I once attended a publishing meeting addressed by the trade attaché of the US embassy: he joked that the first words spoken by his young son were not Dada or Mama, but “Mind the Gap”. This was probably an ice breaker rather than the truth, but I’ve recalled the story as we have moved around Tokyo. The big sights (temples, gardens, museums, Imperial Palace etc.) are important, but what one also remembers so vividly are the sights, sound, tastes and smells of life in the metropolis. In many ways, the small things of daily life are more significant than the great monuments of Japanese history.
One thing you notice is the complete absence of smoking and vaping on the streets and any other public place. The Japanese certainly are smokers. Hotels offer smoking as well as non-smoking rooms, and you need to be careful to book the type you want. Bars can often be smoking, even in luxury hotels, and certainly in the case of neighbourhood bars. Restaurants tend to be non-smoking, although, some offer a smoking room or compartmentalized dining area for those who cannot get through dinner without a puff. As notices on the pavement occasionally remind us, smoking is prohibited on all streets. Therefore, one does not see desperate office workers puffing away outside office blocks, unless there is an area of private property for the purpose. On the main campus of Rikkyo University smoking students cram into a small smoking booth hazy with smoke. And the young person absently-minded puffing on a vape while walking along studying a mobile phone, so common in the UK, is a rare sight in public in Tokyo.
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| No smoking on the pavement. |
Cafés are abundant and come in several different shapes and sizes. At the disappointing end of the scale are the corporate chains. Starbucks is here, but fortunately not anywhere close to dominant, and certainly not in our neighbourhood. The chain most to be avoided is Dotour, featureless spaces that offer insipid coffee and cakes, donuts etc. with no discernible taste other than sugar. Tully’s Coffee is slightly better, but both chains offer seating for single customers separated by plastic screens. When we had coffee in the Tully’s at Ekoda Station, it was full of single women and men all in complete silence on laptops or phones: it had the atmosphere of a funeral parlour. Becks Coffee offers pretty good coffee and seating for at least two customers at a table, which encourages social contact.
But the stars of the coffee scene are abundant individual businesses, often occupying tiny spaces staffed by one owner or a couple, that make coffee with great care. In one of our locals in Higashi Nagasaki, the owner (a grey-haired gentleman), sits patiently waiting for customers. Choices are few: coffee, not tea; blend or straighto. The blend comes from Kenya, Brazil, Guatemala and Mexico. Straighto is a single bean, chosen from large bags of unroasted beans from a variety of countries. The beans are roasted on demand, ground and the coffee made, strong and black (no milk available), using a glass siphon apparatus similar to the metal espresso coffee makers I remember from my student days. The customer has a choice of coffee only, or a “cake set” of coffee and a slice of cake. Another nearby café makes only drip coffee as its owner proudly informed us: here we sat on a two-table patio fragrant with roses and other flowers.
Everywhere, the customer is asked whether the coffee or tea is wanted hoto or ice. The latter must be especially delightful in Tokyo’s steamy hot summers, although iced coffee is available all year round. But the star of stars is Sakiya Café in Kanamechō, run by a delightful lady. Her café has room for only two tables, each with two high stools, the other seating being eight low stools at a wooden counter. In her tiny kitchen she bakes a bewildering array of scones (spelled “scorns”: matcha with clotted cream and jam is to die for), muffins, a sort of rock cake, carrot cake, pudding (crème caramel) various sweet breads, and half loaves of dark bread. All served with a smile and gracious politesse. Sakiya is open five days a week, 8am-6pm, so the owner works hard for her living.
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| "Scorns," cakes and bread at the Sakiya Café. |
Unlike Britain, where restaurant chains funded by corporate investors, dominate much of the restaurant scene, even in metropolitan Tokyo small establishments abound. We had dinner with John in a neighbourhood yakitori (grilled meats) restaurant. This was essentially a small rectangular room, with two small tables squeezed in by the door and a long counter, round three sides of the kitchen and serving space. I had a prime view of the work area. Cooking occupied about half the working space: at the far end, a chef was grilling the meats, and next to him another was producing the fried dishes. Closer to me there was just room for draft beer and warm sake dispensers, a double sink and a refrigerator, where two young people worked, taking orders, serving food and drinks, washing up the quantity of dishes produced by successive small servings. In all there must have been about 20 customers sitting at the counter and another 6 or 8 at the tables.
