Made in Japan

2003-03-03T18:09:00.000-08:00

Japan rues the airport that should never have taken off

Jonathan Watts
The Guardian

It is not often that Tokyo commuters grumble. On the rush-hour trains, they quietly put up with being manhandled into packed carriages by platform guards. In the filthiest traffic on the urban motorway, it is rare to hear a single horn beeped in frustration. Even on the pavements, pedestrians merely shrug when they are cut up by cyclists.

Such irritations are endured without protest, but there is one subject guaranteed to push even the most tolerant Tokyo-ite into moaning mode: the city's international gateway, Narita airport.

Located an exhausting 40 miles from the city centre, Narita must rate as one of the most inconvenient airports in the developed world. It is definitely one of the most unloved - a target for bombs from extremists and irritation from everyone else.

So when a second runway opened at the airport last month, it was met with a collective groan. Even the transport minister, Chikage Ogi, admits that Narita is "a mistake that should never be repeated".

Anyone who has plodded wearily though one of the two terminals will understand why.

Judged by distance and cost, Narita is a nightmare. Nestling among paddy fields, golf courses and coastal plains in Chiba prefecture, it looks quite attractive from the air, but the problems are soon apparent on the ground.

I have never dared to take a taxi, but tales abound of people spending almost as much on the fare (at least �’120) to Tokyo as on their flight ticket.

For long-haul travellers arriving from Europe or the US, the journey into the city via an often crowded motorway or an expensive express train creates a feeling of dreary exhaustion.

As one wag put it, deep-vein thrombosis may not get you in economy class, but it will on the bus into town.

Narita is also damned by its history. Built in 1978 on farmland compulsorily purchased by the state, it became the focus of violent protests by leftwing students and farmers whose liveli hoods were threatened by their giant and noisy new neighbour. The disputes, which blazed most strongly in the 1970s, continue to disrupt the airport today.

The new runway, which was rushed into operation for the World Cup, is 300 metres shorter than planned because farmers refused to give up their land. Last Tuesday, opponents firebombed the home of a Chiba official - typical of protests that have necessitated levels of security unmatched at any airport in Japan, including watchtowers and electrified fences.

Many Tokyo residents have quietly been rooting for the paddy field owners. Rather than expand Narita, many would prefer more international flights at Haneda, a domestic airport just 10 miles from the city centre.

So why is the government intent on expanding Narita? The speculation focuses on the influence of the Chiba prefectural government, which has a financial stake in ensuring Narita remains the gateway for 70% of those travelling overseas each year.

This is the real cause for complaint: that policy on transport and just about everything else in Japan is made not according to the interests of the densely populated capital, but to suit rural areas where the ruling party gets its votes. Now that is surely worth a grumble.

2002-11-30T20:00:00.000-08:00

Japanese flirt with disaster waiting for the 'Big One' to bite

Jonathan Watts
The Guardian

The Tokyo municipal government advises every family to hold monthly meetings on disaster prevention, but our house has become rather lax in preparing for catastrophe.

I realised this while checking recently through our bosai-bukuro (disaster-prevention bag), which we - like all good citizens of the Japanese capital - keep at hand in case a giant earthquake suddenly makes us homeless.

The shiny silver rucksuck was a gift from the town hall. It contains 8 metres of rope, two torches (with batteries), lighter fuel, a box of matches, a first aid kit, soap, hand towels, a waterproof sheet and a pair of white cotton gloves (purpose: unclear).

Our generous local authority even supplied what could be our first candle-lit meal on the street: a box of dried biscuits, half a litre of mineral water, 500g of dried rice, five pickled plums, cups, cutlery, a candle and matches. The only things missing from what would otherwise be the perfect picnic hamper is a bottle of wine and a corkscrew.

As a taxpayer, the £20 set seems rather expensive, but as a resident of an area where the earth frequently throws wobblies, it feels like a justifiable precaution.

Precariously situated at the intersection of two enormous plates, Japan is the most seismically active country in the world, accounting for one in 10 of all earthquakes. The worst struck Tokyo in 1923, killing 140,000 people.

Depending on which seismologist you talk to, the next "Big One" is either 10 years overdue or 100 years away. Tokyo authorities estimate it will kill more than 7,000 people.

So it is sensible to prepare but it is not easy to follow the Tokyo government's recommendations. I daresay our family is not alone in skipping the monthly disaster meetings, but we have not even participated in the drills held every September 1 - the anniversary of the 1923 quake.

Households are also advised to put aside food and water for three days, but the only additional nourishment in our bag was out-of-date powdered baby milk (our youngest daughter is three).

On the plus side, we usually remember to switch off the gas at the mains every night; we have secured our wardrobes against the wall; and we have identified the safest place in the house: the toilet.

