Rubbish To Get Used To

Dearest Rachel –

Yes, you read that title right. But hear me out: I’m not dismissing the differences between Tokyo and Chicago culture as ‘rubbish.’ Nor am I saying that Tokyo is unclean, and full of trash; quite the opposite, in fact. I’m saying that our noticing such differences literally began with it.

You see, when we arrived at the hotel, we each had a bottle of water provided us by our taxi driver. I’m not sure either of us finished ours over the course of the thirty-minute ride from the airport, but regardless, we didn’t want to clutter his vehicle with empty (or even half-full) bottles; we took them with us, hoping to finish and dispose of them at the hotel.

Only… we could only do the former. For all that Tokyo appears to be a beautiful, clean city (although not completely pristine; we did see some graffiti on a bridge while riding to the hotel), the place has a surprising lack of publish rubbish bins. Even within the hotel, as we wandered through the place, I found myself unable to locate a place to discard these water bottles. I finally found a bin in a restroom (because it was one of the rare ones offering paper towels to dry with – more often than not, they used the ‘air knife’ dryers), and disposed of them there.

But it seems that this is a familiar situation. I ran into the woman with whom we shared the cab ride this morning (she’s also traveling with Azamara, and apparently had relatives stationed here as part of their military service), and she confirmed it; Japan at large doesn’t really have a lot of public garbage receptacles. Not sure what everyone does, to be honest; maybe they just bring everything home with them to throw out – it’s the sort of thing that you wouldn’t have quite the same issues with as I do, I guess.

That being said, this is probably reflective of the cultural bent toward personal responsibility, ingrained in them from the time when, as kids, they cleaned up their own classrooms, rather than employ the school custodian (which is not to say that Japanese schools didn’t/don’t have a custodian – I’d expect they would require someone to maintain the grounds and fix whatever’s broken, and the students couldn’t be expected to do that. But cleaning up after oneself is institutionally taught to them, if it’s not already done so by their parents. It results in a much cleaner environment).

On the other hand, one thing you’ll find in a Japanese school, but not in a hotel such as this, is a toilet like this:

I think you may have mentioned trying to deal with one of these during your homestay in Tsumago. I’ve also heard that these are actually supposed to be better for one’s health, as the position you assume makes the whole process easier and faster. And clearly, it doesn’t use the kind of water a Western-style unit does, making it environmentally friendly in a day and age long before it was ever a point of consideration.

All that being said, I’ll stick with the standard Western-style throne, thanks so much. But even there, Japan knows how to make it something to have to accustom oneself to. Here’s what we found in our hotel room, for instance:

But where do I start with this thing? Well, how about the visual aspect? Barbarian that I may be, even I can tell that this thing has a bidet/washlet attachment, complete with settings regarding both the pressure and volume of the spray (I’m not sure about temperature). But knowing what it is and how to use it are two vastly different things. Fortunately, as a guy, I don’t have to, and can use it as a normal commode. But even the cord on the other side is disconcerting; an electrical cord right next to (attached to, in fact) a contraption that meant to pass volumes of water doesn’t strike me as the safest of things.

Then there’s the tactile nature of this thing. Sit down, and you realize it’s warm. Ordinarily, a warm toilet seat suggests that someone has just been there before you; and while that’s not really something to truly be concerned about, it’s still kind of uncomfortable at first. Granted, once you accept that it’s supposed to be like that, it’s actually rather pleasant, particularly in the vaguely chilly spring weather we’re dealing with. It’s a more intimate take on the heated floor that we have back at home.

Oh, speaking of the floor, the floor in the bathroom is raised by about four inches over the rest of the room. Daniel and I have both already stubbed our feet on this step, thanks to not having seen it at first; fortunately, we both had shoes on when we learned our lesson, so we didn’t have to get a rude awakening in the morning.

Finally, there’s an auditory aspect to this as well. Actually, it may be more than that, but considering where I’m positioned at this point, I can’t exactly check. But once you sit down, and get used to the warmth of the seat, the next thing you notice is that the water is running beneath you. Is it flushing? I have no idea. But yeah, all these little things make one of the most necessary activities in human existence a bit of an adventure.

***

With all this sophistication with regard to hygiene, it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that you see a lot of face masks as you wander about, be it within the halls of the hotel (and the shopping arcade) or out on the street proper. Considering the complications we’ve been having in trying to get ourselves admitted to the country (and eventually, onto the ship), this was almost to be expected, although it is different from how things are back home at this point. To be fair, this is a cultural thing going back generations (if not into antiquity itself), so somehow this allows Daniel to be accepting of their behavior, rather than denigrating them for sheeple like he does from time to time about Americans.

I’ll be honest, I don’t know which is more difficult for me to wrap my head around.

