Japan

Awesome, so I haven't written in a bit, sorry, I've been lazy...

So I'm in Beijing right now. I arrived last Sunday so I've been here for about a week. Beijing is really interesting, and I have a lot to write, but I'll write about Japan real quick first...

Tokyo was amazing!!! The city is incredible.

I arrived on Tuesday Feb. 27th and stayed until Sunday March 4, so 5 nights. I stayed in a ryokan, which is a traditional Japanese inn with tatami-covered floors, futon beds which lie on the floor, communal baths and rice paper doors. My ryokan was more of a hostel than a strickly traditional ryokan, but it was still nice, and the best part was the price: 3000 Yen per night (~$25) which is cheap for a hostel in the US and an absolute steal in Japan!!! I shared a three person room but I was alone for 3 of the 5 nights.

At first I was a bit worried about how I was going to find my way around. I had a Lonely Planet guidebook (which I highly recommend) and I tried to read up on Tokyo before arriving, but the city just seemed too big, too overwhelming. Well, the city is huge, and it's also in Japanese, but it's remarkably navigable. The subway system was super easy once I got it down, and most street/information signs were written in both Japanese kanji and English, so I could generally pretty quickly orient myself.

I did a ton of sight-seeing... I went to a fish market early one morning, I believe one of the largest in the world, and ate sushi for breakfast. I saw Shinjuku which is the big commercial district with all of the famous huge skyscrapers, flashing neon signs, and frantic pace (see 'Lost in Translation'). I saw the Imperial Palace and strolled through the Japanese gardens. I went to famous Shinto shrines that date from the Edo period...

On Wednesday night I went to a Pancrase show in Korakuen Hall, which is right next door to the Tokyo Dome and is somewhat of a Mecca for mixed martial arts in Japan. It's a smaller venue, so I was able to get a great seat. The show itself was pretty good, with some really entertaining fights (highlighted by a soccer kick-to-the-head KO by Brazilian Chute Boxe fighter Thiago Silva*(see below)) and the atmosphere was awesome. It was really different from fighting events in the US, like the UFC where everyone is screaming and shouting, and there is always booing if there is a lull in the action. In contrast, the Japanese fans were really respectful towards the fighters, so there was never any booing, and for the most part the crowd was really attentive and generally silent, except of course during really exciting moments when there would be shouts/ooos/awwws. It was great.

http://www.sherdog.com/news/pictures.asp?n_id=6943&my_page=5&my_title=Thiago%20Silva%20vs.%20Tatsuya%20Mizuno

On Friday night I went to see a Kabuki play, which is the traditional Japanese white-faced theater. It was interesting, but really slow. It was a 4 1/2 hour, 3-act play. People brought in tupperware containers with their dinners, and a man next to me alternated between reading a book and sleeping throughout the play (I guess he had seen it before).

At the play I met a group of Japanese and American students, and I went out with them that night. First we went to a business-man bar, which was a bar where the businessmen go after work to drink. There are thousands of bars like this, small, hole-in-the-wall type places, where, so I was told, the real business takes place. It was standing-only, and everyone around us was wearing a suit. It was funny, because usually the Japanese are really quiet and reserved, but you get a few drinks in them and they come alive. We shared a bar/table with four businessmen and they immediately struck up a conversation with us in slurred English and what I assume was slurred Japanese. :) Afterwards, we went out, of course, to a karaoke bar. It's a stereotype that the Japanese love karaoke, but it seemed pretty true. A Japanese girl that was with us told me that she goes every week. The bar that we went to was a 9 story bar, and every floor had about 10 individual rooms with a TV and couches where you could sit with your group and sing karaoke. The place was packed, we had to wait for 30 minutes to get a room, and when we did we rented it from 12-5. It was awesome. We snuck in drinks from a convenience store (in order to drink cheaper) and just sang and drank all night.

The next day I took a day trip with them to Kamkura, which is a city about an hour outside of Tokyo famous for its shrines, temples, and its Great Buddha, a bronze statue 13.35 meters high, which is the second largest Buddha statue in Japan.

The Japanese people were incredibly friendly and considerate. When I first arrived, I climbed out of the subway station near my ryokan, and immediately realized that I had no idea how to find it. I tried to reconcile my map with the streets in front of me, but was having a tough time of it. A Japanese guy saw this, walked up to me, asked me where I wanted to go, and just said "follow me" and walked me there. We struck up a conversation and bonded over So Taguchi from the Cardinals. Another day I was walking down the street, I dropped a piece of paper without noticing it, and a guy picked it up, followed me and said, in perfect English "Excuse me sir, I believe you dropped this." Also, while I was there I kept on seeing so many people wearing masks over their mouths and noses, like surgical masks. I thought at first that it was for the smog, which there was very little of anyway, but I found out later that it was because they were sick. There are a ton of people in Tokyo, everyone packs in the subways and stuff, and they didn't want to get other people sick. How considerate is that! Also on the subways, people won't talk on the phone, or if they talk to people with them they talk in hushed voices so as not to disturb the other passengers. The city is also so clean, it's pristine. I was walking down the street one day, behind a well-dressed little old Japanese lady, and she bent down, picked up an empty soda can from the grass next to the sidewalk, and walked a block with it to a recycling bin.

The best part of Tokyo though, well, maybe not the best, but something pretty cool, was the high-tech toilets. All of the really nice buildings, like big corporation buildings or government buildings, had awesome toilets! They had seat warmers, built in bidets with 2-3 settings, and built-in dryers. Wow! Well, also Tokyo has a lot of Japanese-style squatting toilets, which aren't so cool, but give your thighs a work out...