Of course not, I am human. But the techbros at YouTube would have you believe that the “algorithm” can predict what I will watch next. The Algorithm™ has access to my video watching history based on over ten years of data. Ten years of evidence showing which aspects of current affairs I click on. What news programs I watch, which science videos I rewatch and which channels I binge. The boffins at Amazon built an Algorithm™ that takes my increasingly dwindling purchase history from Amazon and suggest items I may want to purchase next. The Algorithm™ exists for me, my personal Jeeves, as I sail on the ocean of information.
The Algorithm™ knows all, sees all, processes all and can tell me all. It automates away the process of discovery, that joy of just stumbling upon something while casually strolling through the aisles of a bookshop, glancing and then skimming it, eventually liking it. The Algorithm™ knows me and can predict my thoughts and facilitate my anticipated actions.
Alas, the algorithm is not me and cannot substitute me. There is some information that another human could glean about my life and preferences via information that the Algorithm™ gathered, but that is surface level at best.
This leads to an interesting thought experiment. If I died tomorrow, could someone live vicariously as me through the Algorithm™? Would that person know me through my algorithmic recommendations?
I think not.
The Algorithm™ knows only what I tell it, what I am unafraid of disclosing. The Algorithm™ does not know my story, my past or my hopes and dreams. It cannot know that I hope to retire and study astronomy, only that I like astronomy now. It cannot know that I dislike techbros, as my copious use of their creations suggests otherwise.
I realise that the next techbro upgrade to the Algorithm™ is AI. An AI crawler will read this post, and this entire blog. It may successfully predict the next word in a list of preferences of E Rebello. But even AI, can it truly know me the way another human can?
Yours truly, not realising that I stood directly in front of the camera while it was capturing a long exposure shot of the May 2024 Aurora.One the of most clear aurora shots I have. Edited for clarity. The actual aurora looks nothing like this when seen with the naked eye.The March 2024 total solar eclipse, captured from Brantford, Ontario.
Spring 2024 was an amazing time for celestial events in eastern Canada. First was the total solar eclipse, which tore a path right across the continent. Starting in Mexico, earth’s satellite cast its shadow north, across the land of the Free, escaped deadly violence and then entered Canada. Once there, it slunk across the country along the Great Lakes and the Saint Lawrence river, before exiting via the Maritime provinces.
My own home was outside the path of totality with the difference being just under 1%. That 1% though, makes all the difference. The sun is so bright that just 1% illuminance makes it bright enough to damage human eyesight. Bunny and I decided to drive to Brantford, about one hour south, placing ourselves firmly in the Moon’s shadow.
We would each head to the rendezvous point from different starting locations, hence needed two cars. Yes, emissions, I know. The ensuing confusion meant we were unable to actually meet and were separated by approximately 500 metres when I finally stopped driving. We were worried about cloud cover because the morning had un ciel nuageux, cloudy. As luck would have it, the clouds cleared well in time for the eclipse. We hit the roads.
Bunny arrived first and discovered, much to her annoyance, that the park she chose was also the chosen viewing spot of a gaggle of other people. This being Amérique du Nord, everyone drives and that meant a full parking lot. I wouldn’t make it before the time of totality, hence the last-minute decision for me to abandon the road and to look up.
And I am eternally grateful that look up I did because the celestial sphere put on a real show. Once the moon totally obscured the sun – a coincidence of identical relative sizes, by the way, not divine intervention – I saw the sun’s corona for only the second time in my life. The first was in Bahrain, in the early 2000s. Wow indeed.
I tried to take a few photos but soon gave up and just took it in. I stared in awe at the magnificence of a rare sight. The atmosphere of a star, hotter than its surface, for reasons that physics is yet to determine.
About two months later, the sun decided to belch up plasma in the direction of the earth. Solar plasma interacting with the earth’s magnetic field and atmosphere excites atoms and makes them emit radiation as visible light. The aurora borealis for me, because I live in the norther hemisphere.
Once again, this is a sight I have seen earlier. In this case, from Finland. That time, though, I lived in Helsinki, a city with lots of light pollution and so wasn’t able to see more than a few faint wisps of green.
