Forget I spoke. Go to Japan and get your bum washed instead.

8. Kyoto has a large expat community. We discovered this when we went to an Irish bar and on the first night were one of three English couples there (the only customers apart from an Irish chap), and on the second night accidentally found ourselves at a wake attended by a large number of middle-aged, bohemian Americans who had all clearly lived there for years. Kyoto is also overrun with tourists of all nationalities, at least during sakura (cherry blossom) season. What’s more, it’s very hilly and April is surprisingly hot. If you’re going, I’d recommend an out of season visit. And not being 6 months pregnant if you actually want to see anything, as all the pretty temples etc are up large flights of steps at the top of steep hills. I lost count of the number of times I sat on a wall to recover while Peter went off and took photos of the thing we were meant to be looking at, so that I could see it later.

9. Despite the above, outside of the tourist industry it’s rarer to find English speakers in Japan than it is in China, where they’ve obviously been teaching English in primary schools for 20 years so that many young people can speak at least some, even if most won’t admit it out of shyness. In Japan, it’s more common to find English speakers among the older generation, but even those are few and far between. Most restaurants – including those purporting to serve western food – have monolingual Japanese menus. Chinese menus (in Shanghai and Harbin anyway) often have English and nearly always have pictures. So eating out in Japan can be a challenge. Restaurant staff, however, seemed mystified as to why we kept walking away.

10. In spite of the down sides, Japan is quite simply fab – and not just when compared to China. It’s super-clean, super-fast and yet remarkably laid back. We found a brilliant quarter of Tokyo awash with vintage clothes shops, which was seventh heaven for me as they don’t have such things in China – well, I suppose there’s not much of a market for vintage Mao suits – yet! The bullet train is great, as is the view of Mount Fuji which you get when travelling on it from Tokyo to Kyoto. And the cherry blossom is truly spectacular. Take a look.

Arigato gozaimasu. Sayonara and Bye-bye for now!