Anya and I just returned from a way-too-short visit to Japan. We had an amazing time; the week easily ranks amongst the best trips I've taken. You can see a group of our favorite pics for a brief summary of our trip, or look through our almost 300 total pictures to get a more complete feel for Japan and all the cool stuff we saw there.
The primary reason to go was to visit Anya's brother, Neil, and his Japanese wife, Sachi. Anya's parents also met up with us there; a complete family reunion for the first time since I met Anya (someone - usually Sachi or I - has always been missing). It's always interesting and fun to hang around with this international family that's spread across 3 continents but manages to remain pretty close.
Of course, the secondary reason for the trip was to see Tokyo and all the great cultural experiences that come with being in a place so different from the U.S. It's this aspect of the trip I'll write about here.
With around 35 million people, Tokyo is the world's largest metropolitan area. Although we typically think of Tokyo as a city, it is - to be precise - a prefecture, or the Japanese equivalent of a State. Inside the prefecture are 23 individual wards, each with it's own government (mayor, police, schools, etc). All of these wards are so heavily urbanized and seamlessly integrated that it forms the effect of one gigantic city. The area that Americans would consider "downtown" is roughly a circle that's about 15 miles across.
I'm not unfamiliar with being in big cities - Chicago, London, New York - but Tokyo is on a different level. What's even more striking than the overall size is the density and crowdedness. Some parts of Tokyo, as our Lonely Planet book put it, "make Manhattan seem like a quaint rural village." Tokyo's busiest train and subway station, Shinjuku Station, sees more riders every day than the entire NYC subway system. Combined, the 2 busiest stations handle a number of people greater than populations of the states of MN or WA. On the busiest rail line trains arrive every 2.5 minutes and they're still jam-packed with people.
One of the images I had of Tokyo before going there was the Times Square-like place with tall buildings covered with bright ads vying for the attention of the hordes of people crowding the streets. There are many different places like this in Tokyo, and instead of being a single intersection they fill entire districts of the city. There are also glass-and-steel skyscraper districts, old bazaar-style marketplaces, ugly grey residential blocks, and neighborhoods with upscale single family houses. Sprinkled throughout are Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines, usually in places that create interesting anachronisms. There are even a few parks.
Space - both inside and on the streets - is tight. But Tokyoites have created or inherited a lot of customs that make being in these close quarters more comfortable. They seem to respect each other more; they are somehow more, well, civilized than any other place I've been. We in the West could learn a lot from the Japanese:
1. There is almost no crime: nowhere we went felt even the slightest bit unsafe.
2. The city is extremely clean - it's rare to see any trash laying about, even in the busiest areas. This seems to be due in part to the Japanese tendency to dispose of trash in the proper receptacles - what a concept!
3. The transportation system is excellent; trains go everywhere and are frequent, clean, and easy to use once you get over the daunting route maps. Signs and announcements are always in both Japanese and English. Bathrooms in train stations are free; some are amongst the cleanest and nicest restrooms I've ever been in.
4. Everyone - even the hardest-core punks - say "sumimasen" (excuse me) if they accidentally bump into you.
5. Eating or talking on a cell phone on the train is a serious no-no. This leads to a calm (and clean) environment on an otherwise packed train. It's also why you can play games, watch digital TV, and browse the internet on all Japanese cell phones.
6. The toilets, sensitive to the fact that sound and odor are more prevalent in small apartments and restrooms, have a host of features which seem ridiculous at first but make you ask "Why don't we have that?" after your first use.
As you can tell, I liked Japan a lot. My only complaints were the lack of a smoking ban in bars and restaurants (although many are voluntarily smoke-free), and that I was constantly hitting my head against things. Tokyo was obviously not designed for 6'4" people, although I did see a few Japanese people taller than me. Luckily, shop and restaurant owners were extremely polite even after I came close to destroying their paper lamps with my head.