This time, the solar storm was much stronger. Southern Ontario has relatively lower levels of light pollution outside the main cities and I live far enough away from Toronto that light pollution isn’t a difficult problem to solve. Southern Ontario, though, has a different problem – cloudy skies. This time, luck was on our side and the clouds – once again – cleared.
And what a sight it was, seeing the aurora dancing overheard. I must remind you that Southern Ontario, the region around the Great Lakes, is at roughly the same latitude as Andorra, Monaco or the south of France. Pretty far south, although the winters would have you believe we live close to the Arctic. The aurora overhead at these latitudes is rare.
I saw green and violet and I saw the aurora shifting with time, often every second. Truly a remarkable sight. My phone captured a vivid green glow. My DSLR camera did the same, however, being largely clueless as to how to operate that camera well, the photos I captured were not great. I forgot to set the aperture correctly. Anyhow, a lesson for another time.
Bunny did not attend this event but I fully recommend it to anyone reading. If you have the chance to see the aurora in person, take it. You will not regret it. Oh, and use you eyes. Leave the cameras be. Do it for the memories, not the Snaptokgram.
In the 1973 film The Exorcist, a certain scene rose to prominence. The possessed girl lays prone on her bed and the demon, in a show of strength, makes her body levitate. The camera angle is from above, looking down, as the poor girl resembles Christ on the cross, arms spread helplessly to her sides. The priests, Karras and Merrin then chant, several times, “The power of Christ compels you”, while gesturing in a chopping motion, as if wielding a divine sword. Eventually, the chants work and the girl succumbs to the force of gravity.
I was raised Catholic and was taught – for some reason – several prayers in Latin. Yes, I, a brown Indian man was convinced by a Sicilian priest, that God, in his divine omniscience, somehow valued a European language over others, that language being Latin. Several Catholics believe this to be true, all while telling themselves that this belief is divine in nature, and in no way connected to the racist tendencies of us mere mortals. Anyhow, at one point in my life, I memorized the Roman Ritual of Exorcism, in Latin. In Latin, this is Exorcismus in Satanam et Angelos Apostaticos. I cannot remember the phrase “The power of Christ compels you” existing anywhere in that ritual. The closest phrase that I can recall is this – in nómine et virtúte Dómini nóstri Jésu. Roughly translated as “in the name and power of our Jesus”. [1]
Where is this going, you might wonder?
Ah, like several Boomers, I too, worry about “The Children”. I too, consider their safety and the messages that modern society sends to their impressionable minds. This is why I watch infernal cartoons such as Peppa Pig, Paw Patrol and Dora the Explorer. I view Paw Patrol as a sinister Canadian platform to convince Americans that the State is singularly evil and that Capitalism solves all problems, divine and corporeal. Guns are needed as are private ambulances. That is a story for another day. Today, we focus on Dora the Explorer.
Dora Marquez is a Latina who embarks on a series of quests while interacting with various talking animals. This is a kid’s show so let’s gloss over the fact that the animals can talk and focus, rather, on the subtext.
Dora’s companion is a monkey with red boots. This is a visual metaphor for the archangel Uriel, often depicted via the colour red [2] and who is the angel of wisdom. Boots, in the world of Dora, often helps the Latina girl on her way and drops pearls of wisdom.
The nemesis of the duo is Swiper, an orange talking fox. The colour is significant. What colour are the fires of hell? Orange. Dora and Boots (the angel Uriel, remember) have a chant that makes Swiper disappear. That chant is “Swiper no swiping” and is repeated three times. You may have made the connection already, but let me spell it out for you. That chant is the children’s equivalent of “The Power of Christ compels you”. In the exorcism chant, the power of Christ compels the demon to release the possessed. Here, “Swiper no swiping” compels the demonic fox to cease his diabolical deeds.
Ha.
Do you see it now? Dora is actually an Exorcist. The show’s title is Dora the Explorer. Explorer and Exorcist both start with the letter E. Boots is the Angel Uriel, sent to assist Dora on her earthly adventures. Swiper is an inner-circle demon of the Earth element and Dora exorcises him through her chants.
Do you see it now? Those crafty Americans are sending subtle messages around the world to impressionable children that they should join the Holy Army of the Catholic Church and should do battle against the legions of Hell.
