The eyes of sports fans around the world are on Tokyo right now, and on this day 20 years ago, I arrived in Japan for the first time. I was 23 years old, having had my uni graduation only three months prior. Here are my recollections of my first three days in Tokyo.
The hot and humid Sunday morning of August 5, 2001 is my first day in a country I had previously only come into contact with through Japanese classes, soaking up the culture by proxy. My involvement was typical; outings to Japanese restaurants, watching a low-res bootleg of someone’s ‘fan-subbed’ anime video, and hosting an exchange student named Gaku – the first Japanese person I ever met. Filed away in my mind during that period was the notion of Japan as the country responsible for video games, lurid cartoons, martial arts and electronic gadgets, all produced by overworked businessmen.
As the Perth group of twenty English teachers-to-be stagger off the plane into the Tokyo dawn, our suitcases are tagged and forwarded to our respective prefectures. Our first day in Japan has barely reached the breakfast hour and the humidity is enough to wilt flowers. I manage to board the coach first, where I stretch out and fall asleep on the back row of seats.
When I awake we are no longer in Chiba prefecture where Narita Airport is. We are now surrounded by towering skyscrapers on all sides in the Tokyo district of Shinjuku. The name means ‘New Lodgings’. New indeed. There are probably enough buildings to house the entire population of Australia. The gleam from the windows do a good job of temporarily blinding us as the coach pulls silently up to the Tokyo Hilton Hotel, and it is there that our group splits up. Several people are deposited there, and at the next stop, the Century Hyatt Hotel, me, my new friend Chris, then 31, and a third guy get off the bus. The three of us are escorted up to the eleventh floor.
Chris and I look at the big brass keys in our hands and see they both bear the number 1120. We open the door to find two beds and a third bed folded out from the couch. Dropping our luggage on the beds, we stare out of the large window into Shinjuku Chuuou Kouen (Central Park) across the road. Our remaining roommate arrives after twenty minutes; Deane, from Christchurch, New Zealand. He is 28, making me the youngest of the three, but we have a lot in common. We are all bound for Gifu prefecture, and none of us have been to Japan before. In the centre of the huge expanse of trees beyond our window is a small paved area where a second-hand market buzzes with activity. To the rear is a small waterfall. You can see this below in the first photo I took in Japan, from the hotel room window.
Deane then falls asleep, so Chris and I decide to go outside and have a look around. Outside, we cross a footbridge over the road, and then over a smaller one named the Rainbow Bridge, and find ourselves in the park. The air rings with the buzzing of cicadas coming deafeningly from every tree. On the ground, people doze on mats with mosquito coils burning beside them. Chris and I do a quick lap of the market, and look at the waterfall which is named ‘Shinjuku Niagara’. We then head past the massive Keio Plaza Hotel and back to our own.
Deane is still asleep. About 11:30 the phone rings. Chris answers it, saying “Moshi moshi”. He is excited to be using the Japanese phone greeting for the first time. It is my family calling from back in Perth. I drink some water and lie down. The phone rings again; Chris’ friend Tetsu from Nagoya is in town. While Chris gets ready to meet him, I fall asleep.
I wake up to find Chris gone and Deane awake. It is already 5:30 p.m. I suggest to Deane we have a wander round, and he says he wants to go for a run in the park. In the lobby Deane runs into some of his Kiwi friends, and we stand and chinwag for several minutes before heading out towards the humid metropolis. As we pass the park, we see the sellers have now all gone. Only a few kids doing stunts on BMXs and a couple playing badminton with no net, remain. We head through the underground tunnels of Shinjuku Station and emerge into the nightlife on the other side. The sky is dark, the neon signs are pulsating, and cars choke the roads. The vivid colours and cartoon caricatures tease the eye; the flashing lights never stop. Shop stereos blast J-Pop, the perky and upbeat genre of mainstream pop music, as giant video screens on the side of buildings blare and glare with slick animated commercials.
Once again we stop to take it all in. Deane also remains silent, and he must be thinking what I am. I have seen this city depicted in a dozen anime films and TV series: as a mutated post-nuclear mega-tropolis in Akira; as a crime ridden psycho-zone in Burn Up W and as a carefree nighttime playground for ne’er-do-wells in Taihou Shichauzo (“You’re Under Arrest”). Now that I have ended up here I can see it for what it is: all of the above and more.
It may seem unbelievable in the era of smartphone cameras (and in the era of digital cameras before it), but I only took two photos on my first day in Japan – taken with my somewhat naff Olympus film camera. And the second photo wasn't even taken by me. It showed Deane and I in the hotel room and was taken by Chris.
