Visit Report

This report contains frivolous and unimportant information about my
recent trip to the Far East only; those desiring serious-minded
discussion of computing services should read no further. To allay any
financial anxieties I should also state at the outset that the not
inconsiderable expenses of this trip were all borne by my hosts: in
Tokyo, NACSIS (the organization responsible to the Min of Ed for
academic networking in Japan) and the Japanese TEI Committee, and in
Korea, the Electronic Buddhist Text Initiative. My thanks to them and
to OUCS for allowing me time off to gad around the far east at the
Japanese tax payers' expense.

The first thing to grasp about Tokyo is that it is very, very, big. At
this time of the year, it is also warm and frequently wet. The
Japanese invented urban sprawl: the Tokyo metropolis spreads across an
area about the size of Kent, densely built up with every variation of
urban life you can think of. There are plenty of quiet suburban
backstreets and human-scale crowded shopping streets. There are also
choked six-lane highways, futuristic suspended walkways and monorails,
skyscrapers and immense shopping malls, the whole cacophony punctuated
at night by exclamatory decorative neon, with countless railways
snaking their visceral way through the whole mess, moving millions of
people from one box to another twice a day.

There are about 50 different railway lines in the Greater Tokyo Urban
Area (hereafter, Megalopolis); each of the six or seven I actually
experienced was busy, punctual and clean. Working out how to use the
network is pretty easy, compared with (say) debugging hex dumps, with
which mental activity it has occasional similarities -- nothing brings
home to you what illiteracy is like better than travelling to Japan.

All you have to do is decide which line you want to travel on
(there's the downtown Tokyo subway, the JR network, and maybe half a
dozen different private company lines). Then locate the ticket
machines for that line, above which there will be a route map showing
you all the stations you can go to on it (but none of the others, of
course), with a number (the price) and the station name -- in
Romanized form, if you're very lucky and it's a big enough station.
The numbers are in English, of course. Pump that amount of money into
the machine, collect your ticket and head purposefully off through
the turnstiles. You will collide with small seas of Oriental
humanity going in the opposite direction, until you remember to
keep right, rather than left, and to read the signs telling you which
side of these narrow twisted passages to walk along. 

On the platform, several small queues are already forming, at right
angles to the tracks; the train will stop with its doors directly in
front of each of these. At rush hours (i.e. most of the time) a
clinically detached and uniformed person wearing a rather splendid
blue hat and white gloves will be available to help overcome your
natural reluctance to compress your neighbours on the train before
you've been introduced.  As a Westerner, even squashed flat against
the window, you are statistically likely to be a good six inches
taller than most of your fellow travellers, which can be comforting
when you are anxious about whether you've reached your station or
not. Amongst the incomprehensible adverts for cars and perfumes and
noodles hanging gaudily down from the roof, there will be a route
map. Better try to find it now, because more passengers will be
getting on at the next stop.

Of course, the trains are not always crowded. Late at night they are
busy still, but most people (apart from the armies of schoolgirls) on
them are fast asleep, or drunk, or both. Travelling (several times)
late at night from one part of Megalopolis to another, I saw no
beggars, no down and outs, no aggressive behaviour and virtually no
dirt anywhere. The worst urban terrorists I encountered were a bunch
of born-again Green Buddhists, who wanted to make me meditate with
them for a while in order to save the Amazonian forests in some way I
didn't quite grasp.

As well as public transport, Tokyo is gastronomically remarkable.
Macdonalds and Kentucky Fried Chicken are to be had, of course, as are
their local clones Mosburger. But there are still plenty of little
restaurants serving better things, as well as street vendors with
barrows who will whip up a bowl of noodles in no time. I like sushi
(cold boiled rice with a fishy filling wrapped in dried seaweed) much
more than the description of it suggests; similarly sashimi
(delicately sliced gobbets of raw fish or crab served on rice with a
bright green horse-radish paste and pickled ginger relish) is much
nicer than it sounds. Noodles come in a large bowl with broth and
other tasty additives; some skill may be required to get them into
your mouth using chopsticks, without getting broth all over your tie
-- but not much, since schlurping noises are sociably quite
acceptable. Other tasty things include tempura (deep fried vegetables
in batter), teriyaki (barbecued bits of meat on a stick) and various
sweetmeats made from sweet potato, aduki bean paste and other unlikely
things. In general, the best thing to do with Japanese food is to eat
it first and ask what it was later.