As a tourist, Tokyo happens to be my favorite city in the world. I was fortunate enough to work in a firm which had one of its offices in Tokyo, and I ended up traveling frequently there. In my multiple trips to the city I saw so many different sights that I always felt I was visiting a new city. I am still amazed how one city can squeeze so much into itself.
There is plenty of information available on the net and in the tourist guides (and I went through several of them before I landed in Tokyo), but there are some things I thought should have found a mention somewhere but don’t.
The people in Japan are very friendly and they try their best to help you, but unfortunately a large majority of them don’t know how to speak English. In one particular instance, we stopped a guy on the road for asking directions to the ferry station. A mini-game of dumb-charades ensued where I made gestures which I later realized could be interpreted as anything from an airplane to a water buffalo. But, once he understood where we wanted to go, he actually walked with us to the ferry station, helped us buy the tickets, handed us a few extra brochures and then saw us off at the ferry like some old relative.
Thanks to Hollywood movies, for us Japanese food had always been synonymous with Sushi. If you are grossed out by the idea of eating raw fish wrapped in rice, I suggest you try Yakitori (literally means grilled chicken). The cooked-over-charcoal vegetables (and obviously, chicken) smeared with tare sauce is mouthwatering-ly good, and goes really well with some good old fashioned beer. For the more adventurous there is teppanyaki, where the food is cooked on your table – no guts, no glory, eh?
Then there are the Tokyo cab-drivers. Dressed in a suit, tie, white gloves and shiny black shoes to match, they seem better prepared to attend that business meeting that you have flown five hours to participate in. Unlike other cab-drivers around the world, there are no commentaries on the socio-political situation unfolding around them, no inputs on how you can improve your dress-sense, no tips on how to make quick money and certainly no attitude.
How do you judge the stage of a society’s development? My answer is Toilets. The logic is straightforward - if you can afford to spend time on making your ablutions more comfortable then you must have surely achieved the more important things in life. And Japan, I believe, is therefore the most developed society. A heated toilet seat that makes sure you can read that magazine in the loo without literally freezing your ass off? I say, “What an idea, sirjee!” My hotel toilet seat had more buttons than that on my TV remote, and even the adventurous-me could not risk pressing all of them. And while we are on topic of Toilets, I think all men should check out the Mandarin Oriental’s loo where you can actually take a piss at the world.
For so many of us Indians, Japan has been this country hidden in one corner of the world whose only point of reference for us has been Hiroshima and Nagasaki. More recently, Sony and Honda may have replaced those two as the two most famous Japanese proper-nouns, but the point is that a large majority of us don’t know too much about that country. Even the travel enthusiasts that I have met so far have rarely mentioned Tokyo as a destination they’d put on their places-to-go list – everyone seems to be planning a trip to Europe. I recommend Tokyo as a must-see city and one that you will want to come back to again & again.
