Portrait of a Pedestrian Scramble

Since my first visit to Shibuya (Noise Capital of the World), I’ve returned often. Now that I only rarely get lost, I can look around and actually process some of what’s going on around me. On weekends, in addition to the usual hubbub there are public speakers and pamphleteers milling around the train station plaza that abuts the main intersection.

One Saturday recently, there was a group handing out flyers related to the abduction of Japanese citizens by agents of the North Korean government, which according to Wikipedia happened between 1977 and 1983. One gentleman even had a pamphlet in English. He began talking to me in my native tongue, which was appealing, but I was distracted by a man in military uniform standing near us on a makeshift platform. He was giving an impassioned speech (subject unknown) and wore dark green fatigues with a red star stitched above the left breast, which made me uneasy. Isn’t that the symbol of some stridently communist nation or other? No one else seemed to care, but I was happy when the crossing light finally changed in favor of escape from his vicinity.

All the folks with views to impart locate themselves strategically to take full advantage of a captive audience – the throng congregating to wait for the “walk” signs at the main Shibuya intersection. This intersection, where 5 major roads meet, is purported to be the largest in the world in terms of vehicular and pedestrian traffic. To get people from one side to another, an “exclusive pedestrian phase” is used. This system is called a scramble or a Barnes Dance (after a guy named Barnes who first used it) because all traffic stops and people can cross in any direction – even diagonally – at once (see photo). The Japanese like the pedestrian scramble, which is used at more than 300 intersections across the country. I like it, too – it’s liberating to walk however you want through the middle of the world’s busiest intersection.

Experience has taught me how to negotiate Shibuya’s seriously crowded sidewalks, deftly passing dawdlers while avoiding collisions with oncomers. I’ve also learned that the sound of a bell means any sudden moves would be best avoided because a bicyclist (also on the sidewalk) is approaching from somewhere outside my field of vision. I’ve come to appreciate being in a place where crossing the street makes you feel like you’re at the center of the universe – part of a mass movement (literally) dedicated to shopping and dining. How could that not be fun?

Trading Trust for Slippers

Japanese dental offices (the two that I’ve been in anyway) are quite cozy. You remove your shoes when you step into the treatment area and put on a pair of slippers, which is reassuring. Who’s going to give you slippers then hurt you, right?

For an American receiving dental care in Japan, it helps to believe that, as I learned when I recently spent two long hours in a dentist’s chair. I understood and appreciated that the dentist and his assistant were busily working to save one of my teeth, but was a little sketchy on the details of precisely what they were doing. So it goes in a country where the best dentists don’t necessarily speak a lot of English.

Did I mention the blindfold? Once you’re settled in the dental chair, they cover your eyes with a small towel. The downside to that, of course, is that you’re in the dark literally as well as figuratively. You can sneak peeks through the bottom edge of the towel to look for clues as to what’s going on, but after seeing blood-soaked gauze and other unsettling sights, I decided that “cover the patient’s eyes during dental care” is an excellent Japanese idea, on par with sushi and Pokemon.

Part of the barrier is cultural, too. In the States, we’re used to being kept abreast of almost every move a dentist makes: “I’m just going to numb your cheek. Then I’m going to give you some novacaine. I’ll have to leave the needle in for a minute. Now I’m placing a suction wand....” In Japan they don’t feel that kind of hand-holding is necessary. (They give you slippers – what more could you need?) For two hours, I sat wondering exactly when they were going to make the incision in my gum they’d told me was coming. It wasn’t until I felt suturing thread dance lightly across my cheek that I realized they must have done it a while back. Chalk one up for the blindfold.

Eventually, I found myself back in my shoes and out on the sidewalk. Although feeling slightly woozy, I walked a block to an international grocery store to get a little shot of home. It’s amazing the trauma you can erase with the purchase of a few familiar luxuries, like all-purpose flour, pepper-jack cheese and, although it might be a while before I can eat them, salt & vinegar potato chips.

10 Trick-or-Treaters per Minute

We didn’t bring our Halloween decorations to Tokyo, thinking we wouldn’t need them. That was a mistake. But not as big a mistake as thinking 400 pieces of candy would last the evening.
I heard about Halloween as soon as I hooked up with the neighborhood expat ladies, way back in August. Halloween has become a popular event in Tokyo, they explained. Over the years, Japanese families have learned that our tiny corner of the metropolis, Yoyogi-Uehara, is one of only a few places they can bring their children for trick-or-treating – America’s great cultural contribution to Japan. Buy a lot of candy, they advised. So we did – 7 big bags of it. Give each child one piece of candy, they emphasized. So we did – 10 times per minute for 40 awesome minutes.