I hate driving. I hate the act of driving, I hate the thought of driving, I hate everything around driving a motor vehicle on the road for any length of time.
What annoys me is other road users, other human beings, also engaged in the act of guiding a few metric tonnes of metal, plastic and rubber along clearly demarcated routes. The behavior of these other humans annoys me, especially in a place like South West Ontario where there is often no viable alternative to driving if you desire to displace yourself and your belongings from one location in spacetime to another. The lack of options is what annoys me. I view commuting as a chore, albeit a necessary one. I don’t mind driving short distances to a shop, a few times a month. If, on the other hand, I am forced to drive for forty minutes on Ontario’s fearsome Highway 401 (shamefully, home to the busiest stretch of highway in North America), I dread it. I dread the other drivers because you never know who is tired, high, drunk, distracted, clueless, confused, incompetent or some combination of these. That uncertainty is what scares me and is why I find myself concentrating fully on the vehicles around me, watching what they are doing and anticipating what they will do. That’s tiring and all I want to do is to read a book, play video games or just stare out the window at the sky or the world whizzing by.
I recently drove to Ottawa and back and the journey was harrowing. On the way there, I sat in Toronto traffic for two hours. I saw numerous bad drivers and dangerous maneuvers. I do not want my personal insurance profile to change hence I give others a wide berth, often wide enough that a north American lorry can fill the gap. A journey of four and a half hours turned into seven hours. Add to this, the variety and unpredictability of weather around the great lakes and you often have to wonder, who around you is driving on summer tires in the winter and whose tires are almost bald, like Formula 1 tires but out of laziness or poverty, not design.
A car is some amount of freedom, but it comes at a cost. Insurance, tires, maintenance, petrol, the mental load of driving. That’s not freedom.
This is why I love public transit. That is freedom. Everyone in an urban area deserves good, reliable transit. You can go where you want, when you want, subject to schedules, of course. It bothers me that we don’t view public transit as an investment, an investment in freedom that deserves to be protected. On the train, tram, bus or metro, you can see other people. You can not see other people. You can do your own thing, you can watch someone else doing theirs. A train between Toronto and Ottawa does exist, but it isn’t cheap. Prices are comparable to a flight. When your family has four members, driving is cheaper on your pocket but driving has others costs that people don’t account for – the pubic money spent maintaining road infrastructure. Ontario spends around 13 Billion Canadian dollars to maintain road infrastructure. That’s roughly $ 900 per person, per year on just roads or about three dollars a day. People don’t really care about that money because we assume that roads will continue to be available, maintained and useable. Why can’t we assume the train will be there? A reliable bus service?
L – A Gacha-gacha rocket from the Miraikan science museum in Tokyo.
R – The assembled E233 Tokyo metro car
At the Toronto Anime North convention in 2022, I discovered nanoblock, the micro-sized building blocks made by a Japanese company called Kawada. They are small enough to be fiddly and unstable but give you tremendous satisfaction when you assemble them into a more concrete whole.
I was slightly taken aback by the prices – most sets are around fifteen Canadian dollary-doos. Remember that I am taken aback by any price that is not zero – after all, I am Indian. I bought two at the nanoblock store in Tokyo Skytree – admittedly, not the cheapest location.
One set was a model of the E233 trainset developed by Japanese train company JR East. The model I have is blue, to match the colours of the Keihin–Tōhoku line in Tokyo.
I decided to capture the building process in a time-lapse video. My YouTube game is weak, hence why there are few edits and the thumbnail is vertical. Both unforgivable errors. Straight to jail.
A second model that W purchased for me was of the N700 Shinkansen. Another timelapse video is below. The interesting aspect of these designs is that you can combine individual models into a train set. I love that!
Japan loves trains. Many stations have a jingle or a melody that plays as trains arrive and depart. There is a culture of tetsudou (train) otaku – people so obsessed with a hobby that it defines their personality – in this case, trains. There are shops where you can exchange your yen, dollars and rupees for model trains, model tracks, even model people for your model train stations. Trains are everywhere, train stations are destinations and trains are indeed a major part of Japanese life.
