The first time I was ever in a place where I really stood out was at Warwick University’s Hong Kong Society singing contest. I remember the wave of stares my entrance to the room brought with it, friends nudging each other until the whole room had noticed me. Even though there are lot of white people in Hong Kong, I was the only one in that room. The whole thing was in Cantonese and perhaps they were wondering if I would sing.
So it doesn’t bother me at all to be the only non-Asian, it bothers me more to see crowds of other foreigners here, and I think others like me feel the same. I heard someone say once that they wanted to be the only foreigner in Japan, at least 300 years too late for that. We want to feel that we are doing something different by coming here, so that when we go back home people say, “Oh you lived in Japan!” and not “Why do so many people do that?”
Having said that all though, today I went to Nagoya Jo, one of the biggest tourist attractions Nagoya has to offer. The translation of Jo is castle but from that you expect turrets, crenulations, a portcullis and a gift shop. Nagoya Jo looks like this.
But it does have a gift shop.
Getting into Nagoya Jo is much easier than it used to be. You buy a ticket from a machine, give it to a smiling lady who stamps it and then you walk through the massive reinforced wooden doors, which are propped open. You walk freely over the bridge that carries you over the moat, up some stairs and through the large metal studded doors which now bear signs against the use of flash photography. There’s even a lift.
There are about six floors to the place with displays in Japanese and mostly English too. Sadly there was no English explanation for this.
The other end of this gun was a normal looking wooden handle, but the barrel keeps going for about two metres. It must have taken at least four people to fire; one to pull the trigger, one in the middle for support, one to aim and another to get shot.
On one floor was a menagerie of pictures of the original castle being burnt down by Allied bombs during World War 2. A tour guide was giving an animated talk about this as I sheepishly walked past.
The top floor had great views of Nagoya, and of the stone dolphins that replaced the gold ones that used to adorn the castle.
From the top of the enormous stairwell I took some pictures but they came out obscured by ectoplasm. Pesky ghosts.
I explored the grounds a bit.
Two women asked me to take a picture of them with a replica of one of the golden dolphins.
I really do like Japanese gardens. They are so peaceful with their ponds of still water reflecting the carefully placed trees, rocks and wooden bridges doted about. A crow was perched photogenically on a stone lantern at the time.
After the castle I got lost finding the subway station again. Walking down one of the streets by the castle I heard someone playing a recorder. I couldn’t make out where it was coming from; there were no buskers or primary school children in sight. As I kept walking I found the source, it was a man in his car waiting at the traffic lights with the windows down and his recorder up loud. That made me smile.
Next I went to the Design Gallery at the trendy Nagoya Park shopping complex. I knew what floor it was from my guidebook and followed signs saying Design but somehow ended up in a gallery.
The artwork on display was pretty brilliant; no Japanese explanation was required because most of the pictures were based around clever concepts. Like one picture of a chicken, inside an egg, inside a chicken, in an egg etc. It was a playful take on the old mystery and even managed to be vague with which one of the two was at the heart of the design.
Another picture was of a stomach and intestines leaking sand into the bottom of a sand timer. I like that kind of picture, it’s a morbid thought that every second a little more of our life drains away but there’s no use denying it I suppose.
I found the place I had tried to be, a small museum chronicling changes in the designs of household objects like phones, cars and furniture.
The first display I came to was about phones. There was a 1920s candle stick type phone in the middle, a modern mobile phone on the right hand side and a phone technologically in between them on the left. They were in typical large museum cases but there was a tiny tiny square button beneath the display.
I pressed the button and heard a lot of heavy loud clunk noises that broke the silence of the place. I looked nervously around the room wondering what I had done. The sound was coming from above me and when I looked up I realised that I was standing in front of a monstrous contraption called the Collection Tower.
It was about 6 metres high and 3 wide and I could see 12 displays inside. Large arms and conveyor belts were moving the display cases around: lifting one up and another across in order to bring the next one down. But the button I had pressed didn’t just bring the next display into view but started a cycle for the tower to go through all 12 displays. The problem was that it was so loud and seemed to be making so much effort on my behalf that I felt I had to stay and watch, even though I wasn’t actually that interested.
