Covered in Beez

Outside the Palace, Tokyo

It’s been about a little while now since I came to Japan on a mix of holiday time (visiting my sister as well as taking my girlfriend to Tokyo) and business.  Finally finding the time to blog about it, I find myself writing the very first blog posts for www.coveredinbeez.com!

The first thing to be addressed is the following: If you come here as a tourist expecting a magical land where everyone is smiley, happy and the land twinkles with magic dust that turns everything into an anime, I’d cancel your travel plans.  Like any city you’re going to get your fair share of interesting and beautiful things - you’ve got shrines and beautiful green spaces where the cherry blossoms fall gently in the breeze - but for every one of those you have a grounding of reality juxtaposed next to it.  Besides your shrine you’ll find the rubble of a building that recently got demolished, your park will be filled with hobos snoozing next to their favourite stray cats or raiding the recycling bins.

One particularly memorable example is round the corner from the shining example of consumerism that is the Grand Hyatt Tokyo in Roppongi, after dropping off my baggage I walked round the corner to find a homeless person with his trousers down trying to take a quick dump in the flower bed.  If ever there was an unfortunately shining example of juxtaposition as discussed above then that would be it…

No matter how hard you squint at it - Tokyo is no utopian city where the streets are paved with gold, spirits leap out of every urinal or where every corner is lined with anime-like occurances or paraphanalia.  There are at least 101 books on Japan from travellers from the insightful all the way along to benign (I’m sure if you look hard enough you’ll find a book on what Japan is like for a one-eyed, mentally challenged mongoose…) but whatever view of Japan you subscribe to there’s one unalterable truth: It’s just another city.

Don’t get me wrong, from the above you would assume I am less than enamoured by the city but that couldn’t be further from the truth, I had an amazing time while there, but like any city it has it’s negative points.  It is after all more fun to talk about negatives when there are screeds of easily available tourist guides extolling the virtues of the city (as well as a few fibs…hordes of cosplayers, excluding foreign visiting ones, do not usually swarm the bridge at Meiji Jingu no matter what Lonely Planet may tell you for example).

On the positive side it has a lot of good things going for it as well.  For example if we go with the grabby materialistic stuff - there’s almost literally something for everyone here, be it shiny music, clothes, accessories, kitchenware, toys - you name it and they have it.  This is balanced by the fact much like cities such as Edinburgh they have a good amount of green spaces - however the difference being Tokyo is many times larger of course so relatively speaking it probably has proportionally just enough greenery to not make it a completely grey landscape all across the city.

I think it’s worth underlining strongly here that these are just the views of someone who has had the equivelant of a blink in but one city in Japan though.  Also that in that blink of an eye I’d heartily recommend visiting and seeing the place for yourself and form your own conclusions about the city.  I certainly loved my visit (I really would like to go again) just go there with eyes open and you’ll have a fantastic time when there!

After these initial blog posts are done you’ll find more talk about what’s going on in the industry and interesting snippets of the life of someone working in marketing for the entertainment industry in general.   You’ll also get more of an insight into the  more interesting personal happenings in my life such as travel observations etc.  Feel free to leave comments, discuss or generally grumble about anything said here…