Kamakura IV

At the top of the hill at the second Buddhist complex, I found myself alone surrounded by guardian statues. These black cast creatures stood at least four feet high (some higher) and wore masks with bird-like beaks.

I am surprised to have never seen these creatures make an appearance in American film. The experience was spooky because the only sounds came from large, loud black crows not unlike the Hitchcock film. Tokyo is filled with these birds. They dominate the limited natural landscape and remind clubbers of the early hours when the sun rises.

Stairs wound around these creatures as they guarded the grounds studded with tombstones engraved with prayers. From what I remember in Hong Kong temple grounds, this is where families pray for dead family members. The top of the hill were two small buildings with supplies for rituals locked inside.

Several vista stands had been built for viewers at the top. An earlier photograph is from the top of this hill.

Kamakura III

The first temple I found at the end of the main road outside the train station was the classic Buddhist temple. Imagine a large man-made pond, monks sweeping with straw brooms (no kidding), and children feeding giant carp. This is a bridge over the pond to an island in the middle where monks pray.

The variety of Japanese visitors was immense. I still cannot categorise Japanese tourists. There are places thugs would never been seen in the United States. Flower gardens are one of many. Here, they wore low jeans, sideways caps, and hipster/skater tees, but carefully leaned over tranquil streams on the grounds to get a better view. All of this was along suburban families and young walking couples.

Kamakura II

This photograph may be too small to show proper detail, but attached are hundreds (or thousands) of fortunes. Like the temple I went to outside the Asakusa subway stop in Tokyo, people would retrieve a fortune for 100 yen. The fortune is clear as the astrology reports in the back of the National Enquirer. No less, it is still part of the tradition.

When finished reading, some choose to fold the paper and tie it as a knot around bars on these structures. I imagine they are cleaned periodically.

Kamakura I

Upon the recommendation of my manager, Richard Robinson, I went to Kamakura today to see two Buddhist temples. Kyoto is the most famous city for temples in Japan. Preserved during World War II on the advice of American academics, Tokyo was instead bombed flat; everything is new.

I rode the Japan Railways (JR) express line about 40 minutes south. My trip alone encompassed three trains. For others they may accompany more! Hiyiba Metro line from Kamiyacho to Ebisu, then JR Yamanote line to Shinagawa, then a change to an express train to Kamakura. Never did I wait more than three minutes, and this was a Sunday. (Hint: Remember this express line when heading Yokohama in the future -- two stops, twenty minutes.)

The first walk through the center of town revealed the usual tourist traps, but only 1000m outside all this disappeared. A tiny winding road lead into the hills where this Buddhist shrine and temple lies (there is a distinction I do not understand). As I arrived at the front gate, the keeper approached me in English to tell me that I was welcome to explore, except the main gates were closed for the day.

I spent over an hour walking the enormous grounds and climbed to the top of a hill (mountain?) to get this picture. It was drizzling part of the day and pouring the rest. The clouds provided a nice, smoky cover for photographs.

Cranes

Considering that Japan had undergone consecutive recessions in the Nineties, it would appear unusual to see so much construction. Nonetheless, cranes are everywhere I visit in Tokyo. Part of this may be that I have only visited the wealthier communities of Tokyo (the southwest), but locals have explained that much of the deflation avoided Tokyo in the last ten years.

Tokyo is still a low rise city. Many large buildings have been built in the last ten years. Since there are no building codes that I can tell of, small apartment building will abut massive forty story office buildings. Buildings are, on average, six to ten stories in the core of Tokyo (I have visited). While this feels like outer neighborhoods in New York City, there is no place like Midtown. Shinjuku feels like a poor substitute.

I also figured out one of the main driving forces behind ridiculous real estate prices here in Tokyo. Any foreigner not from New York City will point to the lack of land. This may be, but businesses frequently pay for employee's housing pre-tax. Imagine the discount on housing in a country where taxes recently were 70+% for the wealthy. Of course, like the tax credit system in the United States for primary mortgage holders, this in turn drives up the price of real estate. While this Japanese tax loop hole is not as prevalent as the mortagage deduction in the United States, it must have driven large rises in the last twenty years.

One final note: there is no deduction of mortgage interest in Japan, like the United States. Thus, buying a home is much less advantageous. If anything, you can afford less.

Tacky Temple

Earlier in the day, I went to a Buddhist temple in Asakusa. Unlike the temples I visited in Hong Kong, this one was tacky and overcrowded. Imagine five hundred yards of carnival shops leading to the entrance of the temple. In Hong Kong, temples rarely had more than a handful of people when I visited.

Regardless, the paintings on the ceiling were excellent. To the right is a nice example. Below these paintings, people said a few prayers and threw money at the shrine. This was a surprisingly loud affair for Tokyo.

I spotted a handful of Europeans/Americans but they were tens among ten of thousands of Japanese. I had my photograph taken by a few Japanese tourists. It was nice to see Japanese families -- rarely larger than four -- out for the day. Everywhere I go in southwest Tokyo, neighborhoods are filled with fashionable, single, beautiful people. One day they may marry, although this generation is working hard to delay, not unlike New York City and San Francisco.