A selection of Japanese trains at the Kyoto Railway Museum https://www.kyotorailwaymuseum.jp/en/
No surprise then that the first high-speed rail line ws built in Japan in the 1960s. The technology behind most trains is ancient, as is the Shinkansen – the bullet trains. Riding them is quite the experience, especially for the North American tourist, where the populace famously traded public transit for “freedom” in the form of manly, testosterone-fuelled, pickup trucks the size and weight of Sherman tanks. Japanese people travel more kilometres annualy by train than even a country like India with some ten times the population. Surprisingly, Japan transports relatively little freight by train – something obvious in hindsight. Less than 1% of Japanese domestic freight travels via rail. I recall seeing one freight train in Hiroshima and people were out in force taking pictures. In contrast, the USA and Canada move enormous quantities of train freight – almost a quarter of the world’s total between them. The North American train isn’t a symbol of freedom, it is a necessary evil, an unwelcome rumble ruining the rustic, rural peace of the countryside. Japanese trains, meanwhile, are literally routed through buildings – see the photo below from Akihabara station in Tokyo.
A Tokyo Metro train literally on top of a building. Uncertain location although it is definitely the Chūō-Sōbu line, evident from the yellow branding on the train. I believe this is Akihabara.
The Japanese train is planned around the human experience and every step is made as easy as possible. Exits from train stations are numbered and all signage indicates these numbers. This makes finding the correct exit for your destination a breeze. On the subway, cars are numbered on the platform floor and most stations have a map showing you which car to board in order to be close to an escalator or lift at your destination station. The cherry on top is that all this info is in your favourite mobile navigation application!
Kuramae station in Kyoto.Front (Green Car) of a Shinkansen at Tokyo.25 kv catenary system of the Sanyo Shinkansen.A collection of images featuring various Japanese trains.
The Shinkansen experience is similar – whizzing along the Japanese islands at nearly 300 km/hr makes the country so much smaller but also more accessible. Tokyo to Kyoto is around 450 km and takes around five hours by car. In contrast, it is about three hours by the Shinkansen and transit. At the end of your train journey, you arrive in the city centre and connect to a robust local transit network and can reach pretty much anywhere in either region. Why bother with the hassle of a car, insurance, driving and traffic when you can catch Pokemon on your cellphone as someone else pilots the train? This is a strong incentive that drives up transit usage, creates demand for better transit and allows transit operators to maintain and invest in the system. In stark contrast, Guelph to Toronto (both in South West Ontario, the most populous region of Canada) is about 95 km by road and takes around 80 minutes by GO Train running with old, diesel locomotives. Depending on traffic, the same journey is anywhere between one and two hours by road. The GO Kitchener line running through Guelph is yet to be electrified. Once you are in Toronto, the transit system is decent by North American standards. The Shinkansen trains are clean, modern and many have on-board catering. It’s just a nicer experience and having the option is freeing – a notion that many North Americans profess to desire. On a more positive note, GO train service in SW Ontario is expanding and is expected to be two-way, all say service by 2025. Hopefully.
A Shinkansen train tearing through Himeji station.
And then there is the Japanese train meal – the ekiben or the “station bento” boxes containing carefully selected foods designed to be enjoyed on board your train. I sampled several varieties and grew to love them. The selection is wide, the quality high and the cost relatively low. Of course, Japan is not a developing country so “low cost” is a relative term but compared to a restaurant meal, an ekiben is affordable. These are not designed for consumption on local trains but rather on longer distance trains – the Shinkansen for example. Most long-distance trains come with a tray at your seat – surprisingly large, I must add – where you can enjoy your ekiben meal. I often chose the varieties without fish although seafood is hard to avoid completely. I sampled Kobe beef, stewed beef, grilled pork, sticky rice, eel (reluctantly), fish roe, lotus root, assorted veggies, different eggs, and many other items. Ekiben are self-contained, complete meals – chopsticks are included and your meal is neatly partitioned. Of course, you provide your own serviettes and trash can. Japan is notorious for having few public bins but not to worry – your long-distance train has several.
One of the four ekiben i ate.