In preparation we strung Halloween lights ordered from Amazon around the entranceway, and taped a Happy Halloween sign and some creepy spiders purchased locally to our front door. Mark carved the small $15 pumpkin we bought at Costco, and put some candle lanterns on the wall in front of our house. Overall, we created a decent Halloween mood with limited resources.
Foreigners who are receiving trick-or-treaters sit outside their houses or apartment buildings with bowls of candy at the ready. We set up a small table and some stools on the front steps. Promptly at 6 p.m., the onslaught began. Adorable children dressed like pumpkins, witches, skeletons, ladybugs, princesses, clowns, and pirates came up our front steps in a steady stream. To the delight of the trick-or-treaters and their mothers, Mark was wearing his excellent Captain Jack Sparrow costume. Talk about 15 minutes of fame, well Mark had 40. Until the candy ran out, he was a movie star. Mothers urgently directed their children to stand with him for photos. Bulbs and smiles flashed all around.

I’ll always remember the sincere little faces of these young Japanese children. Looking up at me, they’d recite a succession of key English phrases: tricko treato, happy Halloween, and thank you. Proud mothers stood behind, prompting their children as necessary and smiling more broadly with each successful utterance. If the next wave of trick-or-treaters wasn’t immediately upon me, I’d wave and say “bye-bye” as children left. The Japanese use “bye-bye” much the same way we do, so this made their eyes light up, as though for a moment they saw me as more familiar than foreign – someone who understood at least one small ritual of their daily lives. Many turned back several times to repeat “bye-bye” and give another small wave, pleased to find they could communicate with me on their own terms, without memorizing strange phrases full of difficult to pronounce sounds.

The Pleasures of Invisibility

It’s fun being a foreigner in Tokyo. Expectations of your behavior are greatly reduced. In fact, no one pays much attention to you at all. There have only been a few times in three months when I felt even remotely self conscious. The first that comes to mind is when I wore denim shorts out and about town on a steamy hot August day. Not that anyone was looking at me strangely (Tokyoites generally avoid looking at people they don’t know – strangely or otherwise), but I couldn’t help noticing that Japanese women in shorts were few and far between and not one looked a day older than 20. Those women who were be-shorted seemed intent on showing the world exactly why this article of clothing is called “shorts”. They were also wearing high heels, stockings and fashionable tops, rather than a t-shirt and flip-flops.

It’s difficult not to feel self conscious when you trigger alarms trying to exit a subway station. Subway turnstiles are electronic and kept in the open position to maximize the speed with which masses of people can pass through them. You simply hold your subway pass card up to the scanner (or insert your ticket) as you enter the turnstile. If there’s a problem, an alarm sounds and a barrier bar is triggered that prevents you from exiting. The unexpected stop in forward movement really annoys the people behind you (of which there are always plenty) because they have to take sudden evasive action to avoid becoming part of a multi-person pileup. As the cause of the blockage, you can only hope they’re paying attention instead of texting while they walk, which is surprisingly common in this crowded city.

Ironically, you can get into a station with a pass card that’s on the brink of being worthless for lack of funding, but you can’t easily get out again: The machines used to add money to your card are located outside the turnstiles.

When I found myself in this situation, I was able to show Japanese commuters in the vicinity exactly why they do hold relatively low expectations for intelligent behavior on the part of foreigners. Once everyone behind me had peeled over to other turnstiles, I turned around and decided to try exiting through a different turnstile myself – as though something must be wrong with that particular one (even though as soon as I was out of the way, normal traffic resumed straight through it). The second turnstile I tried was adjacent to a window with a subway employee behind it. When, predictably, the alarm sounded and the gates again closed off my escape, I simply showed him my pass card and said in English, “For some reason my Passmo isn’t working.” He just waved me through without bothering to collect the fare shortage. I was disrupting the flow of turnstile traffic, which is apparently worse than not paying the full fare. Here in Tokyo, an offense to efficiency is an offense indeed.

On such occasions, you realize that rather than sticking out like a sore thumb, as a foreigner in Tokyo you are in fact virtually invisible and free to blunder on in the comfort of your own anonymity. It’s quite liberating.

Noise Capital of the World

Tokyo seems to be either very quiet or incredibly noisy. Our neighborhood is very quiet. We’re lucky enough to be located across the street from a park, so we sometimes hear children playing and young baseball teams chanting musically as they run laps around the perimeter. We also “enjoy” the background hum of some type of cicada that sounds like electric current gone wild. The occasional truck rumbles past, which makes the house shake but is not terribly noisy.

On the other hand Shibuya, the big commercial center in our ward (Tokyo is divided into 23 wards), is noisy beyond anything I’ve ever encountered anywhere. In Shibuya, the air itself is loud – I swear.

One day in early August, Mark and I stood in the center of Shibuya laden with bags of groceries and various items for our new household. As we stood sweating and waiting for the boys to catch up, we were a captive audience for the cacophony of voices and music coming simultaneously and discordantly from every direction. The combination of extreme humidity and uber stimulation made my brain feel like it was melting.

The main intersection in Shibuya is the biggest in the world. It’s about the size of Times Square times six, with five roads fanning out from the center like starlight. Giant video screens on the sides of surrounding buildings blast out programming to everyone in the vicinity (which is a multitude if I ever saw one). More immediately, voices from the shops and restaurants that line the street we’re on exhort us to buy what they’re selling – at least that’s what we assume.

