5:21PM Stare into the eyes of a full-sized robot that walks and shows emotion, built by students at Waseda University
Japan. Where to start?
While taking one last dip in the flashing neon pool of Tokyo this morning, I contemplated what I’ve seen here. The only thing I was sure of is that I couldn’t wrap my head around any of it.
The whole country is spotless. The streets and sidewalks. The building interiors and exteriors. The stores. The floors. The cars. The public bathrooms. I even saw one guys who stopped on the side of the road to pick up a lonely, detached muffler. He picked up and hid it behind a bush on the opposite side of the road so as not to clutter the view for everyone else.
Unlike NY, people wait at a crosswalk if the sign says don’t walk, even if there’s no car in sight. Its a very weird thing to watch. Here, rules are made to be followed.
The design aesthetic is mostly immaculate when its not explosive and in your face. There seems to be practically no crime here. Eveyone dresses to the nines. If there’s a word in the Japanese language for ‘sloppy’, I’d be stunned.
The cultural traditions, mannerisms and rules of etiquette are mind bogglingly difficult to keep up with. I found myself constantly being corrected for standing in the wrong place, walking in the wrong place, putting my chopsticks in the wrong place, running out of business cards, exiting my shoes incorrectly or simply exercising the wrong placement of my hands. Even standing still can prove troublesome for me in Japan.
There seems to be an impossibly unwaivering quest for perfection here. And you can sense the tension and stress created by that attitude. So many people I met seem to be on pins and needles. And that’s the troublesome part of this need for perfection. Japan has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. Its also the #1 cause of death for Japanses under 30.
Its an unnerving statistic but not completely unexpected.
This morning I hit Harajuku (with its bizarre anime inspired fashion sensibility) in search of toys for the kids. I found a 7-story toy store that had everything you could imagine. It was one of those visual and aural explosions I mentioned earlier. Every inch of the store was packed with colors and sounds. I could stand in one spot and hear a minimum of three different characters and songs playing at once. And everything in the store moved or flashed or sang or danced. Its like having 300 tv sets in your bathroom, all tuned to different channels at full volume. But I found what I was looking for—a battery powered bullet train with tracks for Magnus. Its all he talks about. Now I can finally go home.
After a trip to the robotics labratory at Waseda University and a demonstration of some of walking, talking and emoting robots being built there, we headed off to Nagano. In case you don’t remember, Nagano was the site of the 98 winter olympics. When we arrived at our onsen, nestled high in the mountains, we were in the midst of a late night snow and ice storm.
All night long I lay in bed listening to the unsettling sound of tree limbs crashing against my cabin roof while sheets of ice would scrape and slide down, splashing loudly into the river just below my window.
But when I awoke in the morning and stepped out onto my deck, the scene was so unbelievably peaceful. Heaven. The snow was still falling. Everything was white. Mountains in the background. Numerous waterfalls fed the river that ran between mine and the other cabins. Tiny walking bridges criss-crossed the water. A few cherry blossoms had begun to flower. I could sit here forever.
Actually I couldn’t because I had to squeeze in a few more shots before heading back to Tokyo to catch a flight back to the US.
