2018年3月9日金曜日 - 
John Keating: Tokyo
My wife and I spent Christmas in Tokyo last year and found it to be
wonderfully surprising. The most surprising thing had to be just how clean
Tokyo was. Even places like Shinjuku, where we visited the famous Robot
Restaurant, were beautiful with no beer cans or cigarette
butts littering the ground.
Fantastic. The people were really friendly and polite and quite accepting of
tourists. I never expected getting off a packed train to be so easy, although
rush hour seemed to last all day.
The Robot Restaurant was spectacular
and the only Japanese customers were my wife and her sister so it felt quite
strange, like going to another country. The restaurant seems to be far more
famous outside of Japan, where things like YouTube has made it easy to see and
it fits one of the three images foreigners have of Japan（＊）. It was totally nuts in the
best possible way. You walk in and buy a drink, like Chuhi in a "lightbulb" glass, then sit down and watch the
show. A variety of dancers in costumes dance along with these massive robots in
a mass of light and noise. Almost as good as watching the show was watching the
audience on the opposite side. Most people, especially the western otakus,
were really getting into it, but a couple
of their girlfriends seemed to be very confused about what they were watching
and were unsure how to react! As wacky as
it was, my wife and her sister seemed to have more fun than anyone, enjoying
how "out there" it was compared to regular life in Japan, and they
really got into it. |
| Wiki |
After that we went to a namahage restaurant in Ginza, which was
wonderful. We got a private table in a cubbyhole
and had some excellent food and nihonshu. You know a restaurant is
really good when food you ordinarily don't like tastes amazing. In my case it
was a variety of delicious fish. While we were eating, two oni gave us a
delightful fright, jumping out at us in costume. The restaurant must be famous
because their English was excellent and they were really funny, with one of
them telling us how sad he was that no one had said “Happy birthday!” to him.
The Ghibli Museum was rather small and not really a museum, more of a
shop, but we also went to Sanrio (Hello Kitty Land) at my wife's request. Now,
this was clearly not designed for me (a man) but my wife loved it. It was sickeningly cutesy,
even the curry was pink, and I appeared to be one of only seven men in a sea of
about ten thousand mothers and daughters. All the men looked exhausted and
clearly there to make their families happy. I saw all of them slumped against a wall at one point, although one
smart man had been clever enough to bring along a Nintendo Switch so he could
sit in a corner and relax! To see how happy it made my wife was good though and
the boat ride was fun. We also took a photo with Hello Kitty and bought way too
many souvenirs.
（＊）The three images of Japan:
1: tradition. Samurai,
Ninja, Geisha, Onsen, temples.
2: technology. bullet trains, air conditioners,
Playstations.
3: crazy/strange. robot restaurants, strange variety
shows like Human Tetris.
cigarette butts： タバコの吸い殻
littering：ポイ捨てしている
spectacular：すばらしい
fits：ぴったり合う
nuts：ばかばかしい
lightbulb：電球
getting into it：夢中になっている
wacky：風変わりな
cubbyhole：こぢんまりして気持ちのいい部屋
sickeningly：うんざりするほど
cutesy：かわいこぶる
slumped：ドスンと落ちた