Then there is the branding. There is a Hello Kitty Shinkansen featuring bold branding using the famous mouthless feline. Also in existence is a Pikachu train where parents and kids alike can catch Pikachu. Oh and did i mention the novelty trains? There is the FruiTea Fukushima Train with local Fukushima (yes, that Fukushima) produce, the art gallery Genbi Shinkansen, the rural house-themed Oykot train in Nagano… I could go on but you get the idea. Even Finland’s Moomin have a special train in Japan. There is no equivalent train in Finland, the land where the Moomin were created by Tove Jansson.
In all, the train experience in Japan is enjoyable and most importantly, convenient. It beats road traffic, is quite, reliable and calming. Totally would recommend and I hope more train systems around the world learn the best from this island nation.
The Tokyo SkytreeKaminarimon gate, one of two gates to the Sensō-ji shrine in AsakusaTokyo is full of oases of calm, such as this.Invisible from the air is the greenery seen here. Yes, the built environment dominates but plants abound.
Tokyo is a massive city. Its scale, even when seen, is difficult to comprehend. The other similarly-sized city with which I am familiar is Bombay and Bombay is quite a bit smaller than Tokyo. The Tokyo region population is around 32% higher, the GDP is over three times higher as is Tokyo’s land area. Tokyo is also infinitely cleaner and more hygienic than Bombay can ever hope to be and this is cultural, something that takes centuries to shift.
I arrived in Tokyo and stayed in Asakusa, one of the fifty four subdivisions of the city. Asakusa was historically the entertainment district and my hotel was just across the street from the Bandai Namco offices. Asakusa is easy to reach from Haneda airport. The journey is technically on two metro lines but the same train continues on meaning you don’t even have to get off to change lines. The hotel was small – my room was around fourteen square meters in total, including the toilet. The floor is a tatami mat meaning that the unsuspecting gaijin must remove their outdoor footwear and don the indoor equivalent. Nearby is the Senso-ji jinja (temple) – Tokyo’s oldest and also the golden poo, apparently depicting the head on a mug of beer. Legend has it that the poo was supposed to be installed vertically but locals were not too thrilled and NIMBY-ism led to the structure’s eventual sideways installation. Also visible from my hotel were the Sumida river and the Tokyo Skytree, a 634 meter broadcast and observation tower that’s hard to miss. This is all Asakusa and the surrounding area. I’m telling you this to emphasis a simple point – Asakusa isn’t a particularly central area or distinctive in any way – all of Tokyo is like this.
From a North American perspective, it is like downtown. If you visit downtown Toronto (I prefer the term ‘center’), you will see that things are close together – businesses, offices, restaurants, apartment towers and so on. There are things not visible from street level including rooftop bars, patios and so on. Once you leave downtown – and this transition is very obvious – things change. Roads are wider, there’s more wasteful single family houses and noise levels drop. Everywhere in Tokyo is downtown. In fact, a lot of old world cities are like this. The city center of Bombay is large, bustling and busy. I lived in the suburbs and right outside every suburban train station in Bombay is another downtown. Think about that – in one city, there are multiple centers. This is the bit that confuses many North Americans. I must confess that in Tokyo, even I was taken aback by the sheer scale of the city, by the diversity of experiences, flavours and choices. There are fewer, large supermarkets and more convenience stores for the things you need frequently. Bombay is exactly like this.
Tokyo is a megacity but one unlike most others. For one, not a lot of old neighbourhood structures exist as they were flattened during the world wars. There are lots of old buildings and shrines but they are spread out. Most buildings you see from street level were built in the recent decades.
To give you some sense of scale, there is an aerial image of Tokyo and Mount Fuji that is frequently reposted on Reddit – I copied it below. Visible at the bottom right is the Tokyo Skytree. Notable also is the apparent lack of greenery. This is misleading because Tokyo is full of greenery, just not large trees visible from above like other places. Also missing are the numerous oases of quiet and solitude – the temples, shrines and parks, miraculously insulated from the din of city life.
Tokyo from the air, looking south. Mount Fuji is in the background. This image circulates on Reddit regularly and I am yet to find a source. I will credit the author once I identify them.
I spent almost six days in Tokyo and I saw very little. I visited Akihabara, several shops, supermarkets and convenience stores. But Tokyo is so large you can spend a lifetime there and never really see all of it.
