Definitely. Spring has arrived.
Green and sprouts everywhere. Spriiiiing!

Bicycle parking

In Tokyo almost everyone has a bicycle. Bicycles are the best way to get to the station unless you can walk or are reasonably near a bus stop. To get to the station, a car is a bother or at worst, useless. So every day millions of bicycles find their way to stations and there's the problem: where to park them.

Suburban stations have their own bicycle parking lots, which cost maybe 100 yen a day and are presided over by a local character. So far so good, but there are usually so many bicycles to be parked that their parking lot occupies as much ground as the station itself, and as this is valuable land right next to the station there is great pressure to use it for something more productive than to park bikes. Of course there's always the rogue crowd willing to take a chance and park their bike illegally on the sidewalk, although they know there's a fair chance the police will come by with a large flat-bed truck and simply load up all the illegally parked bikes and take them away, nobody knows where.

Bicycles illegally parked on sidewalk outside Hiyoshi Station

The problem is particularly acute at major stations like Shibuya and Shinagawa, where somehow space has to be found to park thousands of bicycles but there is no space around these densely urban stations for anything as frivolous as a bicycle parking lot.

To this problem a very Tokyo solution has evolved. At many of Tokyo's major stations a tower has been erected. The tower can be up to five stories high and can accommodate many hundreds of bike racks. Alternately, this towering five-story parking lot tower can be located underground. In fact, underground parking lots seem to be the most popular because nobody sees the ugly brutes.

But think, just after the offices let their minions out, there is going to be a rush to retrieve hundreds of bikes at once. What makes this solution workable is a very efficient, very rapid elevator which can bring your bike back to you in 22 seconds.

The routine is: you take your bike to the parking facility, swipe a card across the reader to identify your bike, then wheel your bike up to the door. The door will open and a set of arms will take your bike from you and the door will close. When you want your bike back, you swipe your card across the reader and your bike will be wheeled from the depths of the facility onto the elevator and whisked back to you. The website www.maniacworld.com/tokyo-bicycle-parking-tower.html shows how it all works.

There are a number of these automated bike parking lots around Tokyo and more are under construction.

In Yokohama, there is an automated automobile parking lot which works similarly. What is notable here is that the automobiles are parked stacked on top of each other with a three-inch clearance.

- Zeke Suzuki

The job of a significant portion of the city's population
 is simply to keep everything as clean as possible

This cozy country

So Esquire columnist Bob Greene comes to Tokyo and freaks out - all this bowing, people so energetic, naked ladies and Miami Vice in Japanese on TV - and goes home exhausted, suffering from cultural concussion.

It works the other way too, of course. A Japanese engineer I know, a sophisticated guy who has figured out a way to record the entire Library of Congress on a single compact disc, comes to me and says he has been invited to give a ten-minute presentation of his work at Bell Labs in New Jersey and he wants to know how to greet them.

Ours has to be the last generation which clutches when it  travels to the other side of the world.

It must be less traumatic for foreigners to come to Japan, though, than for Japanese to venture abroad. Japan is so cozy, and abroad is so, well, brusque.

Think of it this way: Japanese go to New York and immediately get yelled at for not closing the taxi door, then they get looked at strangely for waiting for the green light before crossing the street. They conclude that New York is the frontier.

All sorts of functionaries make it plain that they expect to be tipped (even for opening the door of a taxi - in Japan the taxi driver pulls a lever to open and close the door for you, an indulgence it's easy for Japanese to take for granted when traveling abroad), but nobody seems grateful for the amount they are given. (There is in Japan no custom of tipping.) Purchases are hardly wrapped, if at all, and nobody seems much concerned about being polite.

Japanese travelers leafing through magazines at a New York newsstand quickly learn they are not encouraged to do so although in Japan it is perfectly OK. They discover that American cars have names like Matador and Cobra and the advertisements for them snarl about horsepower and brakes. They recall wistfully that Japanese cars have names like "Parsley" and "Ballade" and that advertisements for them show young people holding hands.

