Tokyo, back to normal – kind of

In a country that has simultaneously gone though a major scale earthquake, the mother of all tidal waves and a nuclear disaster – how does one go back to normal. The crises seems to be one that will endure for months, which means that some kind of normality in everyday life has to be achieved.  This is cherry blossom season and soon the Golden Week will be upon us, times usually reserved for jubilation. As a humorist, things are even more complicated. Will I be forced to perform Hari Kiri  for trying to put a smile on the faces of my readers?

I was pondering this thought while trying to have a nap last Saturday afternoon at my hotel, I’ve yet to find an apartment but am working on it. Just like any hotel in the West, my snooze was interrupted by a ring on the door from a smiling employee who wished to change my towels. Giving it another chance, I was again rudely woken up, this time by a mild earthquake. Such is life in Japan. Not being a great believer in third time lucky I decided to give up,  got dressed and went off to Shibuya to see if the natives were back performing the holy Japanese ritual of Sho Ping, or as we call it back home spending well earned doe on ridiculously priced clothes that you don’t need anyway but will look nice in your closet beside the Prada shoes that came with a second mortgage.

The thing I like about Japanese shopping is that you can spend some valuable time in the department store toilets without having to hold your nose while doing so. Ah but things have changed in Tokyo. Everyone is power conscious. This means that the store had turned off the toilet seat heater, sacrilege! how unpatriotic can you get? Who wants to sit on a cold toilet seat. It makes the thought of reading on my Iphone unthinkable. But that wasn’t all. After I had properly washed my hands, I found that the hand dryer had been sacrificed too.

There are advantages to the new voluntary city wide electricity cut, you get to do a lot of sport. Tokyo is a city of trains. No one in his right mind would use any other kind of transportation. The train and subway stations boast multiple stories connected by some of the steepest escalators known to man. In these difficult times, many of the escalators have been shut down and a journey across town involving two train changes can easily remind one of that mountain climbing trip you’ve always sworn to take but were never fit enough.

After a couple of such journeys across town, I returned to my room fully exhausted and slept like a baby. There are, it would seem, positive sides to everything.

© 2011 Steve Taite. All rights reserved.
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