To Fuji and beyond...

1 September, Monday.
The kids walked themselves to the bus stop, a first. Which is another way of stating that the parents were very tired. A few of the mothers walk with their kids, more to meet and chat for a few minutes with other mothers (never a father) to start off the day.

We looked at a final apartment today. I’m glad we looked before we rented, but I wish we had realized that beforehand; we would have saved a great deal of time and effort. The differences between modern and older apartments are quite interesting: better designed switches, picture hangers on rods in the ceiling to avoid marring the walls, heaters with the shower fans).

From the apartment I went to Titech for the first time. Masanori Kaji greeted me and showed me the museum (Titech dates to 1881) before taking me to my new office. The campus is more compact than A&M, but not as urban as a George Washington University. The subway stop is directly opposite the main entrance. An express takes me from Meguro in five minutes, the local takes eight.

The semester does not start for another month and people are casually dressed. Saving energy is one reason: a “no necktie” sign indicates informality allows the minimum temperature to be raised. Many lights in public spaces, such as bathrooms, are sensor-activated, so they remain off most of the time. A sensible contrast to A&M where many lights blaze away 24/7/365.

The offices of the faculty are filled with books and papers. At least one has papers scattered over his floor. Only one that I saw has a room that might be termed neat. My kind of people.

I met my office mate, Yakov, a Turk who had, like me, spent time at the Smithsonian. He very kindly offered to share the window space with me. The psychological benefits of a view are not to be dismissed (with the exception of a hospital I visited in Oxford that overlooked a cemetery. Sometimes efficiency can be taken too far).

Alex and I took the late ASIJ bus to the Tokyo American Club for the first meeting of his Boy Scout Troop 51. This weekend, the troop will climb Mt. Fuji. I will volunteer to join them.


Why is Japanese print so small? On meishi (business cards), I can understand, but even books (including my textbook) use such small type that reading is hard on the eyes.

The shortcomings of the service apartment are becoming obvious in the kitchen. The ceiling fan extends two feet down and over the stove, putting it in prime position for a certain male to bang his head painfully. No learning curve seems to have evolved. That’s a design flaw (though not for people less than 5'8". The small dishwasher works well, but the person who ordered the full-sized dishes and bowls apparently did not consider its petite interior.

You can tell we’re foreigners – we’re the only people on the subway not dozing, listening to iPods, or reading.

A common sight, whether a house in the countryside or a tall apartment building, is clothes and futons drying outside on balconies. Air drying saves energy and space in small quarters, reducing the need for a clothes dryer. The combo washer/dryer, as Lisa noted, is a poor dryer. Also used for drying is the bathroom, which has a fan in older buildings and a fan with heater in newer apartments. Our new apartment, which is two decades old, only has the fan: we’ll see how well it handles us.

What strikes me as somewhat inconsistent is the focus on recycling (which deserves a future post) and the elaborate, sometimes necessary wrapping that goods, especially food, are packaged in.



2 September, Tuesday
Filling out the paperwork (guessing how this American circle fit into the Japanese square) took most of the day, but we finally applied for an apartment. The form we had to fill was quite daunting, primarily because it was designed for people working for companies, not visiting American scholars. We discussed our answers with the agent before filling in the (small) blanks.

To apply requires a fair amount of information, some of which seems entirely reasonable: Passport, alien registration, income, job. Then there is information (admittedly quite possibly limited to the firm we’re dealing with) which seems a bit intrusive: reason for moving (of the nine possibilities, my favorite was “piano”). A fair amount of information is required about one’s firm, including its year of formation, turnover, my immediate supervisor, &c. To me, what appears most unusual is the emphasis on the guarantor. The information required for that person or firm is quite impressive.

My American circle is partly due to being funded by the Fulbright (in the form of the Japanese United States Exchange Commission, JUSEC), but working at Titech, and partly due to using the Fulbright as my guarantor. We’re waiting to see if the landlord will accept JUSEC as guarantor.

The PASMO card is a convenient way of taking the subways and trains – you fill the card with money, pass the card over the scanner as you enter and exit and the fare is deducted. There is no saving in money, only time (the actual process is faster plus you avoid buying tickets and figuring out how much the fare is). A well hidden secret is that a children’s PASMO exists. Takeo somehow discovered this and I went to the local station today to apply with our kids’ passports. No trouble at all, apart from my poor Japanese. The station attendants helped me fill out a form, translated the names into Japanese, took my money, and we had the kids’ cards. The same cards as the adult version, their names are printed on the card and a little “chisai” (small) is printed on them too.

