Hiroshima: Miyajima

We traveled to Hiroshima on the Bullet Train (the middle-level train--the Nozomi--which makes few stops and runs at about 185 mph), and unlike last year's trip to Kyoto, we had a clear day... This meant that Fuji-san was not shy, and we had a 20-minute period where we could see Mt. Fuji on the horizon. The picture is pathetic, and doesn't do it justice.
Because of the good weather, we decided to head to Miyajima on the first day in Hiroshima. It's an island off the coast of the city, accessible after a 45-minute trolley ride to the coast. Miyajima is home of one of the most famous toriis in Japanese iconography, the red torii in the water.

The shrines here date back to the 6th century, and are spread around the island, which is a mountain coming out of the water.


The most beautiful temple complex there was the Daisho-in Buddhist temples on the hillside, details of which are below.

Akihabara

I went to Akihabara on the anniversary (plus one day) of last year's "Akihabara Massacre," in which Tomohiro Kato killed seven people and injured ten others. Japan doesn't have the rate of mass murders that we have in the US, but there are episodes like this almost once a year; last year this was the big Japanese crime of the season, with the added inflection of "otaku" culture.
"Otaku" is literally a second-person formal pronoun referring to "your [family] house," but in pop slang refers to an extreme fan. The term has negative connotations akin to "fanatic" or "obsessive," though "Otaku" is generally translated into English as "nerd."
Akihabara, associated with Otaku subcultures, seems to confirm the "nerd" association in its major businesses: electronic goods (ranging from gadgetry, bulbs, switches and transistors sold in small specialized booths, to stores selling full-fledged robots), manga and anime (in a slew of six- or seven-story shops), fantasy figurines and toys, and a range of sexual material.
And the district is noticeably dominated by men (somewhat as Shibuya or Harajuku seem dominated by women), making it seem all the more nerdish.
One of the business types there, too, is the "maidol cafe," in which women, dressed up as exaggerated maids, wait on customers with extreme obsequious behavior, servility, and formality--there are women at these shops, but most of the clientele is comprised of men between the ages of 20 and 50.
But "nerd" may give the wrong idea, easy as it is to interpret the community as full of techno-geeks with limited social skills. I think the western idea of the nerd is that of youngish men who cannot communicate well with others, who then spend all their time with computer games. But the Japanese concept seems to reverse that portrait: the men are so obsessive about their pastime that they communicate with others in different ways. They are not social, or are so only insofar as their sociability matches their lifestyle.
Thus the strange world of men with highly focused educations, alongside fantasy women or women enacting fantasies...an image that predominates in "Akiba."

Origami

We had a great class last week, taught by the ladies at Japanese Lunch, on the basics of Origami. We started out with a basic exercise--making the samurai hat--
and then moved on to more complex pieces, like a figure from classical Japanese theater. We had amazing paper to use, and the principle of the folding seems to be making a series of geometric folds as the guide for the construction, even if the object is not symmetrical.
This is the same piece after the first round of folding, but it is then opened up (as below) to become the jacket/torso for the figure.


Added here are the pants from another texture of paper (with gold dust).


Finally, here's a picture of our group: front row, Tung, AJ, Josh C., Lara, Cammy, Samantha, and Stephanie; back row, Adam, Sunny, Doug, Sarah, Alexis, Tiffany, Kelly, Josh A., and Cameron.

