To compensate for my sluggishness yesterday, today I have walked and walked and walked around Tokyo. I began by getting my hair cut by the charming and - it turns out - talented Chie at Watanabe hair, where the shampoo girl is not just a shampoo girl but delivers an unexpected and pleasant head and neck message too. Emerging at 11 into bright sunshine with much less hair and no real idea of where I was, I wandered round the little streets of Harajuku, learning from my guidebook that Harajuku is where painfully fashionable kids shop for probably painful fashion. It is true. I conclude that pointy boots are in. At the end of one of the little streets, I reached a main street, turned my head and saw a scene like this:
If it had been Oxford street and not Omotesando, it would have been my idea of hell. As it was Tokyo, I people-watched and people-pushed my way up and down it, then fled to the subway which turned out to be tolerably simple to navigate, if “tolerably simple” means a lot of peering at maps and consulting guidebooks. But once it's figured out, it's figured out. Then I committed the foreign oaf sin of crossing my legs. One does not cross one's legs in Japan. “Crossing your leg at the knee or ankle indicates disrespect” says Time Out. Only I only remembered that six hours after my first subway ride, when I was about to cross my legs, noticed that everyone in the carriage was sitting feet flat on the floor, and had to feint a scratching-my-knee manoeuvre to cover the crassness. I think the man opposite noticed. Or he thought that foreigners usually raise their left leg for no purpose to scratch a part that would have been just has accessible if the leg had remained as it was.
Also, Time Out continues, I must not blow my nose in public. I understand that it is considered rude to spread one's germs, hence the face masks everywhere, but is it really less rude to sniff loudly forever? My proudest moment of the day was communicating to a nice man who runs a noodle stall in Asakusa subway station that I wanted noodles in miso soup sauce with no meat. Actually, he did most of the talking, placing things in front of me and saying, *Garlic.” “Pepper” “HOT.” I opted for some of the HOT, which made my nose run. Dilemma. In the end, I blew my nose when no-one appeared to be looking, and sniffed a lot.
My absent host A. had recommended I visit the shrine(s) of Asakusa, so I did. I thought it would be a relief from the consumerism of Shibuya ka and Harajuku. But the shrine is surrounded by shops and stalls and more shops. Admittedly, there is no Prada, and instead plenty of shops selling kit required for kimono-wearers, and in these shops were plenty of women wearing kimonos - apparently for no reason other than they wanted to wear kimonos - shopping for kimono kit. I won't bother with the clichés about how Japan mixes old and new but it does and sometimes it is head-shakingly abrupt but always it seems to fit the “huh? oh. OK” of this city. On the way to the shrine from Asakusa, I wasn't sure I was going in the right direction, and orientation in Tokyo is not easy, as street names are not used in addresses. But the Shinto gods - who are they, exactly? - were smiling, and a wedding procession trundled past in a rickshaw, looking lovely and similar to the couple in this photo which I have borrowed, having left my camera at home all day:
If lost in Tokyo and looking for a major Shinto shrine, follow the woman in the white hat.
Asakusa was packed. There were kimonos, and paper items, and cute and beautiful things to buy. There were also baked things that people were queuing up to buy, so I bought one and it was a savoury rice cracker and the furthest thing from my gastronomic desires I could think of, which were more tuned by late afternoon to strawberry jam doughnuts (which I now know that Mister Donut does not provide, unless they call strawberry jam “Angel Cream”). The cracker went in the bin. My gastronomic desires did however extend to a beer, but the small bars on Asukasa's backseats, packed with men watching horseracing on TV, with the occasional - very occasional - woman, weren't enticing. Instead, I got back on the Ginza line (orange) and went to Akibahara, or Electronic Town.
In Electronic Town, there was everything. Everything - iPods, DVD players, hair straighteners, manga shops, shops selling costumes for cosplay. Everything. And as always happens in places that provide plentiful things to buy where consumption is less conspicuous than a slap in the face with a wet kipper, I didn't want to buy anything. Total shopping indifference, even in the face of irresistible draws like The Captain Santa Club for the people in love with the sea. This is weird not because of Captain Santa, but because when my father used to travel to Japan three times a year, he would bring back presents and they always seemed wonderful. Also, when I stayed in Japan for two days eight years ago, having arrived on the QE2 with Simon, I found everything fascinating. I walked around department stores and thought the food departments were mesmerising.
I did the same today and it wasn't the same. I hope it's the after-effects of valium rather than age and cynicism. Or perhaps a suitcase that already weighs 19kg is a powerful disincentive. Or perhaps I just don't like shopping. In Bangkok, Shopping Hub - according to the Thai tourist agency - I was overjoyed to hunt down and eventually buy a stainless steel coin carrying container as used by the ferryboat conductors. In Tokyo, one of the world's more interesting shopping centres, I have bought only:
1 hair cut
1 packet of hair dye
1 bowl of noodles
1 small transparent plastic engineer/nerd's case for little bits and bobs
1 UK-Japanese adaptor
50 business cards
And I have seen the following:
A large pagoda
A lot of people
Many pointed boots
Several dozen kimono-wearing women
A woman in a metro station sobbing her heart out
A boy in school uniform, wearing a bowl-shaped hat, talking with serious intent on a mobile phone. He was probably 7.
After eight hours of walking around Tokyo, I feel like I've done several rounds in a washing machine. A hi-tech washing machine embroidered with ancient silk and sounding like a pachinko arcade. In a good way.