sgrunt

JAPAN, 2004
Travel Notes

:: 7.3.04 ::

– Tokyo –

On the left side of the bowl hangs a console with four buttons, a knob and a luminous display. As soon as you touch the ring, the mechanical-electronic apparatus starts up, to the delight of the toilet user.
The user has various functions, illustrated by the symbol of jets of water, more or less vaporized, above symbols of buttocks, more or less happy. The temperature and pressure are selectable by the user, and it all starts with a delightful electrical noise – similar to the noise of the tricks of James Bond’s DB5 – and a sort of dispenser comes out of its seat.
In the women’s bathrooms (*) the speakers emit the sound of a delicate splash of water – there are two theories, long debated: that the sound serves to stimulate sitting, or that it is just a cover noise.
In public bathrooms, after washing your hands, you put them in a slot from which high-pressure air comes out – and so far nothing new. But when you insert it, a blue ultraviolet light comes on to illuminate your hands, to carefully eliminate any tough germs.
For those who linger in long showers that result in flooded and foggy bathrooms, in hotel bathrooms there is a rectangular section of the mirror that never fogs up.
In public bathrooms, there is often a safety baby carrier attached to the wall – in this case the user of the bathroom inserts the child to be more free in using it. The baby carrier is not equipped with video games or an I-mode cell phone.

(*) The experience was not lived firsthand by the editor.

:: D 02:10 [+] ::

:: 11.3.04 ::

– Kyoto –

After all, it’s the same all over the world.
The wild nights of teenagers and older teenagers all over the world basically all have the same structure. You leave the clubs at dawn, you stop for a bit in front, someone screams, someone laughs, someone sings. Then in the worst case scenario, you go to eat. Groups of friends who go in while other groups of friends go out. Sometimes they are restaurants, sometimes bars, sometimes bakeries. Sometimes brioche, sometimes pizza, sometimes hamburgers. Here in Kyoto, however, noodle soup.

:: D 10:20 [+] :: …

:: 16.3.04 ::

– Tokyo –

I’ve finally fulfilled my lifelong dream: sleeping in a capsule in Tokyo. The Capsule Inn Akasaka didn’t appeal to me at all – it was too much of a Holiday Inn, too cheap – so I called the Green Plaza Shinjuku: “Hi, do you have a capsule for tonight?”. I arrive around ten in the evening. The hotel is in the middle of a sort of red-light district, where peep shows blend in with thousands of arcades and slot machines. You enter on the ground floor of a building where it’s not clear what’s there, also because all the signs are only in Japanese. The hall is red and deserted, with a few poorly maintained fountains on the sides. I go down onto the red carpet worn at the corners of the steps and decidedly filthy, I get on the elevator, and I notice that it too is really dirty. A sign warns that entry is absolutely forbidden to those with tattoos and drunks. I thank the heavens that I managed, back then, to quell the youthful impulses to tattoo, and in the meantime I arrive at the reception. There is a very long counter, obviously different from the ones in hotels and more similar to those at McDonald’s, apparently very efficient, and there are many people in line, but they are quickly disposed of. I approach and a girl looks at me: “You are here for the capsule?”. I answer yes and she looks frightened at my shoes – I had to take them off, and in fact I look around and everyone is barefoot. The check-in process is particular, and it also has to manage the assignment of three lockers – one for shoes, one for clothes and one for suitcases as big as mine – and for the insertion of valuables inside a yellow bag that is then sealed before my eyes. I understand that I am a special customer, first of all because I am blond, and then because few people have a suitcase. I am given a locker key and my shoe key is taken away – you can’t have both keys at the same time. As I pay I turn around and see a completely naked guy with some kind of light blue shirt on his shoulders walking up the stairs. With my credit card in my hand, I look closer and notice dozens of people going up or down the stairs, naked or in blue boxers, all barefoot and some with a small yellow towel in their hands. Then I focus on those checking in with me: middle class, people in suits, some very distinguished in gray pinstripes and impeccable ties, some guys my age in suits, a few homeless people and some old people. I am the only Westerner, but as happens in Japan no one pays me any attention.

I enter the locker room and look for mine. In each row of lockers there are people changing – everyone is undressing and putting on the uniform provided by the house: blue boxers, blue shirt, and nothing else. It seems that everyone knows where to go and how to do it, it seems that everyone knows how it works.
At the end of each row of lockers there is a chair where a naked person sits and smokes. In the bathroom there are disposable toothbrushes, disposable razors, shampoo, soap and all kinds of creams, but the bathroom is old and unkempt.

I ask for showers, and they tell me that I have to go up three floors, I go up the stairs and on the stairs there are dozens of people who go up and down with dexterity – they seem to be at home. I get to the seventh floor, I am now barefoot too, in my blue boxers and blue shirt. I enter a room where there is a large tub with many people in their fifties asleep in the water with yellow towels on their foreheads. No one gives me a glance, even though in this context I am decidedly different from the others. Along all sides of the room there are many white seats on which you have to sit to take a shower – there is no standing shower. After the shower everyone goes to a room where there are piles of yellow towels – here you dry yourself on a platform in front of a fan that blasts cold air at full speed towards the wet ones that are drying. The room next door is another huge bathroom where on the sides there are various products and where everyone settles down a bit.
After the shower I go downstairs. Everyone is barefoot, but the place is not clean. Or rather, it seems clean but it is old, so basically it is dirty. After the shower I go out for the evening, and while I leave other men in suits and ties and a boy in a tuxedo with a slightly undone bow tie are arriving.

I return around two and there are still people at the check-in, still in jackets, ties, and socks. I go up to the top floor and enter a large room where there are hundreds of people, all barefoot and in their underwear. To the right of the entrance there are eight beds and in front of the eight beds eight masseuses – the must here is the foot massage. Just to the left there is a kind of self-service restaurant that is not worthy of attention, and the rest of the floor is taken up by lots of tiny desks – like those in elementary school – each one separate from the other, and all oriented towards a television. At the desks people are eating dinner, reading the papers, watching television, or talking out loud to themselves like in a mental institution. I sit down while I wait for the foot massage and I discover that the boy next to me is crazy. He is a fat Japanese man, which is rare, first of all,who has strange reflexes in front of his beer while watching television – he is agitated but is as if enchanted, passive in the face of events.

The foot massage is excellent, enhanced by the noise of the unbearable snoring of the two salarymen right next to me; after the massage I decide it’s time to go into the capsule. My capsule is on the third floor of the hotel, along a corridor on either side of which are these sorts of plastic cubicles, which look like washing machines but which don’t have a door and are always open; the entrance is one metre by one, and for each corridor there are two floors of capsules.
People snore a lot here, and you can tell because the reception sells earplugs. The capsules are yellow, an early eighties yellow, the place is indeed old. The capsule is very clean, there is a control console with a radio, light, alarm clock, an eleven-inch television that pops out from above, a smoke detector, a curtain.

I turn off the light. My capsule is on the ground floor, so all night I can see clearly those who walk in the corridor, people who come and go at every hour, back and forth. Before they wore a jacket and tie, now they have blue boxers, a light blue shirt, and they all walk barefoot.

:: D 10:12 [+] :: …