We have had lunch at three Indian restaurants, all exceedingly inexpensive (lunch for the equivalent of £4 or £5). They offer lunch and dinner provided by one (maximum two) chefs and a waiter. The customer chooses a curry (options from mild to very hot), rice or naan, drink (lassi, mango lassi or coffee), and salad. If you choose naan, the sound of vigorous slapping announces that yours is being made to order. In one tiny establishment I watched a woman slap a circle of dough onto the hot plate a few times; she then slapped it repeatedly and vigorously between her hands, stretched and grilled it.
In the more formal restaurants where you spend longer over your meal, whether Japanese traditional or western-style, one often must choose a “course” (a fixed price menu, frequently chosen in advance). Service is gracious and usually provided by an attentive lady in an elegant kimono. Western food is often served with delicate Japanese touches: small portions, elegantly presented. When we lunched on a course at Forestier, the “Japanese-style western restaurant” at the Tokyo city concert hall, our soup was served, followed in seconds on a beautifully arranged tray with the fish and meat dishes, and salad. Soup in Japanese restaurants is not the dish you consume first, but an accompaniment eaten as the diner pleases.
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| "Western" lunch served Japanese style at the Forestier restaurant. |
It is always essential to carry a good amount of cash when eating out or going to a café, for cash is still, if not king, often unavoidable. Many of the restaurants in the area where we are staying take cash only, and none are card only as is often the case in the UK. John’s local yakitori feast cost ¥10,800 cash (about £54) cash only. And when we top up our PASMO card that we use to pay our rail fares, we must do so with cash. On the other hand, non-cash payments are almost universally made by mobile phone or digital watch, rather than cards. Thus, the economy is simultaneously very digital and still substantially cash-based, a typically Japanese contradiction.
As I mentioned in a previous blog item, Japan is the land of plastic packaging. Even in our rather scruffy greengrocer, peaches and mangoes are wrapped in individual plastic blankets, as are the ready-to-eat avocadoes in the supermarket. Apart from the greengrocer and the local cafés, we have a fishmonger run by a single gentleman who is there every day in his little wellington boots. We now exchange a cheery konnichiwa. He seems to be open all hours of the day, often filleting fish or grilling them on the tiniest charcoal barbecue. Another easy dinner option is offered by Yakitori King: a selection of ready-to-eat skewered meats, or, our favourite, deep fried battered chicken with a leaf of shisō (“Japanese basil”). Between the fishmonger, Yakitori King, and the greengrocer, a healthy salad dinner takes minutes to prepare.
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| Avocado and mango in their plastic blankets. |
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| Our local violin maker at work in the evening. The bike indicates how small his workshop is. |
One is often amazed at the sheer variety and number of small businesses. No more than two or three minutes from our apartment is a violin and viola shop, where one evening we looked in to see a young man sanding down part of a violin. There is an equally diminutive art gallery, displaying for a limited time the analogue photographs and prints of a German artist. We bought rice crackers from a shop that has been in business for 75 years in the same family. And round the corner is a small workshop where tatami mats are made.
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| The tatami workshop. |
We continue to be amazed by the gracious generosity and courtesy of Japanese people, most of whom speak little or no English, to assist us with our very limited Japanese. At one station I was able to ask a young woman if the approaching train would take us to our destination. She studied the departure board intently, then hurried off down the stairs (we followed at speed), turned left, took us to the stairs up to the next platform, pointed up and, bowing, rushed back to her platform. She may well have missed her train, and certainly saved us from heading in the wrong direction.
Another day, in a local neighbourhood, we wandered up a small path to a traditional-looking single storey building with a tiny garden and torii gate of the sort one sees at every temple or shrine. An elderly lady holding a broom made of sticks invited us into the garden and tried to engage us in conversation. We managed to understand that this was her home and garden: through the window we could see tatami mats and an easy chair. She seemed willing to persist in chatting to us in Japanese although we understood barely a word. We parted as pleasant acquaintances.
