Tokyo - The ritual trip

It has been eight months since, I landed in Japan. And it was only last week that I set out to see the key attractions of Tokyo. The inclination to visit Tokyo had been very less, although there had been a dozen or more trips to the city on some work.

Tokyo is another metropolis and all metropolis in the world are the same; May be not, but that is what I think; All of them have been cosmopolised, completely re-built in the recent past, the history erased and re-written over again and again;

Listing down the things, common to most of the metropolis and Tokyo is one of them....
- Every square inch is constructed, a very effective transportation network of well connected metro trains and buses, shopping malls all over to feed the economy; satisfy the purchase power,long endless foot paths, giant road crossing and signals, multi tier rails and roads, an eerie humming sound buzzing all over the city, a sense of hurry prevailiing in the air, a sense of anonymity among the population, the determination to survive; to catch a train; to take a seat; to reach in time; to be ahead of others; to gain more wealth; no history left, no distinct culture to be celebrated, the city belongs to nobody, nobody loves the place; their minds are miles away in their natives while their brains machine day in and day out to mint money, Skyscrapers, famous Skylines, Concrete Monuments, Cement roads, pubs, bars, a distinct entertainment district, weekend hangout places, Cofee shops for younsters, huge parks for the families, road side shows for children, old age homes, street vendors, music bands playing on the road, street advertsing, neon lights, traffic jams, never ending queues, parking problems . . . . . . .

The list is too long but let me stop here and write something about Tokyo too.

The main city centers around the Yamanote line or the Yamanote loop, trains run round the clock in this never ending loop. You can reach a station by boarding any one of the trains running in opposite directions. 'Yamanote' refers to the upper class town of the erstwhile Edo era.

We headed staright to Shin-juku, the commercial epicenter of the city with huge skyscrapers....The Tokyo Metropolitan Government office (see pic. right) offers a view of the city from the observatory in the 45th floor. Shinjuku station, is the largest station in the world in the sense that 500000 commuters pass through it everyday. Being the center hub of all buzzing activity, the subways, footpaths and a 750m long moving walkway are broad and I could sense how it would be like to be there on a weekday morning rush hour. The view of a city from an elevation, to see the cars like matchboxes, skyscrapers like a pile of bricks and roads like grey coloured ribbon bands is always exciting; As the day was clear, we were able to see as far as Yokohama eventhough Mt. Fuji was not visible.

The next destination was the Meiji shrine in Harajuku; The shrine is dedicated to the Meiji emporer and empress under whom Japan prospered during the late 19th and early 20th Century. He was the one, who opened the Japenese ports for foreign trade. The shrine is completely in contrast to Shinjuku high rise buildings. You feel like steeping back 100 years earlier, once you enter the shrine, nothing is modern, no traces of the present, vast area of greenery with more than 100,000 trees, peaceful and tranquil. The shrine is ideally maintained to attract the foreign traveller, we could see more gaijin (foreigners) than Nihonjin (Japanese); A shinto wedding was taking place in the shrine, giving every foreigner an oppportunity to click some memories . . . . although most of the relatives were dressed in Victorian attire let one some old ladies in kimonos.
The Yoyogi park, beside the Meiji shrine is the largest city park open to the public; It was very busy on that saturday afternoon, with walkers, joggers, doggers (he, he just for the rhyme), picknickers, dads playing with their kids, daters, young couples, picknickers and even yoga classess.....Jus outside the Yoyogi-koen, the street culture of the west is out in the open, the youth of the day, playing guitars, drums, singing and dancing, attracting a lot of onlookers, .....


An another shot in the same place, i luv this..... dunno why? Its a bit unusual, rather a strange sight in this extremely male chauvinistic Japanese society;
From Harajuku, we headed to the otherside of the Yamanote loop to the Hamamutsuchuo station; Tokyo tower is a 15 min. walk from this station and it was very difficult to find the route, every other guy whom we asked for the way, showed us the direction,..."kochi"(this way), but not the route; Finally, it was there - a look alike of Eiffel Tower, an epitome of steel construction, and a nice destination to take "I was there" kind of snaps. Me too, took one.

Nagz

My first Japanese Class

The first 'Nihongo no Jyugou' is one of my cherishable experiences in Japan. Offered by the Company, I was one of the early birds to register for the class. The class was scheduled for Thursday evenings every week. It was about the beginning of march, 2006 and I was too new to Japan and my Japanese language skills were into negative. i was not even knowing the basic greetings like 'Good Morning', 'hello', etc,.I was very much excited about the class...

