A Week In Japan: After Four Years In China

After four and a half years in China, I've taken a trip aborad. I like to pretend that I haven't taken a week off since I visited Tokyo previously in 2016, back when I was working in a County Durham factory making masks and had overtime cash burning a hole in my pocket. The benefit of been an adult living with parents. The more recent trips to Budapest then Prague for teaching courses weren't exactly relaxing and neither were the times I spent recolating within China from city to city. So, with some anxiety, having lost touch with the outside world in the time I've been here, I stick a toe outside of China for the first time and return to the same place where I had my last vacation eight years ago, Tokyo.

Travel Anxiety

I remember just a few years ago, when preparing to relocate within China from one city to another, needing a test that was valid for 48 hours upto the time of the flight. Like the ticking clock in an action movie if you don't get on the flight in time before that test counts down to zero, you're done for. Not to mention the selection of necessary QR codes. I felt anxious that there was something I wasn't packing, but much the same as in 2016 all I needed was my British passort. In retrospect I could've arrived in Japan like a proper idiot, legally, with just my passport, the clothes on my back and no money. Rather than the mildly autisic sort of fool I am with a suitcase half full of gopnik clothes, space for a games console from Akihabara, and a stupid amount of Chinese currency incase my Chinese bank cards don't work after hearing all the time how expensive things have become in the outside world.

Airport

Leaving from Dalian one good feeling I had on this trip is I feel content to return a week from now. This is the first time I board a plane without that, 'Finally getting out of Dodge', mentality. The last time I boarded a plane in Dalian I had that metality on my way to Shanghai. If you look at my Chinese visa photos you'll see me age twenty years after two months there, then perk up a little after some time in Guiyang.

I bought my flight ticket to Haneda, Tokyo on WeChat and was told by text to be at the airport three hours early. After waiting an hour later the check in opens. It's always a pleasant surprise when they allow my luggage onto the flight. This been the first time I've flown out of China with the intention of coming back to continue working I feared there might be unexpected problems, but it all runs soomthly. She gives me my passport back then I go to security.

Am I still British or Chinese?

The inside cover of my passport reads, 'Her Britannic Majesty grants the holder passage without hinderance...'. It wasn't exactly yesterday when more recently issued passports changed from her to his, and before that the colour changed to blue. What else has changed in Britain, UK or whatever we call it, in the time I've been away. Without a plan or pull to return home, apart from go-kart racing and Greggs, I have to question where home is. Even without being able to string a sentence together in Chinese is China more my home that England? As I hand over my passport for security to stamp it I fully understand he could, if he wanted to, scribble something on my visa to stop me coming back in. He doesn't have any reason to and gives me a red square exit stamp next to the red oval entry stamp from 2019 and sends me through. I guess that answers my question of where home is. I can always sneak off back to Britain, as a last resort, and see what's left.

Haneda to Ueno

The flight was delayed for 90 minutes at Dalian, making it a long day for what I thought would be a quick city hop, like flying from Newcastle to Barcelona. One of the best things I bought was a Japanese SIM card, while waiting in Dalian for the planes sat nav to get fixed. I assumed topping up my Chinese phone via WeChat would do for a week in Japan, but on arrival my phone was more lost than I was. The crowds at the airport are much bigger than I remember on my previous visit eight years eariler, although it is rush hour. There are signs demanding the download of a QR code all over the secruity area. Luckily there's a paper option for someone like me who wants a break from them. While filling in the form I have to ask a helper where I'm from. I'm no longer 100% sure. She says it's where my passport says I'm from, so Durham UK it is. After they take my fingerprints, possibly a retina scan and check my customs declaration, I recive a cute Mount Fuji stamp in my passport and I'm let loose to roam Tokyo. The delay did mean that rush hour on the tube was missed and instead I got rush evening. My lack of planning and preparation for this trip was intensional, an attempt to overthink less and be less anxious by putting myself in an anxious sort of situation. Also, I've been here before, so how hard can it be?