The fabled Japanese politeness is obvious as we queue at the places indicated on the train platforms where the doors will open, and wait as we let passengers off the train. However, there all politeness ends: younger passengers rush for the seats if any are available, leaving we seniors standing. We choose to board where signage tells us there will be priority seats, which gives us the best chance of a seat on a busy chain. However, we have learned that we could collapse in a faint before a younger person with a mobile phone in a priority seat will make way for an older person – chances are much better, but far from guaranteed, if a young woman occupies the seat.
At busy intersection stations such as Ikebukuro at the end of our line, crowds rushing from one line to another take no account of anybody, and I am surprised that after two weeks nobody has yet charged into us. Equally, where pedestrians and cycles share the narrow local streets, or the wide pavements of wide boulevards, cyclists weave unnervingly (often at speed) between pedestrians. The wider pavements are divided into areas for pedestrians and cyclists, but the latter pay no heed.
Stations are transport hubs, but the big interchanges such as Ikebukuro are also places that offer a bewildering array of retail food opportunities: noodle restaurants, Japanese sweets, cakes, a variety of cheese-based items, takeaway dishes to be microwaved at home, and so on. Most smaller stations will offer a café or small restaurant and a convenience store. Above the major stations are shopping centres and department stores. At Ikebukuro, the department store is owned by the Seibu group, which runs the railway line we travel on, the Prince hotels, such as the one in Shinagawa where we had dinner a few days ago, a burger chain called Mos Burger (avoid at all costs), banks, and the Seibu Lions baseball team based in Tokorozawa on the Seibu railway line.
The no-holds-barred railway hubs, contrast with the quiet discipline that otherwise dominates much of life in Japan. For example, when we visited Rikkyo University we waited with hordes of silent young students waiting for a green man sign to cross a narrow street with no traffic as far as one could see.
Streets, stations and public spaces in general are extraordinarily clean by European standards, partly because almost nobody disposes of their rubbish in a public place, and partly because people are employed to keep them clean. Public toilets abound. They are to be found in every station and public park (no matter how small). They are invariably clean and equipped with technology to warm the seat and cleanse the body. For wheelchair and other disabled users there is always a disabled toilet and we have yet to encounter a train platform that does not have fully functioning lifts. At some major stations recordings of bird song signal to visually impaired travellers the location of exits.
“Tough on crime; tough on the causes of crime” was a motto of the Blair government, and in Britain we lock up more criminals than most other developed nations, but nevertheless we seem to live in fear of crime, even if we have never experienced it ourselves. In Japan one is struck by the absence of the threat of crime. I once escorted a visiting colleague from New York to a party at the home of a Japanese colleague. The New Yorker was quite unnerved because she did not need to be alert to threats of robbery or violence.
One consequence of the absence of threat is the vast number of children (even quite small children of nor more that 9 or 10 years) moving (walking, or riding the trains or buses) around in small groups or on their own with no adult supervision. The school run in a Range Rover or its equivalent, so common where we live, seems not to exist in Tokyo.
One rarely sees police walking the beat (although I have seen them on cycles in Higashi Nagasaki), and only rarely a police car. Instead, the police are present in police boxes (there are said to be over 800 in Tokyo and more than 6,000 in all of Japan). The presence of an officer in his small building provides reassurance and a place to go in the event one needs assistance. Nevertheless, the boxes display mug shots of a number of most wanted criminals in my experience all men). One also sees them displayed at train stations. When I asked Ryōka if she had ever been to one, she told me that when she was quite young, she handed in a ring she found on the street. She handed it in at a police box where the officer gave her a receipt. After the allotted time, the ring became her property. And I suspect that petty pilfering is no less common than in other countries: Ryōka commented that shopping centre toilet paper holders are designed to prevent theft of rolls of the stuff.
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| Wanted posters and other warnings at Higashi Nagasaki station. |
A book I read in preparation for our extended stay notes that “By the seventeenth century, the Japanese had the most urbanised society in the world. The court was based in the great city of Kyoto; the merchants in the equally vast city of Osaka; the rulers were building their power in what was shortly to become the largest city on earth, Edo, or as it was later called, Tokyo.”* We have been observing the consequences of this early urbanisation in the homes of people in the areas where we have walked. Our apartment is particularly small (three rooms and a toilet and bathroom). The home of our son John and Ryōka is slightly more spacious, but not generously so. We have come across homes in our area and places close by that would qualify as those of well-to-do professionals in the UK, but nothing that approximates the luxury homes of the exceedingly wealthy in the Ascot area where we live.
