For Sake's Sake

The sake-tasting extravaganza at a small club in the downtown, nightlife district of Roppongi was a good deal. For 500 yen (about $5), we could taste up to six different types of premium sake, Japan's specialty alcohol and a centuries-old tradition. The best sake, ginjo, comes from fermenting moldy rice for a certain amount of time and doing other things to it that I didn't really understand in the presentation from the "sake guy."

But it wasn't all about the sake. In addition to some performances by "ambient" Japanese bands (which apparently just means noise) and a traditional-meets-modern shamisen player (old guitar-like instrument), the most bizarre fashion show I've ever seen made its way across the makeshift catwalk set up in front of the club.

I'm a journalist, and I really believe in the power of words, but this time I just can't do it justice. These are worth more than a thousand each.









That last one is my favorite, too.

A few friends and I left after the fashion show to walk around Roppongi, a dynamic neighborhood that beats to Tokyo's all-night party. There are two disctint parts. The first is the new, clean Roppongi, with lots of shopping centers, bars, restaurants, clubs and commercialism that is gorgeous in the day and exotic at night, home to as many flashing-neon signs as you can imagine in Tokyo.

The second area is run by the yakuza, the Japanese mafia. Organized crime in Japan isn't like the Sopranos or Whitey Bulger. There are fewer murders and shady deals and all that, but the yakuza is as much an embedded part of Japanese life as is rice. For example, in the disastrous Kobe earthquake of 1995, the yakuza was the first to respond by bringing water to the ravaged area to help the victims, because the authorities couldn't handle all the carnage.

But they're not always that nice. The yakuza take advantage of geijin (foreigners) by running all the bars (and hostess bars, which are pretty much what they sound like) in their controlled sectors of Roppongi. Most of the time, white visitors are greeted by a beautiful European woman who sits with them at a bar, and as soon as she buys him a drink and he sips it, he passes out and wakes up the next morning on the sidewalk missing his wallet and $10,000 from his credit cards. If he goes to the police, he's out of luck; the yakuza are that influential.

So, we didn't go to any of those places. We just walked around.





Come on, what trip would be complete without the obligatory building-sized advertisement of naked Japanese girls in ramen-noodle cups?

A few days later, I spent the day with the extended Hirao family while we celebrated Miawa's brithday (Kohei's wife). The dinner. Was. Amazing. Gyoza (dumplings), salad, some soup thing with egg and tofu, then delicious chocolate cake for dessert. I'm not sure if this is Japanese tradition, but we lit the candles on the cake before dinner even started, and we sang "Happy Birthday" in English ("Hah-pi Birs-day"), and when Miawa couldn't extinguish all the candles in one breath, we chanted something as they rekindled themselves and then one more person would help her, and we did that five times until the room went black.



I feel as if I should mention that although I was nervous at first about living with a new family and adjusting to a new cultural lifestyle of living at home, everything has been going so smoothly with the Hirao family. They're so informal and accommodating, they love talking about anything and everything, we teach each other our respective languages and joke about our own imperfections. It's almost as if they're my new family. (Although I certainly miss my American one in volumes!)

Finally, as promised, here are pictures of not only the skyscraper in Shiodome that houses the Associated Press bureau where I'm working, but also the men's bathroom with a wall-sized window for all onlookers to peep in. (It was a clandestine shot so people didn't think I'm a pervert.)

Really, Eely Weird

The thing about eating eel is that it's best not to think about what it is. It's eel. You have to get over it.

Unagi, prepared on rice like Mrs. Hirao made it for me, tastes sweet and slippery, fishy and chewy. It kind of feels unnatural, like taking a bite of a luscious apple and then chasing it with a swig of tomato soup. And on top of all that, it looks as if something from Alien landed in your dinner box.



Now, I understand that by looking at that, you may not think it looks that weird. But consider how, a week ago in Naritasan, I first saw it in its right-after-it-dies state. The eel slaughterers slice the sea snakes from the back of their neck down their spine, or whatever they have that are like spines, and not through their stomachs. They do this because death by stomach-slicing is known as hara-kiri, a ritual suicide that only samurai are privy to. Although in a few parts of Japan, unagi are prepared that way. Observe:



Appetizing, hai.

While we're on the topic of weird, I'll point out that while I ate my unagi (friends of "Friends" will recall Ross's claim of inner peace), Mrs. Hirao and I watched a series of Japanese game shows that she found completely normal and entertaining and that I found entirely ludicrous and entertaining.

