End of the Line - Press One Button
Last trip in a Japanese Shinkansen bullet train. This one takes me from Tokyo to Nagoya, from where my flight tomorrow takes me back home to the cold and dark, but also to friends, family and Christmas lights. Sitting here I admire Japanese engineers for developing the patented train seats, which can be turned round at the end stations to face the direction the train is going in next. I approve!
One needs, apparently, push only one button to save ones energy and to reduce failure. For me, during the dark winter days (nights?) of Finland, that button is the "BUY"-button for a flight into new countries and faraway shores. Thanks for travelling with me.
Tokyo after Taiwan is very full. Full of people and full of shops and very very full of unnecessary, cute... stuff... for sale. In Taiwan street stalls seemed to sell only food, phone covers, bags or socks. Here the variety is much broader.
Japan, like Taiwan is full of those warning signs and guides to behaviour, which tickle my fancy. I am instructed how to stand,
what to hold on to and how to use a variety of appliences and the toilet seat. Yet if the Japanese thought they had all the bases covered with their potty training manuals, they were wrong! In Japan you may be instructed to sit on the seat, not straddle it, but in Taiwan they really start from the basics. Piss in the toilet, not in front of it!
Now that I'm back in Japan, I'm struck anew by the ritualistic politeness of people here. Having the staff of my hostel thanking me profusely and backing out of the room bowing makes me feel a little uncomfortable, too much like a great white chief or memsahib. It has the feel of a very hierarchical society, where the more important person (customer, boss, big white chief) is treated with exaggerated deference. But these are merely my own, Finnish reflections on the matter - for Japanese this may appear totally different. I still remember a telling tale of cultural misunderstanding from my previous trip to Japan - in the 90´s. I had wondered why people, who otherwise appeared very polite kept cutting me in the queue for the metro ticket machine. I read this as impolite behaviour, untill a European woman who had lived 12 years in Japan enlightened me. The space I had left between myself and the person in front of me in the queue was the appropriate amount of space in Europe. But in Japan leaving that much space meant: "I haven't quite decided where I'm going, so I'm leaving space here for someone, who already knows their destination". And she was right, no more cutting me in the queue after that. And the politeness certainly comes out on top in traffic. Isn't it great to have cars stop for pedestrians!
So now I'm down to eating the last meals on the road. Yesterday I opted to snack at the Moomin stand yesterday. Under their logo was the sentence "Kaikki hauska on hyvää vatsalle" - or "all things fun are good for the tummy". And I guess chocolate milk with glutenous tapioca balls and Moomin shaped pancakes are fun. They're not very tasty though.
Today I lunched on Udon in a diner, where you first had to place your order into the food automat. Luckily the interface was easy to fathom and had images of the portions, so I ended up getting what I wanted.
At the end of this trip I feel, once again, that there is nothing I could have been doing back home for the last month that would have given me so many hilarious moments delicious meals, insights into foreign cultures, awe-inspiringly beautiful vistas - let alone warmth and sunlight.
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