I entered the class, 3 minutes late as I lost some time locating the conference room. The room was full with 14 philipinos, 3 Indians and 3 Japanese. There was a young lady in the Japanese group, and I was just thinking that it would be nice if she is the teacher.Was that plain chemistry or lol.......all my language teachers have been from the opposite gender, to get into descending order, Learnt Francaise from Sunita-ma'm ,Elisabeth-ma'm and Cecilia ma'm, Hindi from Poongothai-akka,Tamizh and English in school from all female teachers...Sita-miss, Indra-miss, Savitha-miss, Sundari-miss, Maheswari-miss, Devasena-miss................oh my goodness. Keeping my fingers crossed (the french way), I was eagerly waiting for the class to begin. As it turned out to be, our Sensei (Teacher) was not that lady, but the old man in the grey shirt, Hagitani-san.

He started with a small introduction on Japan, the people and the language..........and was explaining about the phonetics of the language; I was not able to understand anything, was literally feeling out of the world. Then he taught us some spoken language, everyday expressions ......'ohayo gozaimasu', 'arigato gozaimasu', 'o-genki desu ka'. . . . The phillipinos were just masters of these expressions, some of them living in Japan for the past 2 years. Spell bound with mouth open, I was gazing at all of them.

The second part of the class was to learn the Japanese script.....It is so strange that Nihongo has three scripts
Hiragana - syllabic script for writing Japanese words consisting of 50 characters
Katakana - syllabic script for writing Non-Japanese words consisting of 50 characters
Kanji - pictorial script borrowed from China more than 2500 characters
Any sentence can contain all the three scripts together.....If you want to write 'Nagappan lives in Yokohama'
Got to write, 'Nagappan' in katakana, 'lives in' in hiragana and 'Yokohama' in kanji;

Having taught this funda, Hagitani-san moved on to writing hiragana . . . He wrote the characters a, e, u, eh, o in the board....and as I was the one sitting closest to him, he asked me to copy the character 'a'. I did that effortlessly which amazed him. He asked

"Do you know Japanese already?"
"No, not really"
"But, You have written like an expert, no flaws in the script"

I felt like, he is encouraging me and did not show much of myself and returned back to the seat. Got some thought over, I told him,

"This hiragana character 'a' is a bit similiar to the character 'ka' written in my mother toungue"
"oh, really? Which part of India are you from?"
"South India"
"Then, your mother toungue must be Tamil"

huh........duk duk uk................a big quake, am I in my senses; What am I hearing? A Japanese fellow talking about tamil; I was not able to beleive my own ears. But, there was Hagitani-san, standing so real and cool was continuing,

"There is a Japanese linguistics professor by name Ohno, who beleives that Japanese might have originated from Tamil. Although the theory is not well accepted, it is one of the famous theories on the origin of the language" (For more info, check http://arutkural.tripod.com/tolcampus/jap-tamil.htm)

This moment, I knew that I was going to enjoy learning this language.

Nagz

Old Man in Tokyo

One from my Tokyo Trip - might be one of the few homeless of Tokyo - found him outside the Tokyo Metropolitan Governement office, discussing some hot issue with his friend;

Look at his wrinkles - Till date, our technology has not been able to conquer the ageing process..

Anger Unspelt

`I am in Qatar` - they say in north India, when they want to say `I am in the Queue`....don`t know why? and I am not going to debate about it.

Queue - is forced discipline, to get things into order, give opportunity to everyone and to emphasise the `First Come - First Serve` philosophy; Queue is democratic and everyone is equal before the queue.

But nobody wants to stand in a queue, nobody wants to wait, nobody wants to keep standing watching others getting their work done . . . . One such guy is our hero; His mother was forcing him to stand in a queue to take his turn in a "game of luck" in the Okusawa Jinja matsuri. He was restless, impatient and getting frustrated but was not able to do anything..... This cropped B&W photograph is one of my all time favourite.



ナガパン　(Nagapan in katakana Japanese script)

Photographing Children - My first hand experience

The toughest thing in the world is to give a title rather than writing it. Got to get a fitting title for your thoughts and also take care that you do not wander outside the title. So, i am going to name this post after writing it . . . . lets see how it turns out to be.

Photographing children is one of the most interesting and also the most difficult things to do. The subject is on the move, doing something or the other, has senses same as you with a possibility of getting offended too . . . .So, along with your camera, you are also carrying the risk of being beaten up.

With a zoom lens, you are bit convenient and so is your subject; Children are always cute everywhere and the children in Japan are no exception with their small eyes and doll-like features; They behave very well in the public and are mostly shy, clinging to the legs of their parents.

I had been to a local festival earlier this month and there were lots of kids around; The festival hosted a small entertainment stall for the kids; There were lot of gifts inside a box with threads tied to them. The other end of the thread was let out of box; all the kids have to do was to stand in a queue, pull a thread of their choice and get the gift - and then again stand in the queue for the next one.

Their were a cycle of varied emotions, a "long wait" for the turn to come, "anxeity" while waiting, "tension" when pulling the thread, "happy" after seeing the toy, "Pride" when showing the toy to their mothers, kinda 'I've acheived feeling' and not to let alone the 'Jealousy' that crops up when the find a better toy with their friend. And as always the other toy looks better.