In the first, two men used remote controls to zip race cars around a windy track with three large holes spaced throughout. In the holes were the heads of people who were standing underneath the track. This is not a joke. (It's OK; they wore helmets and protective goggles. The helmets I don't understand at all. The cars just hit their chins, which weren't covered.)

Eventually, the "champion" was brought out to race his car, and he was amazing, at least according to Mrs. Hirao's audible approval. To celebrate the champion's victory, a skinny Japanese man in a very tight speedo jumped out of a curtain and began singing in a high-pitched voice and dancing by extending his limbs as far as he could. While he did this, four men in anachronistic costumes kicked his legs.

Then, apparently moving on to another contest, a shirtless man pulled out his armpit hair one by one.

After that, a man was placed inside a sealed box (a la Win Ben Stein's Money) and instructed to catch a fly with his hand; if he failed, a large balloon with stink-bomb gas would inflate inside the box and explode. He failed.

OK, enough talk about weird. Time for some pictures from Harajuku, Tokyo's youthful, commercialist, pseudo-punk block.







There's no good transition to this next part. As I was leaving my internship at the Associated Press today, I realized I had to go to the bathroom, because the train takes a little over an hour to get back to Inzai. The AP is on the seventh floor of the Kyodo Press building in skyscraper-laden Shiodome, right near Ginza (I'll post a photo of the building later). I walked into the bathroom, and even though I had been inside there a couple of times before, I had never noticed the full-length windows that span the far wall, giving the opportunity to anyone who wants to watch people go to the bathroom from the towers across the street.

I felt confused. This picture says it best:

Land of the Setting Sun

My perfectly timed trip to the Imperial Palace on Saturday took me through the commercialized streets of Ginza and the obsessively well-kept lawns of the royal gardens.

On the weekends, the police close Ginza Street to cars so people can walk around freely. That's not to say it's easy to walk around. You're lucky if you get two feet of breathing space. Most of the stores (reminiscent of 5th Avenue) are high-end designer boutiques in which I wouldn't even know what to look for. I walked past many glitzy Japanese consumers feeding the world's second-largest economy with cold, hard cash. (Most of the well-to-do were women in fur coats with war paint on their faces.)



The Western voice in me led me to the Apple store, a giant cube of a building on a corner, where I fiddled with some Japanese MacBooks that probably weren't designed to be used by people who only speak English. It was late afternoon when I left the store, and I navigated through the thick of spend-happy people further down Ginza Street.

I'll preface this next part with a disclaimer: I haven't done a whole lot of research about cheesecake in Japan. But apparently it's more delicious to these people than octopus on a stick (which, yes, they do have). Cheesecakes come in practically as many flavors as ice cream does, from fruity to chocolatey to custardy to just darn cute. And their cuteness is not age-discriminant, as I saw three men inspecting and tasting a strawberry portion that sprouted my taste buds.



The sun was getting lower, and I had to book it to the Imperial Palace, a healthy walk away from all the commotion. Past many ministry buildings and office towers, under a highway bridge and through the subway line lies the gardens that surround the Imperial Palace, a marvel that was destroyed in World War II but reconstructed and is still home to the royal family.

A crisp sunset greeted me as I walked through the gravely park encircled by close-cropped trees. Perhaps the most beautiful parts of the area are the outlying parks that are free to roam. Pools of still water reflect the nearby skyscrapers and are home to ducks and fish.



The palace itself is set high upon a hill and is surrounded by more water, where swans flirt as people walk slowly along the edge. The setting sun hit the palace in a golden light, outlining its shape on nearby stone walls and elongating the shadows of marathon runners who were passing under the royal arches that separate metropolis from history.





It's just a small slice of this massive clustertown home to 35 million people, but for a few minutes it felt lonely and aloof to the happenings outside its walls.

There are just a couple more pictures I want to post up. This one (I'll let you decide what it is) is from Ginza:



And, before I took the Asakusa Line to the downtown station, I stopped in Chiba Newtown, the first train stop I hit inbound from my temporary home in Inzai. There I walked around an incredibly modern shopping complex and spent no less than 15 minutes exploring Capcom Plaza, a multi-level arcade fantasy center. In addition to being visited by people of all ages and genders in Japan, these game centers are designed to constantly saturate your brain with sights and sounds that make you want to win (not sure what). They're also incredibly family-friendly:



Don't ask me for a description of this game. It was kind of like Keno, or some lottery-based game, but with bouncy balls that fall into a slot in that giant cylinder that reminds me of what the scientists put ET in when he was going to die. Sometimes I feel like the Japanese are all extra terrestrials. Or maybe it's me.

