Tokyo Transport

Fresh from the high humidity and temperatures of the tropics Tokyo greeted us with cold, pelting rain and confusion. What fell wasn't a 3 month long annoying Seattle drizzle mist, it was a cold, heavy penetrating, soaking downpour that sopped through my shoes, socks, pants and sweatshirt. After spending time in Thailand and Malaysia what I know that rain in the tropics is that it announces itself with a darkening sky and if that doesn't make you take heed it's followed by thunder and lightning. Then it'll rain like a sonofabitch for perhaps an hour and then all is forgiven and the day resumes a few degrees cooler. The Tokyo rain lasted all day and then it was spent, the next morning the sky turned blue and the temperature eventually jumped to a summer like 80F.

Japanese stores hand out free umbrella condoms for all customers and/or have communal umbrella stands. Some urinals in public men's rooms in Tokyo have small metal hooks alongside to hang your umbrella allowing you to conduct your personal business with both hands and to help you to keep your aim true. The sinks in Japanese men's rooms often have 2 spigots and both are motion sensitive. The one on the left squirts a generous helping of soap into your hand like an excited 16 year old boy on a hot date and the one on the right dispenses water. Everything I saw was clean, clean, clean, very little of the stink of a pay toilet squat house typical all over China. In Tokyo public rest rooms seemed to be plentiful free and unabused. 

We got around Tokyo by train. Tokyo has an amazing network of trains running with great frequency. Miss one and there's another right behind it. I never figured out who or what was in charge of which trains. Some lines are the Tokyo Metro, some are JR trains and still others belong to different railways private like Tokyu. Most of the lines intersect and some transfers are free, some are discounted and some transfers are full price. The system is massive so nothing is simple, there's organized chaos down there. Sometimes we bucked never ending rivers of salarymen to find the path to the next train or to the surface but we managed without getting too waylayed.

There seems to be a code of conduct that nearly all passengers adhere to.  There are signs in the train cars in English and Japanese requesting that people refrain from talking on their cells phones.  The only time I heard anyone on a call phone on a train the offender was speaking Mandarin.  Locals certainly don't ignore their phones, everyone is preoccupied with game playing and texting but there's no cell phone talking.  Very few people hold face to face conversations, it's all manners and decorum packed into a very large can.


The trains have a common payments card called Suica. Foreigners get a break on a special foreigner only Suica at the airport upon presentation of a passport and purchase of a ticket to and/or from Narita airport and I imagine the tourist authorities get data on where foreign tourists like to go in return. Recharge machines can also check on the amount of funds left on the card and upon request will deliver an accounting of all of your trips for the week, that's mine to the right.  Suica payment is good on trains, buses, some 7/11 stores and many other convenience stores and fast food restaurants.  Not much is cheap in Tokyo, our Suica cards arrived with 1500 yen installed and we quickly chewed that down and had to add funds twice. Recharges are performed by machines that have an English menu upon request and take cash and plastic.  Station announcements are often in English and signage is almost always bilingual.

As a result of the March 2011 tsunami and meltdown of a nuclear power plant north of Tokyo in Sendai all of the nuclear power stations in Japan have been pulled from the grid and shut down. The result is an electricity shortage. Stores are warm inside and so is the Tokyo Metro since air conditioning draws lots of juice that the Japanese grid can't provide. A new train, the Tokyo Metro 100 series, has just been put into service on the Ginza line that has LED lighting inside and out and flat panel displays for advertisements and station announcements.

In Asia How Do You Know When is Tap Water Safe to Drink?

That's easy, 7/11's are everywhere so just drop in and price a liter of water.  If it works out to .30 then use tap water for bathing and stick to drinking bottled water.  At a 7/11 here in Tokyo I saw 1.5 liters of water for sale for nearly $4.  In Bangkok bottled water is cheap and there are lots of things to do in Bangkok but drinking water from the tap isn't one of them.  In Tokyo I drink water straight from the tap, it's delicious.

This method had also guided me to drink tap water in Hong Kong, Taipei and Singapore.

Made in Japan

Before I went to Japan last Thanksgiving Eleanor asked me to get her some small single edged razor blades on a plastic stalk. I picked them up at a 7/11 in Tokyo. Before I went back in April I asked her if she needed any more. "No thanks", she said. I get them at Daiso now".

We have dollar stores, the Japanese have 100 Yen stores. Daiso is a 100 Yen store and it's starting to show up in North America on the west coast from Richmond, BC to the Bay Area. For me the great thing about that is that it's mostly unchanged from a Daiso store in Tokyo. Most items for sale are $1.50 or $2 and most of the products are packaged exactly the way they are in Japan, in either Japanese or Engrish or both. In many cases if you don't know kanji you don't know what's in the package.