But most of this was done years ago, when memories were fresh of the 1995 Kobe earthquake, which claimed 5,000 lives. Since then, we have been made complacent by the minor temblors that sway our 11th-floor flat every few months.

When they strike, we no longer run to the toilet or hide under the kitchen table. At most, we switch on the TV, where the intensity and epicentre flash on the screen within seconds. Usually, we just ignore it.

We are not alone. Surveys suggest that one in three takes no precautions at all. Stores have stopped devoting shelves to disaster kits. The government recently admitted that half the country's schools were not quake-resistant.

Such complacency could prove deadly, but it is also necessary for one's sanity. To live in a city that could be devastated at any second, it is as important to push worry to the back of your mind as it is to occasionally get concerned enough to check your precautions.

Come to think of it, the earth has been alarmingly still recently, which probably means pressure is building somewhere deep underground. It may be time to fill our shiny, silver rucksack with more pickled plums.

2002-10-29T00:41:00.000-08:00

An alien's views on little green men

When I first arrived in Japan 12 years ago, one of the most eye-opening differences I noticed about my new home was that people actually obeyed the signals at pedestrian crossings.

At the time, this struck me as very curious because I had come from Britain, a country where jaywalking is virtually an art form. In London, where I grew up, and Manchester, where I went to university, you had to learn how to slip through the narrowest gaps in the traffic or your friends would soon leave you behind.

After a short term in Japan, however, I realized I would have to change the habit of a lifetime and wait patiently for the green man like everyone else. This was not because I believed the saying "When in Rome" it was because I was afraid of killing someone. All too often when I dashed across a crowded road, I heard the sound of horns and angry shouts behind me because a Japanese person had unthinkingly followed me in the mistaken belief that the lights must have changed.

Ten years ago, I did not consider this observation worth mentioning in my letters back home to Britain. After all, it was not half as exotic as all the other new cultural experiences I was having such as using chopsticks, bowing my greetings or sleeping on a futon. But the longer, I am in this country, the more I believe that the behaviour of pedestrians at traffic lights is an indicator of the best and the worst of Japanese society.

Let me explain, As in any country, the little green man and his red friend (strictly speaking, they are white men on coloured backgrounds, but let's not quibble) are SUBSTITUE BUREAUCRATS. If you do as they say �EGo! Wait! Walk! Don't Walk!" you are putting your faith in authority rather than trusting your own judgement.

The positive side of this is social safety, order and stability �Equalities of which Japan is justly proud. The negative side is that blind obedience stifles individual initiative and stunts economic activity. I have been amazed at how many times I have seen people waiting obediently at a red man on a small side road even though there were no cars in sight. Why? Simply because they were unthinkingly following the rules even though there were no doubt a million better things they could have been doing with their time.

It is possible to draw a rough index of development based on road-crossing behaviour. In developing nations, where automated traffic controls are few and far between, many pedestrians are not used to waiting at the lights and roads often appear chaotic. In industrialized nations, such as Japan until recently, the opposite is true. But visit a post-industrial country, like the US or the UK, and people �Eespecially in big cities �Eare much more likely to pick and choose whether it is worth obeying the lights.

This is not to suggest that everyone in Japan should suddenly start ignoring crossing signals, which would be irresponsible and potentially very dangerous. But I would not be surprised if jaywalking becomes more common in the future as Japan becomes more of a post-industrial nation. After all, many social trends are already moving in that direction. The finance ministry claims to be promoting deregulation, the economic ministry wants the population to be more creative and risk orientated and more people in the education ministry are keen to encourage individual freedom and self-responsibility.

Of course, traffic agency officials are never going to declare that it is OK to ignore their red and green substitutes; that is something every individual must decide for themselves - very carefully.

2002-10-29T00:03:00.000-08:00

The art of selling out in Japan

Is it wrong for Hollywood stars to make fools of themselves in Japanese commercials?

At least three website operators seem to think so and provide some entertaining reference material to prove their point:
gaijinagogo
klein-dytham - sold out
(And particularly brilliantly) japander

Marvellous stuff.
All power to these websites for sharing such gems with a wider audience in defiance of legal threats from the likes of Arnie Schwartzenegger.

Even though I saw the ads first time round on TV and thought nothing of them, they make a much stronger impression as as a collection.
It is a new genre - daft gaijin ads - that has taken on as much of a wild and wonderful life of its own as crazy mixed-up Jinglish-Janglish slogans.

You can argue, as gaijinagogo does, that the Hollywood stars are sneaky doing commercials in Japan that they would be embarrassed about back home.
Some do look and sound foolishly self-conscious, but there doesn't seem to be that much to be morally ashamed of, unless you take a fairly puritannical view and say Harrison Ford and Sean Connery are wrong to endorse alcohol. It would also be hypocritical, of course, if the actors or actresses claimed to be above advertising in their own country.