Myriad of Expressions - No More Words . . . . . .

Yabusame in Kamakura

For the outside world, the name `Samurai` is synonymous with Japan - films like `The Seven Samurais` and `The last Samurai` have glorified the skill and courage of these erstwhile warriors.Samurais belong to a group of military nobility and the word samurai means `servants of God`. For more history check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samurai

In present day Japan, we seldom get to see any male in traditional looks leave alone the possibility of meeting a samurai. All of my Japanese team mates swore that they do not possess a kimono and have not worn one in their lifetime. So where are the samurais ? Where are those war skills? After many prolonged searches in the internet, I zeroed in to `Yabusame` or `The horseback archery festival` in the Tsurugaoka Hachimangu shrine in Kamakura.

The annual three day festival of this shrine ends with Yabusame display and luckily it fell on a saturday. I headed straight to the shrine and then settled down in the viewer's area beside the track. I had about 2 hours and 45 min to kill before the event start. But, you got to be there to get a place just near the target and in the front row. The wait was long . . . . . .

Yabusame (流鏑馬) is a type of Japanese archery,that is performed while riding a horse. The archer shoots a special "turnip-headed" arrow at a wooden target.This style of archery originated at the beginning of the Kamakura period (1185 - 1333 A.D.). A consoling fact of this festival was that due to the presence of large number of foreigners and a big press community from outside Japan, the commentary was in English also.

The ceremony started with the head Shinto priest leading the 'Servants of God' to the shrine to pray to God and offered all the samurais, the japanese Sake. This Sake is holy and is beleived to purify the souls of the archers and bless them to perform their best.

The track is 254m long and archer has to hit three targets in such a small span. The central target is the most difficult to hit, as the speed of the horse is maximum. Sidding beside the central target, I was really lucky to watch the treat . . . U blink your eye and the samurai is gone...zooooooooom after hitting the target. One of the archers split the target into two and I got that action frozen into my CCD (See Photograph).

The archers were formed into groups based on their schools . For each group, the event started with an introduction procession , then Yabusame and ended with an applause/appreciation procession.

All the archers were part-timers and most of the archers were old and the evident truth is that this art is dying......Our so-called development is erasing the traces of history once for all.

Are we tech-savvy ? ?

Pre-blog note: Hate the gadgets
Indians in Japan are lured into techonology; They talk about Akhihabara, Yodobashi, SofMap, iPOD, Shuffle, Nano, palmtops, laptops, MP3 players, DVD players, PSP2, portable HDDs, digicams and handycams.
Wait....when somebody talks about all this stuff like a professional, dont jump over him. I can bet 10,000 yen that he wont be knowing what actually a Celeron or a pentium means to his laptop performance, why the heck there are 4 USB ports, will the stuff really work in India, whats a mega-pixel, what to do with this aperture priotrity mode, can we really play games on a PSP, how do I change the fps rate of my cam......
Adding to all this irony, he is always going to grab junks and junks of load from Akihabara to be taken to India; MP3 players for 500 yen - China makes - which you will get in Rs.100 or less in any third market duplicate shop in India.
Basically, indians are not tech savvy. We dont really think about this stuff. India has more problems and each one of us in India have to struggle in and out everyday to survivie and lead a life. We dont really think about buying a new digital camera, let alone upgrading it every year. The consumer electronics in the entertainment front has not gone so far as in Japan. You beter discuss Cauvery water problem with your colleague rather than the newly launched Sony 20GB MP3 player. There are things more important in your life than electronics.
Then,Why all this . . . that too all of a sudden.... .Listing out the reasons
- No social life in Japan
- Japanese never entertain you and you are always a gai-jin
- You have got weekends and got nothing to do
- Can't really watch the TV
- Got some unspent money too
- You think its not worth spending in anything else
- You wanna show-off yourself
- You wanna tell everybody that you are smart
- You want everybody to talk about you that you got something worth in a damn good price
- You wanna boast
- You wanna satisfy your ego
- and all your kith and kin over there in India, are expecting you to land with an electronics store as your baggage

The effects of this so-called "pseudo-tech-saviness" of Indians living abroad are too many and are mostly miserable.

Nagz

Venturing into professional photography . . .

May be, buying a prosumer camera (Lumix FZ7) was my first step in venturing into professional photography. After 10 days of using the camera, I know where I stand and realize that there is a very long and tough way ahead before I start clicking some stunning photographs.After getting into the pool, reading a lot of photography books and observing the works of pros., I know where I have to go. I have to burn some more midnight oil and be more patient when fixing the frame. My previous Sony DSC-S60 had limited features and very less freedom to play around; Onto the next level, this dSLR offers me a lot more which I, in the present state am incapable to handle.