Since the kid’s fare is approximately half the adult, the savings could be significant. Certainly the frustration factor of understanding which ticket is good for which line is avoided. So why isn’t this advertised more? One reason might be abuse by adults. Metropolis mentioned that police had nabbed a significantly greater number of adults illegally using kid’s PASMOs.

I walked around Shirokanedai-Hiroo today and once again was impressed by the huge contrasts in architecture here. Some of the ugliest and some of the most beautiful, imaginative structures I have ever seen are here, sometimes side by side. Concrete as a rule is unattractive, especially if painted green to resemble the moss-stained wood of a castle (at least that’s what I think the architect meant – the implications otherwise are truly unnerving).

Staircases can be quite impressive. Many spiral staircases – to save space? Some of the modern staircases, wrapped in glass or accompanied by lavish metal, are clearly works of art. Sadly, they are far outnumbered by the emergency staircase bolted onto the building as an aferthought.

Perhaps most striking are the micro-buildings, usually 1-4 stories tall, narrow, and sometimes triangular, clearly designed to fit a specific piece of land. These buildings are often only one room wide at most. My impression is that they represent not only the high cost of limited land in the city, but also a pattern of small land ownership. Acquiring land to build big buildings can be quite an undertaking: for the massive Roppongi Hills complex, decades.

In a way, the buildings are like the small Kubota shovels and other construction equipment that seems so small as to be almost toy-like compared with American equipment, yet performs quite well and actually even better for the small spaces thy were designed to function in. Japan has a great deal of the full-sized construction equipment too.


Wednesday, September 3
A wasted morning, all my fault. I confidently guided Lisa to the wrong subway stop so we never reached the bank. A helpful American took us a few blocks in the direction of Softbank, where the sales representative was not helpful. A visit to Docomo was more interesting: Instead of English speakers at the branch, the sales agent handed me a phone connected to an English speaker, who talked also to the rep as needed. A good way of reducing labor costs by centralizing. Must be frustrating for the rep who just said motionlessly as a conversation passed her by. Docomo had its revenge, however; I could not understand its plan at all.

The older Roppongi area is a bit seedy and ugly. Lots of restaurants and tall commercial buildings. The elevated expressway crossing Roppongi added to the charm. One real estate agent said he could cross the town via expressway at 2 a.m. in 15 minutes. The same commute via local roads 12 hours later would be 2.5-3 hours.

I went to Titech in the afternoon. We have my computer running, hooked up to the internet, and printer. So good to have the essentials.

I visited the gym. It reminds of the A&M weight room of 12 years ago: weights, a few machines, underilluminated and basic, with no accommodation of design or attraction. What’s frustrating is the system of variable weights for a hand dumbbell. Instead of a wall of different weights (e.g, 10, 15, 20 lbs.), there are a few bars that you add weights until you reach the desired amount. It saves space, but takes time to change the weight. Sometimes, efficiency is not all it’s cracked up to be.


Thursday, September 4

Found the bank today, then to Shinjuku to buy Alex and myself sleeping bags. Amazing how much the technology has improved in the years since I last bought a bag. Back to Titech where Lisa saw my office and we both took a Japanese class run by retired volunteers. If I had any illusions about my Japanese, these kind, competent teachers destroyed them.

In the evening, I went to Titech for a Middle School evening. I was impressed by the enthusiasm and excitement of the teachers.

Friday, September 5

Lisa went to the Elementary School day today, while I stayed home and worked until leaving for our Mt. Fuji adventure.
Saturday, September 6
“A person who does not climb Fuji-san is a fool; a person who climbs it twice is a bigger fool.”
– alleged Japanese proverb, passed around the Americans after the climb

When I imagine Boy Scouts climbing a mountain, I think of long lines of hikers cheerfully heading up. The reality of Boy Scout Troop 51's ascent of Mount Fuji (called Fuji-san in Japanese) was somewhat different. Our car of seven (three scouts, two accompanying parents, one parent whose family was taking another car, and one parent whose family was in the States but wanted to do the climb) set out from the old Tokyo American Club, located at the back of the Russian embassy, Friday night at 7.. Alex I reached the meeting spot despite several minutes of not finding the right back of the embassy. Fortunately, several people helped us reach our destination.