But the best ones are unapologetically cheesy as the actors stand grinning (who wouldn't while earning a million dollars a day?) at the nutty cultural intersection between Hollywood's fake boulevards and Tokyo's crass expressways.
Ewan MacGregor does this hilariously in the Aeon ads, but even he cannot hold a candle to the King of Kitsch, Bruce Willis, whose Japanese ads - especially for the Eneos petrol station chain - form an impressive body of very very silly work that will one day deserve a chapter all of its own in his cinematography.

So, no, I don't think it is wrong for Hollywood stars to sell out in Japan.
But it is surely a sin for them to deny the rest of the world a chance to share in their highly-paid humiliation.

2002-10-11T20:31:00.000-07:00

My dinner with a gangster of exceptional taste

Jonathan Watts in Tokyo
The Guardian

As demonstrations of power go, our host's demand for ice in his vintage burgundy was somewhat unorthodox, but undeniably impressive. In fact, it was matched only by his rejection of the entire nouveau cuisine menu in favour of a large bowl of curry rice - the Japanese equivalent of beans on toast.
Given that we were dining at one of Tokyo's most exclusive restaurants, the chef and sommelier might have been expected to balk at such requests. But no, these unusual orders were treated with the fawning courtesy due to a man who was clearly the establishment's most important customer.

Our host for the night, Kuro-san, was the last person anyone would want to upset, not if they valued life, limb or financial well-being. A club owner, tuna trader, political fixer, business consultant and estate agent, he is one of the most powerful Yakuza (Japanese mafia) bosses in Tokyo and therefore the perfect, if rather frightening, guide to the city's remarkably well-connected underworld.

So it was with considerable excitement and a little anxiety that I had accepted an invitation arranged by a mutual associate to join him for what was to be a night out on a truly cinematic scale.

Full of surprises as well as stereotypes, the evening inevitably began with a ride in a Mercedes Benz to a restaurant full of showbiz stars - and ended in a huge techno nightclub with our host holding court to a handful of minor celebrities and a procession of young women who were "ordered up" to the VIP room from the dance floor.

At times, it was a case of life imitating the art of Black Rain, Sonatine and a dozen other gangster flicks - fortunately without the violence - such as the revelation that a former policeman managed the club. By the time an impromptu strip show began at 4am, it had already been the most eye-opening night I had experienced in six years in Tokyo.

Kuro-san (a name made up to protect me rather than him) conveyed a definite air of menace. I don't know if the stories about him having killed someone are true, but his gaze was the most alarming I have ever averted my eyes from.

If you were to pass him on the street you would probably never guess he was one of Japan's 83,000 mobsters. Unlike the stereotype, he is still in possession of all 10 fingers, there are no telltale tattoos peeking out from his collar or sleeves, and his suit is not so much punkishly loud as stylishly understated.

Kuro-san is part of a new generation of Yakuza, educated at the nation's top universities and smart enough to know that the big money is to be made by moving in the lofty circles of international finance rather than hustling at street level with protection rackets and prostitute rings.

A good if gruff conversation alist, he was exceptionally polite - even by Japanese standards - and surprisingly open about his contacts in the ruling Liberal Democratic party, influence over the domestic media and international business activities.

By the end of the evening, my head was spinning from talk of bankers' murders made to look like suicides, of golfing trips with buddies running the government, and of TV stars that owed him their careers.

It was impossible to know how much was true, but Kuro-san struck me as a man who had about as little need to make up stories to impress people as he did to change his drinking and eating habits.

2002-08-25T00:16:00.000-07:00

"Futon ga futon-da"
It was the first Japanese joke I ever heard,
Told by an izakaya waitress in Kobe in 1990.
I really didn't get it at the time, even after the pun was translated.
But 12 years later and 700 kilometers away, it just came true:
My futon is a futon and it just flew away.
The bedding had been airing on the balcony, clipped in place by two sturdy hand sized pegs
But true to the name of our estate - Umikazenomachi (Sea Breeze Town) - a gust blew in from Tokyo Bay and stole it away.
(After losing our kid's inflatable swimming pool last month, word must have got round among the thieving wind gods that we are a soft target).
It could have been lethal.
A heavy futon falling 11 stories on to a path, where small children often play.
Fortunately nobody was around.
So I guess it was pretty funny when my wife came in to tell me with a smile,
"Futon ga futon-da"

2002-08-20T23:28:00.000-07:00

The Shutoko: Wilder than any video game

Jonathan Watts
June 4, 2001
The Guardian

After five years in Tokyo, I thought I had a fairly fixed view of Japan's megalopolis. It was not a good one either, at least in terms of its appearance. Although the city has a splash of green open space near the imperial palace, I'd always cursed it as a monotony of grey concrete, confused streets and ugly office blocks.
But in the past month, my perspective has changed. The reason: I have finally got round to buying a car. My wheels have given me access to the high-altitude, slightly frightening but immensely privileged world of Tokyo's elevated expressway: the Shuto.

