Japan, Now
British Airways wanted another 200 euros on top of the original 700 they quoted me, and I wasn’t going to pay it. Found Aeroflot instead for 500 euros round trip. It felt like a win until I realized the layover was six hours somewhere in Siberia, but I decided it was worth it anyway. The timing shifted too. Forget early September. Late May instead, for five weeks, with an open return ticket in case I decide to stay or need to escape after two weeks. Both feel equally probable.
Sari volunteered to be my guide—she’s one of the new authors here. We’re going to hunt down artists, hit some concerts, photograph people who are already photographing things, eat food that shouldn’t exist. Unless I end up too drunk in a gutter somewhere, which also counts as experiencing the culture, apparently.
Hannah went to Tokyo for three months in 2009 and over the years has drilled advice into me like she’s preparing me for combat. Don’t walk while eating—it’s impolite. The cold soup with raw egg at street stalls is a trap. The yellow egg things at the sushi conveyor taste insane but they’ll destroy your stomach if you go overboard. Never eat anything that looks like sludgy peanut paste, because you will vomit. The milk-flavored soda from the vending machines though, that’s legitimately good.
There’s a beggar at Shibuya Station who targets foreign people, tells elaborate stories, kneels down asking for money. Total performance art. The manga kids—you can’t tell if they’re male or female under all the makeup, they’re visually identical. A few streets over and basically everywhere else are the red light places with big display windows where you pick from the menu before entering. Hannah got thrown out of one—women aren’t allowed. Fruit costs more there than anywhere else, which is bizarre, but that’s Tokyo.
Always step through temple entrances with your left foot first or it’s bad luck. The way people blow their noses is this aggressive snorting thing that sounds horrible, and I’ll definitely do it wrong. Hannah used to laugh at how much people slurp their soup. Buy yourself a Hello Kitty face mask. Nobody speaks English there. They’re too self-conscious about it. You can approach someone in a business suit and they’ll just say hai hai
and wait for you to release them. They learn reading in school, not speaking. Some of the ones who don’t speak English are incredibly generous and brave about trying to help though. It goes better if you actually try Japanese. They warm up fast. Don’t ride the trains without paying. Don’t hop the barriers. That actually gets you in trouble.
I’ll probably stumble from one social disaster into another anyway. It’s how I operate. Before Japan there’s Prague and Mallorca, but I’ll get to that later. I’m just hoping the landlord and tourism board feel benevolent about my housing, because the backup plan is a roommate situation, and that’s only tolerable if they’re genuinely interesting people. Otherwise it’s just miserable.