Yokohama Chinatown

I traveled to Chinatown in Yokohama on Friday night. It is the end of Golden Week in Japan, so I had Friday off from work. Most natives had Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday off. Many travel home to visit family.

A friend from Hong Kong decided to take me after visiting a temple in Asakusa earlier in the day. Yokohama is forty minutes from central Tokyo -- comparable to Berkeley and San Francisco. Definitely grittier and less refined than its big brother city to the north, we took the JR line from Ueno (way-no).

A few things about this so-called "Chinatown": This isn't your average Chinatown in the United States filled with native Chinese. Most people and even many restaurants were Japanese! If anything, it felt like a theme park built for the Japanese that is supposed to feel like a Chinatown in the United States. Of course, trash was everywhere -- at least by Japanese standards, so there was some authenticity.

Instead of eating on the two main roads with overpriced restaurants built for Japanese tourists, we found a tiny cramped alley where the cooks and servers were Chinese. We had traditional Hong Kong noodles. This alley felt more like Chinatown II (Richmond District) and III (Taraval Street) in San Francisco. We had a different kind of noodles. Large lumps of dough were held by cooks over boiling water. Individual noodles were sliced from this dough using a special tool. The result: incredibly fresh, chewy noodles.

Street Signs

I posted a picture from a Shinjuku alley earlier in this blog. This is another photo of Shinjuku, but an average street there. Unlike New York and most of the United States, there are apparently no restrictions on signage.

The louder the better.

Since it is so crowded in these neighborhoods, entire buildings are built to house restaurants and bars on different floors. The long signs on the left are sectioned off -- one for each floor. Some buildings are fifteen stories with these small shops, bars, and restaurants.

Shinjuku is one of the busiest places on the planet. Its main train station must be the busiest in the world. More than one million people walk through it each day. Now imagine trying to satisfy those people with food and shopping. These kinds of crowded streets are abound in Tokyo surrounding train stations.

Koizumi-san

Is this the Richard Gere of Japan? I think so. It is a political poster for Koizumi-san, the current prime minister of Japan. While his hair usually long and wily in public appearances, here it is subdued. His faced is so airbrushed in this poster, it is cartoonish. Our American politicians don't need to be on posters to be plastic... they appear that way in person!

When formally addressing someone in Japan, it is polite to append the suffix "-san". There are some people at my office that I do not know their first names -- only their last names. They introduce themselves using only their last name.

Some foreigners attain this respect, but san may be attached also to their first name.

Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana

There are three writing systems in Japan: Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana. I don't know much yet, but I do know Katakana is phonetic and is used to write non-native words to the Japanese. Coffee, lemon, and fax are examples are new words to the Japanese language. They are spelled using Katakana, but not pronounced the same. The words must be stretched to fit the language. (Imagine: "fax-uh")

To the left is the city Tokyo written using Kanji (I think). Kanji are the characters brought from China thousands of years ago. Unlike written Chinese where they are as many as 80,000 known characters, the Japanese government has strict controls on the number of characters here. It is limited to approximately 2,000.

Hiragana is used as a the grammatical glue, where as Kanji is used for objects and concepts. Richard has told me learning Katakana and Hiragana can be accomplished in a few days with books. There are very few characters -- less than 100 to learn for these two systems. They are decidedly more Roman -- or Korean (another phonetic language).

I bought a book about each of the languages from amazon.co.jp two days ago. It is frustrating to not be able to read the restaurant menus. If I could speak 100 food words and read 100 Kanji characters, I might be able to order lunch at a small Japanese restaurant.

Performance Art

The only subway I can compare to Tokyo subways is San Francisco (BART, not Puni). They are stylish, sleek, and freakishly clean. People are silent for the most part reading a book or messaging a friend on their mobile.

This photograph is from the same car as the previous post of Will. He is behind me. This line is very new and is called the Namboku Line. Before entering the train, there are doors that protect passengers from oncoming trains. While not enclosing the platform like Hong Kong (trains can barely be heard arriving), they nonetheless prevent people from throwing themselves on the tracks. I will post more on this terrifying phenomenom when I know more. At least once a day in the Japanese newspaper (published in English), I read a story about a train-related suicide. Japan is clearly struggling with these events.

Enought about suicide -- the title of this post is more important. In a place, like the subway system, where conformance is its more strict, there is an environment ripe for performance art. None of the stations have musicians or actors. Locals have explained, "There is no room." There is plenty of room...

Izakaya

This is Will (American from New York) from work. We traveled to Yosuya last night to eat at an izakaya with our Welsh manager (Richard), his Belgian friend (Sebastian) and his Japanese girlfriend (Maya) (who is fluent in French). When people say that foreigners stick together in Japan, they weren't kidding!

An izakaya is a small restaurant, sometimes without seats where simple foods such as meat and vegetables on shishkababs are grilled or battered and fried. They are served with a variety of drinks. Japanese business men, and now women, relax here after a long week. The atmosphere is casual and often loud if crowded. These are the rowdiest, noisiest places I have yet visited in Japan.

These are Richard's favourite kind of restaurant; he is forever searching for the cheapest. ("Value for money" sums his hunt.) Since the menu in Japanese and the wait staff only speaks Japanese, these places would difficult to visit without a Japanese speaker.

Read more about izakaya here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Izakaya