The ride took 2.5 hours, including a rest stop (just like an interstate stop, save for greater variation in types of toilet and food as well as significantly higher gas prices) and $38 in tolls. The Scout building held many other scouts when we arrived at 10 p.m/. No real roughing it except for trying to sleep. The scouts had bunk beds, eight to a room, and the adults had either single rooms or a large tatami-room without the tatami. The hall was a wonderful sound conductor, so when we were roused at 5, no one had really slept well. Some scouts had left from Tokyo at 4, which probably would have been the better option for starting a long day with some sleep.

Driving from the building to Station 5, 2000 meters up took nearly half an hour. The two parking lots held 150-200 cars and were already full. Here, as elsewhere, I am impressed by the ability of drivers to park in incredibly tight spaces. I think I could become a reasonable driver here, once I adjusted to driving on the other side of the road. Parking, however, would be beyond my abilities.

By the time we parked, unloaded, and walked to the station, it was 7 and earlier vanloads of scouts had already reached the station and started up in trickles. Tradition (marketing?) recommends buying a walking stick to have branded at each station you reach. What I did not realize is how essential I would find Alex’s stick.

Climbing below the treeline to Station 6 was pleasant, if challenging. The view of Fuji past the treeline was not that attractive, volcanic rock with occasional plants. The real beauty was the weather. Fog and clouds rolled in and out, sometimes dropping visibility to only a few meters, then suddenly disappearing to show where we had climbed or where we had to climb. Alex moved from shorts and a t-shirt at the bottom to jeans, t-shirt, long-sleeve shirt, sweater, and sweatshirt at the top. Our hair was wet from the moisture and my glasses misted over several times.

The further we harder the steeper the ascent seemed. Despite frequent switchbacks, the path up was very steep. Our breaks were short and frequent and over the next few hours we consumed the recommended two-three liters of water per person. Our group could tell the oxygen level in the atmosphere was dropping even without using the bottles of oxygen for sale (1000Y at the base, 1500Y at Station 8). The cost of food and liquids rose as we climbed, but considering the difficulty of bringing anything up to the stations, we did not begrudge the cost. The paths were well marked with rope guardrails as needed.

Even though the official two-month climbing season had ended with over 200,000 people ascending and several stations had closed, hundreds of people climbed Fuji today. Rarely were we out of sight of people. We passed some; many more passed us. Nearly all were Japanese from their 20s on up. Most were in groups, especially the younger climbers. Men outnumbered women. Many wore climbing gear, including gaiters, and masks. We discovered why on the descent.

After five and a half hours, Alex and I (our group, reduced from five) reached Station 8 at 3400 meters and he collapsed, resting for half-an-hour on the bench. The station was only a few hundred meters from the summit, which we could see, but his fatigue and a requested turn-around time of 1 p.m., meant I will never stand at the top of Mt. Fuji.

The descent took half the time and was awful. Instead of climbing down a trail, we skidded down long stretches of ash, dirt, gravel, and rocks. I fell twice, ripping jeans and jacket but nothing more. What comfort I could have taken from the many other people I saw falling was totally eclipsed by the spectacle, repeated many times, of single men in bright gear literally bouncing down the slope at high speed. I suspect that was not their first descent, but this is only a suspicion. One of the scoutmasters climbed in three hours and descended in one. We learned from an American Air Force officer that some Navy officers had climbed (and descended) Fuji four times in one day as a fundraiser.

The gaiters kept the pebbles and dirt out of shoes and the masks kept the dust from being inhaled. One scoutmaster had brought duct tape to wrap his troop’s shoes for the descent. It looked funny but it worked well.
I survived the final steep descent by holding on to a guiderope and walking down backward. It looked odd, but it worked.

We drove back to Tokyo that evening, stopping at an excellent ramen noodle shop for dinner. In a land of overemployment, the shop was a model of labor-saving. You choose your dish and bought a ticket from a machine before you entered the restaurant. The waiter took half the ticket and gave it to the cook. When ready, the waiter then matched the ticket with the other half. Simple, efficient, and effective.

In Tokyo on the expressway, we saw an accident that backed traffic up the other way for miles. Ouch. Reminded me of the New Hampshire toll on Interstate 95 South on a Sunday night in summer.

