Tokyo and the tyranny of slippers

 

We emerged from customs at Haneda airport on Showa Day, the public holiday that marks the Golden Week holiday, to be met by our son John and his partner Ryōka. In considerate Japanese style they had worried that we might not appreciate the crowded trains, so they bought tickets for the calmer Limousine Bus to Ikebukoro Station.

 

In the warren of underground streets that takes the traveller to the many train lines that radiate out from Ikebukoro came our baptism of fire by teeming Japanese crowds. We followed Ryōka like an obedient tourist group to the Seibu line (named after the Seibu department store – many of the lines that connect Tokyo disgorge passengers into the departments stores that own the train lines). We avoided the temptation to enter the store, as well as the myriad retail spaces offering food and treats that line the passageways.

Ikebukuro station at a quiter time

 

We had been forewarned to bring the slippers we would need after removing our shoes upon arrival at our rented apartment. But we had not foreseen the need for the toilet slippers - to be worn when entering the toilet but nowhere else. So a pair of designated toilet slippers (washable to ensure hygiene) was our first purchase in Japan. I soon discovered that I struggle to cope with the requirements of slipper wearing: one pair upon arrival; one pair of toilet slippers upon entering the toilet, which on no account must be worn outside the toilet; be sure to wear neither pair when entering the tatami mat room; and another the pair outside on the balcony where one hangs the washing.

Our building (left) and street in Hisaghi-Nagasaki

 

Dining room and kitchen

 

I dread to calculate the proportion of the life of an average Japanese lifetime spent changing slippers. And if Donald J. Trump could tax Japanese slippers, he wouldn’t need any tariffs on Chinese cars; could abandon plans to annex Canada; and need not invade Greenland. I plan to seek an invitation to the White House to promote my beautiful slipper tariff idea to the President, or failing that to the DOGE-in-chief.

Tatami room

 

We discovered on our first day out and about in Tokyo (a visit to the Shitamachi Museum which recreates a working-class district of Tokyo from the late nineteenth century to the 1960s and the former home of the painter Yokoyama Taikan) that we lacked yet another essential of daily life in Japan. Toilets in museums, cafés and so on are impeccably clean and hygienic and provide water and soap to wash your hands, but nothing to dry them with. Everybody carries with them a small towel for the purpose. Jan, who knew this in advance has one, but ignorant Ian does not. Another investment. So, if Donald J. Trump were to tax the slippers and the small towels he wouldn’t need the Ukraine minerals deal either.

The tenement home of the family of a lantern maker. This family had some modern convenience. The wooden cabinet to the left is a refrigerator. A block of ice placed in the top compartment proved the cooling. Out of picture to the left is a flushable Japanese toilet. The flush washed the wastes to a collecting point behind the building to be collected and used as fertilizer. By the 1960s many Japanese housewives owned the "three sacred treasures": a black and white TV, a refrigerator and a washing machine.

Back at our apartment we barely had time for a quick tea before leaving to meet our landlord, Kevin, who had invited us to tea and cake (we spurned an invitation to dinner convinced that we would not have the energy for a sociable evening). We discovered three things about Kevin: the first that he was born in Hong Kong; the second that he can be generous (he arrived bearing gifts of Japanese tea for Jan - I had mentioned that she likes tea and cake - and a pack of. Wedgwood English tea just in case); lastly that he is a terrible listener. Despite all evidence to the contrary, he had decided that we were first timers in Japan and needed to be introduced to one of the seven wonders of Tokyo, Shibuya Crossing. If we had been dazed by the crowds at Ikebukoro, we were shell-shocked by Shibuya. We met at the entrance to yet another Seibu store from where Kevin took us to a Fujiya café – the first nationwide Japanese cake shop founded in 1910. After tea and a Mont Blanc cake (a creamy chestnut mound), we were released from Kevin’s endless chatter only after he had taken the obligatory photographs of us at Shibuya Crossing.

 

We returned exhausted for a supper of supermarket sushi (delicious) and salad of tomatoes, rocket and an avocado (all the way from Mexico), sake and beer. Before bedtime I failed for the umpteenth time to remove my toilet slippers before exiting the toilet. I dread to calculate how much dirt and possible infection I might have spread to the world beyond our little toilet room. (Toilets, by the way, are always in a separate room and by no means in the same room as the bath.)

 

Fortunately, Higashi-Nagasaki has none of the tourist attraction of Shibuya crossing, no tall buildings and no neon. There are small shops, restaurants, karaoke bars and cafés, a couple of supermarkets, a 100-yen store and the odd 7-11 or Family Mart convenience store. Pedestrians and cyclists share the quiet streets with occasional traffic. One thing, however, puzzled me. Across the street from us is a home for senior citizens. On the other, front, side of the building is a small garden, and in front of that an expanse of fenced off tarmac. As we walk around the area, we came across similar expanses of apparently useless tarmac. Ryōka explained to us that in Higashi-Nagasaki there are still many older buildings made principally of wood and therefore a fire risk: the tarmac areas are fire breaks.

Firebreaks in Higashi-Nagasaki

 

Safety planning in Japan is part of everybody’s life. This is, after all, a land of earthquakes and tsunamis. The residents of Shitamachi had regularly experienced fires, and the Great Kanto Earthquake of Childre1923 destroyed most of the area. Then the fire bombing of 1945 razed the area again. The Japanese are trained in earthquake drills at school and adults are therefore well aware of earthquake safety routines. John and Ryōka bought for us at some expense (about £135) an earthquake emergency kit. This includes, among many things, thermal foil blankets, ponchos to keep us dry, a whistle for attracting attention, a quantity of bottled water, dried meals to be hydrated with said water, wipes for cleanliness, and sturdy bags for disposal of toilet wastes.

Our emergency kit. We also have a tin of nutiritional biscuits and a large supply of bottled water.

 

We spend a month a year in Mexico, where earthquakes and hurricanes constitute comparable threat levels. Since the disastrous 1985 quake, safety standards and practices have improved. There are nationwide rehearsals of earthquake evacuation, and warning sirens in Mexico City sound when an earthquake is imminent. But Mexicans are not drilled from childhood as the Japanese are, and earthquake kits of the comprehensive Japanese sort are not available. The irritating Japanese discipline applied to wearing slippers could pay off in lives saved.