Japan: Thursday Morning

Thursday, September 13, 2001. 11:14 am. Japanese Subway.

The Japanese don’t wear sunglasses. Of all things I could notice while traveling abroad, I notice that nobody around me is wearing sunglasses. It is one more feature that makes me stand out from the Japanese, as if blonde hair and blue eyes wasn’t enough.

I am on the train to Gunma. I couldn’t tell you where Gunma is; I just know that it involves taking a train. We just finished our morning meeting with Toshiba, and are heading off to see NEC. This involves two hours of train travel from Ome to Gunma.

This isn’t the fancy bullet-train travel that everybody associates with Japanese businessmen. This is the subway, filled with average Japanese citizens going to average Japanese places.

Mike is reading my copy of The Daily Yomiuri, the English version of a daily Tokyo paper. The first five pages are dedicated to coverage of the terrorist attacks on America. Almost every television channel in our hotel, English or Japanese, has dedicated a majority of programming to this event. I have pushed it aside for now, trying to focus on Japan and the business at hand.

After this afternoon’s trip to NEC Gunma, we have one meeting scheduled for Friday. I couldn’t tell you whom we’re seeing. I know they make computers, so they have a need for our product. I know that I will give the same presentation I always give. Mike will draw the same incomprehensible arrows between circles in an attempt to describe our business model. We hope, as in previous presentations, that the customers will be impressed.

Our Japanese office handles all of the meeting arrangements. They speak the language, they know the customers, they know the train schedules. We show up for the “our product is super” song-and-dance routine. The Japanese market is different from America, so I don’t even try to handle the local business arrangements.

I look around the train as we rattle down the tracks. Mike and I are the only two foreigners in the car. At first glance, it doesn’t look any different that a subway car in a major American city. Passengers are dressed in Western-style clothing, both business and casual. Nike logos on hats. Levis logos on jeans. Tommy Hilfiger emblems on business shirts.

The first clue that I am not in my home country comes when I look out the window. The typical Japanese apartment complex has a distinct lack of architectural style. It is a big box, subdivided into smaller boxes that contain windows and people. It is the common style of post-war Japan and Korea. The appearance of Kanji on billboards and storefronts completes the image.

The second clue I am not in America is the subway advertisements. Obviously they use the Japanese Kanji characters, but many contain a large amount of English. The style of advertising is what sets them apart. The ads are extremely colorful, bordering on garish. The people in the ads use over-exaggerated expressions, making Broadway actors look subtle in comparison. The ads are busy, packed with Kanji characters and colorful backgrounds. Bright primary colors are common. The ads almost seem to overcompensate for the normally emotionless Japanese culture.

My third clue is the cell phone. I love Japanese cell phones. They are light and packed with features. The average five-ounce flip-phone sports a color screen, web browsing capabilities, and Java applet support. The Japanese phone network is ISDN based, so the call quality is very clear. Japan also utilizes a low-power cell network. The high towers of American cell systems don’t work in Japan due to the mountains. NTT uses ground-level cell repeaters on the phone booths. By spreading the network out, the cell phones require smaller transceivers. This requires less battery power, making the phones smaller. I imagine the phones could be even smaller … but the design is constrained by the distance between a human’s ear and mouth.

Typing on my laptop, I appear to be an exception to the Japanese train ritual. Most passengers read. Some travelers have conversations, either with neighboring passengers or with invisible parties on the other end of tiny phones. Many passengers stare blankly into space or nap. I have seen riders sleep until the exact moment the train arrives at their stop, as if their circadian rhythm was tied into the train schedule.

I pause to transform my notebook from workstation to the world’s heaviest MP3 player. Despite the gigabytes of music at my disposal, I fall back to my familiar WinAMP play list. Poe’s voice growls in my ear as I rumble towards an anonymous Japanese suburb. Her voice is a familiar constant in my travels, and carries me to another side of yet another foreign land.


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