In New York, buildings are monstrous, closing out the sky, while the open spaces of America extend to an empty horizon. Japanese think of the landscape of both urban and rural America as bleak, lonely, uncomfortably majestic. In Japan, there is no "Marlboro Country" which demands to be lived up to ("Golden Bat" country, maybe), and in Tokyo there are no boulevards scaled to make the stroller feel insignificant. All Tokyo is a jumble, like the family living room on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

Japanese go to the States and see television news featuring anchor people (tough, rugged nomenclature, that) who speak with enormous confidence and tremendous vigor. In Tokyo, TV is more low key, as if it were put on by the neighborhood amateur dramatic society or a bunch of friends in a silly mood.

American sports on TV seem to celebrate aggression - the slow-motion playbacks seldom analyze form, but focus on people getting hammered. Favorite sports on Japanese TV are high-school baseball tournaments, marathons through the middle of large cities while the citizenry waves little paper flags as encouragement, and sumo, which although certainly violent (for several seconds at a time) is so drenched in ritual and weighed down by the roly-poly physiques of its participants that it only serves to underline the singularity of an act of violence.

In America, few people seem to have a hometown to return to. Everybody has to pump their own gas. Drunks are hauled off to jail. Children are scolded in public. People write angry things on the sides of buildings. Handshakes are wrestling matches. It is difficult to spell people's names and they never give you their visiting card. A party means standing holding a strong drink while trying to make conversation with people you have never met. People are surprised when a train is on time.

Japan, on the other hand, is a country where infants are carried  warm and snug on their mother's back or nestled in a pouch on their front, pampered with cute little toys (the Japanese cute toy industry is big business), and sung the sweetest nursery songs in the world. When they reach kindergarten, Japan Railways, like a proud father, hangs their watercolors in the stations.

The Japanese grow up accustomed to being fussed over and as adults the habit lingers. In Japan, as evening approaches the shoji shutters of the house are pulled closed and after a hot bath drawn up to the chin and a dinner prepared by the loving lady of the house, the family arranges itself around the kotatsu, a warm blanket over a low table under which an electric fire glows) to sip sweet juices or warm sake. (Japan must be the only country whose national drink is coddled.) After an hour or two of easy conversation - rapier witticisms and thundering arguments are not encouraged - the family finishes off with bowls of ochazuke, rice pablum, a dish which puts few demands on the digestive system, then rolls into beds laid out on the tatami inches away from each other which cannot be fallen out of. Rabbit hutches, by definition, are cozy. 

In the morning, the Japanese are swept off to work on a tide of fellow commuters. The train is crowded, as the womb is crowded, but there is no cause for anxiety because each stop is carefully announced in dulcet tones and everyone is told to hang on tight as the train approaches a curve and reminded not to forget their umbrellas. It is like being taken to school by mother.

In Japan, the whole country is one great commune. Almost everyone describes themselves as "middle class," and there is little of the gnawing pressure to improve oneself that drives Americans. There's a single time zone and a single language. The country's schoolchildren all study the same textbooks to the same schedule. To venture forth from Japan is for a Japanese like leaving the bed for a blizzard.

The Japanese police are avuncular to the point of being prepared to lend carfare. They take kids aside for walking sloppily or riding their bike in a reckless manner, and they  make it their business to know when a baby is born on their beat. The Tokyo subways put up artful posters reminding people not to get their fingers caught in the closing doors and to surrender their seats to their elders.

At stoplights Japanese drivers switch off their high beams so as not to dazzle the driver in front. A phone call brings bowls of noodles to any house any time, even in a downpour. A child crossing the street holding up one of the yellow flags obtainable from a box at the crossing could stop an army. Visitors to the house, even the paperboy on a collection run, bring a little gift. When you join a Japanese organization, you can expect a welcoming party in your honor. The whole country saves old newspapers.