The Shuto is not fair. It is a symbol of a transport hierarchy in which cars cruise among the rooftops while pedestrians subsist in the shadows and subways. That hierarchy dates back to Japan's period of "miracle growth", when the population were sacrificed for industry, and economic development took precedence over everything, especially urban aesthetics.

As a pedestrian and train user, I felt that there were few more depressing sights in Tokyo than the expressway, especially at the point where it towers over Nihonbashi bridge. The bridge, which has been around in various forms for almost 400 years, ought to be a tourist hub. Instead its charm is lost underneath a grimly pragmatic traffic carrier. That stretch of the Shuto, completed in time for the 1964 Olympics, represents the same rush for growth that prompted Japan to put its electricity and telephone cables above ground, leaving the sky tangled with wires.

From the ground, the Shuto is like a huge concrete millipede casting a dirty shadow over rivers and streets, condemning most of Tokyo's 12m population to a view of its black underbelly and grimy oversized feet. But it seems a different beast altogether now that I can ride on top. For a start, I can see a decent stretch of the horizon. And that's not all you get for your 700 yen (5 dollars) toll. At night, the cityscape is stunning. Driving high among the neon hoardings of Shibuya, across the elegant Tokyo Bay Bridge or beside one of two huge ferris wheels pulsating with lights, it is easy to see why Ridley Scott took Japan as his inspiration for Blade Runner.

But, unless you are a passenger, there is little time to appreciate the scenery. The Shuto is a demon of a road. an inspiration for the most fiendish of driving video games. There are terrifying hairpin bends, sharp dips and sudden ascents that would not be out of place on a rollercoaster. On the Bayside route, just past Tokyo Disneyland, the road suddenly curves and rises to the height of an eight-storey building. The barriers are so low you feel you could plunge off at any second. Elsewhere, claustrophobia sets in as the road squeezes between residential tower blocks and high sound barriers curl up on either side.

Exits and slip roads appear on the left and the right with almost no warning. Lanes split in the middle only to join up again on the other side of bridge pillars. If this is not enough to confuse you, there are always the traffic boards - huge, complex electronic maps indicating where the jams are worst.

Those jams are the most terrifying part of the Shuto. When you are immobile, with a concrete tier of expressway heavy with traffic above you and a huge drop to the ground below, the mind wanders to the question of what would happen to the stilts of the Shuto in an earthquake. And then - damn the aesthetics of the pedestrians below - it is hard not to wish that the concrete monstrosity had even chunkier legs.

It would be better still, of course, to bury the whole thing, or at least certain stretches of it such as that above the Nihonbashi bridge, as Tokyo's governor and construction minister suggest. Given Japan's economic pinch, expensive tunnelling projects are not likely soon. But even a call to condemn the Shuto to the bowels of Tokyo indicates a long-overdue shift in the transport hierarchy. In that case, Ridley Scott's model for the future may yet become an image of the past.

2002-08-12T19:03:00.000-07:00

A glimpse into the world of an 18-year-old Japanese girl

Marie Usui
Hostess

12 August 2002

Since graduating from high school in March, Marie Usui has been working as a hostess to save up for a trip to Australia, where she plans to study English for six months. She lives with her father (a robot maker), her mother (a nursery nurse), sister and grandparents in Saitama, near Tokyo. We chatted for a couple of hours in a coffee shop in Shibuya with the cicadas buzzing away outside. This is an unabridged version of what she told me about being 18 for a story in The Guardian.

I haven�ft slept for the past three days. It has been exhausting but wonderful because I have been with my friends and, apart from family, there is nothing as important in life as friends.

Last week, a bunch of them came round to my place, we hired a car and then drove to Tokyo Bay to watch a firework display. We had such a great laugh, singing, dancing and gossiping about our boyfriends. After, we drove for nine hours to the beach, napping in the car and eating at convenience stores, and then spent the day sunbathing, eating melons and taking photos. It was brilliant - pictures of my friends and gifts from my mum are the most precious things I own.

Loads of boys and old men tried to chat us up but we ignored them. This was a time for mates. Nothing else mattered. We carried on chatting and swimming and letting off fireworks until dawn and then drove back to my home, but once all my friends had crashed out on my floor there was no room for me so I stayed awake filling out all the documents I need for my trip to Australia next month. It wasn't drugs that kept me awake - I don't do them - it was excitement.

I�fve been saving up by working as a hostess. It is good money - about 800 pounds per month - but we work hard until 2am almost every night. There is no sex involved: just pouring drinks, lighting cigarettes and chatting to middle-aged men in high-paid jobs such as doctors, university professors and corporate presidents.

