Traveling in style. Oh yeah, baby. I knew I was going on all these Asian trips for a reason. I have built up major mileage on my frequent flyer card, and decided to take advantage of it on this trip. I upgraded to business class.
This is a whole different scene from coach. I sat on the "upper deck," which is the nice upstairs portion of the plane with just 7 rows of 4 seats each (2 windows, 2 aisles). There's plenty of space: a couple of feet in front of your knees, nearly a foot between you and your neighbor, and the seats themselves are several inches wider than in coach. The seats are a high-tech wonderland, including the following features:
Woo-hoo! Ten hours of this is pretty much tolerable. Oh, and the other interesting thing was that on these big planes, the upper deck is where the cockpit is located. Anyone who has traveled since 9/11 knows that airlines are now very jumpy about letting passengers near the cockpit. If the captain wants to come out to use the lavatory, they block the whole front area until he (or she, but let's be truthful) is finished and locked safely back in the cockpit. In this case, they weren't quite so nervous. When the captain came out, the stewardess simply stood in the front area (I suppose if someone had approached, she would have told them they had to wait). And later, the co-pilot came out and walked to the back of the upper deck to get some coffee (and probably stretch his legs). Just like the good old days, right?
So what do we learn from this? That people in business class are inherently more trustworthy than the riff-raff in coach? That airlines think terrorists are less likely to buy business-class tickets?
Anyway, I enjoyed my time pretending to be high-brow. I had a bottomless glass of water (an issue for me as a thirsty person, and yes, it's a real glass glass). I watched "Monsters, Inc." in Japanese. I wore the slippers, ate the sushi, used the cool reading lamp and foot rest, and stretched my legs simply by walking (which is still limping) around the spacious upper deck (I was in the emergency exit row, which has a good 4 feet of space in front of it). It was totally worth 13,000 miles.
This seems to be the time for groups of students to be out on trips. I saw tons of class trips at the airport, some Japanese but many foreigners. (Where do the students get this kind of money? We never went on international travel when I was in high school!). On the train into Tokyo, I sat near a group of German kids. It was incongruous to hear German in Japan, and understand it. Better yet, one of their leaders was a fine German woman (complete with strong jawline and blond hair) who spoke flawless Japanese.
I finally made it to my hotel, a bit sticky in the 85-degree heat (plus 85% humidity). And guess what? The toilet seat in the bathroom is one of those heated types! I still have to figure out how to turn it off (if possible) because it is not needed.
I also cruised over to a nearby garden called Happoen (eight-fragrance-park). There was a pond with koi, plus a sign that said, "Please do not feed the fish." But when I approached them, they all came zipping over with huge gaping maws protruding from the water. I guess not everyone has heeded that sign! Koi aren't that pretty when they are begging for food.
Pre-meeting. I'm here for business, to give the final presentation of a custom study we did for a Japanese client. I have to give it to the company's head honchos, but I mostly dealt with a more junior manager during the project. The way they've decided to work it is that we have an "introductory" meeting ahead of the real one. That way the junior guys have a chance to vet my presentation. There are many cynical ways to look at this, but none of them matter. This is what they want to do, this is what we will do.
The meeting went well, actually. But it's worth noting the difference in Japanese and American styles. I continue to be stunned by the attention to detail in Japan. Gifts (and even some ordinary products) come encased in several layers of perfect wrapping. Taxi drivers clean their cars lovingly with feather dusters and white cloths between fares. And when planning for a company presentation, one of the key agenda items to discuss is the size and shape of the room. We talked about the placement of the chairs, the fact that they have a nice laser pointer for me, and the general surroundings in which I'd be speaking. In all but the most formal settings in America, such details would not be worthy of discussion before a basic, 2-hour presentation.
In some ways, you have to appreciate and admire this quality of the Japanese. By comparison, American products and practices often seem slapdash and casual to the point of bordering on careless. I like getting an origami flower with my cereal in the morning. I appreciate neatness and aesthetic balance, which often seem wanting in the American style.