Youngsters who want to be thought of as malcontents cut their hair bebop style and wear black nylon jackets which say something like BAD SOLDIER TEAM WORLD WAR ESTABLISHED 1987 across the back. Japanese painters of a romantic inclination have to move to Paris because in Tokyo there is no Sturm or Drang.  

When American students from the American School who have grown up in Japan go abroad to experience what their parents insist is their homeland, they come back reeling. Life in Tokyo is a snuggle; life abroad is a hockey game.

Can foreigners resident in Japan partake of this coziness? Absolutely, but they should be wary. It is addictive.

- Rick Kennedy 

Bicycle illegally parked. Motor scooter and motorcycle OK, though.

Waiting for the pachinko parlor to open

Curious habits of Japanese TV

--There is no disinclination to show the same short video--a man getting out of his car caught in a traffic jam, shaking his fist at the cars struck around him, then resignedly getting back into his car--twice, three times, even four or five times in a few minutes while the reader rattles on. The essential importance of video supporting the narrative or narrative explaining the video is often not recognized.

--Another example of witless picture editing is the all-too-familiar shot of a gaggle of politicians coming out of one room and striding down the hall to enter another room, without the slightest verbal exchange or the slightest notice of the camera. What can the viewer possibly learn from this?

--We have already made note of the extraordinary detail of weather reports. It's also interesting to note that on NHK's evening weather report, the main (usually  male) news reader stays on camera when the young (female) weather reporter begins her run-through of the expected weather, and he invariably injects a comment to show his interest, then after a moment or two backs away out of camera, thus showing that he while he is interested in the weather report he is not really responsible.    

--Ads, particularly those for soft drinks, are often built around a shot of fanatically precision dancing by an outlandishly costumed troop, featuring the unnatural jerking back and forth of arms and leg movements and spins as meticulous as well-oiled machinery. These five-second sequences by a dozen or so dancers of exactly the same height must have required weeks of rehearsal.

--NHK broadcasts the Evening News in 27 languages, including Gaelic.

--You will have noticed that when something untoward happens, but something which is photogenic and which by good luck has been captured on camera, such as a picturesque bicycle accident or a bank robbery in a remote prefecture, the evening news programs will devote five minutes or more to it, with the police shown diligently making measurements and holding patchy interviews with attractive observers. The time devoted is governed by the supposed interest in the video, not by the importance of the story.

--Sometimes video will show someone (a politician usually) speaking, but then narration comes on and the speaker is still shown to be speaking but the video's sound is cut off to let the narration go on under. So the politician or whoever is shown to be saying something but we don't hear what. 

--We are too often treated to stock shots of the signs of political parties on the roofs of their headquarters, when there's nothing else handy to show.

--The camera will pan across four or five people lined up behind a desk pretending to engage in a panel discussion but in fact there will be no exchange of ideas. One person will go on for three or four minutes about something and the others will periodically nod and say things like "Of course" and "I see."  Then another person at the desk will rattle on about something else which may or may not be related while the others nod and say "Naturally" and "Uh huh." So there is no real discussion at all. This practice even has a name; the person who gives a periodic mumbled response to the long explanation is called an "ai-zuchi," which means roughly the person on the other side who nods. 

- Alex Mitsumori

On the way to school

The Bus

It's a big city, but it's well served by its intricate train and subway system. So far, so good, but how to get to the subway station?

If you don't fancy a stroll (subway stations are maybe an average of 300 yards apart), you may be able to take a bus. Depending, a bus will come along in ten to twenty minutes, and so everyone can know exactly when to leave home it will surely be on time to the minute.

If you board at the start of the run, a digital display at the front of the bus will count down the minutes before the bus will start. The uniformed bus driver in peak cap and white gloves will thank everyone everyone as they board and swipe their pass over the reader. He will often greet old customers by name. 

In time, the driver will announce that he is about to start the bus's big rumbling diesel engine, then you're off. (Time was when most buses, even those on rural routes, had conductors to collect the fares from everyone seated, but now this is done automatically at the machine at the front which reads everyone's pass; money is rarely exchanged.)

