| Submitted by: Mark Leeper United States |
| Submission Date: 09 February 2005 |
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And the acronym TEPCO for Tokyo Electric Power Company indicates they are thinking in English. They have a seven-floor exhibit showing what is electric power, how it is generated, what is its future, etc. Included are educational PC games and a carousel stage presentation. They give out a brochure in English, but the presentation is almost entirely in Japanese. One thing they do talk about is their efforts putting electrical lines underground. They still have a lot to do in this regard. But I do get the feeling that they are bullish on the future of Japan. In America we are afraid to teach kids that nuclear energy is great because we don't really think it is any more. Three Mile Island has scared us. Using energy is thought to be unpatriotic. It takes a certain amount of courage to bring about a future that is not just an echo of the past. The Japanese feel the problems can be licked, Americans are not so certain and hence have a good excuse for failing. If any county has reason to fear nuclear power it is the Japanese, but they don't. We need more Americans who are willing to take a bite out of the future and to think long term for the species rather than short term for personal profit.
After that we walked. We saw some Krishnas doing their thing, trying to win converts to their religion. It probably won't do them much good. The Japanese don't stay faithful to one religion generally.
We stopped at a noodle shop for lunch and chose our dishes from the plastic food. I copied down the names and prices. The waitress really liked my writing down what dishes I wanted. It saves the trouble of a lot of communications problems. I had a salad, beef dunburi, and a big bowl of ramen. Filling.
Much of this walking tour takes you to store selling fashions, which we totally ignored. We did stop into a toy store and saw what was available there. They have some fun ideas. I think they don't do nearly enough to capitalize off of the Gojira-potential. They sell rubber Gojiras and have Gojira trading cards, but there is so much more they could be doing. Gojira really is a national icon of Japan.
The Meiji Shrine is a tribute to the emperor who took Japan from feudalism to a modern culture. The emperor was probably the single most important figure in Japanese history. The other contender being Tokugawa Ieyasu. Meiji was emperor 1867-1912 taking over when the Tokugawa shogunate fell. While he was emperor, Japan decided to itself become an imperialist nation. This was the beginning of Japan looking at how other countries did things and then forming their own version. To do this Meiji had to take power from the samurai. His biggest threat here was from the Saigo Uprising. (See the October 8 entry.)
Japan wanted to be 'rich nation and strong military.' Western ways and Westerners flooded into the country. They accomplished industrialization under Meiji and accomplished military victories first over China in the Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895) and a stunning victory over Russia in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905).
The shrine to the Emperor Meiji was burned in W.W.II, but was reconstructed in 1958, 'supported by all loyal Japanese' as the signs and the brochure say. Now this is rather ominous wording. Had they said 'supported by loyal Japanese everywhere' it would have been more tactful. This way it seems they are saying that any Japanese who did not support the reconstruction were not really loyal.
Something should be said about etiquette for shrine visits. You should first of all dress in a respectful matter. The Dancing Elvises, who are not far away, would not be welcome. Before coming in you should wash your hands using the water and dipper provided. Make sure that the water from your hands goes into the gutter around the water trough, not back into the trough itself. When you approach the shrine bow twice. Then with hands parallel, clap twice, then bow once more. I pass this along in case the reader finds it useful, I have not done it myself since I do not want to go through the motions of Shinto without accepting more of the religion. I would probably be willing to dress the part as I have in mosques, but not to go through the action without adopting the religion. The shrine is set a long walk from the busy street. In a country that has so little space, space is lavished is on the Emperor and the royalty. The reason the NS building has so much space may be that space shows power and wealth. Where we might lavish gold and jewelry, the Japanese lavish space. The shrine has at least two Torii gates we passed. One had cracks in the wood and passersby had stuffed the cracks with 10 yen pieces.
The shrine itself had a big courtyard and there were a least two weddings going on. One was having wedding photographs taken, the other had a procession going through.
Also in the courtyard is a collection of toys donated probably for some charity. Overall this is certainly more sedate and dignified than some Shinto shrines we have seen. It is a long walk back to the street and there are no hawkers along the way. No doubt this is for respect for the great emperor.
Shinto, meaning 'the way of the gods,' is a religion actually invented in Japan and there are not a lot of advocates I have ever heard of outside Japan. It bears some relation to paganism in the one really worships nature itself. In Shinto there are many kami, what we call gods, including the emperor. That doesn't leave much room for separation of religion and state. It also explains why the Japanese resisted American efforts to have Emperor Hirohito renounce his godhood. Shinto does not get involved in ethics the way Western religions tend to.
There are some concession stands out toward the street when you have passed the outermost Torii gate. At this point you also start hearing loud rock and roll music. At least you do on a Sunday afternoon. The music is coming from Yayogi park and one of the strangest sights in Japan.