On the other hand, these Japanese practices are anal, wasteful, and frankly maladaptive to the modern world. Does the person who cleans my hotel room really need to align my shampoo bottles in the shower? If you wrap a tiny set of chocolates in foil, an inner box, wrapping paper, and an outer box, you are surely spending more money on packaging than on the goods! (And the Japanese love to claim that they are very environmentally conscious-- how about all that landfill trash?).
In a fast-paced world, there is something to be said for just getting it done. American flexibility looks quite adaptive right now. It has allowed us to move fairly rapidly away from a manufacturing economy toward a service economy. Japan is mired in its past, and seems to be fading each year. (But don't write it off yet. Japan's evolution resembles punctuated equilibrium. When the strain gets too great, it will shift to a new form faster than you can blink. And it has been pretty successful at not destroying itself in this phoenix-like process over the eras).
Still, these differences are real, and can make business and personal relations challenging.
The other Japanese food. For dinner, I went out with a guy from my company. I wanted Japanese, but not the usual fare (sushi, shabu-shabu, ramen, etc). On the advice of the hotel concierge, we went to a hole-in-the-wall place that had soba, but also lots of other foods that aren't so well-known to Americans. It was a place I couldn't have gone on my own because it had no English menu, and was somewhat imposing in its smallness, if that makes sense. Just a few cramped tables and a bar area-- I would have felt really out of place as a gaijin. Good thing my companion was Japanese.
We had a feast of little dishes. Some tofu with soy-like sauce. Fried fish cakes made from a tiny ocean fish, seasoned with something vaguely spicy and smoky-flavored. A salad made with raw tuna and onsen-tamago, which are basically soft-boiled eggs. (Onsen means hot springs, and these eggs are supposedly cooked at the temperature of a hot spring). Also some sort of omelet and an appetizer of raw fish with vegetables and mustard sauce. The whole thing was capped off with a bowl of soba. Since it's summer, many people choose cold soba, but we had it hot since that is supposed to give it a better flavor. It comes with a salty soy-like sauce, ginger, sesame seeds, and green onions. Plenty of beer to go with it of course.
It was great to try some Japanese food that you really can't find in America. This stuff is pure local, and pretty darn good. On the way home, I saw another restaurant you won't find in America-- Italian Thai! I kid you not. I wonder what's on the menu.
The real meeting. So the next day, we were off to the real meeting with the head honchos. Sure enough, the room looked just like we had talked about the day before. It went well. Most people seemed appreciative, but there was the usual curmudgeon-- at least that feature is the same in America and Japan. I am referring to the senior manager whose job it is to proclaim his superiority and assert his knowledge by telling the speaker why they don't actually know what they are talking about. I had to endure this guy's protection of his turf as he noted that my study was incomplete and obviously missed some key points (like, the ones related to his department, of course). Never mind that I had already covered all of that in the talk. He didn't hear it, and just needed to make sure everyone knew he was the alpha-male. Whatever.
Then we had lunch right there in the conference room, and the alpha male was much friendlier. As usual, when these guys don't have to puff themselves up before their subordinates, they can relax a little bit. (Can someone please tell me why guys like this seem to universally find their way into management positions in corporations, no matter where they are in the world?).
Hontou no sushi. That is, real sushi. As a celebration of finishing the big presentation, we went out to a famous sushi place in Shimbashi. I was expecting the restaurant to look swank, like a New York restaurant would if it had a famous chef. But this was really just a simple bar and a few tables, tucked in among many similar joints. The chef's name is Tsuruhachi-- please be sure to visit his restaurant if you're in Tokyo!
But the taste assured me it was not average. This was the freshest fish I had ever had. Apparently the chef is known for being very picky at the fish market and completely cutting off sellers who give him fish that doesn't meet his standards. He stands regally behind the counter, taking care of all the orders in the shop. He has a couple lackeys to hand him things, keep the grill warm, etc. But he's not unapproachable; we chatted with him a bit. He also likes to watch how you are enjoying the fish.
I saw real wasabi! Most people know wasabi is a root, of course. It turns out that it is kept in a bucket of water to make it really soft, almost like a cooked yam in texture. It is then grated on a fine mesh, which turns it into the mushy green stuff we're familiar with from sushi restaurants. The dried/reconstituted stuff is an imitation of how it is naturally when fresh. I wouldn't say the heat was any stronger than the powdered stuff, but the taste certainly had more "clarity."
