Tokyo, Japan: Behind the Electric Smile (cont.)

When contending with the outside, the surface of things, there is no greater virtue than patience. The Japanese use a phrase, nin tai, which, at its most basic level, means patient perseverance. A key element of nin tai is therefore to treat assumptions and speculation as utterly spurious. One must forget what they think they know and accept that they may never see the honne of Japan, beyond its briefest glimpses.

However, as strangers to the ceremony of process, foreigners can find limitless value in the practice of observation. Foreigners can notice the visible, as well as those things the casual observer, or native, take for granted. Within this observation is the personal understanding and the cultural epiphanies that are part of life for an outsider in Japan, those moments when language and experience combine to provide one with a new, intimate understanding of their surroundings.

A close Japanese friend of mine said that “living in Tokyo is easy, if you can get past how overwhelming the city can be on a daily basis.” To him, a Tokyo native, he hardly notices that which I find unnerving. But he makes a good point. The tatemae of Tokyo, the surface of things, will help provide one with a greater understanding of Japan, but moving past that surface, to that place between the façade and the true meaning, is crucial to making a life here on a long-term basis.

I have yet to reach this point. I often still catch myself gaping up at five-story billboards, cowering at the sound of loudspeakers blaring advertisements from shop fronts, or feeling my chest constrict when entering a six-way crosswalk that has the look and feel of a feudal-era battle charge. These things, of course, are not the real Japan; they are only that which I choose to see and that she chooses to show me at this point in my journey.

Socrates said “the only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing.”  Those who choose to undertake the journey of moving to Japan, and especially to Tokyo, would be wise to heed his words. Living here requires patient perseverance; it demands attentive observation of the ceremony of process, and a comfort that whatever notion of Japan one ever learns through personal experience is honne; it is unique, a gift to cherish and to hold private.

For much like the lights blinking throughout the Tokyo skyline, what one learns and chooses to share about Japan always, somehow, represents the mere surface of things. It is those special moments that one keeps to themselves that have true meaning.

In Japan, discovery is both endless, and endlessly personal.

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