A New Year's visit to the Meiji Shrine

New Year's Day is an important holiday in Japan. Unlike the Chinese, the Japanese new year is celebrated on January 1st rather than the lunar new year. Soon after the temple or shrine bells ring out the New Year most Japanese pay their first visit (hatsumode) to the temple (Buddhist) or shrine (Shinto) to pray for a good year. Many people do this right after midnight but most do it sometime during the first day. The crowds at the Meiji Shrine today were enormous.

As I approached the entrance to the park where the Meiji Shrine is I suddenly found myself enveloped in a flowing mass of people entering under a giant torii gate and moving like a river toward the shrine down wide walkways through a forest. As the river thickened with tens of thousands of people I took an off ramp through the forest and escaped the traffic jam. I'm not keen on huge crowds. I circled back and toured the many pop-up stands serving traditional new year food and crafts such as arrows with white feathers and Daruma dolls.

When I went to the Meiji Shrine at Harajuku today there were a lot of sign-wielding Christians, mostly foreigners, surrounding the shrine. Some of them had recorded messages blaring from bullhorns. The signs and the recordings urged people going to the shrine to turn to Christianity. Nothing unusual or wrong in the message but I thought it was not the right time or place. The Japanese were engaged in their religious practice. They weren't harming anyone else. How would these Christians feel if a bunch of foreigners, say Muslims or Hindus, surrounded their church on Christmas Eve and harangued them to switch religions as they entered their church? Can you imagine how that would go over?

The Japanese reaction was to just ignore the signs and the bullhorns and go on about their business. There weren't any shouts, mean looks or any visible negative reaction from the shrine-goers. There was a lot more restraint than what I think would have happened if the shoe was on the other foot.

Japan X-League Football Bowl

Roppongi Hills in December

Watching suburban life from a KFC

I have this week off so I'll be doing some exploring around the city. Today I ventured out to the southern suburbs in search of one of the two or three Ikea stores in the region. Land prices in central Tokyo are just too expensive for the land-hogging Ikea stores. I took the Hibiya line to Naka-Meguro and then the train to Den-en-chofu, a wealthy suburb that was redone in British suburb style in the 1990s. Many of Japan's movie stars and rich live here. If I saw any in the train station I didn't know it.

At Den-en-chofu Ikea provides a free 20-minute shuttle bus to their Kohoku store. I missed one shuttle because my train line branched into two and I was on the wrong one. By the time I backtracked I had missed the shuttle and so waited an hour in an almost empty KFC overlooking the train station. There was a light rain and I was in a cozy second-floor window where I could watch people coming and going from the train station. This is the only station I've seen that was small enough for family members to drive to the station door and pick up their family members as they de-trained. This didn't seem like the jam-packed Tokyo I was used to. By train, this comfort was only 10-minutes from the edge of "downtown" Tokyo.

The Ikea was just like the one in Shanghai except it wasn't as crowded. The prices were about the same as in Shanghai. Most of the Swedish-designed furniture was made-in-China. I bought a lamp and headed back home in the rain.

Standing in the doorway of the Mitsukoshi on a December night

Less than 2% of Japanese are Christians but this is one of the most Christmas-crazy places I've ever lived in. There are Christmas lights everywhere. Restaurants have Christmas specials, stores have Christmas sales, and corporations invest heavily in Christmas-themed advertising. Of course a big part of this hoopla is commercial in nature - just like it is in Europe and North America.

But it still raises my spirits when I see the lights and hear the same Christmas music I grew up with. A couple of nights ago I went to hear an orchestra play Christmas music at a concert hall at the Ginza. Afterward I walked down a street lined with shops twinkling with lights and stood and admired the large Christmas tree outside Mikimoto Pearls near the Ginza crossing. Before I got back on the Ginza line to head home I stood at the main entrance to the Mitsukoshi Department Store watching the fashionable Tokyoites go in and out and across the Sukiyabashi Crossing - one of the most famous intersections in the world. Warm air heavy with perfume was flowing out of Mitsukoshi and across my face. Across the street the Neo-Renaissance Wako Department Store was bathed in a purple glow from its light display. Wako's curved granite façade and clock tower has stood at this corner since 1932. On the opposite corner the the San-ai Building with its huge neon sign towers over the intersection. It's been the image of Ginza on postcards and travel books for decades now. On this cold December evening its neon illuminates the entire crossing and the thousands of shoppers busily going somewhere. I seem to be the only person standing still.

Autumn in Asakusa

The Veggie Pizza Effect?

This is going to sound self-serving but I can't help it. It's an interesting phenomenon that I've noticed and wondered if there was a name for it - like Murphy's Law or the Coriolis Effect etc. It happened again this week at a meeting I was at. We ordered pizza delivered for lunch. There were eight of us - me being the only vegetarian. Four pizzas were ordered - one of them a veggie pizza I requested - the rest meat. As soon as the pizzas arrived the meat eaters headed first for the veggie pizza and demolished it before I could get more than one piece. Then the meat lovers started on the meat pizzas and couldn't finish them. Of course I had paid one-eighth of the total bill - which was not cheap. But I got one slice for about $15. This isn't the first time I've noticed this. What's the deal?

So today I went to the all-you-can eat pizza buffet at Shakeys and made up for it.