Someday, I will return. Until then, memories and photos will suffice.
Food is central to life in Japan. Yes, food is essential to life for any human but the Japanese experience is different. Japanese food ranges from the utilitarian restaurants at busy train stations to the exquisitely honed culinary talents at work in a $ 400 per meal Wagyu beef specialty restaurant. It ranges from a simple ramen to a sixteen course breakfast served by Buddhist monks. An entire building in Hiroshima dedicated to a single dish (okonomiyaki – 広島風お好み焼き) to a handful of restaurants in the entire country serving regional cuisines. Not many other cultures that I am familiar with have quite this breadth of food types, preparation styles and regional interpretations. It is quite the experience and I’m glad I was able to partake of some.
Arrow shows Chukasoba Billiken (中華ソバビリケン) in Asakusa.
I began right after arriving in Tokyo – soba noodles was my first point of discovery. Of late, I developed a mild allergy of sorts – I eat certain foods and face a bout of explosive diarrhoea, once. Once and done. Which foods trigger it, I am not certain, however I suspect it might be certain preservatives or additives. Soup powders trigger it, as do certain ready-to-eat meals. Sometimes, it is mushrooms and I suspected MSG but can’t prove it. Anyhow, I knew that Japanese cuisine uses a lot of soy, MSG and other ingredients, some of which may upset my intestines. I did not want to tempt the fates so I decided to play it safe and eat right before returning to the hotel. Nervously, I approached a noodle restaurant close to the hotel, in Asakusa. Chūka sobabiriken (中華ソバビリケン) was the place and you can locate them with your favourite map. “Homemade noodles Billiken” is the name in English. I expected it to be good because there were seven stools at the counter, no tables, a brief menu and a Japanese-style ordering machine that ingested currency notes and spat out coins and food tokens. Oh and, all the menus and signs were in Japanese. Evidently, the weary gaijin was not their target audience.
I arrived at 17:45, fifteen minutes after the evening service commenced. Soba noodles are made of buckwheat and are more firm compared to wheat noodles. I cannot recall trying them before this point and even in the restaurant, I did not realise I ordered soba. Now, I am not big on social media photography and so did not take a picture of my food (a lie, see image below) but I do remember that I enjoyed it immensely. The flavours were simple, clean and bold. This is a stark contrast to the Indian foods I ate as a child – foods where the flavours are a cacophony, much like the country of India itself. My bowl of ramen was also cheap – around ten Canadian dollary-doos, and this too pleased me. My chopstick game is not the best so I struggled a bit eating my noodles, egg and meat but I powered through. I noticed that around two Japanese customers ordered after me and finished before I did. Evidently, they are more adept at consuming noodles than I was but our restauranteurs were unfazed and willing to help. They even helped us with the ticket machines!
The text above is a lie. I did take a photo of my soba noodles – here it is. As you can see, no mushrooms.
Besides not having a photo (same lie, repeated), I also forgot what specific dish I ate. In any case, it was a clear soup with pieces of pork, chopped onions, an egg and enoki mushrooms on the side (another lie). The ingredients were top notch and their quality was very obvious. A full day after leaving home, I was glad to find this restaurant and to eat like the locals. I was glad to be full but not bursting. This is yet another aspect I like about Japanese food – the manageable portion sizes. North America is indeed the land of plenty however it is also the land of too much. Too much food, too much wastage. Back in Bombay, I witnessed the poor eating rotting food from dustbins and those mental images are difficult to erase, as is the stench. This may be why I have an aversion to wasting food. The portion sizes in North America are so large that they are one component in the obesity epidemic but also lead to lots of wasted food. In Tokyo, I was all to happy to return an empty bowl to our restaurant staff.
I will mention two other aspects of Japanese food that I loved – the omnipresent vending machines and the convenience store nibbles. Vending machines are absolutely everywhere and sell everything from sugary drinks to packaged hot coffee, ramen noodles to socks. Those things are a marvel and a lifesaver on a hot day. Convenience stores like 7-Eleven, Lawson and Family Mart aren’t as numerous as vending machines but are almost everywhere and offer many options for pre-cooked food ranging from varieties of onigiri to filled pastries and matcha cakes. If only Canada had more of them. Alas.