We ate sashimi first-- maguro, tako, and engawa-hirame (tuna, octopus, and the dorsal fin of flounder). Then some interesting grilled clams. I'm not a big clam fan, but I was surprised that these tasted a little bit sweet, and much more pleasant than raw or canned clams. We also had some kind of scallop, lightly charred on the grill. Then some nigiri sushi. One feature was a huge shrimp, apparently seasonal (just in summer). The shrimp was good, but then we also got the head, which had been fried and dunked in some kind of sauce. Let's just say the head was a non-repeater for me. We also had white miso soup and beer.
Really a great experience. One more thing about the setting-- the sushi was placed directly on the counter in front of us! We each had our own dipping bowl with soy sauce, but no plate. We just picked up the pieces from the counter where the chef delivered them.
The $170 cockroach. Another little adventure of this trip was the cockroach. Yes, that's right, I had a cockroach in my otherwise pristine-clean Japanese hotel room (apparently Tokyo is riddled with the things, even in high-class buildings). I saw it at night, crawling along the edge of the bed, and when I came at it, it scuttled off under the couch into the netherworld from which these creatures come. I was ticked off, but tired enough just to go to bed.
I mentioned the beast to my colleague the next day, who went ahead and told the hotel manager on my behalf. So I got this nervous phone call from the night manager, saying that he understood I had seen a cockroach. I said brightly, "Yes, that's right, I did."
There was a pause, and then he said, "Are you scared?"
Hey, turkey, would you ask that to my male colleague? What kind of baloney response is that? I said No.
I guess he expected me to say Yes, because he went on to offer me a new room for that night. I was even allowed to leave my luggage in the old one if I just wanted to sleep somewhere else. (Um, why would I want to go sleep somewhere else without all my stuff with me? Did he think I was so desperate to escape that I would just flee as if I were responding to a fire alarm?)
So I politely refused the new room. He was getting uncomfortable. He assured me that they wanted to "make me happy" because my company was very important to him. I admit that I played with him a bit at this point. (Hey, it was an experiment. Call it international hospitality research). I asked him to pay for my stay. I assured him that that was what would really "make me happy."
He did agree to pay for one night ($170 worth). Not bad. In America, you would get no recompense at a cheap hotel, and possibly this same level at a fancy one. But wait, our encounter wasn't over.
There was another awkward pause, and then he said, "So, did you... kill the cockroach?" Of course not, dummy. If I had, I would have brought it down and dumped it on your desk. I said sweetly, "Oh no, it escaped." Flustered, he asserted that they would come and spray my room thoroughly as soon as I had checked out tomorrow. Thanks, bud. That doesn't affect me directly, and besides, the cockroach probably isn't even in this room anymore! It's off terrorizing someone else-- maybe in the room where he would have put me if I had elected to change rooms. (And for all I knew, my room had been sprayed before I arrived, so I had spent the whole visit breathing toxic roach-killer fumes. What a pleasant thought).
Overall, it was a pretty amusing experience. But still, I felt that in America, the focus would have been less on my fear, and more on the responsibility of the hotel to provide its guests with sanitary surroundings. That would have been the reason for their concern about "making me happy," not the fact that I was frightened of a bug. But whatever.
Japan in summer. I hadn't been to Japan during the summer before. It is really hot and humid, like the East coast of the US (and like much of the world, of course-- we are spoiled in the Bay Area). Also, the air just isn't so good, sort of like in Manhattan.
My problem with American air conditioning is that it is overdone. When you are wearing a tank top in the 90-degree heat, you don't want the house at 68. Who would wear a tank top when the natural weather is only 68? So I am often cold inside American buildings during the hottest summer months. Japan does not over-air condition. If anything, they slightly underdo it, so that it's still a little bit too hot. I can live with that.
In Japan, sweat is very offensive. So people carry around handkerchiefs and small towels, with which they constantly wipe their heads, necks, and faces. I swear they must train their bodies to sweat more by constantly eliminating the sweat! After all, it's there to cool you off.
Yet another fascinating trip to the other side of the world.
Copyright © Kim Allen 2002