In Higashi Nagasaki, most homes occupy the entire area of the plot of land, except perhaps for a small space to grow a rose bush or a very small tree. A few have gardens, but those are exceedingly small by British standards. To British eyes, these homes seem very modest, but quite a number have Mercedes or BMWs parked outside, suggesting that the owners are fairly prosperous. To the south in Mejiro, the stand-alone homes are larger, some with more generous gardens, and the apartments have more of an air of prosperity, although still not plush by UK standards. A Rolls Royce and a Mercedes parked outside one home that occupied its lot with no room for a garden, suggested that money does not buy an awful lot of space even for the very well-to-do.
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| A well-to-do house in Mejori. |
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| A traditional wooden house in Mejiro. |
Thus, most Japanese have very little personal private space, and very limited privacy. It is true that there are several parks in our area, but these are essentially the size of an urban block with a playground, some flowers, a few bushes and two or three benches for sitting quietly (children are noisy, adults not). Further afield, Tetsugakudo Park, in the Nakano district, was larger, with baseball diamonds, tennis courts, a pond with large carp and a small area for strolling or sitting quietly on a bench. There was also a short walk along the Myōshōji river (encased in concrete as all rivers in Tokyo are).
We visited Tetsugakudo on a Sunday. The tennis courts were occupied. Two teams of noisily enthusiastic boys (no girls) aged 10 or so were leaving the nearer baseball diamond with parents dressed in their own baseball outfits. Another team entered, lined up neatly and in unison bowed to nobody in particular. Meanwhile, the previous teams had found their bikes and were all lining up neatly to leave safely under adult supervision. We have walked past a number of schools with well-maintained and spacious sports facilities. At one we noticed one girl playing in a football team and another girl playing baseball. Japan seems not to feel it necessary to separate male and female sports at all levels as we have now done in the case of most sports in the UK. However, Ryōka tells us that it is not common for girls to play alongside boys.
Then, of course, there are the gardens that provide the Japanese with space for quiet contemplation. In Kanazawa, we visited the famed Kenrokuen, considered one of the three greatest of Japan’s gardens, created from the 1620s to the 1840s by the Maeda rulers of Kaga province who employed Kurando Terashima of whom I wrote earlier. This large space of trees, ponds, streams and flowers is tended in meticulous detail: we watched three lady gardeners wearing conical wicker hats working on their knees, heads down, removing from the moss intrusive grass with a small knife. And men pruning with a sharp curved blade on a long pole small pieces of dead growth from pine trees with meticulous care to keep the trees uniformly green.
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| Moss management in Kenrokuen. |
Nowadays, hordes of visitors render quiet contemplation a rare commodity in Kenrokuen (one is never truly alone in Japanese cities), but a visit to the small Mejiro garden (created in 1990) in Tokyo, was an entirely different experience. There is the obligatory pond with ducks, carp and a not-so-obligatory swimming snake, carefully crafted vistas of trees and bushes, an old-style building available for hire, and seating to enable one to relax away from the bustle of the city (although a railway line is but a few metres away). The only obstacle to peaceful enjoyment was a betrothed couple, the bride-to-be resplendent in a gorgeous red/orange with silver thread kimono, her severe-looking lover in a sombre black outfit, with photographer and two lady assistants to create the perfect image for the pre-wedding photos. Oh, and a snake had moved on to lounge on a rock by a path, alarming a group of ladies enjoying the garden’s tranquility.
The lack of personal space is no doubt, one reason for the lack of touch in public to maintain a distance from others. This includes simply holding hands or the briefest of familiar touches, even in the case of husband and wife or young couples, and the pervasive bowing (although friends allow us to shake their hands or hug).
Personal distance is also expressed in forms of address. Your father is Otōsan and mother Okasan, both forms including the honorific -san. Although other partners of our sons, nephews and nieces address us simply by our first names, Ryōka prefers Ian san and Jan san. At work John addresses all his colleagues by their family (first) name and san, never by their given (second) name. The Japanese patron of my Dictionary of Art (Macmillan, 1996) was the most senior art historian and Tokyo University Profesor AkiyamaTerukazu (his given name means blessed peace – he was born in 1918), who was addressed using the still more respectful sensei (master).