I ate a lot more food through my stay in Japan and I will get to that in subsequent posts.
Japan is a strange, alien country for a lot of people. Its exports are popular around the world and some generations are more familiar with Japanese manufactured goods and their accompanying, poorly translated text descriptions. Other generations know Japanese cultural exports – anime, manga, J-pop, cinema and video games. Regardless, Japan – from a western viewpoint – is about as culturally far as one can go without too much hassle. Japan is sometimes fetishised, sometimes misunderstood, sometimes adored and often exaggerated to comical dimensions. No doubt, Japan is a very interesting country.
I looked forward to my trip there, in May 2023, and I had several items on my personal agenda. Shinkansen (high-speed rail), the Suzuka motor racing circuit (host of the Japanese Formula 1 race), Godzilla, Fuji-san, the minute-perfect trains, the Playstation, robots and many others.
For connoisseurs of international travel, Japan is travel on easy mode. Everything, everywhere is set up for the international traveller. Granted, the assumption is that your language skills include English, Mandarin or Korean but in most cases, things are set up for your success. The global tourism sector took a hit during the COVID-19 pandemic and is yet to recover to 2019 levels. Japan is similarly affected. The United Nations’ list of the ten most popular countries by tourist arrivals does not include Japan. UN data puts the number of foreign tourist arrivals (2022) in Japan at around 3.8 million – around 5% of the comparable number in Spain. This was surprising to me because the tourism sector in Japan appears large, active and profitable. The implication – surprisingly – is that most Japanese tourism is domestic. Despite this, many things are geared towards the foreign tourist, something I valued and used fully.
My perspective on Japan is certainly not Western but it is close. As a child, i unwittingly watched several cartoon shows that were from Japan. They were dubbed in Arabic so I had no clue as to their origin, having discovered the truth only as an adult. I am myself Asian – my ethnic roots trace to India, which is part of Asia. The North American usage of “Asian” refers to ethnicities from East Asia, which is strange although, not entirely surprising. Many North Americans continue to refer to indigenous North Americans as “Indian” despite having access to accurate maps.
From my perspective, Japan is one of those countries that is simultaneously very familiar and unfamilar. The bustle of a city like Tokyo is similar to that of Bombay. The cleanliness is alien. The crowds are familiar, the absence of the associated stench is not. The misogyny is (unfortunately) familiar, the way it manifests is not – maid cafes, lewd comics sold behind curtains. The conservative society is familiar, the conformist pressure is familiar. Alien to me are the safety-valves for pent-up pressure, the outlets for suppressed creativity. Dear reader, I encourage you to investigate what the Tokyo salaryman gets up to after hours and how gaijins are spoken about behind closed doors.
I enjoyed my time in Japan. I love the infrastructure, the roads, the trains, the shinkansen, the attention to detail. I enjoy the manageable portion sizes, the quality of ingredients, the focus on simple flavours. I enjoy the high standards for punctuality, for polite conversation, the respect for public space. I admire the thought put into ensuring equal participation for all – the accessibility at every train station, the man at the ticket turnstile guiding the deaf and blind. I admire Japanese society’s ties to its past, the respect for those who came before while simultaneously aiming for a better future for those yet to come. Japan is truly a remarkable country where many things work and work well. It is a sort of ideal country for someone of my persuasions.
I would never live there. Japan is a homogeneous society with significant uniformity in thought. Not many Japanese people travel abroad – 2019 saw more Canadian tourists abroad than Japanese. This despite the fact that the population of Japan is three times that of Canada. Japan does not see significant immigration and is famously xenophobic. I observed the number of Nepali restaurants in Tokyo and wondered how bad things are in Nepal that Nepalis are driven to the famously insular Japan, of all countries. Japanese society also has a problem with misogyny. Set your smartphone’s location to Japan and notice that you cannot disable the camera shutter sound. Why, you wonder? The uncomfortable truth is the tendency of many Japanese men to capture unsolicited and invasive upskirt pictures of Japanese women. Japan also has a complicated relationship with its own past, especially the horrors the state committed and the symbolism attached to historical imagery – see the rising sum flag controversy as one example.
