Sakura Blossoms and Booze

Spring has arrived in Japan, and although it is a little early for the sakura blossoms, the parks are filling with people getting drunk under the trees.

This is, of course, the time of year that people look forward to for months. Preparations can be very involved or spur of the moment. From April 1st it will also be the responsibility of the newly graduated employees to hang out in parks to hold spaces until their new bosses and co-workers get out of work and can get drunk under the trees.

It's also the time of year when you get out your pink dress, fuzzy paws and camp out and dance by mountains of garbage. Women, too. 

Special thanks to the newly certified doctor who slept in the park overnight to hold on to the prime spot in Ueno Park next to the dancer.

Enoshima, Kanagawa

On Enoshima, an island sitting only about an hour south of central Tokyo, there is a set of caves containing various carvings of Buddhist statues. Access to the caves is obtained by either walking over the island or by taking a boat from the causeway. The boat costs 400 yen per person. Walking is free, unless you opt for the escalators to the top, which run 750 yen for use of all three, and to reach the caves you still need to walk down the other side.

 

The approach and entrance to the caves have obviously seen some fairly recent renovation, with a wide concrete bridge arcing around the cliff faces and keeping visitors safely above the rocky flats (and more interesting things). Along the cliff wall the old access path is still visible (though crumbling) and looked a lot more fun. Once inside, vertical fish tanks (sans fish, but the first sporting a little blue plastic dolphin) line a tunnel to the main cave. There are also some historic photos of some early tourists to the site adorning the walls.

 

The 500 yen entrance fee includes the use of a thin candle lamp, the necessity of which the idle monkey trainer failed to see. The main cave itself is relatively well lighted. Plexiglas separates the statues and the lighting from the visitors. The ceilings are low, and covered with one of three things: wire caging to keep rocks from falling on people, Plexiglas to keep water from falling on people, or foam padding to keep people off the roof. All are secured with large, exposed bolts, so caution is necessary. A good deal of the time you are in the caves will be spent in a hunched position if you are over four-feet tall, more if you’re over six-feet tall. The cave system is not very extensive, however, so it is not a long time.

 

The second cave is even more disappointing. In its farthest reaches is a plastic-looking dragon (safely in a fenced area), surrounded by black lights and phosphorous rocks. Despite the natural occurrence of phosphorous rocks in the area, the bright colors of these rocks appear false.

 

The tidal pools that can be accessed along the rocky and wind-swept coast near the cave entrance turned out to be largely devoid of life apart from some plants. I did spot one, very small, dead crab. (There was more live sea life seen at the sushi shop during dinner than witnessed while on the island.) Still, the few merchants along the route sell (or perhaps rent) small nets for kids to use in trying to capture anything they might find. There were a few intrepid youngsters giving it a try, but not seeming to have much luck.

Researchers in Japan have taken one step closer to fulfilling the dreams of many otaku (generally lonely, comic-obsessed, socially awkward, single men who keep Tokyo's 'maid cafes' busy). Spending $2 million dollars, they have developed a robotic catwalk model that can move her (animation-inspired) face to show "emotion".  With the build of an 'average Japanese woman,' the robot will make her fashion show debut over the weekend. 

Although it is now claimed there are no plans to commercialize this particular robot, I have to wonder if in a country so anime (animation)- and robot-obsessed, and one in which 'love dolls' can be rented and delivered like pizza, if we won't be seeing a sex-bot version in the next few years.

You can see the creepy little thing here:

http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=100425&newsChannel=oddlyEnoughNews

Views of Hakuba, Japan

The Idle Monkey Trainer managed a weekend out of the city and on the snow at the end of February.   The conditions were more like late March, with melting snow and emerging rocks and streams. Still good times were had. 

The start house from the downhill at the 1998 Winter Olympics has seen better days and  appears to have fallen into disuse.

"Chicken Gyoza" a rather unique take on the regular dumpling, or some sort of freakish (but delicious) mutant offspring of chicken wings and dumplings. 

Mall rats

The economic downturn in the global economy has spawned reports of doom and economic malaise across the world. The Japanese press is no exception, with near daily reports of on the troubles of the major exporters of consumer products from cars (who would have ever believed Toyota would face trouble) to electronics.

The Japanese consumer has never been the driving economic force that the U.S. consumer is (was). Still, the reports of malls going under in America (I have heard one commentator speak of “ghost malls”) has not spread to Japan. If the Idle Monkey Trainer’s Sunday afternoon visit to the newish Koshigaya Lake Town Mall, a scant hour’s train ride from central Tokyo, is any indication Japanese malls are booming.

The mall sprawls across a couple of kilometers (and takes nearly 25 minutes for Japanese television reporters to walk across) and is divided into two sections called Wind and Forest (there was no forest anywhere to be seen). It has somehow gained a reputation for being cheap. Personally, I am not so sure. The mall is packed with the usual retailers that are found in Tokyo’s other shopping districts, with no real discernible difference in price, at least as far as I could tell.

In some ways, however, it had distinct advantages. The most prominent, to the Idle Monkey Trainer anyway, was the space. Despite the number of people, the mall does not feel overly crowded, though there were still lines of 30-plus minutes at KrispyKreme and Cold Stone Creamery – just as you’d expect in Shinjuku.