Deane says he will head back to the park for a run, so I continue on up a stairway, through a shopping precinct and down a crowded inner-city street. Crowded is not the word, although obviously I just used it. There are 325 people per square kilometre in Japan. For ten minutes I stare around me glaze-eyed at such sights as a punk in chain-mail; a girl with him in ‘Goth Lolita’ get-up; people sending text messages as they wait to cross the street; piles of discarded magazines on meter boxes; calling cards of prostitutes in phone boxes, each one featuring a manga character; trash bags piled up on the kerb and a noticeable lack of rubbish bins; and the ever-present hordes of gaijin (foreigners).
The katakana word geemu (game) on a sign catches my eye and I follow the arrow down into a seedy video game arcade. A large fan is on full speed, barely ruffling the addled gamers’ mohawks. A few of the cabinets are just excuses for full-frontal cartoon nudity. Back in the street, I spot the pink HMV logo on the side of a building some distance away. I head towards it in the scrum of flawlessly-attired Tokyo-ites. I reach the Takashimaya Department Store, and get the lift up to the twelfth floor. Entering the massive store, I am surrounded by millions of CDs on shelves, and take a stunned moment to scan the signs above them to seek out the correct genre, which are written in English.
Even after eight years of learning Japanese I’d never bothered to learn the order of the hiragana so locating my favourite Japanese band Shonen Knife is a tad difficult. I eventually find two of their albums and scurry off to the checkout where a youth awaits me. The two CDs come to over 6000 yen – about a hundred dollars in Australian money – but my dedication to Shonen Knife refuses to let this fact sink in. Tax is not included in the stated price, which means you can never have the exact change ready. I hand over a 10,000 yen note, and he returns the change and receipt on a small metal tray. Then, producing a small card and a leaflet, he begins to explain something. I stand there and pretend to be in the know, but I do manage to surmise that he is giving me a loyalty card, with five points for every CD purchased. Luckily, part of the leaflet is in English. He swipes my card and I collect five points. I thank him and leave, my first real-life informal interaction with a Japanese person in Japan completed satisfactorily.
I have no problem getting from Takashimaya to the shopping precinct I first entered but from there I am lost. I decide to trudge down some back alleys in the hope that they somehow lead back to my hotel, but of course they don’t. I go around the block and end up on the main road. Finding one’s way is different to back home; directions in Japan are usually given by block numbers and landmarks. Most streets don’t have names; only main thoroughfares have them. Trying the opposite direction this time, I catch sight of a McDonald’s (where else), go in and order a meal. Ah, a familiar gaijin ritual. It takes them a while to make the burger, so I am given a free small Coke while I wait. I pay with a 500 yen coin. It feels strange to pay for a whole meal with one coin. As I eat, I watch a live music show on a large video screen.
Back out into the warm night I go, sticking to the main roads and find my hotel using the maps on the roadside. Chris has just returned from a place called Asakusa, and Deane has brewed some coffee which he bought from a convenience store called ampm. “Did you find the CD you were looking for?” Deane asks. I say yes, showing him my copy of Strawberry Sound. “Sweet!” he says, in that easy-going Kiwi way. How appropriate (and also inevitable) that my first purchase in Japan were two Shonen Knife CDs.
I was completely dead beat at this point, so I fell asleep without dwelling on the fact that this was my first night in Japan, with a year of living there ahead of me. But I've never forgotten that day. I was grateful to use it by going out and exploring. Perhaps the JET Programme organizers gave us that day to get used to our new surroundings.
A 'selfie' (even though the term hadn't been invented yet) in the Tokyo district of Akihabara,
August 7th 2001. I really felt like I had stepped into the future.
Back on August 5, 2011, I chatted with Chris on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of our Japan arrival. "Wow, doesn't time fly," he said, and I hope he won't mind me reproducing his comments here. "I want to go back in time. Back to 2001."
I asked him what he remembered about that first day. "It was like a sauna!" he said. "I remember walking around Shinjuku overwhelmed. The hotel was very nice. Luckily we had good room mates, me, you and Deane. I think everyone slept that evening. I didn't, I met a Japanese friend and we went to Asakusa. I somehow felt OK the next day. We had to be careful, being hillbillies from Perth, haha."
I just reminded Chris this evening about it being 20 years. "Happy 20th JET-iversary!" he said. "Don't throw away those photos and journals. We can talk about it when we are 80! I think I didn't take a photo that day. Most were so tired and slept. Was it just three of us in the [hotel] room? We were lucky, us three. We all got along so well. Never easy staying in a room with people you don't know. I knew you so it was easy."
I'm not a sporty guy – you'll never see me sweating it out in a field. But I do enjoy watching the Olympic Games, and not just to see GOLD GOLD GOLD FOR 'STRAYA either. Couldn't give a toss about that. Take yer medal tally and shove it up yer catflap, matey. No, I watch it for the drama, and the raw human emotion, not just the joy but the defeat, the adversity and the heartbreak. The upsets, the records being broken, and the medal winners appearing in breakfast cereal ads for the next three years.