Got up early this sunday and went for a SMS a.k.a "Sunday Morning Stroll" with my cutie FZ7. As expected, the results were not stunning, but I have got a feel of the camera but still not so well versed with it. The rythm that I have with my DSC-S60, is what I have to acheive with my new one. It should be soon reverbrating to my frequency.
A camera, I feel is a soulmate, it responds to your mood, it talks to your mind, it visualizes on film (rather on a CCD), what your mind sees out of the whole scene and not what you or everybody else's naked eye sees out of it. It conveys a story, reflects a mood, changes the perception of the viewer;It brings out the charm that lies in everyday life un-noticed, not bothered about into frozen frames for eternity. It has the power to bring to still, every other thing running on this earth. The mood of the nature, the smile of child, the play sunlight enacts on a bright flower are saved for posterity.

Nagz

Umbrellas . . . . .~~~!~~~

When I started for the office last friday, it was slightly drizziling and it flashed to me that my precious umbrella is in the office itself.
Precious umbrella?
Yeah, Umbrella is a priced possession in Japan; It rains every other day and you can always expect your day to start with a bright sunny morning and end up totally wet and messy.The seasons winter, spring, summer and autumn come and go but rain (ami in Jap.) persists forever.
As most of the Japanese population commutes through trains and walks to their homes and offices from the stations, Umbrellas become a must; You can only find newspaper boys and postmen in raincoats.
Umbrella is indeed a priced possesion and it also plays the role of being a status symbol. It reflects your personality and you can always convey a fashion statement to the world through your umbrella.Most of the men have black umbrellas while the women (as in all other cases) are equipped with all sorts of colours and designs. The umbrellas widely used are the longer ones, of 60cm or 70cm rather than the foldable stuff that is more popular in India. You get designer umbrellas for 20,000 yen and also the foldable stuff in 100 yen. Umbrellas with dual colours, Umbrellas with metallic chain staps, flowered umbrellas, summer umbrellas, doll umbrellas decorating the kimono-clad dolls - It is a treat for umbrella maniacs (hey, I'm not one).
On the same fateful friday, I noticed a woman in the train hanging her umbrella in her hands with an umbrella pouch; An umbrella pouch - huh whats that? It's one of the thousands of Japanese inventions that makes life easier. It is made of cloth with an ear to its end. Get the ear inside your hand and put your umbrella inside the pouch - So....Nobody can see your umbrella - They will never come to know, whether its black, white, coloured or flowered. It becomes so handy, compact and the Japanese introvert tendency is preserved.
In places like restuarants and offices, umbrella stands are there so that you d'ont have to carry it all along with you. If you are really concerned with your priced possession, you can always lock it and take the key with you. So many of them, like me forget their umbrellas. There is a whole bunch of umbrellas, orphaned, untouched for years sleeping in hundreds of umbrella stands all over this country. The unlucky ones forgotten by only because it was not raining when their masters were returning back. As everybody will agree, an umbrella beats anyother stuff in this world when it comes to losing it - oh, poor umbrella!
The other one worth mentioning are the rain pouches; When you are going to a supermarket on a rainy day, you are surely gonna get inside with your umbrella and damp the place out there.But thats strictly not allowed, you cannot mess around with public property; The option is to keep the umbrella outside and go - which may sometimes become difficult to manage in a crowded place. The solution is to have a plastic pouch, put your wet umbrella inside it so that it does not drip and when you are getting out of the place, remove the pouch and put it in the designated garbage bin before venturing into the rain again.
In our office, there are yellow umbrellas arranged in the grid-wise pattern in umbrella stands which can be used to commute between the buildings. A note beside it says "This umbrella is Company Property. Do not bring back to your home". When it is not raining, the umbrellas along with the stands are kept inside, but the note stays there proclaiming the unseen umbrellas to be the company's property. Another interesting thing about this note is that it is written only in English and not in Japanese. Maybe, the Japanese are trained so much that they will never "bring" back a company umbrella to their homes even in the wildest dreams. The foreigners always underestimate the rain and end up helpless in the evening facing an endless rain, left with the only choice of "bringing" back a company umbrella back home. Still wondering about "bring" - the "bring" here, literally means "take" - another bad translation. The Japanese can never be seen drenched or standing helpless against the rain. They ALWAYS have umbrellas and whenever it is not raining, Japanese do not have umbrellas while the foreigners (Aliens in Japanese-English translated from the word Gai-jin) end up carrying it all day along.
During the rainy season (Jun-July), it rains everyday and one of my colleagues sayshe always carrys two umbrellas during the rainy season. The smaller foldable one inside his bag is for small rain and the long one in his hand is for a heavier rain.

Hope this is my first blog - on Japanese lifestyle ....... .... .... More musings to follow .

Nagz