It was like when you go and see an elderly person who mistakes your polite attention to their talk about porcelain sheep for genuine interest and then spends an hour digging through heavy boxes in their dark attic to find a particularly interesting example because the man who made it came from your town etc etc etc. In short, the effort it was making to show me the history of telephones was far greater than my interest. But I knelt on the floor and dutifully watched 80 years of telephones go by, almost in real time.
I made my way back to the hotel afterwards and hid from the baking sun. Later that night I was going to meet Yoko’s friend’s brother. Yes, that’s right, Yoko’s friend’s brother – two apostrophes. I had met this friend of Yoko’s before; she had been quite shy as she doesn’t speak English but made up for it with lots of smiles. And besides, Yoko has told me lots of things about her friend: her hobbies, her tastes and even how often she does a number 2. With this in mind I went to meet Kengo, her brother.
We met at 7:30, and coming up from the subway station where we were meeting I was sure it was him, sitting on the wall with his backpack. There was something about him that looked more real than everyone else walking by, like in old cartoons when you can tell what was going to move in the scene because it was more vividly drawn.
Since the whole thing had been arranged by Yoko and Kengo’s sister I was worried that we’d meet and he’d say, “So you wanted to see me about something?” Then we’d look at each other awkwardly and go home. However, like his sister he seemed to constantly smile but his English was very fluent. He liked to laugh and it was an immediately comfortable meeting.
We went to a vegetarian buffet. As soon as he suggested it my mouth said yes without my brain needing to get involved. I didn’t even know there were vegetarian buffets in Japan, let alone that I might get to go to one. I had been surviving on convenience store food and hope since the start of my trip so I was very happy indeed.
It was not a disappointment either; there was lots of different food, including chicken. I didn’t quite see how they had smuggled chicken into a vegetarian buffet but I didn’t let that stop my elation. “You’re going for more?” Kengo said to me, more than once.
We talked for hours, about games, anime, jobs, Japan, sisters, food, English, Japanese etc etc. We were the last customers to leave and when we did our waiter called out, “The customers are going home,” in Japanese. All the other waiters came rushing over and bowed to us chanting, “Thank you for coming,” when really they meant, “Thank god you’re going.”
After the vegetarian buffet we went to McDonalds, perhaps this was the universe rebalancing. I had a chocolate milkshake, the best thing McDonalds has to offer I think. In the UK people often tell me, “Burger King milkshakes are better.” Kengo eyed my milkshake critically, “Mossburger’s are better,” he said.
When he discovered that I had studied Psychology he asked me to analyse him. I thought he was joking but he had an expectant look. “Umm,” I started, “your name is Kengo.”
“Yes,” he said, unimpressed.
“You don’t like cockroaches.”
“Yes,” he confirmed.
“You don’t like to be alone,” I guessed.
“That’s true”
“Finished.”
“That’s all?” he was disappointed but I explained that I only got a 2.1
He lives in a dormitory complex offered at a cheap rate by his company. This means that he basically lives with his colleagues. They also have communal showers. “I was washing my hair,” he regaled to me, “and my supervisor came in saying, “Hey Kengo.” I forget the rest of what he said, that alone was too strange a concept for me.
Having studied in America his English was very fluent and his job involves talking to American and European subsidiaries. His company is some kind of engineering firm who specialise in aircraft parts. The queries he has to deal with get very technical with specific questions and specific parts. “I don’t know anything about the industry but they still hired me because I can speak English. In Japan, if you can speak English, you can work for any company.” He smiled at this truism and then told me the most useful English sentence in the modern working world, “Can you put that in an email to me.”
When he was 13 or so his teacher asked everyone to write down what their dream was. “Move to Hawaii,” he wrote.
“I want to live in Hawaii,” he told me when we talked about travelling. He couldn’t even say Hawaii without smiling with excitement.
At midnight we said goodbye and I went to my hotel. I was leaving the next day, slightly sad that I had no one to meet until Yoko in 12 lonely days and countless miles away – well I could count them if I could be bothered.
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