I used to be upset if one of them touched my bum, but now I put up with it. I look at it as a burden of being born as a woman. What I don�ft like about the job is that it can make you seem insincere. We are taught to tell white lies to customers, such as flattering them or telling them that we don�ft have boyfriends. But this is bad because even friends start disbelieving you when you complement them.

Some also let the money go to their heads. Half the girls in my old high school class are now hostessing and the ones who earn the most in the big Tokyo clubs are really spoiled They look down on us now. I don�ft want to become like that, but I want to be rich. It is a difficult balance.

The things I fear most in life are being alone and having to do a job that I don�ft find satisfying. My generation doesn�ft believe in anything except money. They don�ft trust anyone. I used to be like that. Last year, me and some friends left home and spent a couple of weeks hanging around in Shinjuku and Harajuku (the teen centres of Tokyo). It was disgusting. Every day we were approached by old men who wanted to have sex with us. Young men tried to scout us for perverted jobs. It felt like everyone lied to us. For me then that was the cold and dirty world of adults and I didn�ft want anything to do with it. Now, though, I�fm in that grown-up world and I realize that not all people are bad. It helped that my mother cared enough about me to be worried. Many of my friends parents just ignored the fact that their daughters had been missing for two weeks.
My mum is great. I wish I could go back to being a high school student, lazing around all day, walking the dog, watching videos and eating mum�fs food. I never have time for that now even though I still live at home.

My dream is to establish a company and then buy an island, which would just be for me, my family, friends and orphans. But I can only get it by hard work. I don�ft have much time for religious people who think they can get what they want simply by praying to God. My parents are Buddhists, but that is not for me. All I believe in are ghosts, spirits, aliens and Santa Claus.

I�fm really looking forward to living overseas. I prefer Western music such as Britney Spears and U2 to Japanese pop music. And I like western men more than Japanese men because the latter are so indecisive. Maybe this is because my parents often took me overseas for holidays. Many of my friends�f parents are more narrow minded and won�ft let their daughters date foreigners. I think Japan needs to change. We are an island nation that is slowly going downhill, but everyone carries on blithely as before.
I�fm not sure that my generation will be any different. Women have more freedom - my mum would never have been allowed to talk like me or wear make-up like mine - but we are weak. Nobody wants to do anything by themselves.

I guess I will have to be more independent in Australia. Everyone in my nightclub, including the mama-san (boss), is supporting me. And my mum has paid most of the 1.5m yen (9,000 pounds) fee. I�fm only going for six months, but they all seem to think that when I return I�fll be grown up and a fluent English speaker. I feel a huge weight of expectation on my shoulders, but it should be fun.

2002-08-12T18:18:00.000-07:00

Capital letters
Workaholic parents bless the guardian angel mummy

Jonathan Watts in Tokyo
Guardian

Saturday August 10, 2002

Tomoko Harada - better known to our two daughters as "Angel Mummy" - is a godsend to the growing number of career mothers in our neighbourhood. She is also probably the hardest working person I have ever met.

There is strong competition for that dubious accolade in our "bed town". I cannot recall the last time I saw any of my employed neighbours during daylight hours on a weekday, but I occasionally exchange tired greetings with them on the last train home.

None, though, can hold a guttering candle to Harada-san, the softly-spoken middle-aged woman who runs a 24-hour childminding centre called Angel Mummy, where our daughters have spent the odd afternoon, and where some of their friends spend most evenings. At 5:30am, while most of the residents in our high-rise estate are still asleep on their futons, Harada-san is already preparing for the first children.

At 11pm, she is often still tidying up Doraemon robot cats and Mickey Mouse jigsaws when the last shattered mum or dad picks up their sleeping kid on the way home from work. Occasionally, her hours extend beyond midnight when parents become so busy or sick that their kids have to stay overnight or through the weekend.

At up to £15 an hour, such services do not come cheap, but they are increasingly in demand.

Twenty-four-hour childcare centres - once primarily for barmaids, hostesses and prostitutes in inner-city entertainment districts - used to be frowned upon as a last resort for mothers, who were ideally supposed to stay at home with their children.

But such services are now growing in the commuter belt as more mothers try to forge careers. They are encouraged to do so by the government, which needs women to work and breed more to offset expected labour shortages, but this is creating strains even in Tokyo's new towns - where attitudes and social systems are more modern than in the rest of the country.

The state has established a network of childminding centres for children up to the age of six, but they are open from 7am to 7pm - not nearly long enough in a corporate culture where it is still not done to leave the office before your boss or to take your full holiday or maternity entitlement.

Until three years ago, women, whose working day was legally restricted, were exempt from such workaholic conventions. But recession and the enactment of a gender equality law mean female employees are putting in more hours than ever.

For working mothers the option of an au-pair or nanny is not considered. Most Japanese feel uncomfortable even if a relative or neighbour is in their house while they are away. Leaving children alone with a stranger is seen as dangerously irresponsible.

