I have spent most of today wandering around Tokyo in a state of utter confusion and hopelessness.\u00a0 And I haven’t even got to the Russian embassy yet.\u00a0 But even taking this into consideration, I am enjoying myself.<\/p>\n
The biggest problem is similar to the one I had in Korea a few years ago, which is a complete inability to distinguish a bank from a brewery and a bar from a bus stop.\u00a0 Everything is labelled but, oddly enough, in Japanese.\u00a0 I can’t decipher a single character.\u00a0 At least in Korea I had half a chance with being able to recognise the logos.\u00a0 I’ve written before about the importance of logos<\/a>\u00a0and when you find yourself in a world without many you recognise (a 60-storey skyscraper with Hitachi on the top isn’t helpful), identification of goods and services is pretty damned difficult.\u00a0 I suspect had Naomi Klein lived in Japan for a year, she’d have ditched her most famous work halfway through the introduction as she bit into an imported Mars Bar.\u00a0 So most of this afternoon I spent looking for an ATM which spoke English.\u00a0 There didn’t seem to be any banks which I recognised except for Citibank, whose ATM was as much use as a slot machine.\u00a0 The few Japanese banks I came across had ATMs with no English instructions, and most didn’t even display the Visa sign.\u00a0 Even the ATMs of the Bank of Dolinsk (Dolinsk is a set of trees with a house between them north of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk) carry the Visa sign.\u00a0 I needed a load of cash (only cash, of course) to pay for my visa tomorrow, and I was beginning to panic.\u00a0 Eventually I found what was described as an “international ATM” in a post office beside my hotel, which coughed up some\u00a0dough after a bit of poking around with the buttons.\u00a0 I can’t say I didn’t enjoy wandering around the Ginza district of Tokyo all day, and I particularly liked seeing the population of a small country cross those diagonal zebra crossings when the little green man comes on, but I fear that never before has Tokyo seen anyone looking more gormless on its streets than I did this afternoon.\u00a0 I should take this opportunity to thank the Aussie fella for giving me directions when he found me hopelessly cross-referencing two pocket maps with a huge tourist one on the street, to absolutely no avail whatsoever.<\/p>\n My hotel, the Imperial Hotel, is superb.\u00a0 Which is of no surprise whatsoever, as this is Japan we are talking about.\u00a0 Being a good metre taller than the average Japanese, the receptionist obviously thought I was more comfortable at lofty elevations and put me on the top level some 31 floors above the pavement.\u00a0 The view from my room is spectacular, and I’ll post some photos when I get back.\u00a0 The room – one of over 1,000 – is excellent, with everything in perfect working order and the bathroom containing white fluffy bathrobes, the one and only sign of a decent hotel.\u00a0 Had I bothered to bring my laptop, I could enjoy complimentary super high-speed broadband in my room, but as it happens I have to use super high-speed broadband in the business centre which contains a dozen top-notch computers, none of which have a worn out mouse and a keybaord missing a couple of keys, which I can use free of charge.\u00a0 When it comes to running hotels, the Japanese – along with the Koreans – have got the rest of the world licked.<\/p>\n I didn’t fancy paying $85 for a buffet dinner though.\u00a0 Tokyo isn’t cheap. So I went for a wander along a narrow street alongside the elevated railway near the hotel and found a place which sold some dishes I recognised, photos of which were on display outside.\u00a0 They were Korean dishes, which I know from living amongst 30,000 ethnic Koreans on Sakhalin and alongside a\u00a0wife who spent 3 years in Taegu, on offer in what I took to be a rough-and-ready Japanese restaurant.\u00a0 So I went in with white face, round eyes, hairy arms, and full of ignorance, where in this regard I was in the company of myself only.\u00a0 Nobody spoke English, which made it all the more fun, and by the time I had ordered my food and had drunk the neck off a bottle of Asahi Dry I realised I was in a rough-and-ready Korean restaurant and there wasn’t a Japanese person in the whole damned place.\u00a0 Keeping “they-all-look-the-bloody-same-to-me’ mumblings to a minimum I kicked back, ate my food, took in the surroundings, and enjoyed my beer and myself.\u00a0 Problem is, I don’t know a single Japanese dish and, now you mention it, I don’t know a single thing about Japan other than crude stereotypes involving sumo wrestlers, karaoke, and samurai swords.\u00a0 But I do know I like Japan, and the service is impeccable and the people unfailingly polite, even if they do turn out to be a load of Koreans.<\/p>\n I’ll see what I can find tomorrow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have spent most of today wandering around Tokyo in a state of utter confusion and hopelessness.\u00a0 And I haven’t even got to the Russian embassy yet.\u00a0 But even taking this into consideration, I am enjoying myself. The biggest problem … Continue reading