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Tokyo is a weird and wonderful place. It's a hypnotic, happening city with a restless energy, where a stroll round the streets bombards the senses and raises as many questions as it answers. Tokyo never sleeps and it's never, ever boring. So when I touched down in Narita airport to start researching the Rough Guide to Tokyo, I was beginning to feel a little bit nervous. I'd lived in Tokyo for several years, so knew it reasonably well, but there's a world of difference between exploring a city for fun and trying to distil it down to a 300-odd page guide within a matter of weeks. Perhaps Tokyo's most daunting aspect is its sheer size. The city's official population is 12 million, but that doesn't give a true picture. To get a better feel, you need to add neighbouring Kawasaki, Yokohama and the other huge cities sprawling over the Kanto plain. This wider net draws in a staggering 35 million people. More than 20 million of them commute in to central Tokyo every weekday, three million shuffling through Shinjuku station alone, making it the world's busiest train station.
Given these statistics, it always amazes me that the whole place doesn't simply seize up under the weight of people. Miraculously, Tokyo works, and works extremely well. The trains are squeaky clean, they run like clock work, and I've rarely come across a vandalized phone or a ticket machine that's out of order. Which not only helps make city-life bearable, but also means it's possible to pack a huge amount of research into a day. The only rule about travelling around Tokyo is never to attempt it at rush-hour, especially if you're carrying anything bigger than your train ticket. I'd forgotten this bit of advice until I hit Shinjuku at the 6pm peak, lugging a rucksack bigger than the average Japanese apartment and squawking shitsurei shimasu (excuse me) to the long-suffering commuters dragged along in my wake. Not that anyone would have been so rude as to hurl abuse at me. For Japanese people are, of course, famous for being impeccably polite - another boon when pestering tired restaurateurs and busy hotel-staff for information. Such politeness is part of a complex web of social conventions and codes of behaviour which is, in part, what keeps Tokyo from spiralling into chaos. These rules of etiquette can be quite daunting on first arrival, and I shudder to think how many times I've offended people by blowing my nose in public, wrapping my yukata (a sort of cotton dressing-gown) the wrong way - signifying death - or committing unknown sins with my chopsticks.
In the end, however, many of the social niceties are infectious, particularly the bowing which is the Japanese version of a handshake. After only a few weeks back in Tokyo, I was bobbing my head with the best of them, and even walking backwards out of offices and restaurants in a little ritual dance of farewell. This was usually accompanied by a duet as my host and I ran through our respective liturgies, in my case repetitions of "thank you so much for your kindness" and "forgive me for my rudeness", possibly with an "I'm forever in your debt" thrown in, just for good measure. At least, I hope that's what I was saying. Another hazard of being in such polite company is that Japanese people will exclaim how wonderfully you speak their language, when you've only just mastered the most basic konnichiwa (good afternoon). This tends to make you rather big-headed - but never for long. One occasion on which I was brought painfully down to earth took place in a quiet little restaurant when I was very new to Tokyo. I thought I'd ordered tonkatsu (juicy, deep-fried pork cutlets served with a rich sauce), and in response to the waiter's puzzled questions I assured him and the other interested onlookers that of course I could eat it, in fact it was my favourite dish. No sooner had I expressed such bravado than the chef himself approached bearing a platter of unadorned, lightly steamed pigs' trotters (tonsoku). He pushed a pair of chopsticks at me and waited. And it's not only the spoken language that has been my downfall. Although Tokyo is without doubt one of the safest cities in the world, it carries its own, more subtle dangers, foremost of which are the toilets. Traditional Japanese toilets are of the simple, squat variety, but in the cities these have largely been replaced by Western-style pedestals. The most benign variety are known as "Warmlets" and are equipped with an electrically heated seat - absolute bliss in winter in unheated Japanese homes. Other versions have electronic censors which activate the recorded sound of flushing, to hide any embarrassing noises. Not that either of these varieties are hazardous. No, the loos I'm thinking of are chunky, computerized contraptions equipped with two control panels that wouldn't look out of place on the Starship Enterprise. There are buttons to raise or lower the seat and to adjust its temperature, buttons to control the amount of water and, somewhere amongst them all, a button to flush the thing; this is where the problems start for anyone unable to read Japanese script. Most novices just start pushing buttons at random, which is what I did when I met my first high-tech "Washlet" in a swanky Tokyo department store. Having worked my way through the display panel without success, I was about to give up when something started whirring, and a small, silver arm appeared from under the rim, swung out into the middle of the bowl and sprayed me with pulsing jets of warm water - I'd pressed the bidet button. Having mopped up as best I could, I walked out through the store, past all those oh-so-elegant people, with as much dignity as I could muster with my jeans soaked from the thigh down. Of course, everyone politely ignored the bedraggled foreigner, and the lift-attendant, unblinking, gave me her perfect deep, deep bow. © 1999 Jan Dodd All Rights Reserved
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