Synopsis of Japan trip

I was in Japan for a holiday with my Dad for a week last week. We resided in Tokyo, in the suburban area of Higashi-Shinjuku. During our trip, we visited various places in Tokyo like Akihabara, Shibuya, Shinjuku, the Tsukiji Fish Market, Shinjuju Gyoen National Garden, Tokyo University, the Imperial palace, the national science museum, Tokyo University, the Supreme Court of Appeal, and the Japan National Diet (or Parliament for those not familiar with the word Diet being used to describe parliament), as well as Hakone where Mt Fuji is, although we didn’t get to see Mt Fuji because it was cloudy that day and the clouds blocked the horizon view from the cable car station we were from.

I had wanted to visit Japan back in 2011, and had bought the tickets for tour guide trip from the travel agency at a tour fair. Unfortunately, the March 11 earthquake struck, together with the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. As I was worried about the possibility of radioactive contamination of the region, I cancelled my trip to Japan. I guess from what I have read online, Japan should be a safe place to go once again.

Being a fan of girl groups like AKB48 and C-ute, I was rather keen to go to Akihabara where all these Japanese pop culture elements are featured. Indeed, the entire town was like dedicated to Japanese pop culture, a concept which I believe unique to Japan. There were quite a number of Japanese girls dressed up in Maid Café costumes on the street handing out leaflets. There were many shops in the area selling Japanese girl group merchandises, like music CDs, photobooks, and picture cards containing images of the various female celebrities on the girl groups. Merchandises of anime figurines and comic books are also sold there, although I would have to say that I am not as much an anime fan as I am a girl group fan. If I could have gotten concert tickets to see a performance, I would have liked to, but I haven’t been taking the trouble to make efforts to check up the concert event listing and procedures to obtain tickets. The pornography laws there are really lax though, and explicit materials can be seen in the shops as well. In fact, the casual convenience stores and bookshops in Tokyo sell magazines containing explicit-content materials. It is a much too sexually liberal for my liking.

It is unfortunate that my Japanese language abilities are rather sub-par. I did take up a course in the Japanese language at my neighbourhood’s community centre before, and have gone through an entire coursebook on Japanese, but I haven’t touch the Japanese language for a long time ever since I entered law school. As such, I didn’t really converse with the Japanese people, although I think it would have been a more meaningful trip could I have strike up a conversation.

I do think that the Japanese people are well-mannered. They have strong work ethics as well in my opinion. This is based on my observation of Japanese people I came into contact with such as the stall owners and train operators. They are also quite efficient in the way they do things, and quite diligent as well. You can see this from the way they design their products, as well as the way they perform their services. The cashier at the restaurant counts the money verbally before giving back the change. The train operator follows a procedure of gesturing while doing his check on the train which may seem odd in nature. The taxi drivers are dressed up in suits and have their cabins poshly maintained. Their food are ornately prepared and fresh ingredients used. There are certainly a lot in their culture that I think Singapore can learn from to improve its service industry. It was a sharp contrast to when I got back to Singapore and was met with snappy aunties operating the toast box outlet at Changi airport when I went to order a meal.

Election was around the corner back then when I was in Japan, and there were campaign vans patrolling the various places in Japan with loud hailers on blaring campaign materials in Japanese. There were posters everywhere featuring images of various Japanese politicians, including the newly-elected Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe. My experience in Japan has been a very positive one, and I look forward to visiting Japan again, perhaps other areas of Japan like Kyoto or Osaka. It has also got me more interested in studying Japan culture, and I stumbled onto a book titled a History of Japan at a bookshop that I am thinking of giving a read.