7 September, Sunday.

I woke up today with very, very sore legs and a marked aversion to going down stairs. This made taking the subway somewhat painful at times. Although some stations have elevators and all have escalators, finding the elevators is not always easy and often there are short flights of stairs without any escalators. Although the situation has improved since our 1995 visit, Tokyo is not a good place for a handicapped person or anyone who does not like to walk.

In contrast to the DC or Moscow metros with their long escalators, Tokyo stations tend to have several shorter escalators, connected by small level areas. I wonder if this is because shorter escalators are less expensive, the consequences of one breaking are less serious, or a tradition in building the subways.

To celebrate Alex’s birthday, we went to Kiddyland, an amazing five stories of toys and souvenirs, including one floor devoted to Charlie Brown. What struck me was the branding. Hello Kitty, Barbie, Totto, and many, many other lines were well represented. En route from the subway, we encountered processions of portable shrines behing carried through the streets. Quite interesting and proof that we should always carry a camera.

We then had amazing $21 hamburgers at Zipzap. Especially fun was watching the avocado burger emerge, a beautiful hamburger with half an avocado on top of the burger. We then wandered into a shopping complex, had some superb gelato, and visited the MOMA store.


8 September, Monday

I had intended to look at a surplus bike from an American, but Softbank took so much time that I phoned Lisa to phone the American, who just laughed at my delay. She knew what I was learning.

It took five visits, but we finally have cellphones. The visit we intended to buy phones but the contract was so complex that we wandered out in a daze. A visit to Docomo, however, introduced us to plans even more incomprehensible. The assumption is that any plan will be costly; Softbank at least has a plan that we have a hope of understanding. A policy change banned firms from subsidizing the cost of the cellphone. Consequently, the price of phones soared, but I am told monthly charges did not drop.

Most of the plans are based on a two-year contract with sliding fees, discounts, eye-of-newt charges, and goodness knows what else. Since we are staying for a short time, we paid for the phones fully up front and will not receive discounts. But at least we can talk (with the price varying, depending on what firm’s phones you call). Incidentally, Skype does not work on 0120 numbers, the Japanese 800 numbers.

The sales representatives, almost all female, had an odd mix of technology, ranging from erasable white boards with markers to the latest scanners and directional microphones to softly speak to each other. Oddest of all were the pages of printouts of phone prices. At least one page was arranged by descending cost. Others I could not understand at all.

The second visit to Softbank failed utterly when we could not find someone able to communicate in English. The third was about to end in a contract, except they did not have the phones in stock. So, like the Marx brothers flying across the Atlantic, but running out of gas halfway, we had to go back and start over. The fourth visit found the phones, but I only had my alien registration card and not my passport, so I had to go back and get it. In fairness to Softbank, that was a requirement in the the fine print – the fault was mine. The fifth visit succeeded – we have the phones. Now if only we could figure out how to use them.


I also went to a main post office (not the one down the street) to pick up my registered (or equivalent) Citibank cash card. What seemed odd to me was that Citibank sent our credit cards directly to us, no registration needed. Nor, for that matter, any activation procedure. The cash cards, however, were obviously considered more important, possibly because Japan is still a very cash-oriented society. Many, many more places take credit and debit cards since 1995, but they rarely advertise the fact.

From the post office, I went to Shibuya to buy a Canon printer-scanner for the Mac. Took the wrong exit from the station and lost fifteen minutes trying to figure out where I was. Bic Camera was much quieter than on the weekend. Not quite pleasant, but definitely not painful. Packaging the box for me to carry was ingenious. The salesclerk placed the box on top of a machine that extruded plastic strips long enough to circle the box. He then placed a plastic handle between the strips, taped some bubble wrap over the handle, and I had a convenient way of carrying the printer.

I dropped the printer at home, made a sandwich for Alex, then met him on the late bus to ride to the Tokyo American Club for his Boy Scout meeting. Some of the adults mentioned that they had decided not to climb Fuji because the climb down was so hard. Now they tell me. The troop leadership is, like in College Station, very impressive. The outings sound spectacular, though I think I will avoid any involving mountain descents.
One of the differences between the business community and, at least, this Fulbrighter, is they have lots of support in moving and settling in. Financially, the stakes are much higher (and the resources greater) so the businessman and businesswomen have staff to help them. Those expats are often staying for several years too. A few moms (most of the “reason for being here” spouses are male), when I asked questions, confessed that their husband’s staff had done the legwork.