Maybe there’s the fact that, despite this preoccupation with breathing healthily, the Japanese haven’t kicked the smoking habit, especially when compared to us Americans. We’ve gotten to the point where we’ve banned smokers from polite society, but they’re still accommodated here.

In fact, the real surprise here isn’t the fact that these vending machines exist as much as the prices they’re asking. For all that Japan – and Tokyo in particular – is notoriously expensive, a pack of smokes only runs about the equivalent of five dollars, if the figures on this machine can be considered representative.

***

And with that being said, let’s touch on the elephant in the room; the astronomically high prices everywhere you look. Part of it simply has to do the fact that yen is so small (back when I was working, a general rule of thumb was that you had to move the decimal point over two spaces; basically, the ‘normal’ exchange rate was 100 yen to the dollar. At this point, surprisingly, the yen has weakened to about 117, but the rule of thumb is still reasonably useful) that naturally, the amounts would appear to be eye-wateringly large, but even when taking the exchange rate into account, the costs of just about anything is stunning. At the food market, an apple was 250 yen (a little more than two dollars), and a tangerine the size of an orange (which may be part of why it’s so pricey) is marked for 800 yen. No matter how you divide that, that’s high.

Similarly, in all of those closed boutiques, there wasn’t an outfit (or even a piece of an ensemble, like a blouse or a sweater) that wasn’t at least a hundred dollars or considerably more. I know that we’re fairly well off – enough so that I could retire, and we could travel – but you would think that living here would make anyone blanch.

Then again, it may partially explain why Japan is no longer the economic powerhouse it once was (among other things, like an aging workforce and population, but that’s a discussion for another time); if a company has to pay its people enough to get by in a city like this, it’s no wonder it can’t keep its prices competitive in the wider world, allowing China (and other nations, such as the Indochinese) to sweep in and take over.

***

But after checking in and getting settled in our room, we decided to get a little comfortable (well, as comfortable as we could, given everything I’ve just described) and rest a bit. We got a little too comfortable, however, and the next thing I knew, it was well after seven, and Daniel was still asleep.

As part of our travel package, we had been given vouchers to use at a number of the hotel restaurants. Dinner was covered up to 12,100 yen (over a hundred dollars!), but most of the offerings from the restaurants available easily exceeded that amount.

And, as we discovered later, that amount was supposed to cover dinner for the both of us, and we were to pay for any excess (which, while fair, was still a little intimidating). So that had us darting from once place to the next, trying to decide where to go, until fate and time made the decision for us; most of the places were practically at the ‘last call’ point when we got downstairs to the lobby in the first place. The only feasible place still serving was the coffee shop.

Yes, the one with the thirty-dollar strawberry cake. That coffee shop.

Oddly enough, though, the items on their menu were surprisingly reasonable. Most everything was available on an a la carte basis for no more than 5,000 yen. Interestingly enough, the beef dishes were among the most expensive (and local beef more so than American beef), with seafood about the same as chicken or pork. It’s a little different from home, where seafood is by far the more expensive item on any menu, but it’s understandable where it’s so much more plentiful. Based on all this (and the misapprehension that we had one voucher for each of us), we ordered an appetizer and two entrées for each of us.

This was a mistake on multiple levels – and I’ll go into more detail further on down – but it was also a bit of a learning experience, and at least we got to taste a variety of local dishes that we’d never had the chance to back home. Everything on my side of the table had a little bit of sweetness; from the corn chowder (which stood to reason, given that corn comes by that naturally – it’s called ‘sweet corn’ for a reason) to the rice omelet (that’s common for Japanese egg dishes, although the tomato sauce inside the dish harmonized with it), to the thick, smoky curry sauce on the multigrain rice (which looked like Cajun dirty rice, but lacked any of the ‘kick’ I might have expected) that Daniel compared to anise or licorice, although I didn’t quite sense that flavor.

For Daniel’s part, he had requested a pork cutlet sandwich, but when we were told they had run out, he settled upon a club sandwich to pair with his own omelet. Unfortunately, he bogged down quickly (again, we assumed that the prices were small because the portions were, too), and, since the sandwich contained cucumbers, it wasn’t as if you’d have been much help finishing them for him.

And as you can see, I did no better, only getting halfway through either entree. Still, we didn’t come close to needing all of both vouchers… and a good thing, too, as the waiter pointed out we were only supposed to use one for this meal, leaving me to pay some four thousand yen that we’d used on this meal that clearly, we hadn’t needed, or even wanted, as it so happened.

So it goes. At least we’ll know better for tomorrow; including remembering to get there early enough so as to make sure everything we want is available.

Needless to say, that was a lot to take in for one day. Time to get some rest, and prepare for tomorrow. They’re almost all going to be big days from here on out. So keep an eye on us, honey, and wish us luck; we’re going to need it.