Opinion / Liang Hongfu
Return visit stirs great fondness for Tokyo
By Hong Liang (China Daily)
Updated: 2006-12-28 07:26
It has been five years since I last visited Tokyo. In the past, I went
there mainly for stories. Those were business trips paid by the
newspapers that sent me there. This time, I am going on my own and I
don't know what to expect.
Everyone I talk to has horror stories to tell about the exorbitant cost
of the city. But I remember I usually spent more on reporting trips to
India, Indonesia and the Philippines than Japan. In fact, it is much
easier, and safer, to stay on the cheap in Tokyo than, say, in Manila or
Bangalore.
Take hotels. In Manila, for instance, you will have very little choice
but to stay in one of the star-rated international hotels which charge
the same, if not higher, room rates as those in Hong Kong. You can, of
course, opt to stay in a local hotel for a much lower rate per night. I
would not recommend it, although I have never stayed in any of them.
But I did spend a few nights in a relatively small local hotel in Kuala
Lumpur, and have regretted it since. There were, of course, the
occasional bugs, as could be expected in any form of abode in the
tropics. But it was the constant noise from the beat-up air-conditioner,
the people living in the next rooms and those chatting and running around
in the corridors that irritated the most.
For some unknown reason, the floor of the attached toilet in my room was
always wet. I tried to look for the leak thinking that if I could somehow
plug it all would be well. With the help of two attendants in singlets
and shorts, we failed completely to locate the faulty joint. It seemed
that every pipe was leaking.
In Tokyo, I almost always stayed at the hotels frequented by small
businessmen that cost less per night than a modest Holiday Inn in Manila
or Bangkok. My favourite was a highly popular small hotel in Toranomon in
downtown Tokyo, which caters to travelling businesspeople from around the
country. The rooms are very small, but they are always clean and neat.
All the basics a traveller may want, including two beds, a television
set, desk and closet, are somehow squeezed into that tiny space. They
even manage to fit a tiny bathtub into the bathroom.
Dining in Tokyo can be very expensive. A hamburger at McDonald's in the
city costs nearly twice as much as in Hong Kong or Shanghai.
But there are no shortages of street-side eateries serving delicious
wheat noodles in steaming hot soup or Japanese-style pancakes laced with
dried fish flakes. I ate these staples at many different places in Japan
and never got sick once.
Because I have a highly sensitive stomach, I would not even eat at the
street-side eateries in Hong Kong. A former colleague of mine used to
laugh at my squeamishness. He once went on a reporting trip to Bangkok
and came back with some bugs inside him. Getting rid of them required the
removal of several feet of his guts.
Many years ago, an American journalist visited Tokyo for the first time
when I was working there as a stand-in for a reporter who was on leave. I
took her to a typical neighbourhood bar, which served not only beer and
sake but also a wide variety of snacks. What impressed her most was not
the food nor the jovial company of the Japanese businessmen, who were
absolutely fascinated by her natural blonde hair, but rather the
cleanliness of the toilet in that hole-in-the-wall establishment.
I never did much shopping when I was in Tokyo. There is really nothing I
need or want in Tokyo that I could not have bought more cheaply in Hong
Kong. I once bought an MD-recorder at a Sony store in Ginza only to find
out later that the street price of the same model in Hong Kong was 15 per
cent less than the discounted price I paid.
But the shopping experience in Tokyo is something that is almost always
worth writing home about. After paying for my inexpensive sweater at the
counter, I expected the sales assistant to hand me the parcel she was
holding. But instead, she accompanied me to the exit and only then did
she offer the parcel to me, with a smile and a deep bow. Having had to
put up with rude sales assistants in Hong Kong for so many years, I was
moved.
My impression of Tokyo has always been good. I cannot wait to find out if
it has changed much. I will keep you posted.
(China Daily 12/28/2006 page4)
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