From Page 7
Food features again when we are back in Tokyo the next day, after returning by air.
We go to a restaurant called Kiji, in tbe central business district, that serves Japanese pizzas. Delicious, these pizzas are more like a cross between a fluffy omelette and a pizza. Toppings on a fluffy base, set on a sizzling grill to keep warm, and shovelled up with our chopsticks. I never thought I’d become adept at using chopsticks or use them to eat pizza.
Further adventures on the surface of another culture come later that afternoon when we decide to take the peak-hour subway to Tokyu Hands, a Tokyo department store that sells everything. I’m exhausted – sleep-deprived, mind chock-a-block with new experiences – but I summon up the energy.
Noriko helps us buy tickets for the train – help we sorely need. The train station is a rushing, buzzing hive of activity, with commuters rushing with purpose to their destinations, sure-footed in this warren of tunnels. Emerging from the packed subway – where, again, politeness is the order of the day. Headphones are muted; a polite distance between commuters is maintained. The area is a riot of colour, light, billboards, shops, and Japanese lettering.
Up narrow streets, past umbrella stands, the rain is coming down this Monday night. The department store is open until late, and I’m smitten by the sheer variety of stationery that is available. There are notebooks and diaries, linen, suitcases, furniture and more, up five floors. Later I stand outside with another journalist waiting for the others. The security guard proudly sweeps a synthetic, green grass-like carpet free of water. It’s pouring again.
We walk to a Starbucks, overlooking the station, waiting and warming up. It’s packed, and it’s hard to find a table. We stand at the counter; one woman has staked her claim to seat by leaving her scarf and bag on it. I am not as incredulous as I might have been days earlier. This is Japan. A place of extraordinary politeness; where even in the subway you feel protected and safe. I watch a young European couple at a table, drinking coffee and determinedly reading their Kindles.
We stand looking out at the intersection XX, where five streets meet, with five zebra crossings. Like clockwork, when the lights turn green the pedestrians stream across, umbrellas raised against the weather. Everything is so orderly, as though choreographed. A few moments later we’re among them, among the choreographed masses, as we cross to the trains.
On our last day in Tokyo we visit a number of art museums, trying to take in as much as possible of Japanese art from centuries past to more contemporary work.
At the Tokyo National Museum we go through an exhibition of art from previous centuries, jostling for space with a group of Japanese schoolgirls in sailor-like blue uniforms. There are exhibitions of clothing, from Samurai outfits to clothes worn by women of the court. There are delicate paintings of geishas and a showcase of masterpieces of Japanese sculptures from northern Japan.
I’m fascinated by the work of the artist described as the “father of Japanese art”, Kuroda Seiki, depicting men and women in traditional dress from the end of the 19th century in broadly modern strokes.
There are some early cherry blossoms and we stop in delight to take pictures.
We walk through the park on our way to lunch. Faint music rings out from speakers. The next day is the anniversary of the 2011 earthquake, and there’s a poster on a tree relating to this.
We stroll through, taking photographs, the wind nipping us, past statues, the ubiquitous vending machines, and down steep stairs that remind me of the streets of Montmartre in Paris. Past a garish-looking shop, signs screaming in pastel and bright pinks, a gambling den, I’m informed.
Lunch at Sensuzu consists of tempura vegetables and giant tempura prawns on a pile of sticky rice.
As always, it’s delicious, followed by green tea ice cream – a strangely astringent yet pleasantly different taste.
At the National Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art we’re introduced to more contemporary art. There is an installation by Kishio Suga, a wall of twinkling lights, a photograph, Breath on Piano by Gabriel Orozco, catches my eye: it shows a pool of water on a piano.
We leave as Tokyo descends into darkness, its night lit by a profusion of lights. I take a last look at a city I have barely touched.
Tokyo flashes past the window: people walking the streets, riding bikes, some with young children strapped into the baskets on the front of the bicycles, glimpsing the river and bridges, a city of endless skyscrapers, and the red of McDonald’s arches. A curry restaurant. A pharmacist sweeps the front of his shop, watching us as we pass in our bus, while the wind is flapping the signs every which way.
lll
I remember my first night in the city.
