to cut its umbilical cord to the Edo era (try dealing with a Japanese bank or, far more seriously, look at something like the lack of gender equality) there are times when it feels the country has gone further into the future than Buck Rogers.
Architecture is certainly one area where Japan continuously pushes the boundaries, and the gray of central Tokyo in particular is often punctuated by the cutting-edge work of internationally acclaimed Japanese architects like Toyo Ito, Tadao Ando, Shigeru Ban, Kisho Kurokawa, and Kenzo Tange. Pritzker Prize-winning Ando’s Omotesando Hills is an obvious example of modern Japanese style, although the former boxer, former trucker’s (and self-taught architect’s) work in Naoshima (pages 102–103) is arguably more representative of his distinctive use of rough concrete, stark spaces, and natural lighting.
Then there’s technology and manufacturing. With automotives, names like Nissan, Honda, Suzuki, Daihatsu, Mazda, and Toyota—the latter whose factory tours are a highlight of a trip to Nagoya—have made Japan one of a small group of global leaders, as, a little less fashionably, have industrial and heavy machine makers such as Mitsubishi. It’s similar within home electronics and brands such as Panasonic, Sony, NEC, and Hitachi. And don’t forget the cameras of Nikon, Canon, Fuji, Minolta, and more. Yet, back to the contrasts, even in a country where robots greet customers with a bow, bathtubs talk and toilets perform a wash and dry, sometimes even the simplest and most effective low-tech solutions are overlooked—just try and find a flat with good insulation.
Beyond that, Japan is also a leader when it comes to things geeky. For gamers, think PlayStation and Nintendo. For cartoons, comic and animation, where to start? It permeates all parts of Japanese society. You see adults reading thick manga comics on rush hour trains. All sorts of companies, from tourism agencies to shrines, use comic strips and mascots to get their messages across. And Japanese manga and anime have legions of fans around the globe, in the process spawning a billion-dollar business.
The E5 Series is one of the newer bullet trains, debuting in 2011 and with a maximum speed of 320 km/h (200 mph).
A Kawasaki prototype. Japan’s automotive companies frequently lead the way.
Nagoya City Science Museum. As well as the futuristic design, inside it’s full of hands-on activities designed to inspire the next generation of scientists.
A prototype on display at Toyota’s main production complex near Nagoya. A visit here can also include a tour of the high-tech, mostly automated production lines.
The Tokyo Big Sight convention center in Tokyo’s Odaiba district.
It might look like something from Thunderbirds, but this is one of the boats that transports people up and down the Sumida River, running from Asakusa to Hamarikyu Gardens and Odaiba.
Toyota’s companion robot Kirobo Mini, who has traveled to the International Space Station.
One of Toyota’s robots. Now it just plays the violin for school kids, but one day developers hope robots will be able to function as care-givers, concierges and in many other capacities.
Naoshima is home to dozens of art installations, such as the Frog and Cat by Karel Appel pictured here, as well as several museums.
The Shinjuku skyline.
A “game center” (amusement arcade). In Tokyo and elsewhere, they come in all shapes and sizes, from virtual reality-heavy centers like Joypolis to old-school, retro-only arcades where you can turn back the clock with a bit of Street Fighter.
Japan’s otaku, which could roughly translate as geek (although that doesn’t quite capture all the nuances), fuel massive anime, manga and related industries. From cosplay outfits to figurines, video games to comics, visit Akihabara in Tokyo and you can take in all of Japan’s otaku color and energy.
Depending on one’s point of view, the Robot Restaurant in Shinjuku’s glitzy, neon-heavy multimedia cabaret could be the ultimate in tacky or wonderful kitsch.
WASHOKU: JAPANESE CUISINE
A Foodie’s Paradise
Food. Be it sushi, ramen or any of the hundreds of other dishes found around Japan, Japanese cuisine has to be one of the country’s greatest claims to fame. In a nation full of foodies, food is a central fixture of celebrations and festivals, food-related shows dominate prime time TV, cookbooks and cooking magazines fill entire aisles in bookstores, and wherever you go it rarely feels you are that far from somewhere to grab a bite to eat. Tokyo alone is home to somewhere near 100,000 licensed eating establishments that range from almost three hundred wallet-busting Michelin-starred restaurants to simple, standing-only noodle joints that give change from ¥500. Leave aside the vast selection of international flavors, the varieties of just Japanese cuisine are mind blowing, but despite that variety there are certain threads that bind everything together.
Afocus on the use of seasonal produce is shared by many types of Japanese cuisine, from the in-season vegetables in Buddhist shojin ryori cuisine to the seafood selected by sushi restaurants. So is specialization: restaurants dedicated only to soba noodles, tofu dishes, pork cutlets, tempura, and many other single foods are extremely common. Look at Tokyo and you’ll see that certain areas specialize, too. Okubo, a part of Shinjuku, is home to a concentration of Korean restaurants. Ryogoku is known for chanko nabe, the hot pot of meat, vegetables and seafood used by sumo wrestlers to bulk up. The Tsukishima area is the birthplace of monjayaki, a happy-tasting but not especially appetizing-looking dish that begins as a runny batter containing chopped vegetables, meat or seafood and then after a while on a hotplate becomes a sticky mess like fried cheese.
And this kind of specializing stretches out on a national scale, too. Almost every region, city and even small town you visit will have at least one local dish it is proud of. Moving away from Tokyo, Yokohama has its Chinatown restaurants. Up north in Hokkaido, the harsh, cold climate has given Sapporo local specialties that include warming soup curry (like a mulligatawny), a hearty miso-based version of ramen, and a type of mutton barbecue somewhat oddly named after Genghis Khan. At the opposite end of the archipelago, balmy Okinawa has a version of soba noodles in broth that are topped with melt-in-the-mouth pork (soki soba), a wonderful stir-fry of bitter gourd, spam, tofu and egg called goya champuru, and oddities that include
