Paperjam

paper-jam does Japan

Travel // Nick // 25th March 2007

An expensive way to get pissed on the cheap

Everyone knows that Japan is expensive. In central Tokyo land costs around a hundred squillion dollars per square inch, it’s $50 for a beer and the only thing cheap things are funky small pieces of electronica that don’t actually work outside Japan and have a default language setting that you can’t change. Mainly because you need to read Hanji script to change it. However I have discovered how to get well and truly hammered, and get some nosh too, for the princely sum of £20, in one of the best hotels on the planet.

In the interests of research and mostly sybaritic pleasure, I recently stayed in the Park Hyatt in Tokyo. If you need a cultural reference, this is the hotel featured in the film Lost in Translation. If you need raw facts, the hotel is the best in Shinjuku, one of the central areas in the megalopolis that is Tokyo. For a London equivalent, central Tokyo is the City, Shinjuku is the West End. The hotel takes up the top twelve floors of the third tallest building in Tokyo, made up of three conjoined and ever-higher towers, the summit of each consisting;

Tower 1: Floor 41, hotel lobby, lounge, peak bar and several restaurants
Tower 2: Floor 47, spa and fitness club, with running machines that if you set too high a speed you would be through the window and falling to a fairly certain death, and a 20m pool with swim-up views of the Tokyo skyline
Tower 3: Floor 52, New York bar and grill, watering hole of rich Japanese businessmen, rich Americans schmoozing said Japanese, and the odd celebrity. I had a martini with Ben Affleck. Honest – no shit…. OK, I had a martini next to Ben Affleck.

Anyway, back to the getting drunk bit. The New York bar is the place to be. It has the best view, the best people and the most fashionable cocktails, so obviously I didn’t fit and had to leave. That and the £5 for a draft beer and £10 for a martini (OK I’m sad, I had two – but at least I didn’t ask them to be shaken, not stirred) meant an alternate post-sunset watering hole was required. And here’s the trick. The Peak Bar in the 41st floor lounge still has a fantastic view, and it is not so busy you have to be there early or be famous. Sitting down by the most vertigo inducing window seat I ordered a beer, ignoring the long and extensive menu of ways to extract money from my wallet, and the barman Eddie (probably not spelt that way) simply said ‘you want all you can drink?’

He had obviously eyed me up and accurately gauged my character, and I was intrigued. A ‘below the counter’ menu was placed before me, which was wonderfully titled ‘Peak of Joy’. The ‘Peak of Joy’ consists of assorted sushi / sashimi, salad, and the daily (unspecified) special, and more importantly all you can drink from a subset of the drinks menu within two hours. Bare in mind two things – the lowest of the low on the drinks menu costs 1000 yen, and there is a cover charge of 5000 yen at the ‘posh’ New York bar upstairs during the evening. The ‘Peak of Joy’ costs 4500 yen, around £20 at time of asking. I think you know the result.

I awoke sometime later in a soap bath parlour in Kabuki-Cho, but that’s another story. In summary, you can get as pissed as you want on beer, wine, saki, whisky etc for £20 in Tokyo. Unfortunately you need to fly to Tokyo to do it, which will cost slightly more than the average night out, unless you are a rapper slugging Crystal.

Reverse Engineering Japan Style

On first sight the Tokyo subway system map is a nightmare. On second look it is merely a headache. On third look you simple say ‘I will never understand this, but now I don’t care’.

This gradual acceptance of the Tokyo subway has little to do with understanding the network. There are around 200 stations, and although according to the map there are only around 15 lines, I think they are lying. The reason for the laid-back acceptance is a work of genius that should be applied to all ticketing systems world-wide.

The Masters of the Tokyo Subway have realised that sometimes, in fact a lot of the time, people don’t know where they are going, or may change their mind. They still have the commuter type cards – the Suica is the equivalent of the Oyster card in London – but if you fuck-up, no worries. And here is the genius; The Fare Adjustment Machine.

In London, if say you buy a zone 1 ticket and end up in Putney, not only will the barrier not let you out, but the man at the gate will be a pain, and probably make you pay a full fare, ignoring that you’ve paid to get to the edge of zone 1. In Japan, it is so much easier.
Buy a ticket. Any ticket. Just the cheapest one for 130 yen (about 50p). When you get to your destination, go to the Tick Adjustment Machine, put in your ticket and it will tell you if you need to pay more. There is no additional charge for doing it this way – the fares are fixed. On the Japan Rail (long distance) lines it is the same. You can still buy a 50p ticket, and just add on the adjustment two hours down the line, knowing you will pay the same fare.

Of course it is slightly different with the Shinkansen (Bullet Train) as you do need to reserve, but after hearing horror stories of getting around Tokyo I was almost disappointed at how easy it was.

Why the Japanese hate the Chinese

Other than the whole mutual invasion / massacre / war crimes thing? They are too similar.
Insular culture avoiding external influences for centuries? Check!
Bizarre combination of Shinto / Zeno / Budhist / Mysticism? Check!
Communal culture above individualism? Check!
Ongoing deliberate separation of written scripts despite 90% of characters being the same? Check!
The same way Brits and Germans don’t get on (or more accurately individually do, but there is a cultural stereotype that remains), Japanese and Chinese don’t get on.

Cultural Learnings for Improvement of British

It’s a very cheap shot, but it’s still funny, to see some wonderful mistranslations.
By shrine in Kyoto: ‘Pray for sucking of children’
Kyoto restaurant: ‘Extract of Slug Slime’ (though this may be correct)
Tokyo electronics shop: ‘Best for price digital everything joy and praise to capital god’
Tokyo bar in red light district: ‘Yu can come for best saki drink in pussy, no can say prostitute but possible hotel fuki’
And my favourite….
Logo on cap worn by elderly man on subway: ‘Pervert – bestest New York’