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Things to Do in Tokyo at Four in the Morning
Face it: the flight is fourteen hours, and you are going to get to Japan fried like an egg. You leave home in the morning, chasing the sun and not quite succeeding. You are deposited at fortress Narita International. With luck, the Chukaku-Ha loonies haven't launched one of their bottle rockets at the terminal to protest the eviction of the rice farmers to extend the runways.
It is 2:00 PM. You have had breakfast, lunch and dinner on the flight. The drinks were free. The movies were endless and your feet are swollen and numb and your eyes feel like cotton balls. You have crossed the Date Line and stood in the immigration line and the customs line. Your documents and visa pass muster.
You skirt the Kevlar-clad security detachments who look like ancient samurai. You are confronted by the sea of taxicabs with their white cloth seat covers and feather dusters. You now face the eight-mile, two-hour drive into town under hazy skies.
On a clear day you can see Fuji-yama, but those are rare here on the Kanto Plain, where nearly forty million Japanese reside on the flat ground. The drive curls your toes. Some idiot has scheduled a late afternoon meeting.
You nod through the meeting, fading slowly, praying they will let you alone for dinner. Sleep is looking awfully good, but you know that if you go down early, you are going to be awake, bright eyed and bushy tailed by 0300. Relax. Hold it off as long as you can. You are still going to up well before dawn. Make a contingency. Tokyo is at your feet.
It is a science fiction town. For the most part, it was painted on a blank canvas, like Frankfurt or Cologne. Old Tokyo- Edo, of restoration times, was erased from the map. They don't speak of it much, although it is always present. The great air-raids of 1945 are described as if they were natural phenomena like tsunamis or typhoons.
What they had when it was over were a few earthquake-proof structures that had survived the Great Earthquake of 1923 and vast empty spaces where Edo once existed. When the stolid Germans rebuilt, they put up modern block structures derived from Mies Vander Rohe. The downtown areas all look like 1954 Holiday Inns, all facing block obsolescence.
The Japanese came up with a uniquely Japanese answer. They applied a sense of whimsy to architecture. The shapes and curves of the buildings are outré, colorful, impossible. They look like Transformer toys, the model cars that fold out into fantastic robots. The cityscape may as well be composed of giant robots and the green nets of five-story golf driving ranges. At night it is a riot of neon.
Sleep conquers, but your eyes flutter open at three. It will take a couple days to bludgeon the diurnal rhythms into conformance with the Rising Sun. You could watch TV. Japanese TV is incomprehensible. The Far East Military Network or CNN is carried by some of the international hotels. You could jog, or walk. The circuit around the Imperial Palace's moat is an island of tranquility in a sea of urban chaos.
The Roppongi and Akasaka club districts are still rocking, the salary-men are drinking Suntori Whiskey and puffing Lucky Seven cigarettes. That is not the way to start the first business day, though. My alternative is the most Japanese of adventures.
Put on your clothes and walk to the subway. It is a most excellent system, and at off-peak hours very civilized. The uniformed train-stuffers won't report until morning rush hour, gently but firmly packing the cars like sardines. Take the Yamanate Line (Japanese National Rail) and get off at Shibuya Station.
After the great fire storms of 1945, the station was where thousands of people lived. This was the district where black market Formosans fought the local yakuza in 1946, escalating into a gunfight outside the police box in Shibuya that left eight dead and thirty-four wounded.
Now it is a high-fashion district. I like to touch the statue of Hachiko, the pet Akido dog who waited at the station every day for his master's return, even after he died. Good dog!
Stroll out of the clean white tile and onto the street. Take Aoyama-dori past Omoto-Sando-dori, and take the big fly-over walkway to get across.
Up ahead on the left is 5 Tsukiji, Chuo-ku, the largest Tokyo fish market. For me, it's the essence of Japan. Inside Tsukiji are over a thousand vendors; outside hundreds more. It's cold. Under the chill is the odor of fish and a whiff or chlorine. Fish fresh from the docks in Yokohama, stacked in open-topped Styrofoam coolers.
Long fish, short fish. Fish with big eyes and fish with little beady ones. Fish the color of gun-metal. Fish with all the colors of the rainbow. Lurking in other coolers are the things of nightmares. Transparent things whose innards are clearly visible, plucked from the abyss. Tentacles there are, and claws. Fierce eels. Masses of seaweed, and seaweed wrapper. Fresh and dried cuttlefish, Great squids and sea cucumbers.
Intent on these treasures are men in dark trousers and aprons, the chefs who will slice and dice them. To service their full needs are racks of cutlery, dry goods, mountains of dry wasabe, the green horseradish that burns with delight and leaves you weeping. Industrial drums of Shoyu sauce rise to the roof. And all around is the cheery sing-song of a female voice on the loudspeaker, incomprehensible.
All the signs are a mixture of three different types of characters, four if you count the fractured English. I used to think it was because the Japanese were so smart, and now I realize it is just very complicated and they don't understand it either.
Steam rises from noodle carts in the cool air.
I recommend a big slurping bowl to start the day, nose pressed down over the rising barley aroma, cheap wooden chopsticks dragging the warm noodles to your mouth before drinking the broth.
But the main event is yet to come: the Tuna auction. Soon to be sashimi or magaru sushi, the great torpedo-shaped fish lie headless in net rows. Massive animals they were, now sans heads. Brokers circle, estimating the profit in the thousand pounds. They have flown into Tokyo this night, from fishing boats around the world.
They traveled faster than you did to arrive. When bidding begins at six AM the fight is on. The Japanese gesture wildly, the price soars depending on the estimate of the high-end cuts. It is over swiftly and the torpedoes are wheeled away on dollies for shipment to the fish-mongers who will parcel the prime cuts. Glance at the watch. First meeting of the day in two hours.
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