Currying Flavour

The Japanese restaurant was quite small but very modern, laid out like a fast-food restaurant, and had a staff of at least eight bustling around the place. Every time a customer entered all would shout out a greeting in unison, and also on departing. It's a little disconcerting to walk in the door and be faced with the entire staff screaming at you! And waitresses and shopgirls tend to speak in a high squeaky voice, drawing the expressions out like a well-worn phrase (which of course they are!). I gather the expressions were "irasshimase" ("welcome") and "arigato gozaimasu" (a polite form of "thank you").

Surprisingly, they had a menu in English, but I quickly saw that everything on it was a curry: beef, pork, fish, shrimp, you name it! Still, the fried fish curry went down quite well, not Indian, but like the ones you get in a Chinese, and with a coke cost only 750 yen.

A change of Plan

The chat I had had in the bar the previous night with the Yugoslav/Australian on Tokyo persuaded me to change plans slightly and head for Tokyo immediately, in order to experience it at the weekend. I phoned the Capital Green Hotel, where I had stayed on my arrival in Tokyo, to book a room. The price had gone up in ten days from around 5,700 yen to over 7,000 yen! What a rip-off! Still, as I would be staying there for only a couple of days, I decided to take it, as hotel rooms would be more difficult to find with the arrival of ever more football fans.

On the way to the station I was stopped by a group of traditionally dressed girls giving out free cans of Asahi beer. Strangely, not a sign of a single Croatian or Italian fan, though they are due to play here this evening...

The attractive, if nervous-looking, lady at the hotel reservation service (probably a bit overworked recently) cancelled my reservation for the Station hotel. Then reserved the ticket to Ueno in Tokyo, the next train departing at 12:50.

As I tried to pass through the gates towards the platform an elderly man in uniform started screaming something at me, and despite my showing him my ticket herded me over to a ticket office. I took out my Railpass, thinking this was what he wanted, but he rudely waved it away and continued shouting, almost pushing me to the ticket office. There he stuck a sheet of prepared phrases in my face, pointing out one that said: "The line to Kashima stadium is not a JR line." I laughed and once again showed the arrogant little git my ticket, which clearly said Ueno, before brushing by him through the gates, while his colleagues burst out laughing. Just as at the airport, I'm wondering whether behind the ubiquitous politeness of the Japanese there is not a trace of arrogance.

In Ueno checked in at the hotel, showered, planned the route and was quickly out again.

Shibuya: A Yen for Fashion

My first stop was Shibuya. Like something out of a science fiction film (and all around me are Creatures from Another Planet!). Five giant TV screens running non-stop, wall-to-wall neon. Lots of teenagers (isn't this the place where anyone over thirty is out of place?). Camera and computer shops, clothes shops and lots of record shops with hip hop, soul, house, trance and techno. The Japanese economy may be in trouble, but nobody around here seems to have heard the news.

I walked along many of the streets browsing in shops, then found myself near the top of a hill that seemed to be a real teenager hang-out. They were queuing for the cinema, window-shopping or just standing around chatting, but it was the get-up that was amazing! Many had their hair dyed shades of silver, brown, red, blue and purple and their skins tanned (I think this is called Gunguro), which gave them a ghostly look (boys as well as girls!). Some girls were in fairy-tale and manga costumes, made-up clobber put together from all kinds of cast-offs. Then there was a kind of French Maid meets Alice in Wonderland style, but with chunky platform soles or huge boots. In fact, except for the ever-present schoolgirls, there was hardly a girl who wasn't in big military-style boots or platforms! Headdresses mostly in black or black and white, made of ruffles, ribbons, and lace. Handbags in all shapes and sizes, some looked like small suitcases. If they didn't have that strange tan, many girls had white faces, and some had blue lipstick. T-Shirts with nonsensical English phrases (“How Funny It Is To Be Design”!). These kids are out for thrills, stepping clear of the buttoned-down, uniformed life of their parents and onto society's dance floor. And Time Out’s Tokyo guidebook says: "What teenagers here wear today, the world wears tomorrow." God help us all!!!