Which brings us to the question of hierarchy. Your seniors (in social and work status, or age) are to be bowed to more deeply and treated in respectful terms. I recall a sales call to the Kansei regional office of the Kinokuniya booksellers in Osaka, ruled by a boss of legendary accomplishment and authority, My Yamamoto. As my colleague Miss Matsumoto and I entered the room an order was barked out and the entire room rose to bow to us. After we had presented our book to the sales team Yamamoto san ordered every salesman (they were all men) to stand. And tell me what they had done to sell my book (which, of course, I could not understand); one salesman started talking only to be yelled at by Mr Yamamoto and then, visibly terrified, sat down – his sales were lamentable and his punishment was public humiliation. Yamamoto san rule was beyond challenge.
I used to be puzzled by the intense concentration with which my name card (as business cards are termed) was studied. At first, I thought perhaps my name was puzzling or hard to read. In fact, my name was of secondary interest: what the publishers and booksellers I met wanted to know was where did I fit in the hierarchy, so as not to accidentally offend me by treating me with less than the deference that was my due. In fact, because foreigners did not fit neatly into the established orders of respect, I was often promoted to an honorary highest status.
Nevertheless, in certain circumstances, the formality disappears, especially when drinking is involved. After a meeting with my friend and bookseller Nobuo Utagawa and his colleague, I was invited to an izakaya (often translated as a pub, but really just an informal restaurant also designed for drinking). On arrival, one of my hosts suggested “Shall we get drunk?” As well as drinking, this involved trying to roll our own sushi and a long discussion of how to write my name in Japanese characters.
Then there is the problem of language. All the main transportation hubs have signage in Japanese and English. On most trains there are signs and announcements in Japanese and English to identify stations, but we have encountered some trains on routes to suburban destinations that lack both English signage and announcements. Our limited Japanese is sufficient for day-to-day things such as basic food shopping, ordering in a café or restaurant, and asking the direction to our destination. Beyond that we depend on our Japanese interlocutor speaking English better than we do Japanese – by no means always the case, although almost everybody valiantly, but often unsuccessfully, endeavours to communicate in broken English.
Most digital transactions offer an option in English, for example when topping up our PASMO card at the station. The cash machine in the 7 Eleven near our apartment offers an English option; the only other European language offered is Portuguese, an interesting reflection of Japanese history (the Portuguese were the first Europeans to make contact and trade with Japan). The English option at the local supermarket checkout works well enough until you need to confirm payment, at which point the instruction is in Japanese only. But these are minor obstacles, easily overcome.
On many trains a small screen above the doors pumps out advertising, but also Train TV. This might offer a very brief film showing one how to eat noodles, or a cooking technique. Train TV also provides tips to improve one’s English. One lesson for example, showed a sad-looking cartoon character on a park bench. Another, concerned-looking character approaches and asks “What’s wrong with you?” This, one is told, is not the way to address the question. Instead, one is advised to say “Are you OK?”
Despite their limited (or nil) command of English the Japanese seem compelled to insert English (and sometimes other European languages) into aspects of daily life. Our packet of prunes at the supermarket tells us that they are Value Plus. A local political poster is all in Japanese except for “My town meeting 2025”. The English is often incorrect: a can of beer told me that it is “For everyone who are truly being yourself”. And some choices are distinctly odd: a famous brand of soft drink is not very alluringly named Pocari Sweat (I think it is an allusion to the electrolytes that the drink provides).
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| Political posters in Higashi Nagasaki, promoting "My town meeting 2025". |
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This male candidate's poster creates, to my mind, the image of a rather menacing, manic character. The image of him speaking in a chamber suggest that he is already a member of the Japanese Diet (parliament).
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Whereas these female candidate' smiles are much more alluring. The ratio of female to male candidates in local posters is high, but Jan comments that women tend to run for local office, rather than the Diet. Outside the Higashi Nagasaki station a few days ago we came across three men (no women) canvassing for a political party.