During the ride, a dulcet recorded female voice will announce name of the next stop, and the stop after that.

The back roads are so narrow that buses going and coming cannot pass each other except at places where one bus can pull over to get out of the way. Because the schedule is so carefully maintained, there's usually a wait for the other bus to come by of no more than a minute, but nevertheless the driver will apologize for the inexcusable delay.

At the end of the line, which will be in front of a train station, the recorded voice will thank everyone for taking the bus and wish everyone a good day. The bus empties in half a minute. 

The bus then goes to the bus-parking area next to the station to wait until it's time to make the run back. Some of the runs along the back roads are extraordinarily circuitous, the better to sweep up passengers from as many neighborhoods as possible.

- Jean-Claude Folgaritsen 

Shinkansen poised

Above is a photo of the latest shinkansen bullet train which whizzes from Tokyo Station south to Osaka and sometimes all the way to Kyushu, the southern island. The shinkansen has all the conveniences of  travel by plane (hostesses, beer, meals--although you'd do better to buy a bento box lunch on from a stand on the platform-- 

--or even better from a stand in the basement of a department store). The shinkansen also goes north, and a tunnel to Hokkaido, the northern island, is now under construction. 

The latest shinkansen can hit 300 kph but the experimental maglev (magnetic levitation) variation, which cannot be bothered to make physical contact with the tracks, has hit 580 kph on test runs. The construction of the maglev is due to begin in 2014. 

Looking at a map of Japan's rail system, you would think the busiest train station would be Tokyo's Shinjuku Station, because Shinjuku is the starting point for trains funneling out all over the country not just north and south, just as Chicago is the busiest station in the US, but no, Tokyo Station is the busiest just because it is where the shinkansen starts. A 16-car Shinkansen train (inevitably, with all seats taken) leaves Tokyo Station every six minutes. As you can imagine, a certain discipline on the part of passengers is required for this schedule to work: when a soon-to-depart train opens its doors, its seats are all taken in, say, thirty seconds.

A little flurry between appointments. Tokyo is a gambler's delight.

The Advantages of Living in a Small Space

We don't feel crowded living in Tokyo because we don't know anything else. We see pictures of Wyoming and wonder how people could be happy living on the moon. Of course, it requires a certain discipline to live so close together, but we were born into a disciplined world so it is hard for us to imagine living any other way. Besides, there are advantages.

For one, it's less expensive to live in a small space, so money which might be spent on an extravagant house with a rolling lawn can be used to enrich the soul. The thought of a backyard pool is absurd and anyway there is no backyard. If you live in a small space, you can't buy things just for the fun of acquiring them because you have no place to put them. What things you do buy--books, for instance--must be very carefully chosen, which is a useful exercise in itself. Pictures to hang on the wall must be small, which is a whole exquisite aesthetic. In Tokyo, an extensive wine cellar is six bottles. We are forced to be discriminating.

Your refrigerator and oven and dishwasher and washing machine, if you have them, will be as small as a crate of beer and your automobile, scooter, and even bicycle will be on the same scale, but of course Japanese manufacturers are practiced at the art of  miniaturization and the cost of their products is in line with their size. (Japanese small cars, called k-jidosha, are the best in the world but there is no call for them abroad simply because most foreigners are too lanky to fit into them.) Very unfortunately, consumers in foreign countries rarely see the results of this Japanese small-scale thinking as they disdain products noticeably smaller than they are used to. Outside Japan, big is OK and small is somehow suspect. In Japan, the reverse is true.

