Life in Animé

The only home that the Global Soul can find these days is in the midst of the alien and indecipherable, says travel writer Pico Iyer (The Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, and the Search for Home, Vintage, 2000). 

For over a year now, the alien and indecipherable for me has been Japan. Ever since I set foot in this country, I have been on a sensory high. Such an overwhelming and exhilarating display of beauty, spirituality, consumerism, art, cuisine–from one extreme to the other.  Remember that feeling of going to a place for the first time? Where every moment seems unbearably precious, every outing an extraordinary lesson in a new culture and a new people–full of thrilling sights and smells, tastes and textures, thoughts and values, encounters and connections? 

I cannot leave home without a camera and a notebook for fear of missing out on documenting interesting observations and impressions, lest I forget minute details I want to keep with me forever. You must be very quick to get good shots of the "Gothic & Lolita girls" in Harajuku in their ruffle and lace bonnets, white skin foundation, Vivienne Westwood shoes, metal crosses or spiders, Mini-Me-like Goth dolls, and of course their vampire novels. 

It would be sinful not to have a camera in case of rare sightings of genuine geishas and maikos shuffling through the narrow streets lined with sakura trees in Gion, Kyoto. I feel inclined to capture every breath-taking scene of a six-hour hike through the beautiful mountains and countryside of Yamanashi. How can I possibly enter the ornate Buddhist temples and austere Shinto shrines without taking a picture?

And what about the sweet old ojisan (grandfather) who manages my apartment building, with his sweet smile, large round glasses falling off his nose, and robot-like gestures. Always in an immaculate crisp white collared shirt and khaki trousers, sometimes even white gloves, as he organizes the 50 separate bins for various recyclable materials, or sweeping the floor. We don’t speak each other’s language, but we always manage to carry on a conversation, getting by on exaggerated hand gestures and facial expressions. I already have various scenarios for a mangga or animé series featuring him.  

Then there are the millions of aspects of Japanese art to document –such as the tea ceremony, ukiyo-e, sumi-e, kabuki, noh theatre. We certainly can’t forget sumo!

The Rough Guide to Japan gives a great description of the Japanese experience in a nutshell:  you might see a farmer tending his paddy field, and at another corner find yourself next to a neon-festooned pachinko or electronic games parlor in the suburb of a sprawling metropolis. One day you could be picking through fashions in the biggest department store on earth, the next relaxing in the outdoor onsen (hot-spring) pool, watching cherry blossoms or snowflakes fall, depending on the season.

The country is increasingly feeling the impacts of mass tourism, with ranks of gift shops, ugly hotels and crowds often ruining potentially idyllic spots. Yet, time and again, Japan redeems itself with unexpectedly beautiful landscapes, charmingly courteous people, and its tangible sense of history and cherished traditions. Most intriguing of all is the opaqueness at the heart of this mysterious "hidden" culture that stems from a blurring of traditional boundaries between East and West.

So many interesting adventures lurking in every corner! Tokyo has been described as a hi-tech, surreal, sci-fi assault on the senses, a city like none other on earth. I would say that goes for the whole country.  

It is the sixth year of the second millennium. Japanese salary men and office ladies flock to Yokohama’s business district of Minato Mirai battling their way through the latest developments in technology and the economy. Unassuming citizens of the world converge at the district’s International Conference Center to exchange valuable information ranging from medicine, business, and IT, to animé, fashion, and quilt-making.  

As the entire staff of an international research institute steps out for their annual group photo during a Board Meeting discussing supposedly earth-shaking issues of utmost importance to the entire world (multi-lateral environmental agreements, biotechnology, and education for sustainable development), they are met by a crowd of monsters and aliens–some in combat with masked crusaders in colorful and tight-fighting costumes, very much like the Power Rangers. A menacing red and muscled figure surveys the scene, leaning against the railings beside a man, or what could be a monster in human form! I could’ve sworn I had stepped right into the planet Tatooine. An alien invasion perhaps? 

But the half-humans in blue suits with their monster torsos peeling down to cool off in the 300C heat, along with the cameras and filming equipment, are a dead giveaway. I discover that these creatures are regular visitors to the area to film Bokenjya, a famous children’s show in Japan (a la Power Rangers and Bioman). And people just walk by as if this were the most normal thing in the world.  

But normal is a relative term, after all. Things only seem alien and indecipherable at first sight. Our beliefs and assumptions are the cause of our complaints about how "things just aren’t like they are back home". One of the best things about travel is seeing things we thought we knew in a different light. There is something liberating about traveling in that it whirls you around and turns you upside down and stands everything you take for granted on its head.

Soon you find strange new worlds to be familiar places, realizing how the things you imagined to be universal are really quite provincial. You begin to explore and confront the larger worlds outside and within. You cultivate a passion to pay deep attention to and care profoundly about what those worlds reveal, and wonder at their illuminating intersections and at the mundane marvels that make up our universe. 

Pico Iyer says travel spins us round in two ways at once: It shows us the sights and values and issues that we might ordinarily ignore; but it also, and more deeply, shows us all the parts of ourselves that might otherwise grow rusty. For in traveling to a truly foreign place, we inevitably travel to moods and states of mind and hidden inward passages that we’d otherwise seldom have cause to visit. 

Travel always moves us in quiet and mysterious ways. You come to understand that the true grit and gift of travel is encountering alien landscapes, peoples, values, and rites. Speaking pidgin English or struggling with my very limited knowledge of Japanese, I feel positively simplified in that I just want to make sense rather than sound eloquent. I often find myself literally at a loss for words, completely helpless and lost in a swirl of hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Times like this, you have absolutely no idea what to do, navigating and embracing worlds of newness day after day, not knowing how the story is going to end. 

Indeed, the story never ends. There’s always a new corner, a new chapter–and who knows what wonders await there?