JAPAN LOVE MY TOKY0(Vol 10) Part-2 EXPERIENCE AT TOKYO DOWN MEMORY LANE!

 

 

Rajini Japanese Fan in Auto

Yaskawa uniform

Top of Tokyo Tower

Thalaiva

In front of Monastery

Selfie

in the lake with Bagi

Jazz in Street

Rajini Fans

Ginza 

Buddha Statue

 

JAPAN LOVE MY TOKY0(Vol 10) Part-2 EXPERIENCE AT TOKYO DOWN MEMORY LANE!

Continued from Part-1 (Vol 09) Japan Love my Tokyo

Japan and Onsen experience:

We understood the dilemma of our Japanese colleagues why they preferred us to stay in the hotel and not their company dorm. The Japanese take bath before going to bed through the community bath system called onsen which provide natural hot spring water where everybody is in in the big pool naked. The dorm has only this arrangement. I initially thought of avoiding by taking bath in the same pool early morning. But no fresh water comes during the day in the pool.

When you are in Rome you had to be a Roman and I became a Roman!   I was extremely self-conscious the first time to be naked in front of strangers. I also inadvertently on the first day itself violated the unwritten rules like wearing the undergarment and using soap. My colleagues were puzzled. One of them approached me after some time and politely told me that they are feeling ashamed seeing me dressed! One can only partially cover yourself with a small towel while walking around the baths, but culture dictates that this towel should never touch the water. You shouldn’t enter the bathing pools before thoroughly washing yourself after leaving your dresses in a locker. Nothing is more relaxing than taking bath after dinner. As days went taking Onsen bath before going to bed became an enjoyable ritual to get good sleep! We would not have got this experience had we stayed in the hotel as recommended!   

Japan at his prime in 80s: We were amazed to see Ginza one weekend Tokyo’s most famous entertainment district with colorful dazzling neon display famous for upmarket shopping. Japanese electronic products and brands were everywhere in display. Ginza is the epitome of luxury for Japanese and tourist alike and was an awesome experience for the first-time visitors like us.

Sightseeing at Tokyo: One weekend we went to Tokyo Tower which is the communications and observation tower. Built in 1958, Tokyo Tower serves as a symbol of Tokyo's rebirth after World War II. The towering structure stands 333 meters tall and view from the observation deck is a must see. We were also taken to Buddhist temple and monastery and the residence of the King.  Some of the pictures are shared from my good old Japanese camera!

Tokyo Metro:   The metro is the pride of Japan and enjoyed the weekend trips to Tokyo downtown. There were so many levels underground (color zones) in downtown stations and cannot imagine how they built it. The trains were always on time people can get out from one side of the platform at the final destination .Once this door is closed within seconds people can enter from the other side of the platform and  all the seats inside the train  will turn 180 degree automatically  so that the view is always the same. Social distancing thus was maintained even then!  Since we did not go beyond Tokyo missed travel experience in Bullet Train! The Shinkansen is the jewel of Japan. The technology transfer to China was a huge mistake as China mastered and brought out their own version within few years.

Sports: During my stay in the dorm I found Japanese younger generation more aligned to western culture. They were crazy of two sports one is Baseball influenced from USA and another one wrestling which they watch till late night.I used to wonder how such a mild soft people  are so crazy of this sport with so much violence. I found an answer later.

Fall of Japan: Japanese were leading the world economy in the 1980s. US demanded appreciation of the yen, as the bilateral trade imbalances became large in the mid-1980s. Plaza Accord in 1985 a joint– agreement, to depreciate the U.S. dollar in relation to the French franc, the German Deutsche Mark and the Japanese yen was signed under pressure from the United States desperate to stymie Japan’s economic rise. The yen appreciated sharply from 260 yen/ dollar in February 1985 to 155 yen/dollar in August 1986, which was one of the fastest appreciation episodes in history, that is a 45% appreciation in one year following the Plaza agreement.