If you don't have a kitchen at all, like many small apartments, you don't need kitchen appliances or plates or wine glasses and you'll always eat out, thus ensuring that you'll be in daily communication with your neighbors living a similarly simplified life and also that the neighborhood is well supplied with cheap, congenial places to eat where everybody knows everyone. Similarly, if your apartment doesn't have a bath, in the evening you'll adjourn to the local sento, the public bath, where again the community gathers, naked, to scrub itself. The tendency for newer small apartments to squeeze in a bath just big enough to sit down in is decried by those who think  Japan's sense of community is thus threatened. They think it essential for national unity that children grow up thinking the only way to really get clean is to submerge oneself in hot water up to the chin at the neighborhood sento. (The government evidently thinks so too, as it subsidizes the entrance to sento.)  

If you live on tatami mats, you don't need a full-size table or any chairs, and your bed can be folded up and put away to create an open space. Once you get used to living this way, western-style rooms seem cluttered. Small rooms are easy to heat and in the summer easier to keep cool with any of the hundreds of models of electric fans of all sizes, beginning with fans the size of an alarm clock, provided each summer by Japanese manufacturers. 

There's no room to let newspapers and magazines accumulate, so everything must be read carefully and put in a pile to be disposed of on the first Newspaper-and-Magazine Disposal Day. No drowsy reading allowed.

Because we live so close together, we must talk softly and move gently, which is why Japanese traveling abroad often find their new surroundings jarring. Because there is no retreat from living close together short of moving to a hut in the mountains, Japanese families, who must eat together around one low table, and sleep together in the same room, are wonderfully cohesive and sharing everything--TV, computer, printer--comes naturally.

One of the great advantages of living together so closely is that there is little "size envy," little unhappiness that your neighbor's house is bigger than yours, simply because in Tokyo it is unlikely to be. In Tokyo, we have the concept of shakkei, "borrowed scenery," which is the idea that anyone can look at a beautiful garden such as the splendid Rikugi-en in Bunkyo-ku or Hamarikyu-onshi-teien in Chuo-ku and to that extent it is theirs. They don't have to own it. It belongs to everybody. Somehow, it is not possible to feel this way about Central Park in New York.

- Natasha Nakamura

Good morning, everyone.

A look back at kamishibai

Kamishibai are small-scale, informal, intimate theatrical performances put on in the old days in the street for passersby, particularly for children. These days there's no telling where and when you might run across a kamishibai in the street, although certainly your chances are better in the more traditional neighborhoods like Ueno.

You will be attracted by one or two fluttering banners, the rhythmic clapping together of two pieces of wood, and the ritual bawled-out announcement to the passing crowd that "The kamishibai is about to begin!" Sometimes there will be other attempts to attract a crowd, such as a familiar tune on an unfamiliar instrument like a clarinet, a juggler, a magician, or a contortionist.

A rug will be laid down for the kids, who may be offered a piece of candy to come and make themselves comfortable. (In the old days, the kids would have to buy their candy for a few yen and this would entitle them to a front seat.)

Kamishibai stories are narrated using a series of emphatic illustrations on boards the size of the screen of a small TV. The narrator uses different voices for the different characters and the children are drawn into the story: "Should the squirrel run away and hide or should he stand and fight?" And the story will go the way the children suggest.

There will be stories of an evil Santa Claus, of the adventures of a peanut that can jump very high and change colors, of a team of bumbling robbers who of course get caught, of floods and of fires. There might be the story about a boy with a great curiosity about everything who sneaks aboard a sailing ship and climbs to the top of the mast--dangerous--and there is a storm and he has to jump off into the ocean--SPLASH--where he is rescued by kindly fishermen who tell him it is a fine thing to be curious but he must be careful and not cause other people trouble.

A kamishibai story takes maybe ten minutes. There will be maybe twenty pictures and a dozen different voices.

Kamishibai these days evoke nostalgia for the immensely popular street kamishibai of the past, which were performed by professionals, that is, people who lived off what they did. Most present-day kamishibai are aimed at adults and are not held on the street but in small halls, where they can be illuminated and microphones can amplify the sound. They recall rakugo monologists without pictures. Not the same thing.

-Erika 

The board game of shogi, which is different from chess in that you can use yourself any piece you capture--which makes the game considerably more complex than chess.