Text and Photos By Imran Baloch
Daily Dawn May 04, 2008
I was surprised to see men and women walking as fast as they could to catch their trains. It showed how much they valued time as they wanted to utilize each and every minute to its maximum.
Japan is historically known as the long-isolated eastern island and the country of the rising sun. I was extremely excited to explore the exotic island and started my journey in the first week of March this year.
I took a flight from Karachi via Dubai to Nagoya, a central Japanese city, capital of Aichi Prefecture. After the ten-hour-long flight, the plane approached the Nagoya Airport. As the plane started landing, it seemed the airport had been surrounded by water and the runway appeared to be a huge floating steel structure. This was my first impression of the engineering brilliance of the Japanese.
I took a train from the airport to the central train station of Nagoya, which is the largest in the world floor-area-wise. On reaching it, I was surprised to see men and women walking as fast as they could to catch their trains. It showed how much they valued time as they wanted to utilize each and every minute to its maximum. Another thing which surprised me was that no word of English could be seen at the railway station. However, announcements regarding the schedule of trains were in both English and Japanese. I took a bullet train from Nagoya to Tokyo. Japan’s main industry is the automobile business and many such companies are based in the outskirts of Nagoya, the major being Toyota and Mitsubishi.
The train ride was comfortable and after a few hours I reached the Imperial Hotel Tokyo just across the Emperor’s Palace. The next day I enjoyed a well-cooked meal. Usually Japanese food is uncooked or semi-cooked. Japanese cuisine is based on combining staple foods (shushoku), typically rice or noodles with a soup and okazu — dishes made from fish, meat, vegetable, tofu and the like, designed to add flavor to the staple food. Whenever I entered a shop or a restaurant or even a hotel I used to hear the words ‘Arigato Gozaee Mass’, which meant ‘thank you very much’. Of course, the words were accompanied with a big smile.
After a relaxing sleep, the next morning I headed off for Ginza. It is an upmarket area of Tokyo with many department stores, boutiques, restaurants and coffeehouses. Nissan’s headquarters and stores like Armani along with Burberry and Mont Blanc are all located here. Besides, there are famous department stores like Wako and Mitsukoshi.
At lunch we enjoyed tempura; thin slices or strips of vegetables or seafood dipped in flour then briefly deep-fried in hot oil. One of our hosts informed us that tempura was introduced in Japan in the mid-sixteenth century by Portuguese and Spanish missionaries and traders. The irony is most Japanese are unaware of this historical fact.
Tokyo has one of the finest subway transportation systems, nearly 40 per cent of workers come from neighboring prefectures, i.e. Kanagawa, Saitama, Chiba, Gunma, Tochigi, Ibaraki, and Yamanashi, on a daily basis.
In the evening, we had dinner at a restaurant at Ginza. We enjoyed Yakitori, which is a BBQ dish, and after that we went to Roppongi, which means ‘six trees’, to enjoy the nightlife. It is a million-dollar business in the busiest business city of the second largest economy of the world.
My third day started with a planned bus trip of Tokyo city. My Japanese colleague informed me that modern-day Japan has been made possible because of the Meiji Restoration in 1867 when the sixteen-year-old Mutsuhito succeeded his father, Emperor Komei. A new era of Meiji, meaning ‘enlightened rule’, was proclaimed and it ended the 265-year-old feudalistic Tokugawa shogunate.
We then went to the 1,000-year-old Senso Ji, an ancient Buddhist temple, located in Asakusa, Taito. It is Tokyo’s oldest and one of its most significant temples. Formerly associated with the Tendai sect, it became independent after World War II. Adjacent to the temple is a Shinto shrine, the Asakusa Shrine. During World War II, the temple was bombed and for the most part destroyed. It was rebuilt later and is a symbol of rebirth and peace for the Japanese people.
We then started our cruise over the Sumida River which flows through Tokyo. The journey covers at least 27 km. I counted at least 26 bridges. The Azuma Bashi Bridge dates back to 1774, the Senju Ohashi bridge to 1921, the Komagata Bridge to 1927, the Kototoi Bashi Bridge to 1928 and the Umaya Bridge to 1929. I saw several floating restaurants on my river trip.
The same evening I had to check out from my hotel and rush to the Haneda Airport, Tokyo, for my connecting flight to the Kansai Airport, Osaka, and from there to Dubai and onwards to Karachi. As I waited for my flight at the airport lounge I could not help reminiscing that the Japanese are an amazing nation with a rich culture and tradition, which is still intact while their economic development is making them progress in leaps and bounds.