The yen appreciation forced Japanese Automobile companies like Toyota, Honda and Nissan to move the manufacturing plants to US as it was not economical to manufacture in Japan automobile and consumer products. Singapore and Malaysia became the manufacturing hub for electronics consumer products.

Exports declined due to the yen appreciation. An unintended consequence of the Plaza Accord was that it paved the way for Japan's "Lost Decade" of sluggish growth and deflation. If the Plaza Accord was never signed, the Japanese bubble would never have happened, and Japanese companies would have been in a much better position to compete against their Asian and American rivals.

 Internet Era : Being a closed society and with tight immigrant policies Japanese were cut off from the Internet and software era from the year 2000 and their superior rugged products lost to software features and innovation which was the demand from generation next.

Japanese companies like Sony with Walkman were the biggest player in the portable audio market.

Steve Jobs was pushing for a music player in the fall of 2000. The tougher challenge was finding a disk drive that was small enough but had ample memory to make a great music player.

At that time Toshiba had been developing 1.8inch drive that would hold 5gigabytes of storage. When Steve saw this he could store upto 1000 songs and he could keep in the pocket. Steve negotiated with Toshiba to have exclusive rights to every one of the disk it could make. Job unveiled the iPod in 2001 which was priced much higher than Walkman.

(Citation Page 295 Chapter 28 Steve Jobs and Apple Raman Sivaraman “World changers Innovators and their Innovations”)

Sony lost the audio market after this innovation which was taken straight from their neighbor Toshiba by Steve Jobs! Later with iPhone Steve Jobs killed camera and other Japanese electronics industries. Nothing is permanent in this ever-changing technology world. 

Japan and Kollywood Superstar

Japanese want to be like what they are not by their nature. If Raj Kapoor through Awaara in 1950s has taken Bollywood to Russia and Eastern Europe. Superstar Rajnikanth with his action and style has conquered Japan and his popularity is unmatched in Japan over the last 2 decades.  Rajinikanth has a cult following in Japan. It all started in 1998 when Rajinikanth’s Tamil hit Muthu was released in Japan as Muthu - Oduru Maharaja (Dancing Maharaja). This movie was the first non-Hollywood movie to have got a big reception and the movie reportedly ran for 23 weeks in Japan and grossed over $1.6 million at the box office.

Meet Yasuda Hidetoshi, Superstar Rajinikanth’s biggest fan in Japan. He and a few others  came all the way from Japan to celebrate the release of  Thalaiva’s ‘Petta’ in Chennai. Thalaiva which in Tamil means a leader is spoken for Rajinikanth with respect, like 'sir'.

Rajini’s recent Darbar the 2020 film a flop in India is now setting Japan’s box office on fire and the film has grossed ¥230 million so far. Some reports even say that the Rajinikanth fan club in Tokyo and cities such as Osaka and Kobe have about 3,000 members.

Liroyoshi Takeda is not a typical Japanese man. Instead of a suit and tie, the 39-year-old Tokyoite wears T-shirts with techni- color pictures of south Indian super star. Rather than bowing, he dances. He doesn’t ride the metro, but travels the streets wearing dhoti in an adorned auto rickshaw imported from Tamil Nadu. In 2008, Takeda and fellow fan, Shinji Kashima, set up a Tokyo-based, South Indian food catering business called Masalawala. They now make their living serving up sambar, vadas, rasam and the like in a fully traditional style on banana leaves. Even Shah Rukh Khan cashed on the image of Thalaiva with the Rohit Shetty’s  2013 Bollywood blockbuster  Chennai Express!

Looking beyond technology this country is special for its culture. I love Japan and would like to visit other places in Japan like Kyoto with family in future. Having visited many other countries in future nothing touched my heart like this visit and the hospitality of these people. They always bring back nostalgia of this memorable trip .

Part 1 Link

https://raman1956.blogspot.com/2021/07/japan-love-my-tokyo-vol-9-experience-at.html

Movie Song Muthu  Rajini  AR Rahman SPB

Concluded