We’re directly in front of a multi-story electronics store, from which a plethora of sounds is emanating. A female voice being broadcast over speakers keeps up a continuous stream of words in a rather demanding tone. Simultaneously, several males standing in front of the same store try to entice passersby, but more timidly – perhaps because they can actually be seen. In addition, two different sets of music are being piped outdoors at incredible decibels. Their strategy is working, although perhaps not in the way they intended, because I’m tempted to enter the store if only to escape all the noise on the sidewalk.

When in Shibuya, we try to “go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence” (Max Ehrman), but we’re so distracted by all the noise and haste that we can’t remember much of anything. That may be just as well – going placidly on a crowded Shibuya sidewalk is one sure way to get absolutely nowhere.

Things I Love About Japan (so Far)

While adjusting to life in Tokyo does present challenges, some things are definitely better here. One is dining out. There are many wonderful restaurants within walking distance of our house that serve delicious food from various cuisines at reasonable prices in small, intimate settings. These restaurants are owned and operated by individuals who haven’t bought into the economics of scale theory – perhaps because in Tokyo there’s not much room for scale. Instead, they seem to believe in the economics of great food and great service, which works out well for us.

Haircuts are also better in Japan. It’s not that the stylists have more training or creative talent, it’s that they include massage as part of the process. You get a good 10 minutes of scalp massage during the shampoo phase, plus a glorious 10 minutes of neck and shoulder massage prior to your blow dry. To top it all off, the whole thing costs about half what I paid back in Orange County. The woman who cut my hair spoke English pretty well. She giggled when I told her that you don’t get a massage with your haircut in the U.S. “Only shampoo?” she asked, as though she couldn’t quite picture how that would work.

Parking garages are better – or at least cooler. In some cases, you drive your car into a large elevator and take a ticket. You go off shopping or whatever, and your car is transported to another level and parked. When you return, you simply put your ticket in a machine and pay the amount due. Somehow, your car gets back in the elevator and when the doors open, you just hop in and drive off. Imagine not having to remember where you parked your car!

People ride bikes everywhere. I love seeing moms on their “housewife bikes” with a sleeping baby slouched over in a carrier ahead of the handle bars, and a chatting toddler in a carrier over the rear wheel. It’s also fun to see professional women in skirts and high heels booking down the hill that extends from our house to the station – holding umbrellas over their heads if it’s raining.

I’m sure I’ll find many more things to love about Japan and will definitely keep you posted.

Life Is in the Details

When you move to a new country half way across the world, there are a lot of big things you could write about. But thinking back on our first days in Tokyo, the small things paint the truest picture of how daily life has changed for us.

Instant gratification is no longer available, which takes getting used to. There’s no more hopping in the car whenever we need to get somewhere or buy something. We walk and take the subway, which is fine – we like walking and the trains are clean, air conditioned and actually run on a schedule. However, Tokyo is a very large city so getting where we need to go can sometimes take a while. Going to the doctor, for example, isn’t a matter of driving 10 minutes and arriving. We have to plan on 45 minutes to an hour each way. Even if we took our car, it wouldn’t help much because there are so many cars on such narrow roads with so many stop lights that driving takes almost as long (and the stress of it could take years off your life). Bottom line: We can’t get as much done in a day. We’ve adjusted our expectations accordingly and find the slower pace rather enjoyable.

Communication is obviously more complicated for us now, given we don’t speak the language and can’t read it either. What I didn’t know and wouldn’t have guessed is that not being able to read is by far the worse handicap of the two. You’d be surprised how far pointing at things and simple pantomimes can get you, but when it comes to reading there’s no way to cheat. There are three Japanese script types commonly used – one of them with 2,000 “basic” characters – so we don’t expect an improvement in our ability to read what’s around us anytime soon. We receive bills and can see how much is due, but have no idea who we’re paying. We have some lovely new appliances, but aren’t sure how to use them.

For example, our Japanese microwave has control buttons labeled in – of course – Japanese writing. If you bought a new microwave in, say, France, you could use a dictionary to find out what the words on the control panel mean because you’d be able to identify the letters. Here, despite 30-odd years of experience using microwaves, I’m left wondering whether pushing the big yellow button will cause the microwave to self destruct, or cook my popcorn to perfection (I burned the popcorn, but the microwave is still intact). One night, Mark decided to try a new button and ended up “browning” a dish with a plastic lid, effectively shellacking our take-out.

Milk is another seemingly small detail that looms large for us. After a few visits to various grocery stores, we decoded the numbers on the nutrition panels to the point where we can identify cartons that hold fat-free milk, the only kind Conor and Stig will drink. A wise American I met advised me to buy only cartons featuring a picture of a cow because she once ended up with goat’s milk, which her kids didn’t appreciate.

So if you find yourself thinking of me and wondering what I’m up to, rest assured I’m busy celebrating my latest triumph – guessing correctly how to change the filter on my new (absolutely awesome by the way) vacuum cleaner, or successfully purchasing stamps at my local post office – and thinking of you.