People on the Street

Walk Across Tokyo

Yesterday I took advantage of what may be one of the last days before the rainy season to walk across Tokyo. Not really across Tokyo, but across the giant Yamanote train line, that runs like a circle, around the center of Tokyo. The Yamanote is the line we ride most of the time. We are staying at Shinagawa, which is about six o'clock on the clockface. Harajuku is ~7:30, Shinjuku is ~9:00, Ikebukuro is 10:30, Ueno is 1:30, Akihabara is about 2:30, Shimbashi is about 4:30. I set out from Shinagawa in the morning, and headed for Nippori, which is about 12:00 on the clock face. Six and a half hours later, I made it to the station there.
I was trying to see some new neighborhoods, take pictures of different cityscapes that seem typical, and see if I could keep my bearings. I got seriously lost twice--once in the center of the city, the government district, where there were few people and few ways to orient oneself, the other time in the residential neighborhoods of the north of Tokyo, where my blisters were beginning to get blisters.
I don't know if these pictures will convey something about the landscape or the city life. One never sees these scenes all the time: it's more as if one is moving through a sequence of different types of scenes. One type: the stark guts of the trainlines (the mass of lines passing through Nippori, above, is one of the big circuit points in the city).
Then there are the cramped neighborhoods where the streets are so narrow one generally need not worry about cars (though the sidewalks are the painted edge of the street, as in the above picture). In general, though Japan has been hit by the recession much worse than the US, central Tokyo doesn't show many signs of that. But this neighborhood, in the north of the city (as you pass from Sendagi to Yanaka) had many shut shops. So it wasn't surprising to see all the political posters above.
These neighborhoods are very beautiful and simple, with older building materials (older meaning probably from the 50s, though a few pre-war buildings are still standing) and parked bicycles...like this barber shop in Sendagi.
And there are the ubiquitous odd signs, often prohibiting something, often using cartoon figures. The one above was outside of what seemed a parking garage: I need to have someone translate the sign, but it seems to be banning men in tuxedos (?!)...
In the middle of the city I came across a giant amusement park on top of some buildings. (Yes, weird...) Above is the ferris wheel, advertised as the first/biggest, center-less ferris wheel in the world.
Also in the center of the city is the Imperial Palace, on a fairly massive plot of land that most people do not have access to. I had to walk around it--I went to the east, where I walked a small park bordering this giant moat.
Nearby is the Diet Building, the parliamentary site. Apart from the cab, you can see how deserted the government area was at this hour. The only places I found, in this middle part of the city, with lots of people were Hibiya Park, full of folks enjoying the weather, and, on a street surrounded by government offices, a massive off-track betting center, drawing hundreds of men from all directions.
One is constantly encountering different textures and styles of of buildings from different moments.
Below is a picture of the annoying set of vans that I kept encountering as I cut across the middle of the city. I first saw these characters outside the Chinese Embassy, where they were blaring a speech and canned music, in Chinese. The signage shows that they are Japanese ultra-nationalists, whose agenda includes complaining about the loss of the pre-1945 empire and military state, while shaking sabers to all Asian neighbors.
I did stumble through a street festival (free popcorn being enjoyed below), another typical Tokyo thing. There are festivals throughout the year, often localized in neighborhoods, as this one, in Azabu, in the south central part of the city.
And in the southern part of the city, you can get your bearings from the Tokyo Tower, though it disappears at times.
Below is the Sumitomo Fudosan Mita Twin Building, designed by the Nikken Sekkei firm.
And here, another train yard, featuring the Yamanote Train, the greatest urban train in the world.
And finally, a picture of someone climbing a pedestrian overpass.

Tokyo Tower

This year, in returning to the Tokyo Tower, we asked our students to think less about the view--amazing as it is--than about the "Tower experience," which is integrated in a series of Tokyo Tower products, two official mascots, costumes for the workers, and four or five layers of shops and activities as one exits the tower. What trip could be complete, for example, without a special pork sandwich, made especially for the Tower?

We did want them to think about how the Tower is used to orient one's sense of urban space though. The tower, which is almost a duplicate of the Eiffel Tower, was built in the 1950s as a crucial monument to Japan's reintegration into the global community...and to show that Japan could do the same things as European countries, perhaps a bit better. (The Tower is therefore 8 meters taller than the Eiffel Tower.)
Despite the imitation of its French counterpart, the Tokyo Tower doesn't work in the same way, partly because there are no building ordinances keeping other buildings smaller. This is really apparent looking at the Tower from the mid-level observation deck of Roppongi's Moti Building, from which the TT looks almost like a small toy. By contrast, the Roppongi highrise (two pictures above), viewed from the TT, looks like a counterpart to the Tower, maybe as tall, but not significantly bigger. It's this odd kind of optical illusion--that makes where one is seem like a center, compared to where one isn't--that helps one locate oneself in the city.
There is also the odd phenomenon of feeling like one is in a separate city in the sky, which is most concretely experienced in the transparent floor windows. The little girl above was not fazed by this at all, but I found the downward line of sight disorienting.