Ryan tries to blend in with the locals, and fails.
RALPH bloke Chris Ryan is a raw fish out of water
As the plane drops down onto the tarmac in Tokyo, I almost jump out of my seat in excitement. I’ve made it to Japan – the great nation behind
Monkey Magic, robots that pour beer, and the Super Toilet.
Bog standard
I avoided visiting the men’s on the flight over as I’m so keen to make use of this wonder of technology. After struggling through customs with my (failed) eighth-grade Japanese, I make it out to the street to search for a coffee that’ll loosen my bowels and hasten my introduction to a toilet that’d make that Kenny bloke whistle with wonder.
I almost cry when I reach the bogs and find a squat toilet. But a rush of joy takes over when I find a Super Toilet in the next cubicle and drop onto the electronically warmed seat. Well, I hope it’s electronically warmed.
They say you should never meet your heroes, and this is especially true if your hero is a toilet. Looking at Japanese characters and vague pictograms on the wall, I realise I’m flying without instructions and that it’s going to be a rough landing.
It’s enough to say, water of a certain heat shouldn’t be fired up the date at high velocity. It felt like an invasion of privacy – the privacy of my colon in particular.
What the...?
Wandering around Tokyo with my girlfriend, I find myself ill at ease – and not just in the pants region. There’s so much that’s familiar to Australians, but it’s all right next to the weird and wild. It’s disorienting, which is frustrating, because I’m dead keen to find my way to the red-light district, which I’ve heard is a real eye-opener. The girlfriend doesn’t seem so shattered by that, but.
Tommy Lee Jones stares down at me from 10m-high billboards, but rather than promoting his next flick about trouble on the Mexican border, he’s flogging a shonky coffee drink called Boss. A thousand miles from home, artistic integrity flies out the window.
Technology and tradition butt heads constantly. A businessman plays on a flash mobile in a narrow bar, while an old woman in a kimono serves him noodles that have been made the same way for generations, with sake that’s been in the same family for centuries.
Having a drink at the Park Hyatt bar high above Tokyo, you look out over a dazzling sea of lights. The bar is the one where Scarlett Johansson meets Bill Murray in
Lost in Translation. Being in there, that whole wanky film, and its improbable relationship between hot Scarlett and crusty Murray, makes a lot more sense. With the amount they charge for a drink, you’d expect her to look for an old perv to shout her.
It’s just a surprise, and a shame for moviegoers, that she didn’t sleep with him too.
Breakfast and furious
After a few days in Tokyo, we head to Lake Tazawa, near Akita, to snowboard. Knowing the slopes would be chockers with Aussies, it seems like cultural confusions might be over. Wrong.
Lake Tazawa clearly hasn’t been included on the Fanatics tour itinerary – no-one is wearing an Aussie flag beanie or green and gold ski gear. The lack of countrymen isn’t a problem, but the complete absence of foreign tourism means communicating in English is as helpful as speaking Swahili.
Communication wouldn’t go astray at breakfast in our hotel. The food is traditional Japanese. I’m dying for Vegemite on toast but lovely ladies in kimonos press me with sashimi, smoked eel and whole dried fish. I’ll eat anything, but when what looks like pickled tongue lands on the plate, I’m wishing I learnt the Japanese for, “I’ll sleep with a sumo wrestler for a couple of Weet-Bix.”
Bathhouse of pain
Back in Tokyo, there’s time for one more dodgy bathroom experience before leaving. My girl pulls her head out of a trendy Tokyo travel guide, and decides we just have to go to a particular Korean bathhouse where the Yakuza – the Japanese mafia – are meant to hang out.
An hour later, as I stand in a small room with a stocky, 40-something tattooed bloke, this doesn’t seem so wise. Especially since we’re both naked.
Escaping the change room, I head into the main section of the bathhouse where there’s a sauna, cold pools, personal washing stations, and nude blokes scattered about, sweating, swimming and scrubbing.
It’s not clear what order you’re meant to do things, and I’m fairly sure several rules of Japanese etiquette are broken.
It’s a relief I haven’t had a coffee first, or several beers, otherwise a sacred footbath may have been defiled.
I leave the bathhouse, and the country, clean, but confused – about culture, not my sexuality.
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