Land of Artificial Islands

I think Japan is probably the only country in the world which creates land (of course Dubai is catching up, as my friend pointed out). It sounds little creepy, a-la Lex Luther style. The country is so small and densely populated that they simply run out of land so they end up creating new one.
My last day in Japan, I am sitting on one such artificial island based airport (Kansai) it is little scary when the plane takes off and lands, all you see is South China sea on both sides and no land.
The first thing that hits you when visiting Japan is density. It is ironic for a person like me, coming from one of the highly populated countries in the world, but there it is. There are no vast open spaces, there are simply houses and houses and.... houses, well you get the point. Every vacant place is taken up by something or other. Everything is compact and close, the houses are so close together, that it almost seems like one long house in the lane. No wonder Japanese are high on suicide rate, it just gets on your nerves. Even the temples and monasteries are closely packed together. I went to the Golden Temple, it turned out to be complex of several temples hidden in the woods.

As necessity drives invention, the hotel room I was staying is 12feet by 16 feet including a bathroom and oversized bed (well it appeared oversized to me relatively!). The bathrooms are made of plastic (I kid not) and fixtures are attached to the walls. Japanese people, ever the inventors, have found simple yet risky solution for the land Vs density problem... High rise buildings! simple because you can get many people sleeping on each other (pun intended), risky because earthquakes and typhoons. I was surprised to see so many tall buildings in a country which is practically sitting on a earthquake-mine. Tokyo is the worst... and all this time I was worried of increasing FSI in Pune.

The city of Osaka where I lived is 'B' grade metropolis with all 'A' grade amenities. Japan was reconstructed after WWII by Americans so all cities look alike, barring few temples, evidences of Japanese electronic giants, and Japanese names nothing is Japanese about cities. Perhaps villages are more, but I never visited them. Kyoto, which my Japanese friends recommended as 'the' old city, looked more like some California town, complete with 'American Chopsuey Noodles' being sold at nearby restaurant. My hotel had shopping complex selling ever-so spreading McDonalds and Starbucks. I must confesss that this was the only time I liked consistency, i.e. I knew exactly what I was getting. I could not say the same thing for all other Japanese eateries.

All the menus in Japanese hotels were in Japanese (prices in English numerals!), and by looking at picture everything looked like:
a) fried
b) noodly
c) some fishy thing with seaweed.
My friend, who was my escort for weekend picnics went out of the way to ensure I get to test everything original Japanese, so I practically tried every kind of Japanese food, except Sushi (I never liked this stuff!).
I also had a typical Japanese evening, which translated in English means, sake with some Japanese snack food, served by pretty waitress - sake without any food served by grumpy old men in a different bar - cold noodles (SOBA) served by old waitress with green tea as dinner.
Of course, I could not test Sake due to my medical condition but I had lot of food, including the SOBA. My chopstick skills were really tested in Japan, some hotels were considerate for gaijan while others simply wanted you to convert, so you sit on floor, drink lot of green tea with your lunch or dinner and make fool of yourself trying to eat noodles with chopsticks. Interestingly in Japan it is ok to slurp noodles, my son would love the country. I can never get used to slurping the noodles, so I suffered silently, even at a times by burning my lips and tongue.

Everything in Japan smells of fish or sea-weed. Hotels, dishes, cups everything. Even in cities which are not close to sea, like Kyoto, general smell in the air is of fish or sea-weed. I particularly did not mind it, but it takes little getting used to. I remembered the experiences from 'Geisha Story' where the heroine gets harassed because of her fishing village smell.

Japanese are voracious when it comes to fish, they practically eat 117 types of fish (translated in quantity that is huge amount of fish - tons of fish every year). I wanted to visit the fish-market but could not make it, perhaps next time...

I had several impressions of Japan before, some of them are still valid, i.e. Japanese people are very friendly, they go out of the way to help foreigners. Unique experience for Indians!

Everything is compact and neat, this applies from dinner table to sleeping bed to automatic toilets (well the toilet functions... you still have to do your job). The legendary service and respect in daily lives, even the policeman bows to you. At the airport, customs officer was practically groveling after looking at my business card. I never carry my card with me, in this electronic world none are needed. However in Japan the culture of exchanging the visiting cards still exist. So I was sitting like a fool when everybody came by and presented their cards to me, I had very few to return back. Japanese women are really beautiful and wear really skimpy clothes even on the cold day. The tea ceremony is for real and costs 500 Yen (with small dessert). The bowing by juniors to seniors is real (even in business world with highly modern business model). At meetings you see everybody practically groveling to each other. Culturally 'respect' is far more important thing in Japanese life than anything else.

It is an interesting country, with lot of friendly people. Just keep open mind when eating the raw octopus...