Train Travel

First of all, let the record show that the above subtitle is NOT a politically incorrect ethnic slur: the letter “L” really does not occur in Japanese, and really does get switched for an “R” in borrowed English words, my favorite example of which is the word for a mid-level corporate drone: sarariman. Sound it out if you have to, with the emphasis on the first syllable, substituting an “L” for the first “R.”

Besides, I dare you to say “urban rabyrinth” out loud, and not giggle. It’s funny, OK -- lighten up.

Anyway.

So Tokyo is big. Really, really big. You may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts compared to Tokyo (apologies to Douglas Adams). It was the largest city in the world for some time; now I think it’s been passed up by Mexico City and Sao Paolo or something, but anyway, it’s still really, really... REALLY big.

Like, this big:

No end in sight...

It’s also exceptionally confusing for the first time foreign visitor. English signage is limited, and there are fewer people who speak English than you might guess. I’m not sure we would have figured out how to get from Narita airport into the city if a very kind young woman named Yukiko, who spent some years studying in Topeka, Kansas, had not taken pity on us and spent the morning helping us figure things out. She was a real God-send. She even showed Lynn the intricacies of Japanese toilets, which is a story for later...

Now, you have to understand that I pride myself on my sense of direction and my ability to figure out my way around any city and its public transportation. But Tokyo has been my nemesis. There are hardly any street signs, because most streets do not actually have names; addresses are something like “1-11-2-4 Ginza, Chuo-ku,” which is area number, block number, building number and floor, area name, ward. And the numbers are not necessarily consecutive, because prior to the 1950s, they were assigned by building construction date.

I shudder for any poor fool attempting to become a taxi driver.

More specifically, I have developed a severe phobia of Tokyo’s Shinjuku Station. Shinjuku is the largest hub in the city for Japan Rail, the Tokyo Metro, and various private rail lines, and it is one of the largest and busiest train stations in the world. I’ve been in some big railway stations: Grand Central, Victoria, Gare du Nord, Termini... Nothing prepared me for the organized chaos of Shinjuku. I’m used to walking into the main hall of a station and seeing a big Arrivals/Departures board with platform numbers, and a bunch of ticket counters and stores. In contrast, Shinjuku looks like this:

”Umm, which way do we go now?”

That’s one small segment of a very long, very wide maze that runs through the center of the station -- which is three floors high, incidentally, and takes over 20 minutes to walk through. Branching off of this very crowded central hallway are lots of smaller areas for different rail lines, like this one:

”If that little old lady in a kimono can find her way...”

As a side note, those yellow lines on the floor have patterns in them so blind people can follow them. How on earth they figure out where to go, I have no idea...

Tickets for the metro and suburban rail lines are purchased from automated machines, like this one, in front of large rail network maps -- which frequently do not feature English translations!

”One of these red ones is Ikebukuro, I think...

This leads to such misadventures as spending $50 on what we thought were two multi-use passes that turned out to be a single-ride tickets we used to go two stops (and should have cost $1.60 each).

I find myself waking in a cold sweat just thinking about it. After several days here, I started finding routes that specifically avoided Shinjuku, prompting Lynn to taunt me: “C’mon, Brad, what are you... Chicken? Caw-cuh-caw-cuh-caw!”

(Right now, our Mercy Hill friends are falling off their chairs laughing at the visual image of Japanese commuters staring at Lynn doing the Arrested Development chicken strut in the middle of a station...)

All that said, the Tokyo metro and rail system is quite effective. Sure, the map resembles nothing so much as an accident at a pasta factory, but once you get the hang of it, it’s not so bad. Yes, at rush hour it is extremely crowded...

Did I forget my deoderant this morning?

...but at other times it’s nice for a little snooze.

Must wake up when we get to Asakusa...

The stereotype of the Japanese as hard workers is most definitely based in fact, and we wondered when they actually find time to sleep -- until we saw it with our own eyes. Amazingly, they sleep through a dozen stops and then wake up just in time for theirs. I have no idea how this gets programmed into their brains.

And how do you get to the subway station?

Dang, I know I left it here somewhere...

So. From all of this kvetching, you might think that we do not like Tokyo.

You would be dead wrong.

Tokyo is confusing, confounding... and absolutely amazing. It is everything that you expect, and total surprises. A dynamic mix of the modern and the ancient...

Shinjuku by night

A traditional 18th century house near where we stayed

The classic and the crazy...

Out for a pizza

Teens strutting their stuff in Harajuku

The peaceful and the chaotic...

The Imperial Palace gardens

Ginza crossing, the world’s busiest intersection

The sacred and the profane...

Senso-ji temple

The Kabukicho “entertainment” district -- full of host and hostess bars for women and men looking for company

The sublime and the ridiculous...

Cocktails atop the Tokyo Metropolitan Building

Need I say more?

We spent our nights in Tokyo at a distinctly less-than-traditional kind of place: Yuji Hidemura’s apartment.

