Postcard from Japan: Lunch must have air conditioning

<written in 2009>

If you're like me, you don't do heat. So heading off to Japan in the middle of summer is not the greatest idea. It's too hot, too humid...so you sweat on the shortest walks, and yearn for the great indoors. Thankfully, the air conditioning in the fancier buildings really works, so you can duck inside high-end stores and pretend to shop every 20 minutes or so. The pre-requisite for any lunch or coffee-shop visit: the air conditioning must be like a freezer, or we ain't stopping.

Unfortunately, the heat makes it too hazy for great outdoor pictures, as the sky is not very blue and the vistas not clear enough to be dramatic. Yet another reason to take your Japan trip in any season other than summer.

Almost everything is wildly expensive, and the Japanese are like the French in being willing to pay almost any amount for the very best. Like the $100 bowl of soup or $50 watermelon I didn't have. Yet many restaurants and stores don't take credit cards. So you're constantly on the lookout for ATMs that accept US bank cards. Despite the huge number of cash machines, the only ones that worked with my cards were in 7-Eleven stores. Not the ones in Circle-K or Lawson or banks or post offices or railway stations. In small towns, you're really hosed if you don't bring wads of cash along.

As everyone on this trip is tall, we took turns hitting our heads on the doorways and low beams of traditional Japanese construction. It became a contest: "X hours since our last cranial-lumber encounter!" In the subway station, we were even able to bang our heads on air conditioning ducts. Gradually, we adapted by constantly crouching as we walked -- the whole country has been set up as some sort of revenge for Randy Newman's Short People.

Above all, Japan is an enigmatic country full of contradictions:

You do want to stay at a traditional Japanese inn -- a ryokan -- built with 100-year old cedar timbers. But the bathrooms are always factory made plastic units that are straight out of a mobile home.
There's no litter anywhere, but there are almost no trash cans anywhere either. So you carry your garbage along with you most of the day.
The people are fanatical about bodily cleanliness. But most bathrooms in restaurants, hotels, and other public places have no hand-soap or paper towels.
The Japanese are willing to spend for personal luxuries. But towels are sub-Motel 6-standard, and the toilet paper is strictly one-ply.
Japan has some of the most expensive real estate in the world, but you can't swing a dead cat around without hitting a shrine or a temple, particularly in Kyoto.
Japanese etiquette is subtle and incredibly refined, but clear only to them. Cloddish Americans feel -- and in fact are -- completely clueless about On and reciprocal obligations. Manners and customs whose intent are to make you feel as an honored guest succeed only in making you feel embarrassed and a little uncomfortable because you don't know what you were supposed to have done 10 minutes ago.

Now that we're back from our trip to Japan, we feel almost prepared for the vacation. Back in the states, we can now relax and unwind.

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