Travel blog #2 - Tokyo

July 2, 2010 6:22pm Tokyo

I'm stuck in traffic on a bus to my hotel, Shinjuku Washington hotel.  I just passed a suntory beer ad.  I think that was the brand Bill Murray was advertising in Lost in Translation.  There are other ads for weird products and westerners as models. These ads reminded me of Andrew Bell.

Andrew Bell was a guest speaker at one of the environmental career nights UWSP hosted back at UW. I had emailed a bunch of alumni working in environmental fields to ask them to speak about their career paths. Andrew was one of the best speakers we had.  He had a background in engineering but went to Japan to ride his bike across the country teaching English. He also spoke about being a model for some shaving cream ad.  Him talking about shaving his chest stuck with me forever.  I think he also said he wore weird clothing and danced but I think I'm starting to confuse this story with Andy Samberg.  Did Andy Samberg even model for anything in Japan?  I'm too sleep deprived to know.    

Andrew Bell wasn't bad looking but you wouldn't think of him as the model type. Apparently the Japanese people are obsessed with white people and will put any above average looking white people on a billboard.

The other thing I've learned while stuck on a Tokyo expressway is that this city looks a lot like hong kong. Same building style, same number of cars, same density. They even share the same mugginess.  It's a Friday evening and I can see office workers still tolling away at their desk.  This reminds me to stick with my number one rule about work: never work late on a Friday.

There's a strange sense of familiarity I feel with respect to this city. It's my first time here, although I have stayed inside the airport once before on a connecting flight.  But its reminding me a lot about home.  Some of these buildings look like the financial core near the firm. Some remind me of Central in Hong kong.  Tokyo so far seems to me like represents what it would look like if Hong Kong and Toronto had a child. There are fewer people here on the streets but the same density like hong kong.     

Who are these people still working at 6:40pm? 

I have already learned from reading a lot of signage that the word "emergency" in Japanese looks exactly the same as the Chinese word for "very".  There were a bunch of very exits and very phones at the airport. 

I don't think I'll have any culture shock here.