January 28, 2008

Tokyo (JAPAN)

Cosplay, The Best (and only) Jamaican Jerk in Japan, and Lost in Tokyo

After stopping by a Middle Eastern Embassy this morning - another backpacking trip is in the works with details to come later - I walked around the Yoyogi district, which is where Tokyo's famous cosplay scene is centered. Cosplay is actually short for "costume play," and it is a Japanese subculture focused on dressing as characters from manga (comics), anime (animations), tokusatsu (special effects), and other fantasy characters.

While the kind of girls who gather in Yoyogi, Harajuku, and Akihabara generally dress up as a way of having fun, there is obviously an alternative sexual meaning associated with the cosplay world. The appropriately named "love hotels" that are spattered across Tokyo - charging discounted "rest" rates (meaning hourly) - also offer costume rental services for all those with a sexual fetish.

For example, I have heard stories of rooms being designed to look like a subway train car for all those "salary men" who ride the congested trains and fantasize of the women around them. (I wrote an earlier post about the trains that gives more detail into the groping phenomenon). Otherwise, the schoolgirl uniform is probably the most common outfit for sexual cosplay, and it even has its own name: seifuku cosplay ("innocence uniform.")

Enough about cosplay as I find this aspect of Japanese culture to be somewhat disturbing.

I met an American friend, David, for lunch at the Aala Wi Jamaican restaurant, which is only a 10 minute walk from Ebisu Station. As has probably become obvious, Ebisu is my number one pick for dining as it has the greatest variety of cuisines and it is a more mature district than somewhere like Shibuya. I ordered the  jerk pork, served with fried banana chips and rice with real kidney beans. If nothing else, having an alternative to Eastern Asia's ubiquitous steamed white rice is a major draw for Aala Wi. Next time I will make sure to visit in the evenings so I can pound cans of Red Stripe beer.

Since all my exams are basically wrapped up, I decided to skip out on going to the lab today, and instead opted to try walking to Ookayama Station. Of course, it was a miserable failure in the sense that I became completely lost, but it wasn't like I was in a hurry anyway. Plus, I found a slew of interesting shrines en route, and even improved my abysmal Japanese as I was forced to ask for directions (God forbid I actually admit defeat and hop on a train.) Below are some photos of several shrines I came across, and as is typical in Tokyo, they were tucked away in the most mundane places (eg residential neighborhoods or small side streets).

Finally, I have one last comment to make with regard to Japanese temples. Despite having a per capita GDP that is 18 times higher than Myanmar (Burma), Japan's temples all have the kind of weathered look that leads one to believe there is no money for expensive improvements. Myanmar, on other hand, boasts extravagance that mocks Britain's crown jewels. Maybe that is why one country has the second largest economy in the world while being completely deprived of natural resources and isolated on an island while the other - despite having an abundance of resources - is an economic catastrophe.

** Perhaps the above title should be more descriptive: I did not mean "Jamaican Jerk" as in a "Caribbean a**hole," but rather the jerk chicken I had for lunch.**