KONNICHIWA, TOKYO
Penny Lewis takes in Tokyo’s bustle, and tastes the quieter side of Japan, too.
THERE IS ONLY three hours’ time difference between New Zealand and Japan, four during daylight saving, but considering how fascinatingly different Japan is for Kiwis, you would think it would be a matter of night and day between the two.
Japan’s capital, Tokyo, is a bustling, busy home to more than 13 million people. Its culture, history, language, sights, sounds and massive crowds are a sensory immersion — and totally unlike New Zealand cities. It’s an enthralling and awe-inspiring place, but what is not normally appreciated by visitors to the Land of the Rising Sun is that you don’t have to travel far from the city to experience a different side — where the incredible megalopolis of Tokyo gives way to a quieter, more traditional experience.
Katsuura
There I was; sitting on a tatami mat in the dining room of a small hotel near the fishing village of Katsuura in Japan’s Chiba Prefecture, as my guide Katsumi dined in his yukata (robe). Other diners were mostly at ease in their yukata, too, except for a couple and me.
I was dressed for dinner, feeling a little shellshocked after visiting the Taiyouno-Sato Spa Resort further up the coast in Kujukuri earlier that day. In Japan, the dress code for soaking in public hot pools is — nothing. You’re nude, but clean, after showering before taking a dip in pools segregated by gender.
Japanese grow up accustomed to bathing this way, but as I explained to Katsumi — behave like that at home and you’ll most likely get arrested. He mused that perhaps Japanese people keep themselves slender to avoid humiliation at the pools.
Over a sumptuous dinner of fresh local seafood at Hotel Ubarakan, Katsumi told me about a sign written in Japanese at the hot springs that read “no tattoos”. I was aware body art is frowned upon in Japan, but wasn’t really sure why. It turns our many Japanese are wary of ink work because of its association with Yakuza, the Japanese mafia.
Katsumi told me about his days as a young man when he worked on the docks unloading cargo. A workmate left the Yakuza because he had fallen in love with a girl outside the gang. As penance for leaving, Katsumi said his colleague “had to chop off his own finger, otherwise he would have been beaten to death”. As I spluttered over my sashimi, saying I hoped she was worth it, Katsumi said the pair did marry, but at his new wife’s insistence the former gang member removed a prominent tattoo from his bicep. “The only way to do it in those days was to sand it off.”
The next morning, Katsumi took me to the local morning market, which has a 400-year history in the village. He pointed out different kinds of seafood — red snapper for special occasions (priced at less than $25 for a large whole fish) and mackerel, usually eaten for breakfast.
When Katsumi dropped me at the train station to catch the 8.08am express to Tokyo Station, he told me he’d read a little about the area’s history at the hotel. The quiet cove the hotel overlooks was considered a refuge during World War II, should any American war ships attack.
Tokyo
After saying goodbye to Katsumi, it took only 90 minutes to go from the peace and quiet of Katsuura to Tokyo Station, after passing through farmland and small villages. The train I caught was fast, but it wasn’t one of Japan’s famous bullet trains.
At Tokyo Station I managed to find the train line I was supposed to connect to — the Yamanote line — fairly easily. It loops around greater Tokyo, a bit like Auckland’s Link bus. My destination was the busiest train and metro station in Japan, Shinjuku, through which 3 million people pass every day. Shinjuku station was as gargantuan as expected, but luckily Katsumi had told me how to find the right way out of the station to get to my hotel, the Ibis Tokyo Shinjuku. It also helped that signage in Tokyo is in English and Japanese.
After a couple of wrong terms I found my hotel,