{"id":34251,"date":"2014-07-06T09:52:20","date_gmt":"2014-07-06T13:52:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/?p=34251"},"modified":"2014-07-07T08:38:17","modified_gmt":"2014-07-07T12:38:17","slug":"tokyo-revisited-day-15","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/tokyo-revisited-day-15\/","title":{"rendered":"Tokyo Revisited Day 15"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Gundam<\/a><\/p>\n

A variety of subtle and minor cultural differences between Japan and American occur to me as navigate Tokyo. During my two weeks here, I\u2019ve seen about a half-dozen women wearing traditional Japanese kimono or similar attire on the street, but to a person the women have been elderly ladies. I wonder to myself if these women are individuals who have spent a lifetime wearing traditional Japanese clothing, if they\u2019ve only adopted the grace of tradition with maturity, or if they represent a contrast with the contemporary, younger generations of Japanese citizens who aren\u2019t interested in the formality of traditional Japanese attire.<\/p>\n


\nDuring my two weeks here I think I\u2019ve seen only two people besides my friend Jon use a credit card. Ironically, in such a techno-centric urban society, cash is still king to the extent that residents still have to manually pay their monthly utility bills in cash payments at the local convenience store instead of mailing a check or paying online via credit card or bank transfer.<\/p>\n

Claustrophobic people should probably avoid the toilet and even the shower in a typical Tokyo apartment.<\/p>\n

\"toilet\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"shower\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The country is very ecologically conscious, to the extent that even heavily industrialized areas like the Tokyo docks still ensure that space is left for patches of trees and grass.<\/p>\n

\"Tokyo<\/a><\/p>\n

Trains and commercial buildings are air conditioned, but private homes and apartments don\u2019t have central air, frequently resulting in apartments that are hotter indoors than out during the summer. Japan is so environmentally conscious that the cellophane wrappers on plastic beverage bottles are designed to be easily removable because the plastic \u201cpet\u201d bottles and their form-fitting plastic labels require different varieties of recycling treatment, thus they can be separated into “pet bottle” recycling bins and “regular plastic” recycling bins. Yet despite all this seeming obsession with cutting carbon footprint, Tokyo residents discard umbrellas with the frequency that Americans discard used drinking straws. And on rainy days practically every retail establishment encourages the use of one-time-use disposable plastic wet-umbrella sleeves.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The label wrap is specifically designed to be easily removable, leaving only the recyclable clear plastic bottle.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I\u2019m constantly fascinated by Japanese sidewalks and train station stairwells that are labeled \u201cStay to the left here\u201d or \u201cStay to the right here\u201d or labeled with arrows that designate where pedestrian traffic should move in order to ensure practical, convenient through-way for all. The sidewalks also contain permanent messages prohibiting smoking on the street.<\/p>\n

\"Shinjuku-Dori<\/a><\/p>\n

\"No<\/a><\/p>\n

Although televised anime is largely relegated to very early weekend mornings or very late at night, anime imagery seems to be nearly everywhere here in Tokyo. Train stations are filled with billboards advertising new TV shows and collectable card games. Pachinko parlors are everywhere, nearly every single one of them adorned with not just anime imagery but even giant LED monitors that loop promotional anime clips advertising the latest pachinko machines. The print ads and even video monitors in the trains use anime imagery. Yet despite the omnipresence of anime visuals, the artists that actually draw and paint all of this anime continue to work for near slave wages and minimal benefits and recognition.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The coin vending machine has a tray to make depositing coins easier. How ingeniously convenient!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Tokyo, especially, seems like almost a fantasy city in the regard that it\u2019s a town deliberately made to be convenient. Life is difficult everywhere, and everyone on the planet suffers personal difficulties and anxieties. Tokyo residents are naturally no different. But the city itself is built to allow residents to entirely fulfill their every daily need within roughly a 20 minute range. Tokyo residents can spend a lifetime without a driver\u2019s license because the trains are so ubiquitous and convenient. One could spend months in an area without sampling all of the local restaurants. For entertainment, a movie theater, pachinko parlor, anime shop, or bar is never more than five minutes away. The entire city is designed to enable quick and painless access to any and everything that a resident needs, thus residents get spoiled. Americans routinely drive an hour to work, yet here in Tokyo having to ride trains for more than 20 minutes renders most destinations too far away and too inconvenient to bother visiting. Countless Japanese residents never leave the small island nation, and Japanese TV is ripe with tourism shows that only focus on internal Japanese destinations because the country feels so insular, so self-contained, and so self-sufficient that residents are almost immediately lulled into a sense that everything necessary and interesting lies near at hand, so there\u2019s no reason to travel farther than ten miles for anything or any reason. America, on the other hand, is so wide and spread-out that in the same way that Japanese residents instinctively think immediately locally, within their own neighborhood, Americans don\u2019t even think twice about hundred mile drives or weekend jaunts to other states hundreds of miles away.<\/p>\n

***
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