The developers of apartments almost always name their buildings in a European language or with an allusion to one. John and Ryōka live in a building called Relafort; they have no idea what it means but assume it refers to relaxation and strength or perhaps comfort. We walked past a building called Fortress, presumably the Japanese apartment dweller’s castle. Some aim for delusions of grandeur: Royal Court Mejiro, Gracious Chihaya, or Bellavista (where the view was certainly not Bella), for example. Spanish names seem to be popular: we have seen more than one Casa del Sol, and also Casa Colina (no hill in sight) or Arbol Grande (no tree present).
This linguistic silliness is reflected in (to European eyes) silly fashion choices and enthusiasms. A walk from Higashi Nagasaki to Nakano Broadway (not a wide avenue, but a crowded and cramped covered marketplace for computer games, manga, toys, jewelry, and anything related to hobbies) we passed Ferret World. Ryōka solved the puzzle of why anybody would want to buy ferrets in this megacity: a ferret character had featured in an animé, creating an instant enthusiasm for ferret-keeping. The narrow streets around Nakano Broadway were just the place to find maid cafés and cat or rabbit cafés (a store called Love Rabbit was almost adjacent to Ferret World). The young boys and girls we see on trains all have cute, cuddly toys attached to their backpacks: Mickey or Minnie Mouse (or both) and characters from Japanese films or manga, Adult young women (not men) similarly have their favourite characters attached to their handbags or mobile phones. And after school closes Harajuku, a district adjacent to the Meiji Shrine, is thronged by youngsters dressed in all manner of silly outfits. Eccentric enthusiasms and sillinesses express a freedom otherwise hard to find in a society that lives in conformity to social norms.
As for the equivalents of “mind the gap”, announcements and “melodies” (the term the Japanese have selected instead of jingles) on the transport system, it is hard to know where to start. Candidates are “doa shimarimasu” (door(s) closing – trains and lifts); “mamonaku” (shortly: as trains approach); or “norikai des” (this is an interchange station). Restaurants and shops, echo to repeated choruses of “irasshaimasē” (welcome) or, as you leave, a chorus of “arigato gozaimasu” (thank you), of if being extra polite “arigato gozaimashita”, or super extra polite “domo arigato gozaimashita”.
Like many other cultures, the Japanese have adopted into their language many English-language terms, but they sometimes miss the target, even in the case of everyday items. John mentioned that the concentric electric plug (like the American two-pin plug) in Japan is known as a consento.
Finally, during a discussion of where one sources things such as eels (in an eel restaurant), Ryōka commented on a peculiarity of Japanese income tax law. Because the tax base of large cities dwarfs that of small towns and regions, one can choose to pay part of one’s tax to a region other than the one in which you live. In return, you are entitled to buy products from that region at an advantageous price: this might apply to apples from Aomori prefecture, or example. I might suggest this to Rachel Reeves as a solution to the North/South divide in the UK on my return to the UK.
On the subject of finance, A British visitor is struck by how inexpensive almost everything is in Japan, a contrast from my memories of a costly Japan in the 1990s. I also remember newspaper reports 30 or so years ago praising the relative lack of economic inequality in Japan, compared to the UK and the UK. Now, most things we pay for are about half the price of the UK equivalent. When we asked Ryōka about the home in Mejiro with a Rolls Royce and a Mercedes compared to much more modest homes in Higashi Nagasaki, she responded that inequality in the pay of workers is relatively narrow, but executives, powerful politicians and the like earn far more. However, when I asked her about jobs that ar poorly paid in the UK, such as waiters and shop assistants, she replied that these pay about ¥1,200 (£6) per hour, about half the UK minimum wage. Nevertheless, the cost of living in Japan is a political issues as much as it is in the UK: the price of rice is the government’s main political concern.
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| An ad for a customer service job at our local station: pay ¥1,100 per hour, part time. |
*Alan Macfarlane, Japan Through the Looking Glass, London: Profile Books Ltd., 2008.
A sumo wrestling PS:
The Yokozuna Grand Champion in the recent tournament was Onosato, the first Japanese wrestler to win the title since 2017. And he won in record time, after 13 bouts, the fastest promotion since 1909. In total he won 14 bouts, losing to the Mongolian incumbent Hoshoryu. Onosato is the 75th fighter to hold the title. Two messengers were sent to his heya to notify him of his promotion. In response he vowed to practice hard so as not to disgrace the title.
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| Onsato celebrates being named Yokozuna, looking forward to a small snack. |
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