Currently, all the chat in Angel Mummy is of the top international news story last week: secretly filmed footage from Brazil of a babysitter thrashing the toddlers in her care.

The story confirmed many parents' worst fears about negligent foreign childcare arrangements, but the open-minded Harada-san was also impressed that foreign parents used childminders for fun rather than work.

"We once had a couple who left their kids here so that they could celebrate their wedding anniversary together, but that was an extremely rare case. Most parents think it is immoral to leave their children behind while they go out and enjoy themselves."

Then Angel Mummy smiled radiantly as if it was the parents she was looking after more than the children. "Hardworking couples ought to have more time for themselves," she said, before sighing. "But if it was me, I would just catch up on my sleep."

2002-07-14T23:45:00.000-07:00

Typhoon season
A phone call from our giggling 11th floor neighbour, Sato-san.
"Your children's swimming pool has taken off.
I last saw it flying in a northwesterly direction."

2002-07-14T19:46:00.000-07:00

Working abroad
Staying on in land of the rising prospects

Jonathan Watts
Guardian

Saturday June 15, 2002

It does not even take six feet of height to be big in Japan - as thousands of football fans and the growing number of Brits who have lived in the country over the past 10 years have discovered.

As well as the rarity value of speaking a language that millions want to learn, and coming from a country that is seen by many young Japanese as the epitome of cool, most Brits are usually guaranteed a decent wage and - for better or worse - the celebrity status of being a gaijin (foreigner).

I can recall the moment when I realised I was going to like the country.

It was the day after arriving in Tokyo for the first time, when I was approached on a bullet-train platform by a young woman who said four words that this gangly, spotty and bespectacled individual thought he would never hear in his life: "Are you a model?" she asked.

No, but I could be. And so could almost any foreigner in Japan, where westerners - especially white males of just about any shape and size - are in a demand for work, company and, yes, love in ways that they could probably have never dreamed of at home.

This is one of the attractions for a steady flow into Japan of UK nationals, more and more of whom are starting with English language teaching jobs and ending up marrying locals and settling down.

According to the Japanese home ministry, the number of UK nationals who have registered as residents since 1990 has increased from 10,206 to 16,525. Of these, 1,618 have visas for work in education, which usually means jobs under the JET and other schemes in the school system.

Another 3,831 are teaching conversation classes at private institutes such as Nova, ECC and Shane, which uses its British - rather than American, Canadian or Australian- bias as a selling point.

Although the qualifications needed to secure such teaching positions have tightened in the past decade, many English language instructors arrive almost fresh from college looking for adventure and a quick way of repaying their student loans.

Even those who start with primarily mercenary intentions, are often soon beguiled by the comforts of a nation with great, and surprisingly reasonably priced food, a low crime-rate, record longevity and a 24-hour "combini" (convenience-store) in every neighbourhood.

For most this more than compensates for the irritations of rush-hour crowds, high prices for other things and a sometimes discriminatory attitude to foreigners - many estate agents openly refuse to accept non-Japanese tenants. For the most part, however, the prejudice is of the positive variety with local people going out of their way to treat visitors as privileged guests.

And then, of course, there is the money. Despite the recession, monthly salaries for teaching jobs have been almost static in the past decade. Teachers on the JET scheme earn about 300,000 yen (£1,300 to £1,600), those at conversation schools such as Nova and ECC from 250,000 yen to 350,000 yen (often depending on a willingness to work six days a week), while those with plum jobs at universities can take home more than 500,000 yen as well as having long holidays.

Long-term residents, especially those who learn the language, often move into similarly well-paid jobs in copy-editing, PR, translation and finance.

How far this cash goes depends to a large degree on where people live. In Tokyo - the most expensive city in the world - an English teacher would have to live in fairly cramped accommodation to enjoy the dubious delights of izakaya pubs, karaoke boxes and love hotels and still have a little left to send home. But the bright lights of the capital are by far the greatest draw in Japan.

More than 7,000 Brits live in the capital and it is the destination of the vast majority of the 385,000 UK visitors who pass through Japan each year. In the countryside, the living is easier in terms of space and prices, but gaijin must also cope with the added pleasures and pains of being a curiosity.

In rural Shimane prefecture on the Japan seacoast, there are only 34 Brits in a population of 771,000 people spread over 6,700 square kilometres.

But most leave with warm memories and great stories. Nicola Chilton, who spent three years as a JET in the northern prefecture of Miyagi, was called upon at one point to play trampoline basketball on the television.

Now working as a JET program coordinator, she says she has become so attached to her adopted country that she is having difficulty deciding on her loyalties in the World Cup.

"Working as a JET was a wonderful experience not only to teach but to learn," she said. "If England meets Japan, I wouldn't know which to go for."

More and more Brits are becoming attached to Japan, many through family ties. Iain Ferguson, vice consul of the British Embassy in Tokyo, said the main trend among residents has been for fewer businessmen who arrive with their families on fixed-term contracts and more single teachers who settle down.

