Saturday, April 5, 2008

Cherry Blossoms in Tokyo



“You are lucky, you will be there at the right time,” says Kana, a Japanese friend right after she knew that I am going to her country in the end of March. I didn’t really feel that she really meant it until I spent a day in Tokyo.

Weaking up very early in the morning is now something difficult for me to do. But, that day, Sunday, 30 April 2008, I managed to do it. I needed to leave Kobe, the place where I had a conference for the last two days, for Osaka where I could buy JR Pass and catch shinkansen, the fastest train in the world. And I needed to get on shinkansen scheduled to leave for Tokyo by 7 AM.

Even though it turns out that I was not eligible to buy 7-day JR Pass, an economical way to take shinkansen and any other JR transportation within seven day-visit in all over Japan, I decided to take shinkansen still when I arrived in Shin-Osaka. The ticket price? Oh, I wasn’t thinking about it. I felt that I needed to be in Tokyo by 11 AM to meet my two Japanese friends, Hibiki and Nozomi, whom I met in Indonesia 5 years ago. Besides, I planned to spend only one night there. Later, when I was doing financial report of this trip for my university, I realized that it is very expensive. I paid 14,250 yen for a single trip. It is almost 75% of monthly bill for gas, water and electricity of an average apartment in Kobe.

It wasn’t bad anyway. The trip from Osaka to Tokyo, whose distance is about 550 km or 341 miles, was completed only in 2 hours and half. And you can even charge your laptop in the train, of course if you bring also your japanese-style socket. It seems that it is designed for rich people, bosses and executives who have to travel hundreds of mile in very short time and probably have to go back on the same day.

I was very excited when shinkansen train I took finally stopped at tokyo station. Seeing friends and visiting some places I already put on my list were bringing that feeling of excitement in me. I found out later on that such excitement would not be easily fulfilled, especially if you have no cellular phone in a huge station like Tokyo. “You can’t live without mobile phone in Tokyo,” said Mike, a Taiwanese friend I just knew that day from Nozomi. Maybe he is right. I was lost in that huge station with thousands of people and I could only contact Nozomi and Hibiki, who had been waiting for me in the designated exit, through public phone. (I thought having a simcard from developed country like Netherlands is guarantee that you will have your cellular network in another developed country like Japan. It turns our that it is not always true!!). We were looking each other for almost 1 and half hour! Pffff!!

Feeling of desperation was finally gone after seeing two familiar faces in front of Marounouchi Underground Central Entrance. Hibiki, now an air traffic controller at Haneda airport, and Nozomi, who is working at Sumitomo company, still look the same. I still remember exactly how they looked like five years ago when I made them lost in their translation during their field research in Yogyakarta. Their hospitality and friendliness soon evaporated my desperation. With them, I spent my best time in Japan.

Hibiki took me to some interesting places. First to a park near Ueno station where we joined the crowd enjoying cherry, or popularly known as sakura, blossoms. It’s the first day we enjoyed cherry blossoms this year,” said Hibiki. Yes, blossoming sakura is not happening all the time. I heard that it blossoms only for two weeks in a year, in the beginning of spring. What made it very special was that it was on Sunday where everybody is free of work. Under the blossoming pink sakura mats were displayed where everybody was drinking, eating and looks very happy. The other thousands of people were just walking down through all the park area. There were also some free entertainments such as juggling and traditional japanese performance, which was look like a chinese liong-liong on the yard of Shinto temple.

Another place I visited was Harajuku, a term refers to a street where japanese youth with their own distinct fashion style usually gather. For indonesian youth, this harajuku thing is quite familiar because it was inspiring the outward appearance of Ratu, a female band which used to be very famous in Indonesian pop-music. That afternoon, I met some female tenagers dressed in extra-ordinary pink girl clothes full of broideries and typically western female cap as we’ve seen in little house on the prairie tv series. Some others dressed in quite innovative rock-style fashion. They looked very confident going from one place to another, it looked like the surrounding area is their catwalk. But, even for those who did not dress in a very extra-ordinary way, for me, japanese youth (both male and female) are generally fashion-stylist.


The last impressive place we visited is Bochi-Bochi, a traditional osaka style restaurant, where three of us had dinner. It is relatively a small place, with its carrying capacity no more than 20 people. Its interior is totally fit with my imagination about japanese houses, I gathered from Oshin tv series and some other images. They have a sliding door with its square motives, curtains whose length is half of the door, and relatively low ceilings. When we entered the restaurant, the chief chef says something like an announcement in japanese, and the other chefs were simultaneously replying quite aloud. Another interesting thing is the way they serve the meals. In each table, there is an electric stove which exhaust third quarter of the table. The remaining table is where we put a small traditional japanese plates, each with its japanese “knife” to cut the food. It is on the electric stove that chefs put his cookings And to pick up foods, of course, we use chopsticks.

While we are eating okonomi-yaki, a pan-fried batter cake usually referred as japanese pizza, and takogarlic, octopus with strong garlic taste, we were chatting about what kind of life has been going on in the last five years. “I still can’t believe that you are here,” says Nozomi at last. But, their hospitality was not ended here yet. Later that night, they took me to the place of Nozomi’s friend, Mike the one I mentioned in the beginning, where I spent the night. Hibiki helped me in calling the bus agent for the bus ticket to go to Kyoto the next morning, and Nozomi bought me and Mike some snacks and foods for breakfast. And Mike, apart from giving me a place to stay, gave me another hand for the sake of my future academic life. Yeah, he allowed me to use his laptop for the whole night to work on my essay to be submitted the next morning.

Kana is right. I am lucky, I am coming at the right time. Not only for sakura, but also for coming to see good friends like them.

The Hague, The Netherlands

5 April 2008

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