Back in Japan

I'm not surprised that my second trip to Tokyo has been nothing like my first.

Six months ago, I had the royal treatment in Korea and Japan: through five big cities, paid-for meals, hotels, transportation, tours and pretty much life for two weeks, courtesy of the Scripps-Howard Foundation that paid for the journalism scholarship. Now I'm here for much longer -- nearly four months -- living on a budget, doing less sightseeing and more adjusting, and seeing another side of Japan that I had only heard about.

I've been here for six days; it's been different, and it's been fun.

The family I'm staying with is as accommodating as it is hilarious. Michiaki and Sadami Hirao are 66 and 64, respectively, and have taken me in as a third person to feed in their ninth-floor apartment in Inzai, Chiba, about an hour from Tokyo by the train that I take every day.

(Above: Michiaki and Sadami. The 38-year-old man is their son, Kohei, with his wife and two children, 2 and 5. This picture was taken during a riotous evening of dinner, The Lion King and discussion of Keira Knightley.)

The first couple of days in Japan consisted of recovering from both jet lag and hardly sanitary food from the 12-hour United Airlines flight out of Washington, D.C. On only a few hours of sleep, I woke up early on my first day to head to orientation at Temple University Japan Campus, where I'm taking four classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The subway system, comparable to the innards of a wooly mammoth, perplexed me in the summer and continues to rattle my brain. Thankfully I don't have to change trains going inbound toward Mita station.


After I got to Mita, giving myself 20 minutes to find Temple, I quickly became lost and had to ask the very polite Tokyoites around me for directions ... which proved interesting. Let me explain the address system in Japan.

Temple's address is 2-8-12 Minami Azabu in Tokyo. Azabu is a large region that stretches for a few square miles with many different sub-sections, of which one is Minami. The "2" means Temple is in the second ward; the "8" means it is on the eighth block of the ward.

The "12" makes absolutely no sense. The final number in all addresses denotes when the building was constructed. So the "12" means it was built after the "10"s and "11"s but roughly sometime before the "13"s. It does not, in any way, indicate where the building is located.

Which is why I was 20 minutes late to orientation. (The second time going to campus, for my first day of classes, proved slightly more successful; I gave myself 40 minutes to get there, and arrived with 5 minutes to spare.)

Since that first day I have also visited (again) Shibuya, the Times Square-ish area of Tokyo, as well as Akihabara, the electronics district, and Harajuku, the teen-angst-punk-if-Tokyo-had-punk alleyways. Travel had been expensive, about $25 each day, until I bought a commuter's pass recently that brings that down to about $6 a day with a student discount. Food can be cheap or not, depending on where and what you want. There are cheap noodle shops everywhere, but once ramen is too much for lunch every day, there are a variety of Japanese foods worth trying. At home, Mrs. Hirao has made something different each night, and each night has been a new adventure. Every Japanese food I already knew of I have had in the past six days, plus new things. Presentation is everything (but taste is not far behind). Most recently, we had make-your-own sushi (OK to eat with your hands if it's with the family!), though she also made rice and curry, udon noodle soup and some other things I can't pronounce, but it's all got good veggies and fish.

And of course, Mrs. Hirao, who admits to being a borderline alcoholic (somehow I know this with my minimal Japanese and her minimal English), pours sake in my drinks every night. The first night she made me hot tea with hot sake, and I could hardly drink it, so since then we've had cold tea and pineapple juice mixed with the traditional booze. When we walked in Naritasan to visit Shinshoji temple, Mrs. Hirao insisted I down a shot of sake with her near one of the many shops that line the steep streets, followed shortly after by a cup each of amazake -- a hot rice-and-honey mix with, yup, sake.



I've only had one day of classes so far, because on Friday I'll begin my internship at the AP's Tokyo bureau, and I expect that to be a two- or three-day-a-week (unpaid) gig. Luckily, a station near the bureau is en route to Mita, so I don't have to pay any extra to commute there.

This is my first truly abroad experience for a lengthy time, and I hope it won't be my last. Tokyo has everything you would expect it to: poorly translated English T-shirts, bizarre game shows with no real point or winner, and hordes of people crossing streets a la Lord of the Rings battle scenes. But it also has many surprises, even for people who think they know the place well. I'll be lucky if I fly out of here in late April thinking I've seen enough.