Some of the products have cultural problems. Before I went to Japan in April I stopped off at the Daiso store in Seattle (Westlake, there's another one at the Alderwood Mall) and bought some vacuum travel bags. You put your clothes in the bag, roll the air out and seal them up for a tight pack and extra luggage space. They had a bag for sale that seemed to be for underwear, the pictures showed underwear and bras going into a blue bag. When I got them home I discovered that these bags weren't fit for Bubba's britches, by American standards these bags were large blue sandwich bags. But Daiso has all sorts of Japanese cleaning supplies, cheap tools, kitchen ware. Much of the stuff is made in China for the Japanese market.

Daiso seems to have been careful to filter out many of the home market products that would have no use here but a few got through. I caught their store in downtown Seattle selling little learners signs to hang from the left rear mudflap of as car. The packaging implied that these were mandatory for new drivers. They might be there but not here. They were also selling cheap cell phone headsets. That's fine but Japanese cell phone headset connectors all seem to adhere to a Japanese standard, one that isn't used on US market phones. But many products survive their trip across the Pacific with their Engrish intact, here's a small car bag for the car that I bought at Daiso for $1.50.

When I travel overseas I love to hit the local stores. Hands down one of the best stores I've found is Tokyu Hands. I dropped a few hundred dollars there and would go back tomorrow if I could. Tokyu Hands is what Home Depot and Lowes want to be when they grow up. In Tokyu Hands I bought a replacement knob for the lid of my old Hitachi rice cooker (the original knob was cheap and had long ago stripped), some gorgeous ergonomic screwdrivers (Made by Vessel, I paid extra for the tang-thru), a pair of pliers made by a company named Lobster and another set of pliers with replaceable plastic jaw liners - pliers with a soft touch. The Japanese have a gadget for every real or imagined need so when I saw this simple tool for recycling I knew I had be the first on my block to own one. It's great! I also scored a small hand saw for yard work. In Japan it's sold as the XBeam but the US arm of Tagaki Tools or their importer changed the name here to Shark Corporation and the name of the saw to Yardshark. It looks like Crocodile Dundee's jack knife. Boy, does it ever chew through wood. Nowhere in this post have I said that anything I bought in Japan was cheap. Buying anything in Japan is never cheap, at least not by US norms. But shopping in Japan makes up in innovation and selection what it looses in price.

On the Ground in Tokyo. Again

It’s too bad that I don’t get to stay in Asia long enough to learn to not offend the sensitivity of the locals. I got off on the wrong foot right away by boarding the train to town from Narita Airport. It had just come into the station. It was the last stop and everyone on board got off so I got on. And was promptly asked to leave by the cleaning lady. It seems that the train is entirely cleaned after every run. I also can never remember to not offend cashiers in Japan. Here in Japan when one pay one is never supposed to place money into a cashier’s hand. That’s why they have a small tray, hands should never touch. I always forget this like the dumb gaijin that I am. Today I found a new way to play dumb foreigner. I had retained a 160Y subway ticket from my last trip here back in late November 2006. I had read that tickets were good for 6 months. Maybe not, when I tried to exit a station the turnstile refused to let me pass and politely told me to see an attendant. I handed in my delinquent ticket where they guys behind the desk immediately noticed how stale it was. I showed them my new Suica stored value card, it’s much like the Octopus card in Hong Kong and it’s new in Tokyo. With typical Japanese efficiency they took my Suica card, deducted 160Y and sent me on my way to get lost again. I spent much of the day hopping from subway line to train line in a futile effort not to be lost. I was trying to get from Shinjuku to Akihabara but theTokyo Metro Map looks like the floor after somebody dropped a pot of ramen. Anybody who knows me knows that I’m colorblind and even in English some of the stations and lines overlap so I never knew where I was going. My Suica card took a beating today. I think I’m just going to drain it at a 7/11 and tomorrow I’ll just buy an all day pass. But that may not work since Tokyo Metro runs maybe half the train lines, the others (JR, Toei) seem to be private or belong to some other municipal or prefectural agency. They all seem to take my Suica though. Because Blogger knows I'm in Japan it insists on giving me a Japanese interface. That’s why it took a month for this page to appear, I couldn’t find the Kanji equivalent of >Publish< on Blogger. But better late than never here are pictures from this whirlwind trip. Great views of Tokyo from the Tokyo Tower.

All Hail Toyota!

