East Eats West

Young, male and living in a city – welcome Mr.Metrosexual Nippon

Unless you are a blind, old and are not allowed to take Viagra anymore because of heart conditions, your attention in Tokyo will be caught by the striking appearances of young and immaculately dressed women. As I earlier Japanese younger females lay great emphasis on make-up, fashion, shoes and boots and handbags. The most popular look is “ready for the Oscars” where make-up and hairdo resemble the one of Jennifer Lopez and other Hollywood stars. Per se not very exceptional you might say. Right. More uncommon is that young Japanese men look similar: a skinny frame dressed in the latest bohemian-come-glamour style combined with head-wear, elaborate hairdos and the heavy use of blow-driers and gel. Young men seem to be as enthusiastic about fashion, lifestyle and shopping as women and eagerly read lifestyle and fashion magazines that hype the latest products: the modern metropolis gives raise to metrosexuality (men interested in fashion and lifestyle similar to women). The question is if this trend will stay. My bet is it will even spread, also to other cities of the world with increasing spending power. Why? Tokyo is the biggest city in the world with over 20 million wealthy inhabitants. It employs thousands of workers and offers all the thrills of any modern city. With urbanization on the increase it is also the modern sweatshop for knowledge workers clocking in high working hours a week and offering them little non-commercial diversion. Good old fashion hobbies or outdoor activities are unpopular. This young generation has a good education and a well-paying job, is tech-savvy and constantly surrounded by commercials and the ever-luring luxury brands. A major past-time occupation is shopping, watching TV, playing games or partying. With all necessity for physical strength or stamina gone, the knowledge workers compete on mental skills, fashion-awareness: brain and being in-the-loop count more than pure brawns. Looks become more important as the knowledge workers is constantly immersed in perfectly designed media messages with beautiful models. Good looks are a sign of achievement and spending powers and luxury worn as medals of honour. In a society where products are hard to distinguish based on quality branding generates emotional value and desire. Luxury and branded products are today a part of the consumer psychological make-up and here to stay. Luxury, knowledge workers and metrosexuality go hand in hand, so do not fight it, buy it!

Japanese Art of Dollmaking

My host, Hiroko Iwata, is one out of about 100 Japanese artists who still make traditional Japanese dolls out of wood and textile by hand. It takes her about three months for a doll and she only makes four to five a year. She has won several awards and yearly exhibits at Tokyo's most exclusive department store Wako. Here are some recent pictures I took of her newest dolls.

This is her website

Ghibli Animation Movie Museum, 5th December, 119 day

The Ghibli Museum is dedicated to the animation pictures of Ghibli Studios with all its amazing characters from flying taxi cats to walking houses and all sorts of peaceful and mute ghosts. And surprisingly it has a strong connection with Switzerland with a special showcase with Sbrinz cheese and a diorama of the Swiss Alps. Why? Because in the 70ies Ghibli made the famous animation movie Heidi based on the novel of Johanna Spyri from Switzerland. This movie I guess has put Switzerland firmly on the tourist map for Japanese. Thanks for that! Nowadays Ghibli has produced famous (at least in Japan) animation movies like Howl’s moving Castle and Spirited Away.

In many ways the museum reminds me of what I like and dislike about Japan: the wonderful imaginative designs with close attention to detail, the rich visual history and the high artisanal skills, its immaculately cleanliness and the best use of limited space. I like the Ghibli characters, especially recently, which revolve around a parallel world of ghosts, strange animals and fantastic machines, being routed in industrialization and the Japanese love of technology. Inside the museum the Japanese also demonstrate their incredible adeptness at falling asleep anywhere quickly. On the other hand one gets greeted by smiling but very fussy staff that gives incessantly orders and ushers people around. The little multi-lingual prospectus starts with the rules and the don’ts first and everywhere one is closely supervised by staff that constantly guides and instructs. No descriptions are in English and the staff can only speak a few words of English and garbage bins are missing. But it is the Japanese knack for closely monitoring and hoarding people around that makes me out rightly uncomfortable. Charming in the beginning I became quickly tired of being treated like a kid everywhere, even if they smile and bow. This is my last day in Japan and nevertheless I will miss the wonderful hospitality of my friends that made my stay unforgivable. Thank you very much!

