Letter from Japan 1981



Street cleaners having a break in Japan
 

 

I landed at Tokyo airport with my luggage which was getting extremely heavy and the problem was immediately solved when I purchased a luggage trolley from the airport and what I needed next was a pair of new underpants, as the one I was wearing was so worn out that I had one hand on the trolley and the other to hold my underpants up; with a smile on my face and help from the Japanese people I reached my hotel without embarrassing my self on the streets of Tokyo!!

 Japan I thought was a bit health crazy, on my arrival at the airport I had to fill in a health form and if I was showing any symptom of a common cold, I had to wear a mask to keep the germs to my self. There were lots of people with common cold in Tokyo; a surgical mask they wore gave away their secret?  There were lots of Joggers too, common past time hobby, I guess? The streets were clean and spotless. The Japanese people went out of their way to help me find my directions. I was starting to miss the chaos and the madness of my beloved India!!

 

 The Japanese people loved anything to do with England and as soon I mentioned the name of famous footballers for example Bobby Charlton, I received a V.I.P treatment. Tokyo to me seemed like a toy town, everything was small and neat and worked efficiently; the railway, the underground system, the traffic lights; mechanical gadgets were everywhere in the shops, in the restaurants and my heated toilet seat was such a luxury to have experienced in a very modest hostel. Having a Japanese bath was another ball game; it took me two days to work out how to have a  standing up Japanese bath?

 I have always been interested in the Japanese drama and costumes and I decided to pay a lot of money to visit the grand theatre in Tokyo to see a play, knowing very well the language barrier. The experience of seeing it all alive in Japanese colours, the costumes and the drama, the make up  was all very exciting at the beginning. However, sadly for me the excitement went all pair shaped. The play had very little spoken words and the action were so, so very  slow  meant that  I simply wanted to get out of my seat,( which was starting to give me back ache, it was designed for small Japanese people not small Indian like me) during the interval and leave the theatre. However, to please the very helpful audience around me, who were translating everything for me, in broken English; I stuck out in my seat for the whole five hours of performance!! 

  

 I arrived in Japan during autumn, and decide to make a trip to Kyoto which is best known for its Buddhist temples, Shinto shrines, palaces and gardens. The famous bullet train took no time at all to make its journey of 370 km to Kyoto. It was so fast that I felt I was travelling through space and I kept falling off to sleep and waking up again to take in the fact that I was not in space but with lots of other passengers, most of them watching small hand TV!! (the land of the electronic gadgets indeed).

Kyoto was beautiful, with autumn colours in the gardens and the city’s Buddhist temples and Shinto Shrines were magical places to visit. I stayed in very old fashioned hotel where, all the inside walls were thin, made of paper. I had to take my shoes off and wear the slippers provided to entre my tiny bedroom, with a bed on the floor; and when any body knocked on the paper door, I was on my knees to open it.

 

I boarded the plane at Tokyo airport on the 10^th December 1981 and when the plane took off, the stewardess did her normal bit to settle all the passengers down. We were up in the sky looking down at Tokyo for about three minutes when the stewardess made another announcement “everyone remains in your seats until the plane comes to a complete halt”. My heart sank for few seconds and I looked up in terror, so did the rest of the passengers!!