Yuji, the man, the legend

For the record, some of you may be wondering about this whole “staying with people” thing. We are members of The Couch Surfing Project, an international hospitality organization that matches visitors with locals who like to host international travellers. We’ve been members for three years, and have hosted people in our home about a half-dozen times. Well, we’re nothing compared to Yuji, who is a bonified Couch Surfing legend. Yuji lives in a two-bedroom apartment in this building on the outskirts of Tokyo:

Yuji’s place

Yuji and Marie at the stove

Last year, Yuji hosted over 700 people. At any given time, there might be a half-dozen or more international travellers crashed out on the tatami (wall-to-wall woven straw mat) floor in Yuji’s extra bedroom:

Home sweet home

We shared the bedroom with Marie, from Sweden, and Maxime and Deborah from France while we were there. Yuji has a whole system worked out because he works crazy hours as a Yamaha piano salesman: he sends you an email with picture directions, and if you don’t come while he’s home, someone else will be there to let you in. He has a fridge and computer for surfers and a notebook full of advice on everything from where to do laundry to martial arts. Unlike most couchsurfing hosts, he asks for a small donation, since hosting 700 people per year has a major affect on his water and electric bills.

One night we were there, we went shopping with Marie, who made Swedish pancakes. Yuji decided to take them with fruit and blueberry whipped cream, and make them into sushi. He used to be a sushi chef, so I guess it’s in his blood...

”It’s not exactly seaweed wrap, but I think this can work...”

”Mmm... better than wasabe!”

”Swedish Pancake Fruit Sushi! Hai!”

Frushi, anyone?

And after that bit of weirdness, I have nothing more to add on the subject of Tokyo. From there, it was off to the mountains of Hakone... in search of Mount Fuji.

As I write this it is 4:22am, and I’m sitting on a train from Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, to Yogyakarta, its spiritual and artistic capital. The train is not exactly luxurious, but not too bad -- we have a reasonably comfortable padded seat, and while it is not air con, there are fans (which have not been running since we left Jakarta) and the breeze from the windows is nice. This train is “bisnis” class; there are much more comfortable “eksekutif” class trains, but they were full and I wasn’t about to pay a scalper 350,000 rupiahs (about $35) for a ticket that cost 200,000 and risk that it wasn’t valid.

But then, there are also the “ekonomi” class trains that are hard benches packed to the gills, so I’ll take the little bit of luxury we got -- anyway, an overnight train ride for only $10 isn’t too bad. We are the only Westerners on this train. There is a family of four in the seat ahead of us, with the mother sitting on the floor so her two little kids can lay down on the bench. A couple rows ahead, a girl in a Muslim headscarf is checking on her cage full of mice. The girl in the seat opposite us, who is dressed in a fashionable jean jacket with a black pattent leather handbag, is busily sending text messages.

The most annoying thing is the vendors who crowd aboard at every major stop. The aisle suddenly fills with people chanting their wares: “Ayam” (chicken), “Es” (crushed ice with coconut milk and syrup), “Dodol” (a caramel-like candy that will pull out fillings), and of course “Nasi Goreng” (fried rice). They make it really hard to sleep, and if they notice you even looking anywhere near them they stick what they’re selling in your face. One keeps chanting “Bap mie, bap mie, bap mie” and I want to say, “Yeah, c’mere and I’ll bop you one, alright...”

Jakarta, the "Big Durian"

Dwight’s driver dropped us off in Jakarta where we intended to catch the train to Yogya yesterday, but as it was full we decided to spend the night at a hostel in the backpackers’ ghetto, a street called Jalan Jaksa. Every major tourist city in Asia has a street like this with cheap hotels, restaurants serving burgers and banana pancakes, travel agencies, and bars with cheap beer that attract a lot of scruffy, dreadlocked Western kids. They’re kind of fun, though the hostels aren’t very nice: our room at the Bloem Steen Homestay, which cost us a whopping $7, was just a bed and a table with a fan, and one tiny window.

Bloem Steen -- good thing we brought mosquito netting!

The shower and toilet were shared with the whole floor and flip-flops are a must. I know that most people would find staying in a place like this totally revolting, and maybe someday we will too, but for now I still enjoy them as long as they don’t feature a bar. If there’s a bar, it always means loud music late into the night and that is where I draw my line.

Jakarta is not exactly an attractive place. It’s a massive city of shiny glass skyscrapers and barely-held-together hovels. It’s called “The Big Durian,” after the Southeast Asian fruit that looks like a spiky watermelon and stinks like rotting flesh. But inside, it has a custardy flesh that some people think is heavenly. I haven’t tried it yet so I have no opinion, but I can see the comparison. We spent the day wandering around Kota, the old Dutch colonial area, looking at colorful Indonesian schooners in the harbor, and sipping iced cappuccino under the ceiling fans at the Cafe Batavia, Jakarta’s original expat bar, feeling very Somerset Maugham-ish.

Kota, the Dutch colonial area

Sunda Kelapa harbor

Sunda Kelapa harbor -- that orange thing is a bajaj, a noisy two-cylinder motor scooter taxi

We also spent some time exploring the tiny back alleys, being chased by laughing kids, and attempted to talk with a friendly woman named Nona who was washing her clothes in a tub under cages of birds. Smiles and “Hello Mister!”s everywhere.

A back street in a kampung -- or neighborhood. Nona is sitting there with her friends.

But a day is about all you can squeeze out of Jakarta, really, and we are off to meet Ciluk and her family, who are hosting us in Yogya.