"We've seen a steady increase in the numbers of births that we've registered whereas the number of passports we issue each year has been pretty static," he noted.

The number of Brits who have been issued visas because they are spouses of Japanese national has jumped more than 50 per cent to 2,342 since 1990.

One Geordie who may soon be added to that figure is Stewart Adamson, who has lived in Japan for 12 years. Starting as a conversation schoolteacher in Osaka, he has mastered Japanese and is now self-employed as a patent translator in the mountains of Nagano.

And next October, he plans to marry his girlfriend, Yuko.

"Originally, I came here to travel and because it was easy to get a teaching job without TEFL qualifications, but now I feel very comfortable in Japan.

"The main reason is that people are reserved so you don't feel you have to force yourself on anyone."

Being big, and earning big, may be what attracts Brits to Japan in the first place. But feeling comfortable seems to be what keeps a growing number of us here.

2002-07-14T19:45:00.000-07:00

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Kirin and cashew nuts washed down with a drop of vintage Tokyo

Jonathan Watts in Tokyo
Guardian

Saturday July 6, 2002

As the rainy season draws to a close and the arrival of high summer turns Tokyo into a concrete furnace, residents turn to drink. In a city that claims more bars and pubs a head than any other capital in the world, there is no shortage of watering holes.

Parties of office workers quench their thirst at "beer gardens" on department store rooftops, students race down huge jugs of lager in vast German-style beer halls and the well-heeled sup chilled Nihon-shu surrounded by the tatami and paper screens of traditional ryotei restaurants.

But for those independent spirits who prefer a little nostalgia and idiosyncrasy with their Kirin and cashew nuts, there is only one place to go: the defiantly ramshackle warren of drinking dens known as Golden-gai.

These alleys of shoddy two-storey buildings in Shinjuku house 200 bars, one "police box", a Shinto shrine and a motley population of mama-sans, transvestites, former prostitutes and 60s radicals.

It is vintage post-war Tokyo in all its cramped, chaotic glory. The bars - most of them big enough only for a counter and a dozen or so stools - are housed in buildings of wood and corrugated iron thrown up for hookers and pimps during the allied occupation.

Several decades have passed since Golden-gai was primarily a lure to the libido, but the narrow lanes have not entirely lost the feel of a red-light district. When business is slow and the air muggy, the silhouettes of mama-sans (some of whom are actually middle-aged men) can be seen in pink-lit doorways as they fan them selves and listen to scratchy records of Edith Piaf or experimental jazz.

These old and relatively dark streets look out of place in the Blade Runneresque nightscape of western Tokyo. A few strides to the west are the blazing neon lights and noisy pachinko parlours of the ultra-sleazy Kabukicho sex district; behind are the futuristic 40-storey towers of the municipal government offices in Shinjuku.

This is the fastest changing area in Tokyo. Yet Golden-gai remains stubbornly stuck in the past. Bar owners have refused to bow to the threats of violence from yakuza gangsters who control almost every other entertainment district, or the cash incentives offered by estate agents who want to develop the land.

They have been saved by recession (which killed the property market), chaos (the land has been divided into so many parts for so long that nobody is quite sure who owns what) and their own independence of spirit.

Golden-gai is a feisty neighbourhood. In the 60s and 70s most of the brothel-keepers were replaced by counter-culture dropouts who turned the area into a hub of political conspiracy and intellectual foment. At its peak it attracted thinkers such as the author Yukio Mishima and the film-maker Nagisa Oshima.

Directors, painters and writers are still drawn to an area that refuses to make way for rampant materialism. Shadow, a bar run for more than 20 years by a communist, is decorated with items found in rubbish dumps. Jetee, owned by a former film distributor, includes Wim Wenders and Juliette Binoche among its occasional customers.

Today the paintwork may be fading and the conversation filled with reminiscences rather than conspiracy plots or chat-up lines, but Golden-gai remains a Tokyo original.

And, of course, it is still a perfect spot for a cold beer on a hot summer night.

2002-07-14T19:43:00.000-07:00

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Letting it all hang out with the neighbours

Jonathan Watts in Tokyo
Guardian

Saturday March 16, 2002

My neighbour Shu and his family invited us out for a bath last Sunday, so off we went - husbands, wives and kids - to be naked for a few hours. There is nothing particularly strange about that in Japan, where people have few inhibitions about getting their clothes off in front of strangers for the purpose of a relaxing soak.

In fact, it is said that you don't really know your neighbours, colleagues and friends until you have shared a bath with them.

Clothes mean formalities, of which there often appears to be a suffocating excess in Japan. But strip away the layers of material and politeness and, so the logic goes, there will be nothing left to hide.

