Travel Log in Tokyo, Japan

August 19th

Can’t sleep and it’s 13% on this airplane and listening to David Lipsky’s ‘Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself.’

Not sure what to expound here but I’m on my way to Japan. Tokyo actually, although I’m assuming that you already assumed that... on a side note the service on Singapore Airlines is excellent. The wait staff—or should i call them the help—the female attendants are incredibly attractive. Wearing some kind of colorful culturally-significant-to-some-culture gown, they walk with a silent grace and beauty of geisha—or is that too politically-incorrect for me to say? Well damn it to hell, as I’ve watched a documentary on geisha and read about them in modern Japanese history class which I got an A in.

Do I like having nothing to do? I’m not exactly sure. I heard some good advice two nights ago and damn it to Hell I can’t remember it. 41 minutes of battery left on my laptop. 

In terms of superhero flicks, the Avengers was well made but subpar on my fourth watching. There were lots of explosions and plenty of ‘witty’ dialogue, but there were too many long pauses for the camera to focus and in terms of meaning, there wasn’t anything significant said [I watched Avengers on the plane ride to Narita]. 

August 22nd

In Ginza, Tokyo and I feel as though I should chronicle in my thoughts at this fairly ordinary ramen shop on the side of a main road whose Japanese name does not stick in my memory. To my right a Japanese man slurps his noodles, sniffing every so often as steam fills his nasal passages. I am buffer than the average male in Tokyo, which is surprising to me as a skinny Asian male in the U.S. Males and females get along here in this overpopulated city, which is to say they do not talk to one another at all. Maybe it’s the district I’ve been to, but I’ve seen few couples.

August 23rd

On the back of a random Japanese lady’s shirt: to love is to believe and to believe is to love.

Jesus i’m just fucking tired. it’s a day before my birthday and it feels like a hundred degrees outside. . I’m in Kawasaki, Japan, around 30 minutes from Tokyo by express train, or the Keikyu line. I feel very very dejected for some reason. I feel like there’s a tremendous weight on my back and it’s as though the weight becomes more cumbersome with each step out into the August Japanese summer. Sweltering. Ridiculously humid and the crowds of Nihonjin walking around don’t help one’s psyche. 

I don’t know what to feel. I’m not seeing anyone. and that makes me sad. But I don’t—I’m not sure—know what i’m not sad about. If this is supposed to be a Catcher-in-the-Rye-type rant then I’ve failed because I’m no Holden Caulfield; I’m simply an unknown, part of the apathetic electorate that can’t/won’t vote. 

Currently drinking Suntory natural mineral water. Tastes fairly good for water. I should probably check Softbank again and use their iPad hooked up to the Internet to check if she’s responded to my messages. But having spent 1270 yen plus 405 yen for iced yuzu tea and this Suntory whole-deal, I’m in no mood to move or to spend more money. And now I’m alone with nothing to do.

Heidegger takes Kierkegaard’s philosophy further? He tries to rally again nihilism? How does Batman fit into this picture? My vision of a post-postmodern figure is the bureaucrat. A person who is able to use the experience of boredom for pragmatic ends. Boredom is no existential hell but a limbo from which one may or can emerge heroic. We contribute to a bureaucracy, private or public. Our positions within such bureaucracy can strictly be determined by our ability to tolerate the mundane, the everyday, and the uninteresting. 

I’m talking about a Zen attitude toward life. A kind of simplicity that pervades or will pervade if a kind of mental meditation is practiced from day to day to month to year to grave. People move on and things move on. I’m sad she’s moved on but that’s something I’ll have to accept. And the easier or more easily I accept her moving on the easier I’ll be able to treat myself.

Be happy, you all. Be happy, everyone. It’s within you, and it’s within all of us. Be content. Meditate. Love. Take care of your body. Walk. 

August 24th

Sitting in a cafe consolidating the drafts of the writing I’ve done so far in Japan. Don’t have Internet access so will have to wait until I get home to post this on my blog. Thank you everyone who posted on my wall wishing me a happy birthday. It has so far been happy. I am happy that I have very caring friends who’ll acknowledge me from a continent away. 

August 25th

How I’ve been feeling these past few days. Somewhat hard to go to bed and to get out of bed. Watching the Hunger Games. Frequently tired. Tired of the humidity and dealing with mosquito bites on the backs of my calves.

August 26th

Sitting in Coco’s in Akihabara, Tokyo. Wait staff is prompt.

Near Roppongi Station, no _______ Station. Again not sure what to write here, but I’m up and about and exploring Tokyo. Stopped at a Tsutaya (Japanese bookstore, kind of like their version of Barnes and Noble). I should probably get coffee in order to justify being a patron sitting at a table with four chairs (the chairs signifying the space is/should be meant for four people). Six people fill eight chairs behind the large rectangular glass wall, the other two chairs occupied by purses. I’m having an add enjoyable time writing all of this down. The truth is I don’t speak much Japanese. 

I can get along fine at convenience stores and other general shops, but past the first few sentences of greetings and acknowledgements I’m pretty much useless. I really should have brushed up on my Japanese before coming here. 

It smells of coffee and the soundtrack busting out of the stereo speakers five meters above me is some combination of wind instrument and whistle and steady coffeehouse drum beat. Met someone and shared a Jagerbomb with her. She was nice. Actually, although her flight was today, I’m in Roppongi now. I might even re-frequent the bar I met her at. She was nice and even messaged me on Facebook apologizing for her poor English. I really should have messaged her back apologizing for my poor Japanese. 