I walked through this area, then past what looked like Love Hotels (short-stay hotels with fantasy decor), and a head shop that sold packets of grass, and back towards the station, where things began to get a bit more normal. Groups of schoolgirls with loose socks (in Japanese, roosu sokkusu!), short skirts. I was wondering what they were doing in their uniforms on a Saturday afternoon...

Outside Shibuya station (at the appropriately-named Hachiko exit) there's a famous meeting place at a statue of a little dog, Hachiko, who visited the station every day after his master died, waiting for him. If that dog tried to do that nowadays he would be trampled under foot!

Sin in Shinjuku

Took the underground further on, and then alighted at Shinjuku. This is the busiest train station in the world—something like 80 exits! Took a deep breath and then it was back out into the megalopolis, Eastern side. Shinjuku is the Blade Runner type district with enormous TV screens on the sides of buildings and packed with people. Ear-splitting noise coming from every direction, drum & bass and hip hop compete with street-side advertizers with megaphones. Lots of fashion shops, then further on came shops stacked with electronic goods. Plus lots of restaurants of all kinds and at all levels. I found a large gaijin bar called HUB, a pseudo-British place, with several TVs, which I thought might be a good place to watch some of the games. It was too packed now, though, so I wandered back into the streets. I noticed there seemed to be lots of Japanese men with Japanese girls, and some foreign men with Japanese ultra-short-skirted girl-friends, but never foreign women walking down the street hand-in-hand with Japanese men.

Nearby is the red-light district, Kabuki-cho, run by the Yakuza, the Japanese Mafia (the words ya, ku, za mean 8, 9, 3—in Japan's counterpart to Black Jack, Oicho-kabu, the sum of these three numbers is 20, which is worthless). Which reminds me that the Far-Eastern Economic Review ran a sensationalist article suggesting the the Japanese police might call on the services of the Yakuza to help deal with football hooligans!

I passed lots of gambling places, adult movie theaters, peepshows, "health clubs", hostess bars and touts trying to drum up business by shoving pictures of scantily-clad girls at passers-by. Somewhere (I didn't look too hard), were the the Soaplands, that were set up when the brothels were officially closed. Lots of young-looking girls, "butterflies of the night", who speak little or no English. The whole sex business is known as mizu shobai (a metaphor for floating, drinking and impermanence, the term literally means "water business").

The Japanese themselves say "the whore is a fact of life". Prostitution is technically illegal, as is visiting a prostitute. According to what I've read, prostitutes are rarely punished, and clients are never punished. The equivalent of our massage parlours are the Soaplands, where you pay an admission fee to go to a private room with a bath and a "masseuse" with whom you then negotiate the rest, but many accept only Japanese clients (and since it's being run by the Mafia, it might be wise not to argue...).

Sake, Tea, or Me?

Attracted by the big money to be made, many foreign women have moved into the red-light and bar districts, from Korea, China, Thailand, Russia, but also Europe and the US, as hostesses, bar-girls, etc.. Some have been here since the era of Japan's bubble economy, when the boom made Tokyo seem like the center of the world.

A new law was brought in a few years ago that makes it illegal to pay someone under the age of 18 for sex (brought in to cut down on the increasing amount of school-girl sex with older men (Enjo Kosai)). But there's still loads of underage porn here—most of the child pornography distributed in the world is made in Japan, and you can buy it in any corner-shop here. Funnily enough, although the amount of porn has steadily increased over the past twenty years, sex crimes have shown a steady decrease over the same period.

The Beautiful Game

In their Group G game against Croatia, Italy had two legitimate-looking goals disallowed. Italy lost 2-1. The Italians were furious, and striker Christian Vieri complained about "the village referees", especially Danish linesman Jens Larsen. They threatened to file an official protest, then said they wouldn't.

After a bust-up with his best player, the Slovenian manager sent him home. Shades of Roy Keane! Slovenia lost 1-0 against South Africa. Slovenia are now eliminated.

Brazil crushed a weak China side 3-0.