Tokyo Taxis with Motorbike Delivery Guy

Gotanda, Tokyo: 26-05-12

Fresh Land Vegi Full

Grocery store in Gotanda, Tokyo.

Love the way the Japanese use the English language. Always puts a smile on my face - making everyday life that bit more pleasant. :-)

Blogstream of Consciousness

Have just checked into our Tokyo hotel and having having purchased a new Samsung netbook recently, logging on for quick updates should be easier this time around. So without much concern for profundity I'll be blogging a stream of random thoughts, photos and maybe a clip or two throughout this visit.

Hold on to you hat, it's gonna be a fun ride! :-)

So, without further ado, here's a photo of the helpful Tokyo subway map. ;-)

Sado Island, Mute Night in Shibuya, Instant Noodles and Kobe

OK, it's official - we're off to Japan for our next visit in a couple of weeks

This time around, the main reason for going at this particular time is to visit Sado Island before it gets too hot and humid in high June. Sado lies in the Sea of Japan, north of the main island Honshu. Our itinerary will have us arrive in Tokyo and spend a few days there, before flying over to Itami airport (outside Osaka) for our usual return home to nearby Kobe. Here we will stay with family and will act as our base for the rest of our trip.

A DJ friend is running a Mute Records club in Shibuya, Tokyo so we have booked a hotel nearby (with a great half-price deal via their Facebook page!) so we can squeeze that into our fairly tight schedule before we head over to Kobe.

In January, I visited the Disaster Reduction and Human Rennovation Institute in Kobe. It documents and commemorates the Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995 when more than 6,400 people were killed. I'd never been before and it was a sobering and yet fascinating way to spend a few hours (few can turn tragedy into an opportunity to learn like the Japanese). A visit there if you are ever in Kobe is thoroughly recommended. It was also in a part of Kobe I had never visited before, Nada, which I enjoyed wandering around. It got me thinking I should spend more time exploring the different districts of Kobe, rather than spending so much time thinking about consuming in Muji and Tokyu Hands! ;-) I haven't yet planned where I'll go this time. But I'm keen to revisit Ikuta Shrine - where my wife and I got married a decade ago - to check out the forest behind it.I might also go visit Kobe Fashion Museum on Rokko Island. I'm not into fashion and probably won't go inside. It's the arcitecture of the building I'm interested in. The Rough Guide to Japan describes it as looking like a docked Starship Enterprise (which from the photos I've seen it does). Getting there also means I get to ride on the Rokko line monorail - which still gives me a kind of retro-future, big kid thrill. ;-)

One thing we have planned (and booked in advance as it is necessary to get a specific day and time) is a visit to the Momofuku Ando Instant Ramen Noodle Museum in Osaka. I'm not joking! Lots of big name Japanese companies offer this kind of museum/factory tour, which usually end with you getting to sample some of the produce for free. (I first did it many years back with the Asahi Brewery - concluding with free beer tasting - which was rather nice.) Ando was the inventor of instant noodles. Here, you get to make your very own, unique Cup Noodle, complete right down to designing the packaging, which you get to take home with you. Cannot wait!

Das Fluff's 2012 Tour of Tokyo

I enjoyed watching this chronicle of Das Fluff's recent Tokyo tour. Hope you do too. A special soundtrack to a special place...

A friend's first visit to Japan

A friend, Dawn Lintern, who is the lead singer in a band called Das Fluff (dasfluff.com) is currently on tour in Tokyo and posted these wonderful first impressions of Japan on her Facebook page. I asked if I could share it here. If you've never been to Japan - this conjures up just the right image I think...

"Fish that's still jumping when it gets delivered to the restaurant, Geisha girls with slimy business men, cigarette smoke, cherry blossom, litter-free streets, teenage girls dressed like 5 year olds, courtesy, friendliness, modesty, non-agressive driving, orderly queues, Asahi, being treated like a pop goddess (for one night, at least), dogs in sunglasses, an insanely efficient transport service, soundchecks that run to schedule and the worst cover version of Karma Police ever. I don't want to go back to London."

I know how she feels! 

 

Wot!? No e-book readers!?

The Japanese are well-known for their insatiable appetite for reading; whether it be newspapers, manga (comic books), an infinate variety of specialist magazines or novels. Everywhere you go, morning, day, or night, you’ll see the Japanese reading in public. The Japanese are also well-known for their love of technology. So, you’d think a gadget that combines these two national passions, such as e-book readers, would be as popular as breathing. But, remarkably, you’d be wrong.

As a frequent user of trains into London (and around it via the underground once inside), not a single day goes by without seeing someone using an e-reader. Indeed, randomly get on any tube train around rush hour and you’ll regularly see more e-books than traditional books being read. Not so in Japan. Not even in the capital Tokyo. During our last stay in Japan, which included time spent in Tokyo, Osaka and many, many train journeys (including on the shinkansen bullet trains), as well as internal flights, not once did I see someone using an e-reader. Not once! More than two weeks spent in the country globally recognised as one of the most technologically advanced, and not a single e-reader to be found.

Japanese electronics/technology giant Sony was one of the first to utilise ‘e-ink’ technology (the clever tech that means reading from an e-reader screen is as close to reading print on paper) and creator of one of the first readers to come to the global mass market with its Sony Librie way back in 2004. (Though, sales of Amazon’s Kindle e–reader have since eclipsed those of Sony – the Kindle accounting for 45%-50% of all e-reader sales in 2010 according to Gartner). So why didn’t I see a single e-reader in Japan?

For all their love of high-tech, the Japanese remain a traditional race at heart. They also manage to sustain social, cultural and economic trends at a national level that most other countries (certainly in the West) would never be able to pull off. So, if, because of some deeply-ingrained reason, they prefer Yahoo!’s services over Google’s, or clamshell mobiles over smartphones, or print over digital text, then they’ll see nothing unusual or surprising in that. They may, in their own time (and on their own terms) gradually decide, often over a period of many years, that they will switch from clamshells to smartphones (as is beginning to happen now). But it will be how and when they choose. Their equal love of print, in the forms listed above, seems as strong as ever it was. 

I’ll be keeping a keen eye open on our next visit to see if I can spot my first e-reader in Japan. When I do, I might just step over the usual Japanese social reserve and tell the owner that they are the very first native e-reader user I have ever seen! If, in the meantime, you have a theory as to why I didn't see a single e-reader then please do share your thoughts...