So letting it all hang out - preferably in the open air and frequently in the company of dozens of people you have never met before - is recognised not just as a fundamental urge, but something of a social necessity.

But in Tokyo that is no longer easily done. A few decades ago, every community had a "sento", or public bathhouse, where local affairs were settled while neighbours scrubbed one another's backs. In those days, people went out of necessity, because they lacked bathing facilities in their homes.

Today, most of the city's apartment blocks not only have their own plumbing, but hi-tech tubs which make the sento look rather dilapidated and dirty by comparison. As a result, the new hygiene-obsessed generation would not be seen dead in the old bathhouses, which are being forced to close at the rate of about one a month.

But in a cunning piece of marketing, the custom of public bathing has been reinvented not as a necessity, but as a luxury. Despite the recession, Tokyo's suburbs are seeing a construction boom in Healthlands, also known as Super Sento, which promise customers not only that they will be clean, but that they will be energised by a healthy bombardment of negative ions, and pampered like royalty.

It was to one of these establishments that Shu and family invited us in the same neighbourly spirit as they had previously asked us to join them in outings to restaurants, bars or children's parks.

A hi-tech but comfortingly tacky emporium of the senses, our Super Sento mixed the basics of the bathhouse with a video arcade, a floor of restaurants, a massage parlour and a live music show.

After splitting up into men's and women's sections (not all inhibitions are shed with the clothes), we dipped in pools of green tea, medicine baths, aromatherapy tubs and jacuzzis, then sweated in TV-equipped saunas and showered under an artificial waterfall.

Despite the urban setting, it was even possible to enjoy an outdoor bath on the roof without being arrested for indecent exposure. Although the high-rise apartment blocks next door necessitated a discreet bamboo covering overhead, I could just about glimpse the stars from my mineral-enriched bath. In a bizarre stimulus to the astral imagination, an ultra-violet fluorescent light illuminated a mural of the planets.

After an hour's soak, we changed into Hawaiian-style pyjamas handed out at the door and rejoined our equally well-washed and oddly attired families for a beer, a bite of sushi and a sleepy lounge around the premises.

It encouraged a mellow and open frame of mind in which Shu, a banker who bears a share of the world's worst bad loan problem on his shoulders, breathed a contented sigh and mused on why the public bathing habit remains so popular.

"After spending the week doing what we are told and wearing the uniform suit and tie that are a sign of our obedience, there is no better way to relieve stress than to wander around naked for a while."

I felt like I was getting to see a different side of my neighbour

2002-07-14T19:30:00.000-07:00

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World Cup city is a barren desert for thousands of grassroots amateurs

Jonathan Watts in Tokyo
Guardian

Saturday January 26, 2002

Property prices in Tokyo may have fallen through the floor in the past 10 years, but ask any amateur footballer in the Japanese capital and he will confirm that there is at least one plot of land that is as much in demand now as during the bubble's most expansive phrase.

Oi Number One could never be described as prime real estate. In fact, even during those crazy days when the land in Tokyo was reckoned to be worth that of the entire United States, this scruffy football pitch would probably have gone for a song.

The location is about as downmarket as Tokyo gets. Bang in the middle of the Oi docks and almost directly below the flight path for jumbo jets landing at Haneda airport, this bumpy, rocky playing area counts among its noisy, smelly neighbours a motorway and a horseracing track (considered the epitome of vulgarity in Japan).

Injustices, injuries and exhaustion - especially in the humidity of summer - are the norm on this mongrel of a pitch. But they are nothing to the pains of securing the ground in the first place.

Space, especially for sport, is so scarce in this overcrowded city that the municipal authorities have devised a fiendishly complicated system to allocate pitches.

Oi Number One is allocated by a combination of Stalinist bureaucracy and national-lottery luck. First you have to collect and copy 12 ID cards and fill out an application form with the names, addresses, ages, phone numbers and workplaces of your players. If approved, this merely entitles you to enter the draw for playing slots. Although this takes place at Oi (a 30-minute journey from Tokyo station) on Thursday mornings, a surprisingly large number of football managers skive off work so they can fill in yet another form and then watch and hope that their number will come up.

Despite all this effort, there is less than a 50:50 chance of securing a coveted weekend slot, because many are allocated in advance to rugby and American football teams.

The reason that people are willing to jump through such hoops is that Oi's dirt is gold-dust. In Tokyo, you can probably count the number of full-sized pitches open to the public on one hand. And Oi is the most central.

That tens of thousands of amateur players are willing to put up with such conditions is testimony to the passion for football in Japan. But the municipal authorities, some of which have invested nearly £3bn in new World Cup stadiums, have clearly failed to invest in the sport's grassroots.

So this June, when the world will no doubt be wowed by the facilities provided for the elite of Fifa's football family, spare a thought for the amateurs who have to play space invaders with the bureaucracy even for the dubious privilege of 90 minutes on Oi Number One.