The 1950s were a hard time in Japan. It was the post-war era and Japan was building its economy with hard work. The Japanese were borrowing work methods from other countries but not methods of play. There was little time for that. Japan missed the Rock and Roll years and now they seem to have a fascination with the teen revolution of those days. Friday night we were to the Elvis Presley Chinese Pork Bun Mr. Donut. (Boy, where else in the world would that juxtaposition of words make sense?) The park has another 50s thing. Rock and roll clubs come each week to dress up as rebellious 50s rock and rollers and dance in the style of GREASE. They have names like The Strangers and The Dancing Elvises. They dress in black leather and wear T-shirts or nothing above the waist, show off their pompadours and their tattoos, play cassette players, and dance an energetic rock and roll style. Not all the moves are as smooth as they might be, but they overall do a pretty good job. They probably do a better job than the originals, but then Japanese baseball is also supposedly better than ours. We get our revenge through Akibono, the American champion sumo wrestler.
The originals in the 50s were anti-establishment, but these guys and women just want to be seen and there is not a drop of real defiance in what they do. This is not war dance it is strutting and mating ritual. They put in extra energy if there is a pretty girl with a camera in the audience, but nobody with a camera is unwelcome, apparently. Nor is anyone who just wants to watch. The bigger the crowd the better they like it. They remind me of the crowds of kids at THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW. Well, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and these people like American culture. Initially the Japanese felt threatened by this form of rebellion, but in truth it is fairly innocent. These people are here to put on a show and to get some exercise. Both the show and the exercise are pretty good. The thought of dancing like this for five hours straight gives me a pain in the side just thinking about it. To me this look a lot more positive than learning martial arts.
Further on you see lots of people just enjoying the Sunday afternoon, sitting in rings in the park. And then there is a different sound, a sort of twanging. People are playing badminton with plastic rackets that give a resounding twang when the birdie is hit. The noise is probably actually a selling point.
Further on there are fountains and couple sit together. At the other end of the walk is a pond with ducks and we watch as one man throws bread to the birds. On the way back we sit by the fountain and I write about the rock and roll dancers.
It now is starting to get dark and we head back We pass a place where a woman is doing an abstract beatnik sort of dance to the music of a band. I guess this is a more artist version of London's Hyde Park.
We stop in Tobu, the department store, and pick up $10 worth of sushi. Give us this day our daily sushi. We pick up Coke at the grocery and have another good sushi dinner.
In the room we write. Towards 11 PM there is a new batch of guests making a lot of noise. They sound like Americans but in the morning they have left around a Canadian flag as well as empty beer cans. If they are going to leave the beer cans, at least they left the flag so Americans don't get the blame. Not that American visitors might not be worse. Eventually someone from another room comes out to complain. That stops most of the shouting, but there are still frequent door slams.
Pity more people are not quiet and polite like me.
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I was looking at some of the prices on a Dunkin Donut handout. A standard doughnut is 120 yen, a brownie 180 yen. If you want to eat like an American, you are going to pay for the privilege. We are getting by nicely on $15 or so a day. It would be hard to eat that cheaply back home. Of course we have to suffer our way through a lot of sushi.
Today we are going to Hokone. We have a choice of doing that today or tomorrow. There is some sunshine in the morning so we figure to go while we can. As we travel it gets cloudy and ugly but almost nobody carries umbrellas so we figure rain has not been forecast.
We get on the train and experience a genuine shove commute. That is my name for it and not theirs, but it is accurate. This is a commute in which we are not just in tight, but people pushing into the door have actually compacted us. For one stop I cannot even turn my head enough to see Evelyn. Many people can not even get to straps and are held in place by the density of the packing of people. Shoving is not considered rude amongst a very polite people because it has the practical result of getting more people on the train and to work. This is really an economy of shortages. Most of the Japanese grew up with great shortages and the philosophy is still to make a little go a long way. There are all sorts of surprising concessions to practicality and shoving to make the trains carry more people is one of them.
This is our first trip on the JapanRail pass and we are still figuring out the rules. We showed out pass to get on the train in Ikebukuro.
Well we picked a bad day. It is cloudy and starting to rain. (I have been running a day or so late on writing my log, but due to less activity to write up on the weekends and the train ride as catch-up time, at this moment I am caught up.) I wonder if Japan is going to be another of these countries like Spain that we will remember only the rain from. We have to be a statistical anomaly with all the bad luck we have with weather. We have had moments of sunshine but not one sunny day here and I am suspecting we won't actually see one. We arrived at the tail end of a sunny stretch and as soon as we arrive it ends. Well, perhaps yesterday almost qualifies as a nice day. |
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