News from the Gaijin Ghetto

Sunday Afternoon in the Sin Den.

It’s Sunday afternoon. I’m not writing, as per usual, from my home, but rather from inside Sin Den. Really. Tokyo has a hair salon called Sin Den, run by westerners using American product and techniques, and therefore, I’m in Sin Den waiting for my wife to finish getting “done.” The salon, BTW, is nothing that the name implies – it is the same type of upscale, well-lit and attractively-stationed salon that my wife has become accustomed to whilst living in the suburbs of NYC (well, lets face it, Fairfield County in Connecticut doesn’t exist outside of it’s relationship with “the City.”) As tattoos in Japan signify association with the Yakuza or other mob elements, there isn’t even interesting body art of any sort to comment about. Except for the topless woman wallpaper in the restroom, Sin Den is about as sinful as Elizabeth Arden or (for the Utahans out there) the Von Curtis Salon in Provo. Not that I advocate any of those places, either.

Anyway, the leeway that this particular non-Japanese establishment has in choosing its rather risqué business name – something that is surely a result of most locals not knowing what the name means – is emblematic of a peculiar leeway that most non-Japanese individuals have in going about their business without having to abide by Japanese customs, mores, or, to some degree, laws – something that is surely a result of most locals thinking of gaijin as uncultured idiots.

In Tokyo, my experience so far (and remember that “so far” is just over a month) has been that, within reason, gaijin – both male and female – can get away with just about anything. Stand still in the walking lane of the escalator or moving walkway? No problem – I’m a gaijin. Sit in the elderly / handicapped seats on the Metro? No problem – I’m a gaijin. Eat and drink standing up, walking, on the train, practically everywhere and anywhere? No problem – I’m a gaijin. Drive the wrong way on a one-way street while passing a policeman? No problem – I’m a gaijin. (And, yes, I actually did this while renting a car the first week we were in Japan.)

By contrast, there seems to be a rather rigid societal code by which the local Japanese are expected to live, particularly for women. Nothing official – there are no secret police lurking behind the hedges – but expected behaviours are commonly known and enforced by glares and whispers. In Tokyo, men are dominant and women are generally subservient. If the woman is unwilling to accept the subservient/submissive role, she is looked down upon or even, in at least one admittedly extreme case, kicked out of the household.

The societal code is difficult for both men and women – I understand that anti-depressants are the top-selling drug in Japan – but the group most effected seems to be Japanese women returning from a stint overseas. They even have a name for the condition that these women find themselves in – they call it “adjustment disorder,” meaning that Japanese women returning from life overseas have difficulty adjusting from the relative equality and freedom of Western lifestyles to the hierarchy of Tokyo. (I learned of this because the wife of Japan’s Emperor, a Harvard-educated former-diplomat, has suffered this disorder for the last three years, requiring frequent trips to Europe for health reasons, much to the consternation of the conservative court. Hm.)

As sad as this is for the locals, life is GREAT as a gaijin in Tokyo. We enjoy all the benefits of a rigidly-controlled social system, without having to abide with most of the requirements. For one thing, the city is clean beyond all reasonable expectation. The street curbs and gutters of Tokyo are constantly being swept by a huge cadre manic grandmothers with little bamboo brooms and trays. OCD maintenance workers clean practically all surfaces to a shiny polish – they even shut down the escalators and sidewalks in order to get to the “tough spots.” The public swimming pools (there are many) are crazy clean. Here’s how they do it:

When you arrive at the public pool, you buy an entry ticket, at which point you take off your shoes and are given plastic slippers. You then enter either the men’s or women’s locker. After you’ve changed, you head to the showers. You are then expected to scrub down – with soap (provided by the pool). After this, you head out to the pool. Sounds like the YMCA at this point, right? Well, put your towel back in your locker; as you head out to the pool, you must go through a narrow corridor. First, you must walk through about two meters of antiseptic / antibacterial footbath – its actually warm and rather pleasant, once you get over being skeeved out. At the end of the footbath, you walk up steps and trigger an electric eye, which starts the walls and ceiling to give you a mandatory shower that you are forced to walk though to get to the pool – as I said, don’t bring your towel.

The pool itself sparkles. This is because the lifeguards blow a whistle every 15 minutes, at which time everybody evacuates the pool with a speed that makes you think that they’d found a massive turd floating in the water. When the pool emptied, they life guard check the water, add chemicals as needed, and then give the all-clear, at which point everyone hops back in with the same speed with which they’d left. The pool is only open for two hours at a clip, allowing for the staff to clean with their manic zeal in-between. When the pool closes down, everyone showers, uses a double-headed water fountain for an eye-bath to combat Japanese conjunctivitis, and gets dressed. Finally the shoes go back on when you leave the building. As overboard as this may seem, Japanese public pools are the cleanest swimming pools I have ever seen, anywhere, and by a long shot. Though there are procedural hurdles, swimming here is a very pleasant (and surprisingly cheap) experience.

Other great things about Tokyo that giajin benefit from.... All manner of public transportation is on time without fail – you can set your watch by when the Metro trains arrive. The parks are manicured and especially well maintained. Shopping in Tokyo, although staggeringly expensive, is also a very pleasant experience, once you overcome the sticker shock. In terms of food shopping, the fruit is better tasting, the breads softer or flakier, the meats are choicer cuts and fresher, the staff is more courteous and helpful (caveat: our former home was near NYC, where customer service is a dirty word). For non-perishables and consumer goods shopping, in addition to the extraordinarily helpful staff, the selection is usually better and the packages more attractively wrapped than in the U.S., even though the shops are smaller in size. (Don’t know how they do it!)

Anyway, my point is that, for a gaijin, Tokyo is abnormally efficient, clean and beautiful for a city of its population density. Though expensive in all respects (except for above-mentioned public pools), shopping and living in Tokyo is wonderful. Because the city is so homogenous and rigidly controlled from the Japanese perspective, residents have a great sense of safety and security. And, as a gaijin, you don’t have to abide by rigid Japanese customs and rules. Expat life in Tokyo – one of the most agreeable experiences you can have. I recommend it to anybody – unless you’re a woman of Japanese genealogy.

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O.K. my wife is done getting "done" now. She looks great. Just now, she related to me how her hair was straightened. Now, getting her hair straightened is nothing particularly strange; she does it all the time; this is simply how my wife likes her hair. She has the stylist process, then cut, then blow dry and straighten with a straightening iron and some gooey products. It results in a very polished, sophisticated and professional look that she feels comfortable with. The difference between the US version and the Japanese is that the Japanese stylists (even in the Sin Den, a western-owned hair salon) don't know when to quit. They have a perfectionist streak that borders on the obsessive.

Normally, the process takes about an hour to an hour-and-a-half, with the styling and straightening taking maybe five to ten minutes. This time the process took two full hours. Apparently, the stylists thought it necessary to straighten every hair. Individually. Which is to say, every single hair, individually straightened. With two stylists, each working concurrently on both sides of my wife's head. Which is fine, but all their efforts are going to swirl down the drain when she takes a shower in the morning.

The haircut cost about a third more than it would in the US, which is in line with everything else around here. But the level of service was substantially better than in the US, which also correlates with our prior Tokyo experience. The point is that life is great here. The Japanese tend to go WAY beyond what most Americans are used to in terms of providing a "perfect" product or experience. But process-driven perfection can lead to silly or wasteful outcomes sometimes; note the over-the-top hair straightening and that the Japanese employees needed to consult a manager to ascertain whether they could hold the pickles on a McDonald's Cheeseburger the other night.