The syllables are heard but not understood. Bought a Kanji dictionary yesterday and tried to read Haruki Murakami but couldn’t get past the third line of vertical characters.

August 27th

In a Doutor in Ginza, Tokyo. Sitting at a table between two men smoking their guts out. It honestly smells disgusting as many of you might agree. It’s not cool. You’re only reducing your own lifespan. One just smoking. The other flipping through a book I can’t understand the the title of.

The smell is now less bad. I can somewhat tolerate it. We’ll see, let’s go through a summary of what I’ve seen so far in Ginza. I’ve seen decadent spending on clothes and jewelry and other materialistic pleasures. Women walking around in $500 dresses and bad teeth. Gangnam style has a subversive message? It critiques the empty materialism of Seoul Gangnam culture? Yes. And these Japanese walk with an empty grace, for usually their hands are carrying bags from designers—the kind they hand to you when you BUY something, not the kind that you simply buy off a shelf. I respect materialism for it’s what brought me my iPhone and Macbook and countless other gadgets. But when things become the be-all and end-all, we've reached nihilism’s pinnacle. For things are supposed to allow us to talk to one another. Our designer Gucci and Louis Vuitton bags are supposed to signify to others that 'hey, we care about similar things' or 'we both respect the craftsmanship of this purse designer.' But things have now supplanted the role of bragging to one another. It’s now not enough to be rich; one must buy BMWs and nice houses and take one’s pets to be groomed by caretakers. Now we buy things to tell others that we are rich. That is no life at all. If material things are all we have to brag about, then you haven’t done your job as a human being. I do not brag but that’s because I haven’t done enough to help the poor and the suffering. I want to talk about Dostoevsky’s purpose. That is to talk about real things in a real way: the thin line between human comedy and tragedy. It’s okay to brag but at the end of the day, the bragging is supposed to make you happy. Why put your wealth on a pedestal! Why not put your knowledge up there, where it shines like a beacon for all to see?

And perhaps we’d experience clarity of purpose if we did that: we’d actualize ourselves. We’d become men and women who’d answer to no one but the call of humankind. 

I haven’t lived up to my word in a very big way. I too have participated in gluttony and self-righteousness and solipsistic idiocy. But maybe now that I’m 22 I know better. Perhaps I’ve learned from my mistakes. ‘We both knew that life didn’t come with instructions‘—Gym Class Heroes.

Flipping through applications and screens on our iPhones and smartphones: is this what life has been reduced to? Billions of years of evolution and we are finally beginning to understand what atheism is. Atheism means acting with the knowledge that there is no God or supernatural design to the universe. Nietzsche did not create atheism or coin it; he was merely influential in developing it in the context of 20th-century Western philosophy.

The lady on my right is playing some kind of smartphone game on her phone. I just shrugged forward in my seat. This is a fairly productive writing session.

It was quite hard to recognize certain persons will not do exactly what you want them to do even if you align the incentives precisely in their direction. Not only was this difficult to accept on my own terms, but living with this fact was even more difficult. It was sad. It was fucking sad to realize a human being has other desires besides you and that you cannot be the center of their universe. For such an idea is crippling to the soul. It’s not quite... an idea that is capable of being lived with for quite a while. 

Trying out new pens. I tried the brush-tip one. Too messy. Rougher tip. 0.05mm tip. Writing with a 0.5 mechanical. Well now you have a better utensil, John Bang. What are you going to do now? A Chinese man is smoking with his wife/girlfriend at the table next to me. His tones are authoritative.

August 28th

Sitting in a Doutor coffee shop in Ginza, Tokyo. Today is the 28th, four days after my birthday and my last full day in Japan before I leave for America. I just withdrew 10,000 yen from an ATM in the post office.

The ATM looked like the equivalent of a copy-room-sized printer or fax machine. I actually got stumbled on one of the steps to withdraw my money as it read ‘card issued overseas.’ I thought (mistakenly) that overseas meant issued in Japan, but I realized the word ‘overseas’ referred to the country the card was issued in. 

This is an interesting layout for a coffee shop. It has one long (enough for six tall chairs) table that is shaped like half of a really long oval. I’m sitting at the end of it. 

What is Ginza like? Well, everyone’s dressed really nicely, especially the women. And they say Japanese women have bad teeth but not here. You’ll walk around and there’s mostly Asian [read: Japanese] faces and Euro-American tourists who are easy to spot either by their dress, skin color, or body weight. There are fairly tall buildings but no skyscrapers. Older folks walking about with lumbering gaits. Department stores and brand name retail stores galore. Bulgari. Louis Vuitton. An Apple Store. Too many to name. People walking around with purses more expensive than most cars. A lot of showy decadence and nothing to show for it. 

To be honest, I feel safe here. It’s not the rustle and bustle of Shinjuku or the ridiculously crowded Akihabara where every geek and their mother is eagering waiting in a hobby-shop line or at an anime DVD bookstore or at the numerous electrical outlet stores en masse. There aren’t many street entertainers playing for money in Tokyo. The only ones I saw were singing a bad rendition of ‘Since you’ve been gone’ by Kelly Clarkson in a crowded area in Kawasaki (which is not really in Tokyo but is a city 30 minutes away).