For those of you not keeping close track of my comings and goings (and really, you have only yourself to blame), hear this: I'm in Tokyo. Got here about five days ago, and I'm still jetlagged. So far it's pretty decent – the nicest thing about it is that, because I'm here as part of an academic program, I've pretty much been babysat the whole time so far. This started with getting picked up at the airport and continued through being taken to dinner that night, then kept on going when they set us up with a party the next day (more on that in a minute). We have certainly had plenty of time to explore, and it's not like they're cooking our meals for us, but it's been a welcome change from what I've come to expect when I arrive in a new place – that is, that I'll make an ass of myself trying to get from point A to point B, then wander aimlessly around the vicinity of point B getting hungrier and hungrier until my gnawing hunger overcomes my fear of making a fool of myself and I manage to buy some food.
Well, I guess there's still a little of that. Japanese restaurants are in principle more inviting to foreigners than those in other locales might be, since almost all of them have either pictures on the menus or, with surprising frequency, actual plastic models of each of the available dishes in a glass case out front. So there's not much chance of, say, randomly pointing at the menu and accidentally ordering a whole bottle of wine and nothing else. But once you get past that very basic element of the transaction, you catch a glimpse of the real heart of darkness. The way things work in restaurants – in all commercial transactions, in fact – is just very, very different from the U.S. Everything is, perhaps not surprisingly, extremely formal and businesslike. The tone of voice used by shop or restaurant staff when greeting your entrance (or telling you how much your items cost, or telling you how much change you're receiving) is identical every time in every store you enter, and has more in common with a religious incantation than a friendly greeting. Though I'm more than sympathetic to servers and clerks' lack of desire to even attempt to engage in small talk with someone who looks like me (since there's a good chance I don't speak Japanese, and their attempt to communicate would only embarrass me), in the restaurants I've been in so far there hasn't been a jot more communication between the help and the other customers than I've gotten. We'll see if my observation holds up over time, but there seems to be no 'casual' mode of interaction between staff and customers here.
Oh, and another thing it took me a couple of days to figure out (insofar as I have figured it out by now, which may not be very far) – but apparently you're not actually supposed to hand your money to the clerks. You're just suppoed to set it on the counter. Or sometimes, put it into a little plastic tray on the counter provided for exactly this purpose. It's not like I got any horrified looks of panic and confusion when I just shoved the money into someone's palm, but nobody else does it, so, when in Rome.
And one last thing – I know this will, on an intellectual level, come as absolutely no surprise to anyone, but Tokyo's population is, from what I've seen so far, amazingly monolithic. Not too shocking, I'm sure – I was well aware of this before coming here, so I imagine everyone else already knows it, too. But to 'know' something intellectually and to see it firsthand are different things, so let me just reiterate – it's one of the world's largest, most cosmopolitan cities, and everyone looks eck-fucking-ZACTLY the same. Racially speaking, I mean. There were a couple girls in Shibuya yesterday of the Barbie-tan type, and there are some tall guys and even a (very) few fat people. But other than that, the variation is really lacking. Admittedly, I don't think my Asian Race Radar is finely tuned enough to distinguish someone of Korean or Chinese descent from a born-and-bred Japanese – but I do know what a Philipino or Thai person looks like, and there aren't many (read: I've seen like two Philipinos). The floodgates are not exactly gushing.
On the other hand, I've found that Asian girls can start to look pretty good when there's absolutely nothing else in sight.
You can check out my Flickr page here, with some photos and commentary:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/48431536@N00/