My Bank Of China card works perfectly in an ATM. Good to know if I ever leave China in a hurry. My other Chinese bank card doesn't want to work at all. Japan seems happy enough accepting cash. Isn't it just easier for tourists when we can use cash rather than need another government app on our phones. Even worse a payment app for each shop we frequent. The Japanese SIM card I bought in Dalian won't go in my phone yet because the poking stick for pulling out the card tray wasn't long enough, then I managed to snap it. This gave me some stress, being that I'm now used to using my phone for every financial and social transaction, and for navigation. But after staring at the Tokyo subway map for ten minutes I was able to find where I needed to go among the colourful and complex spider's web of lines and stations. It seems like the best way to get to most places in Tokyo is to head for the black and white circular line in the middle (or is it the line green) then navigate from there. Ueno, my destantion is on the eastside of that circle. The man working at the entrance helps me buy a ticket. Using cash and paper tickets feels like the Tyne & Wear Metro back home rather than the metro systems in China where you just flash a prepaid card at the turnstyle. The complexity of the map is made easier by the complexity of the platform signs and diagrams. The train I need goes from airport to airport, Tokyo having two international airports at opposite ends, with my destination about a third of the way.

Train Beggar

I used to be the nice sort of guy I now despise, the sort that needs to help anyone in need. Last time I was in Tokyo a homeless Japanese man asked me for money using the translator on his iPhone, a phone much better than my worn out old Samsung. Being the nice gullable fool I was I gave him the equalivant of 10 pounds without thinking about it. I still remember the look of shock on a Japanese woman's face who was walking past. I think she was more shocked at my giving than the homeless man's begging.

The train is crowded with comuters and the wheeled luggage of tourists. I'm already enjoying not hearing a single spit in the hour I've been in Japan, when a European sort of guy steps on my toe while marching down the crowded carridge while wearing the sort of long overcoat Tintin would wear. He then marches back up to me,

'Excuse me. I'm Belgian. Do you speak English?' My instant thought is to take the piss, being not only English, but an English teacher.

'Yes'. I thought I would be tight lipped and defensive, not only because he's standing close in an intimidating way, taller and with his eyes wild and open, but he's inevitably going to ask me for money.

'I left my wallet at the library and someone stole it. I don't have a hotel to stay in tonight and my flight isn't until tomorrow morning. Can you lend me enough for a hotel? I'll pay you back.' He really put me on the spot. My younger self would've opened his wallet, inadvertently showing all of his holiday cash. However much I give him would never be enough, and his eyes would likely pop out if he saw the amount of red 100 rmb notes I foolishly have on me. Plus there are questions to think about in the five seconds he waits for me to consider, while he breathes down my neck. If I was in his situation. If I had a flight the next morning and no hotel, I'd stay at the airport that night rather than be on the subway leaving it. Why go to a city as foreign as Tokyo without a hotel resveration for every night and lastly, unless Japan has changed for the worse in the past eight years, nobody here steals. One more thing, who goes to the fucking library on their last day in Tokyo!

'I'm not leading you any fucking money', was my considered reply.

'OK', was his. Then he sniffed and marched back down the carriage.

It's always more dangerous getting somewhere after nightfall, but Tokyo still feels safe at night. In any English city after dark I would've been a touristic target with my rucksack, wheeled luggage rattling on the pavement and banknotes clearly there in my pocket. The hotel is as I remember from last time, which is strange because I booked into a different one from last time without realising it until I saw the orignal one days later.

'Konnichiwa!'

'Ni Hao!' Another enevitable social mistake with more to come.

One thing I felt within me over my week in Tokyo was that I can no longer compare things to how I did them in England. My frame of refence regarding my home nation is antique, pre November 2019. I don't know of any British music or fashion since. I would completely fail Jimmy Carr's Big Fat Quiz Of The Year 2024 and many preciding it. I now have some kind of Chinese frame of reference and mannor, which was evident when I tried to get on the train before people had gotten off. One positive of this trip is I'm suddenly able to write more in a few days than I have in the past year. It's pretty disgraceful really, considering I'm trying to write a book and have ideas for a few more. I think the mental freedom of now knowing I can come and go, since the global pandemic restrictions have ended, allowed me to relax enough to write rather than think about writing. That said, I still never got any progress made on my novel because I wrote this instead. Most of it was written in Tokyo at least, I'm now trying to finish this off months later and about to go to Osaka, but the week in Tokyo was a step in the right direction. I must get out of my own way to be honest.

Air

Perhaps Tokyo gets it's days of smog, but in this week the air was so refreshing. Deep breaths were easy and soothing. Can't imagine how delicious the air in the mountains must be. It's ridiculous how clean Tokyo is. The crisp cleanliness of the air is matched by the condition of the streets and the spotless cars on the roads. The only scruffy aspect to Tokyo are some of the tourists, including casual me in clothes fashioned for a day off.