Sell your GM stock, they’re doomed. Ford too. When I was in Tokyo I visited the Amlux Toyota Showroom, a 4 floor showcase of everything Toyota sells in Japan. It’s a full house. It’s no secret that Toyota is stomping domestic rivals in North America. But now I see that in the North American market Toyota is playing with one hand tied behind it’s back. In Japan they sell everything from a small scooter to the Toyota Century, it lists for close to $100,000. They sell more different kinds of SUV’s in Japan then they do in the US and their US lineup is fat with SUV’s. In Japan Toyota sells small cars, large cars, even a small car with a passenger seat that doubles as a wheelchair. Great looking Toyotas with goofy Japanese car names like Alphard, Ipsum, Passo, Fielder, Ractis, Wish, Brevis, Progres (not a typo), Rush, and Spacio. All this in a small country where gasoline costs close to $5 for a US gallon. Although I saw a Japanese made Camry at the Amlux Showroom I don’t think I saw one on the streets of Tokyo. It’s commonly accepted that Japan is a small country with expensive gasoline and the Japanese drive small cars. Some do but I saw plenty of big cars, both Japanese and European, plying the streets of Tokyo. There was no shortage of large Mercedes, Audis and BMWs, even big expensive ones. I did see one Chevrolet Suburban in a parking spot on a Tokyo street and there was overhang of the marked parking space both front and rear. Another surprise was the small number of Priuses (Priii?) I saw on the streets of Tokyo. I saw some but it doesn’t seem to be the statement of fashion, environmental righteousness and virtue in Japan that Prius ownership implies in the US where gasoline costs half as much as it does in Japan. From what I sawToyota pretty much dominates the market. They have a car for every market niche and if market conditions in North America change Toyota will be waiting.

Akihabara and Christmas

Akihabara (or Akiba) is the well known Tokyo geek neighborhood. It’s home to gizmo, tool, electrical supply, manga and anime shops. For me it was must see JP. While there’s plenty of selection in Akihabara the prices are high, maybe 30% higher to someone used to shopping at Costco, New Egg and EBay in the US. It’s either a happy coincidence or price fixing but prices are pretty much the same from shop to shop. Whatever it’s failings the USA is a shoppers paradise. But that doesn’t mean that I didn’t score anything in Akihabara. I couldn’t leave without a USB coffee warmer and a USB fan. No sign of the elusive USB butt warmer or USB butt cooler but maybe my shopping techniques are more set to shop but not to drop. I know that they’re out there somewhere in Tokyo because just about everything electronic and is. Japan’s industry is world famous for good reason. And Japan was well built with Japanese made precision tough tools. With so many lousy tools on the market back home I bought several Vessel screwdrivers. I also scored a few electrical plugs and connectors that are made for tight and/or angle installations, Home Depot and Lowes carry crap. I steered clear of the anime and manga shops. I peeked into a few and saw a staple of Japanese men, soft core pr0n comic books. I had heard that some of the women handing out flyers on the main drag of Akiba, Chuo-Dori, were dressed as French maids. It’s true but I have no idea why. One of the French maids I saw was handing out flyers for a restaurant called Melty Burger. The Japanese seem to borrow freely from other cultures. Americans borrow too but in the USA it’s because we’re borrowing from people who brought their culture to our culture when they came to the US and it gets smushed together somehow in the diversity we always hear about. Not so in Japan, aside from African and other exotic prostitutes the country is pretty much closed off from the immigration and melting pot ways of the USA. Japan is a homogeneous country, just about everybody here is Japanese. There’s a small Korean minority and the Japanese supposedly don’t let the Koreans forget who’s number one (and it's not the Koreans). So the Japanese are free to pick and chose whatever cultural elements they want, often from TV, and to interpret it any way they want. How they interpret a teenager in a frilly French maid’s outfit handing out flyers for a restaurant is beyond me, please email me with any suggestions. The Japanese have also adopted Christmas. It’s Christmas Jim, but not as we know it. For one thing, except for a small minority there’s no Christ in Japanese Christmas. Never had it, probably never will. But they go nuts with gift giving and trees, ornaments, ribbons, tinsel, Santa Claus and many of the usual trappings of the season. TV this morning was wall to wall with live shots of Christmas lights in Los Angeles and the Macy's Thanksgiving parade in New York. This year a special guest will be showing up in Tokyo, one who loves little children and knows what they want in the true spirit of the season. Michael Jackson is coming to town. Just because it has no religious significance doesn’t mean that stores treat it any differently here. At least in the US we pretend that the holiday is grounded in religion. Sometimes. But in Japan they don't even pretend. Stores play wall to wall Christmas music, some of it with quite religious lyrics. Since most of the population has no idea what the words mean the religion in some of the songs means nothing to them. Maybe the Japanese have more in common with we Americans than I originally thought.

Morning Coffee Tokyo Style

This is a Doutor Coffee shop. One difference from home is that coffee shops don't open until 7am in Tokyo. Another difference is that smoking is just fine in some coffee shops in Tokyo, smokers doesn't seem to carry the social stigma that they do in the US. You can light up nearly anywhere here without getting nasty looks or being considered a pariah. I sat down with my small cup of coffee ($2.20 US) and smelled cigarettes. The salaryman next to me was puffing away. And so was everybody else. The only person in the place who seemed to give this activity more than a passing thought was me.

One woman who appeared to be in her early twenties walked in wearing a surgical mask. Many people here do so that wasn't all that unusual. She ordered her drink, sat down, pulled the mask down exposing her mouth and instead of sipping her drink she lit up and began to puff away. So I guess that not everybody here who wears a surgical mask in public does it for health concerns, maybe it's just a fashion statement.

Mmmm, German Dog, Lettuce Dog and Bacon Spicy Dog.