It does not get any trendier and more fashionable in Tokyo than this

Gwen Stefani sang about Harajuku and its fashion-conscious teenagers dressed up in fantastic and bizarre costumes. Unfortunately it was raining this Sunday so the dressed up teenagers stayed home. The day after I strolled around the trendy neighbourhoods of Omote-sando and neighbouring Harajuku which their many small boutiques, fashionable cafés and stylish restaurants. These neighbourhoods are the trend incubators of Tokyo and a Mecca for fashion victims. From tattoo shops to cowboy boot shops to hip hop joints: if you can’t find it here, you will not find it anywhere else. These areas are also home to funky architecture as you can see from my newest pictures.

Lying under five millions stars with a Japanese non-stop commentary

Most of us have been to planetariums as kids: I have been for example to ones in Lucerne (Switzerland) and Munich (Deutsches Museum). There is also one in Kawasaki near Tokyo where I went today. The first indication that this planetarium was different was that I got handed out a standard binocular. The room was normal with a normal dome and it the middle was the familiar oddly-shaped projector. Beside the old projector was a much smaller projector looking like R2D2. Its brash name was Megastar II. It is a Japanese invention and only four exist in the world (most star projectors nowadays come from Zeiss in Germany). I sat down and waited for the Japanese instruction to finish and the lights to go down. After a lengthy explanation of how the binocular are to be used (no kidding) the show started. First the old Zeiss machine began its familiar show with the sunset and all sorts of zodiac signs were projected and explained. Then in the second half the Megastar II took over. And boy, what a difference! This little ingenious Japanese device projects over five million stars, a world record! The machine projects the Milky Way in a detail that you can use binoculars and see every single star and shading, like in the real sky! Just to give you a comparison: A good old fashion planetarium projects a couple of ten-thousand stars, not more. Do not even think to use binoculars on them. The Megastar II in contrast can project the tiniest shades in nebulas and pinpoints every little star on the dome: it does feel like lying under the open sky in a clear night. Were there not the very annoying Japanese commentator talking through the 90 minutes show, non-stop…

I am not sorry and I will interrupt anyhow

Japan is constantly worrying about their citizen. As I wrote about earlier there are security staff guiding you out of parking lots, pointing you in the right direction in the museum and fire engines using their sirens warn you additionally with loudspeakers. In the subway the staff tells you over the PA not to push, walk on the right side, not forget your belongings, what other connections there are and so forth. Even most machines talk to you: starting from cars telling you that the automated billing system works, the parking meter that you have to enter the ticket, the bath-tub that the water has reached the proper temperature (no kidding) and the escalator that the end is near. Everywhere either machine or smiling staff worry about your wellbeing (as we know Japanese are famous for being outrageously rebellious and undisciplined). The thing is that after you heard the same phrase a gazillion of times you wish them to shut up, to tell them that you can take care of yourself. But they don’t shut up. It is there job, written down in the work manual. This Friday night my two Japanese friends invited me to a nice Japanese restaurant (near Roppongi, you guessed it). We were immersed in an intense discussion about the peculiarities of living in Japan when the waiter arrived in order to announce the specialties of the day and to explain (sic!) us the menu. So we ordered. Typically we order a variety of dishes and they come out of the kitchen every 15 minutes or so. As we enjoyed the good food our discussion became more intense. Nevertheless every time a new dish came the waiter ruthlessly interrupted us in order to, smilingly, explain the dish and how to eat it (e.g. dip the tempura in the sauce and put salt over it). This happened again and again, like a clock-work. Eventually it erupted out of my Japanese friends (both having lived in Europe for a longer time): they were so fed up with being advised, lectured, guided and taken care of all the time, they are fed up with waiters interrupting and that they are fed up with not being allowed to ask questions at work, of not being allowed to state their opinions and of being discriminated in the job because they are women. We intensively debated in English the idiosyncrasies of the Japanese society and its rudeness. The waitress in the meantime kept on mixing the rice on a little tray and then said “thank you” in English, apparently understanding English. Guess what: the next time she came, she interrupted nevertheless. It is in the manual, stupid!

