The Japan Diaries: Day 1

Diary of a Traveling VBD: Day 1 in Japan

While I am on a 10-day business trip to Japan, attending the World Assembly organized by Religions for Peace, a powerful interreligious NGO.

I’m writing this from the famous Japan “bullet train,” which is carrying me and my Religions for Peace colleagues from Osaka to Hiroshima. A 5 hour drive, the “super-express” (which is what the Japanese call the bullet) gets us there in 2.5.

This morning, I imagined that I’d spend my first full day in Japan exploring ancient temples or photographing coy ponds. Instead, I had a day at Woodbury Commons.

Backtracking… after an uneventful plane journey from New York to Chicago and then on to Osaka, I landed up in Japan at 5:00pm yesterday (Japan time). As soon as I stepped off the plane, I was struck by how similar it felt to being in India. That same wall of thick, humid air that smacks into you when you step out, that same distinctively un-American glow that other airports seem to emanate. After exchanging dollars into yen (I figured out an easy way to convert – you take the yen amount and move the decimal two spaces to the left and that is the dollar amount, approximately), I got on a shuttle van to my hotel for a night. Osaka Kansai airport, supposedly the world’s biggest, is actually on a man-made island that includes a mall, hotels, and an observatory. As the van drove across a bridge towards the city of Osaka, I took in the beautiful view of the seaside town at near-sunset. The scenery and salty sea air reminded me a bit of Mumbai, specifically Marine Drive, and a brief wave of nostalgia washed over me. Before I could dwell on it too long, though, we were navigating our way through small alley ways and twisty roads, until we finally arrived to my hotel. The room was small, clean, and quite comfortable, and made for a decent place to spend a night.

This morning, after a shower and breakfast of Nurti-grain bars and crackers (thanks Krsangi!) I tried to plan out my day. Originally, I had welcomed the opportunity to have some down-time and had daydreamed about going for some sightseeing, chanting japa in a park, doing some writing, or catching up on emails. Unfortunately, though, yesterday the hotel concierge told me (in broken English) that I had to check-out by 11am. Since I had to meet my group at 4pm at the airport, that left 5 hours to fill without a home base. I checked out at 11am and tried to ask for some suggestions from the hotel staff of what to do.

Surprisngly, my stay in Osaka has taught me that most of the Japanese people I encountered don’t speak a word of English. Shocking, considering that in India just about everyone – even the common riskshwalla or dhobi – can at least manage some tooti-pooti Angrezu phrases. Not so in Japan.

The hotel staff proved to be particularly non-lingual. Somehow they managed to communicate to me that a cab ride anywhere with anything to do would cost me at least 4000 Yen (read: $40). But, they offered, a free hotel shuttle could take me to the nearby outlet mall. From the mall, the airport (where I was meeting up with the others) was a short public bus ride. Another plus point: the outlet could rent me a locker to stow away my two big bulky suitcases while I spent my day. Although I hadn’t planned on it, it made too much sense to turn down, so I boarded the shuttle and within twenty minutes found myself in…

… Woodbury Commons outlet mall. Okay, so it wasn’t called that. But it might as well have been. The same developer made this place (a world map showed locations of replicas all across the globe, including Woodbury), and apparently they like them to look uniform. It felt surreal, but there I was – walking along the rows and rows of stores, a lone brown face in a sea of Japanese teens and families.



The Japanese are extremely fashionable people. Nearly everyone was decked out in designer gear. Many of the men sported punk rock haircuts and vintage retro chic clothes, while their ladies opted for form fitting designer outfits and highlighted bone straight hair. I’ve yet to see a young Japanese woman who weighs more than 100 pounds. Also, I’m not sure why Japanese people are said to be “yellow” – they look more white to me, literally, than so-called white people (who should be perhaps called “peach”). Anyway, I spent the next few hours embracing Japanese culture – such historical locations as the Gap, Kate Spade, Armani, Versace, Eddie Bauer, and Nautica. After doing the customary price conversions (“Wow, this Guess sweater is 9,000 Y – wait, that’s $90 just like it is in the U.S.”), the novelty of going outlet shopping in Osaka wore off.

Soon I was hungry (24 hours had almost passed since my last meal on the plane, and I had been surviving on crackers and granola bars). Different devotees have different standards about their eating while traveling. Although at home I make it a point to not eat out frequently, and to only eat at vegetarian restaurants if I do eat out, while abroad this is not always so easy. Krsangi had done some internet research on vegetarian restaurants before I left, but both of the only two veg places in Osaka were closed today (it being Sunday). So, I decided to give the mall's food court a try. Unfortunately Japanese food seems to favor meat, fish, and eggs without exception. Desperate, I finally found a high-end Italian restaurant that seemed clean, had English speaking staff, and served a freshly made Margherita pizza. With my Japanese tour guide book, I was able to express myself (the Japanese word for vegetarian, believe it or not, is “bejiteran”). The pizza – a simple concoction of thin crust, mozzarella cheese, fresh tomatoes, and basil leaves – hit the spot.

And so, after spending my first Japanese day looking at American stores in a mall and eating pizza, I took a short bus ride back to the airport, where I met up with other Religion for Peace members. Together, the 14 of us boarded the train for a 2.5 hour to Hiroshima. And here I am, typing this in Word. I will cut and paste this once I can get online, and will try to write some more from the hotel in Hiroshima tomorrow.

Sionara!

Ys,
VBD