Blizzardboy | A Kiwi in Japan

Tokyo has an image of being one of the most expensive cities in the world, a city where spending ten thousand dollars on an evening entertaining clients, where everyone sports their Louis Vuitton status symbols as if they are truly unique. But of course being a city of 24 million people things are a little more diverse than that reputation would have you believe.

Of course such frivolous nights are possible, even though they are less common than they were during the effervescent bubble of 20 years ago and the yen, being as weak as an American democrat, makes Tokyo an even more affordable place to visit than one might imagine. Even more affordable though, if you are struggling on an unpaid Nova teachers salary, are the free activities and attractions on offer in present day Tokyo.

Tokyo for Free, written by Susan Pompian is a great resource if you are looking for free adventures in Tokyo, or just something interesting to do on the weekend.

With over 300 free attractions there is something for everyone in this book - from watching Japan’s famed sumo wrestlers practicing, through to visiting the home of the Imperial Family in Tokyo, as well as a range of the truly bizarre such as the worlds only Parasitological Museum in Meguro. Whilst being a few years old now - published in 1998 - most of the attractions mentioned are still open and still free.

Tokyo for Free has sections on Parks, Museums, Martial Arts and Sports, Gardens and Festivals, Libraries and Galleries, the Performing Arts and museum-like Antique stores, Super showrooms, free views and temples and shrines. So there is a huge range of things to do for just about anyone.

We have been to a few of the places mentioned in the book, including the wonderful view from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government buildings in Shinjuku, the aforementioned Parasite Museum as well the Fire Museum in Yotsuya and the Bank of Japan’s Currency Museum in Nihonbashi.

One negative for this book is a lack of a geographically based index - which would make finding nearby places much easier. But like the Exploring Kanto book I reviewed earlier, Tokyo for Free is a wonderfully useful resource to liven up ones life in the land of the rising sun.

# Title: Tokyo for Free
# Author: Susan Pompian
# Paperback: 464 pages
# Publisher: Kodansha International (March 23, 1998)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 4770020538
# ISBN-13: 978-4770020536

You can pick up a copy from amazon.com: Tokyo for Free.

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Tokyo is a magnificent beast of a city, a circuit board of buildings stretching far across the Kanto Plain, rolling on into the surrounding provinces of Chiba, Saitama and Kanagawa. Home to 24 million souls by day and 12 million at night. Tokyo is one of the megalopolii. A concrete jungle where space is the ultimate luxury.

It is easy to forget, when one lives in Tokyo, that there is more to Japan than just office buildings, subway lines and harried office workers. To forget that out beyond the confines of the city there are mountains and rivers, farms and rice fields, open spaces and yes, even nature.

Michael Plastrow’s excellent Exploring Kanto: Weekend Pilgrimages from Tokyo is a guide book for day walks one can do from Tokyo. Covering 33 routes it offers a plethora of options for those looking to get out of Tokyo for the day.

These 33 walks follow the order of, and cover the 33 temples of the Bando ‘Sanjusansho’ Pilgrimage. As Plastrow writes in the introduction:
The Bando circuit is dedicated to Kannon, (Avalokitesvera in Sanskrit), a merciful bodhisattva who is supposed to have thirty-three separate manifestations (hence the number of temples on the circuit).

The book covers 9 walks in Yokohama’s Kanagawa Prefecture, 1 in Tokyo, 4 in Saitama, 2 in Gunma Prefecture, 3 in Tochigi Prefecture, 6 in Ibaraki Prefecture and 7 in Chiba Prefecture. We have been on a couple of the walks in the book and found it to be a useful guide - not just to the temples themselves, but also to local sites of interest that one passes on the way.

Published in 1996, it is a little dated in parts but overall the temples and walks described in the guide book are all still there making this book still as useful as when it was first published. Bus and train times may well have changed in the interim however there is enough in this book to make it a valuable addition to ones bookshelf during ones stay in Tokyo.

Highly recommended as a source of inspiration for what to do whilst living in Tokyo.

# Title: Exploring Kanto: Weekend Pilgrimages from Tokyo
# Author: Michael Plastow
# Paperback: 256 pages
# Publisher: Weatherhill; 1st ed edition (June 1996)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0834803321
# ISBN-13: 978-0834803329

This book is reasonably hard to find, you might get lucky with one of the second hand bookstores in Tokyo - such as Good Day Books in Ebisu, or you should be able to pick up a copy from Amazon.com: Exploring Kanto.

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Japan’s war crimes during the Second World War are well recorded and widely acknowledged, however when thinking about the war, it is easy to overlook the fact that at some levels the Japanese soldiers during the war were human and like all human beings had feelings, knew beauty and desired for peace.

The Harp of Burma by Michio Takeyama is a novella that traces the experiences of a company of Japanese soldiers from the final period of fighting through internment by the British in the south east asian country of Burma (now known as Myanmar). This is no Platoon or Thin Red Line, war is important to the book, but more important is music, and to a lesser extent Buddhism.

This is a moving book. The soldier in the unit documented by The Harp of Burma have taught themselves to sing, to make instruments and to play them to a level that made them famous amongst the occupying Japanese soldiers. Just how “Music hath charms to soothe the savage beast” is clearly delineated.

My own readings about Burma have been limited to George Orwell’s work whilst stationed there, and accounts of the current regimes brutality. The differences between Orwell’s colonialism and the bond that Buddhism provides the Japanese soldiers and the local citizenry are stark. And compared to the current situation in Burma, The Harp of Burma paints a picture of much happier times.

This book is well worth reading, both for another angle on the Second World War, as well as for a peek into what Burma was once like, and hopefully can one day become again.

# Title: The Harp of Burma
# Author: Michio Takeyama
# Translator: Howard Hibbett
# Series: Unesco Collections of Contemporary Works
# Paperback: 136 pages
# Publisher: Tuttle Publishing (June 1968)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0804802327
# ISBN-13: 978-0804802321

You can pick up a copy of Michio Takeyama’s classic The Harp of Burma by clicking here.

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The post-war period in Japan was one of immense social change as Japanese society adjusted to the shock of defeat and to the occupation of Japan by American forces and their allies. Osamu Dazai’s The Setting Sun takes this milieu as its background to tell the story of the decline of a minor aristocratic family.

The story is told through the eyes of Kazuko, the unmarried daughter of a widowed aristocrat. Her search for self meaning in a society devoid of use for her forms the crux of the novel. It is a sad story, and structurally is a novel very much within the confines of the Japanese take on the novel in a way reminiscent of authors such as Nobel Prize winner Yasunori Kawabata - the social interactions are peripheral and understated, nuances must be drawn, and for readers more used to Western novelistic forms this comes across as being rather wishy-washy.

Kazuko’s mother falls ill, and due to their financial circumstances they are forced to take a cottage in the countryside. Her brother, who became addicted to opium during the war is missing. When he returns, Kazuko attempts to form a liaison with the novelist Uehara. This romantic displacement only furthers to deepen her alienation from society.

Famous as it is in Japan, I wouldn’t recommend The Setting Sun. The translation comes across today as being dated and stilted. If you are looking for a novel focusing on the decline of the aristocracy I would recommend Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, which while having no relation to these fair isles does manage to capture the decline of the nobility without sending the reader to sleep.

#Title: The Setting Sun
#Author: Osama Dazai
# Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation; Revised edition (June 1968)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0811200329
# ISBN-13: 978-0811200325

You can pick up a copy of Osama Dazai’s The Setting Sun by clicking here.

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