Japan is a complicated country and I knew this. During my stay, I tried to get a sense of what life there is like. My stay was not guided and I ventured both on and off the tourist path. It was certainly memorable and I look forward to visiting again.
Sun. Sand. Pearls. Camels. Monarchs, but not that kind.
Image courtesy Hans Schwarzkopf pixabay.com
I grew up in Bahrain. I moved there at four years old so I did not have any understanding of the world, society or even a map. My knowledge of geography would soon change immensely because I was constantly reminded by the Bahrainis that I was a filthy Indian, someone beneath them but also someone whose ethnic origins were not in Bahrain. I soon realised that I was Indian. That my face and accent were dead giveaways of my genetic links to the region and nation of India. I knew that I was no longer in India and that India was somewhere else. Where? The map would tell you.
Bahrain was an interesting place at the time. The majority of the population was not from Bahrain but rather from the Indian subcontinent – India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka – in addition to a significant number from the Philippines. Most were low-wage workers but one must remember that “low” is relative. Low compared to others in Bahrain but high relative to wages in the mother country. Most were men, young men who dreamed of better lives back home. Home was where the family was, where their lives were, where love was and where the future was being played out. All while they were in Bahrain. There were some immigrant women, usually wives, daughters or relatives of the men who moved. Likewise, there were children too – such as me.
One of my earliest memories is standing outside the airport in Bombay – then Sahar Airport – staring at a Gulf Air plane and asking my cousins how that thing could possibly fly. Fly it did and I loved it. Partly because the experience was new and partly because I was small enough to walk up to the flight attendants and politely ask for a toy – something I was usually given for free. I also enjoyed the meal, and even as an adult, I continue to enjoy airline meals. Why? Possibly because I enjoy the novelty, possibly because I enjoy eating in small spaces, possibly because the meal is planned and everything you need is in a convenient package. Who can say?
Anyhow, my next memory is arriving at the apartment my parents rented and being offered a “Sun Top” drink by my dad. As I looked it up, I fell down an interesting rabbit hole. Sun Top is Danish, and was developed just outside Copenhagen. Interestingly, those Sun Top drinks were where I first encountered the Tetra Pak and I always assumed Tetra Pak were Danish. They are Swedish, but for tax avoidance are conveniently located in the international tax haven of Switzerland. Danish Sun Top is a brand from Co-Ro foods. Lots of other things in Bahrain were Danish – several milk products, for some reason. There was a Danish powdered milk brand called Dano. Denmark was also the source of much confusion with the adjective for things and people of the Netherlands – Dutch. Danish and Dutch – how different could they be? Very, as I later discovered. For context, Denmark does quite a bit of business with the Arabian Gulf. In 2020, Denmark exported around one billion US dollars worth of goods and service to Saudi Arabia, a country right next door to Bahrain.
I liked Bahrain though I did not know why at the time. Most women in Bahrain would and still do disagree. The misogyny is on a different level there but it is not unlike most society in that part of the world – South Asia and the Middle East. I was not a woman so I was spared all of those problems. I enjoyed the change from India. The quiet, the peace, the clean streets, the absence of Bombay’s unending cacophony and smells.
After the initial days, I joined school. A pretty good school by Indian standards, at least. Most of my classmates were Indians and many were from Kerala or Goa. The Goans were very similar to me – we had similar accents, Portuguese surnames, ate the same food, went to the same church and supported the same football teams. I loved the Goans and still do. These friends were how I discovered Portugal, Brazil, Deportivo de La Coruña, Porto, Sporting, Benfica, Churchill Brothers, Dempo and Salgaocar. The latter three being football clubs in Goa.
Outside school, my life was spent avoiding the sun. It was mostly too hot for outdoor activities and the internet was barely a thing at the time. Mobile phones were certainly not common although they did exist. The highlights of the week were trips to the supermarket where I would wander down the aisles, imagining my life with ownership of the wares on display. I also wandered the streets and still have a good mental map of the area.
I remember the souk, the pearl roundabout, the Arad fort, the Bahrain gate and several restaurants.
Copyright Philippe Leroyer on Flickr. (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