Lights blazing all around. I turn on the TV – there isn’t a single English language station, even at a hotel. Just station after station of Japanese drama, game shows, some news.
My room is small, there are controls for the radio built into a panelled headboard, and just a single memory foam cushion. There’s something so beguiling about that. About being in a place where everything is new and unfamiliar and you can’t even read the writing on a chocolate label.
The next morning, still a bit disoriented, we had taken the famous bullet train to Kyoto.
I watch the sci-fi city of Tokyo receding from the windows, a city built on layers, as one of the journalists remarks.
Quaint Kyoto is the Japan I had been expecting – of beauty and poetry, along with the images I’d had of Tokyo’s Japan’s futuristic, hi-tech city.
I’d had my first taste of Japan, so to speak, at breakfast. There was no cheese available at the buffets for Western and Japanese breakfasts. But I eat looking out over a grey pond where ducks paddle, an oasis of a rock garden, of calm in the city.
On the bus from the airport we hear the announcement: “Don’t use your portable phones, you will disturb your neighbour.” English made to fit another language, and the Japanese politeness that I will grow used to and then miss.
lll
On the second-last day in Tokyo, I take pictures while the rest of the group have gone ahead to our restaurant. I am to cross a street, the robot is red, but the street is clear, and my instinct is, of course, to cross. Keiko is waiting for me on the other side. I stop myself from jaywalking, as I would have done back home. It just isn’t the done thing to do. How quickly we adapt to the society we are living in, to the norms around us, whatever they are.
And then on our last night in the city we decide to eat near the station where there is a plethora of restaurants. The night before we’d stumbled into a traditional pub-like restaurant, and now, without our guides, we take pot luck in ordering. On our last night we will do the same.
On a Tuesday night in Tokyo it’s incredibly hard to get a place to eat for the seven of us. Restaurant after restaurant is packed; a tout keeps trying to get us to eat at “his” restaurant on the second floor of the building. Finally, we try his place and he smilingly directs us there. But again, there’s only one table available, and it’s only for six. One of the more adventurous in our party takes another flight of darkly lit stairs, the stairwell narrowed by boxes of produce, and finds a dark, smoky place, where finally there’s space for all of us.
We settle down to choose food from a menu that offers horse salami and boiled innards with vinegar sauce.
On our last day in Tokyo, we stroll the streets of the city, past a temple where a woman prays silently before the edifice, and I’m reminded again of the differences and the similarities that bind us all.
We take a subway train to the Skytree, the highest tower in Tokyo. Getting there is an exercise in determination and acquiring an advanced degree in rocket science.
There are a myriad subway train lines, run by eight companies. After close to a half-an-hour of traversing the station concourse and enquiring at different booths, we eventually get ourselves the right ticket for the right line, and find ourselves going the wrong way.
We eventually find ourselves on the right train, going in the right direction – but not on the line we originally thought we’d be going. An American man working in Japan uses an app on his phone to help us find our way. The subway map is horrendously vast and complicated, he tells us.
The Skytree stretches into the sky, rising 250 floors. On a clear day you can see Mount Fuji. While the other writer takes a trip into the sky, where you can eat, I do some sorely needed shopping – finding strawberry white chocolate for someone special at home.
“Where you from?” the smiling assistance asks me.
“South Africa,” I smile back.
“Mandela!”
Ah, Mandela, I nod back. She bows to me as I smile my thanks and walk away.
I buy a distinctly unspicy samoosa filled with potatoes in the food court, and again the shop assistance is polite and smiling, bowing to me. By now I, like the rest of the group, have learnt to bow back, in a more stiff Western fashion, but there it is.
As we leave Tokyo for the airport the sky darkens, the ocean and river flash in and out of view. The Tokyo Eye revolves in the distance. I pass roads, bridges, cars, tunnels, houses, buildings, people in cars and trucks going places.
It feels like a dream.
n Arja Salafranca was a guest of the Japan Foundation: www.jpf.go.jp/e/
n Parasophia exhibition: www.parasophia.jp/ www.parasophia.jp/en/