Naked sword-fighting and phallic structures

It’s strange what music sounds good in different locations. I find that when I’m travelling, I make different playlists, but on arrival in whatever country it is, the music simply doesn’t ‘fit’. For example, I never want to listen to Americana bands when I’m in the Mediterranean, preferring instead to go all out for the pop music I wouldn’t normally listen to in London. It’s a mindset thing, I suppose. The two artists I’ve loved listening to while wandering the streets of Tokyo are, rather bizarrely, Nick Cave (the Grinderman project – my boyfriend will be pleased, he’s been long urging me to give it a go) and Mel Torme. They may sit at complete odds with each other, but like Tokyo, there’s just no explaining it. One lyric from a Mel Torme song stood out: “I’ve seen a lot of big cities; I’ve heard a lot of big talk.”
Yesterday was one of those days that I hope I never forget. I travelled out to a place called Asukusa, 25 mins from Shibuya at the end of the Ginza line. Asukusa really came to prominence in the Meiji Restoration period, when the Emperor first decided to let Westerners and Western culture into the city. It was the first place to house cinemas and music halls and allow strip clubs to open. Amusingly, strip joints in the area replaced a different form of ‘erotic’ entertainment: naked female sword-fighting. Asukusa is a mixture of many things: somehow it has retained an air of what I would imagine is traditional Tokyo – a sprawl of temples, statues and pagodas, all incidentally reconstructed after the bombings in1945. The area is also cluttered with a million stalls and shops selling anything you could ever want: kitchenware, clothes, toys, pets etc etc. Tokyo and particularly Asukusa shares something with California: although the architecture is grey and drab, every effort is made to make it look attractive. Flowers, ribbons, ornaments, carefully-designed signage in array of pretty colours. Those who live there clearly take pride in their surroundings. It works the opposite in London. We’re so spoilt with incredible architecture from all manner of periods that we don’t bother to make an effort ‘beautifying’ the place. It’s beginning to sink in just how lazy us British folks can be.
I spent three hours wandering the streets of Asukusa – delighting in the smells, sounds and the visual feast, avoiding the rickshaws, the bicycles, the other mass of tourists. One major pull for the tourists outside the temple is...and I don’t know the official name for it....the fortune telling stand. The procedure is as follows: you chuck some money into an honesty box, shake a cylinder box from which a chopstick falls. The signs on the chopsticks match signs on about 200 wooden draws, from which you pull a piece of paper which tells your fortune. Mine was shockingly awful: “Bad fortune: Thunderbolt hit and sound is breaking the sky, it is real dark and terrible. A man of good sense of humour stay within a house closing the gate and door. All looks really lonesome.” I nearly fell over laughing, which clearly frightened the Japanese people who took steps to get away from me. What amused me even more is that they undertake this ritual, then walk into the temple to banish their sins by wafting incense over themselves and praying to the shrine. Superstition and spiritualism are bed fellows here.
Asukusa sits on the river and over the bridge is the Asahi beer building. It’s apparently meant to depict a glass of beer, but I have a feeling some phallic symbolism is going on. It’s best to just check the picture on my Flickr account and make up your own mind about it.
The “Edo gawa-ku Hanabi Taikai” fireworks took place last night. Paid for by the government, they go on for an hour (puts the London New Year’s shindig to shame!) from a stadium in the centre of town. I was taken by a companion here to the Park Hyatt hotel in Shinjuku to watch them: the amazing five-star hotel where they filmed “Lost In Translation”. We sat in the bar on the 45th floor (just along from where Bill Murray made cloaked advances to Scarlett Johanssen), sipped cocktails and watched the fireworks explode below us. My companion recounted a story about meeting Lou Reed in Paris, which had me in stitches. Forget my bad fortune, I’m a lucky girl.
I’m starting to get my head around the Japanese mindset....a little. They are amazing copyists. Someone quite crudely suggested that genuine, original creativity is thin on the ground here. I don’t believe it. Throwing your own slant on something that has gone before does not mean you are void of creativity. The Japanese are, however, incredibly child-like. Those under 25 or so express themselves so strongly: particularly in their style. They desperately want to differentiate themselves from the rest of the crowd by concocting their own dress sense – it’s brilliant to watch. The adults are slightly different – given they all work in a highly corporate society, they are obliged to do the suit and tie thing, much in the same way as the Western world does. But underneath that veneer, they still hold on to child-like traits. For example, a man on the tube yesterday was wearing a suit, but hanging from the top pocket was a chain carrying a fluffy, miniature bear. Maybe the freedom we are granted in the West means we inevitably mature...if you are kept suppressed, maybe that supposed ‘maturity’ never kicks in. I’m only beginning to get my head around this idea. I’m sure I will travel around the city today and what I notice will contradict this. To the streets it is.....