The Zen-sation of Emptiness - Mori Art Museum Tokyo

After a soothing and uplifting Shodo (Japanese calligraphy) lesson with a new and very charming female teacher I headed again to Roppongi Hills, my favorite part of town in Tokyo. Its massive tower and urban village feeling of shops, restaurants, cafés, cinema and movie are luring. Again I was magically drawn to the Mori Art Museum (see my previous blog entry – enter link) and its inspiring and uplifting exhibition by the acclaimed Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto (link). And there in the exhibition it happened again: art hit me and opened a door to far away place in my soul. All of a sudden, while intensively watching Sugimoto’s photos of the empty and calm sea and his incredibly powerful empty movie screens I realized what much more there is to life beyond reasoning, analytics and information: these empty screens in empty movie theatres glow with white purity and are bursting with life. The reduction and stripping of information to the precise and essential minimum in the present lead to clarity and clear-voyance. When the self awakes and realizes that less is more and when thoughts are reduced to the single moment, the future not being allowed to happen and the past being forgotten, the true nature appears. A pure joy is abruptly taking hold of the soul when ratio and mind bow to the deeper knowledge of life, locking out any distracting noises and messages. In Sugimoto’s photographs the hundreds years of Zen wisdom of the simplicity of the truth is beautifully caught in one single, precise black and white picture. Simple is beautiful, it has never been clearer. Sugimoto instills the very rare moment of absolute joy, listening to art talking to the subconscious self, communicating beyond language and reason, beyond justification and explanation. What a pure moment of outmost luxury and joy in a world of ubiquitous information and time-synchronous communication. The truth has always been there; it has just not been heard.

Taro Okamoto – a famous Japanese multitalented artist

Taro Okamoto is a famous Japanese artist so far unknown to me. He was born and lived in Kawasaki (I was told there are no connections to the bike company) and the city erected in his honor a museum in a wonderful peaceful park. He became famous in Japan for designing a monumental tower for the Expo in 1970. Coming from an artist family (his father was a Manga artist and his mother a poet) he soon learned many art forms from pottery to calligraphy to painting and sculpting. While his colorful and brutal, slightly surreal, paintings are to crude and brash for my taste, I do like the poetic and lost expression of his sculptures, especially the ones with the trademark flat faces. Set up in parks and in natural surrounding they command a strong grip of the place, raising questions of belonging and sucking the viewer in. They conjure a feeling of loneliness and quietness in this fast-turning world of ours. Their quality lies in their reflection of the inner soul in a non-judging way and seem to penetrate with their missing eyes the deep emotions buried among noise and sensory overload.

Of Masters and Pupils

One of the very appealing aspects of Japan is the strong arts and handicrafts. My host Hiroko for example has been making wooden dolls for over a quarter century. The dolls take about three months to make and are purely handmade from the dress to the carving and dress. Another particular aspect of Japan is the strong master-student relationship. There are masters in doll-making (Hiroko has one), Judo, Zen and Shodo. I often thought about masters being masters because of their knowledge and skill-level. But a master will remain someone’s master for life, the student always being the master’s student. It is a lifelong deeply respectful relationship based on the master not only as knowledgeable person but as a spiritus rector. Even if one becomes more accomplished let’s say in Judo and surpasses the master in skill, one will always remain student. This is based on the idea that one becomes more adept in a skill because of the master. The master is the guide, stepping-stone and incubator and will remain so for the rest of the life. My friend Hiroko has students herself who have been students of hers for decades and will remain students even in their advanced age.

The meaning of order in Japan

Guess, what is that? As I walked home from the gym today I saw this red object? Take a guess, for what is it and write a comment! I am looking forward to your guesses...

Revelation: It is a mobile ashtray belonging to the construction workers (in the back).