[Leica] Back from the Land of the Rising Yen ( LONG) - PART 1

[TTAbrahams@aol.com]

 Suffused with Leica's and Green Tea, I am back from my annual trek to Tokyo. 
It is a bit of a shock to come home to moderate temperatures and wide-open 
spaces and plenty of available parking spaces. Tokyo is a crowded place and 
in September it is hot (33+ C or high 90's F) and humid (80-85% humidity). I 
am sure there is a Japanese word for "Foreigner dripping with sweat trying to 
decode subway signage".
 I like Tokyo although after 4  one week long stays there I still get 
hopelessly lost on occasions. I have discovered parts of Tokyo barely known 
to the locals, where the residents look at me with wonder and surprise; "What 
the hell is the gaijin doing here?" while I am trying to figure out if the 
sign on the wall of the house is a street number/name or a code for an 
electrical switchbox. When in doubt take a subway, at least you will be lost 
in a different place now! The mustard/yellow line sooner or later brings you 
back to the Ginza although you will visit lesser known parts of the Tokyo 
underground on the way.
 Driving in Tokyo is not for the faint hearted, nor for the financially 
challenged. Road toll from Narita Airport (70 km from the city center) is 
around US$ 30, parking in downtown Tokyo runs anywhere from $5/15 minutes to 
up to $75/day and that is if you can find the space. Someone was defined as 
being very wealthy because he owned a house in Tokyo AND 2 parking spaces! 
These crowded conditions have resulted in the evolution of some interesting 
vehicles. The yellow plated 660cc "mini cars", they sound like demented bees 
as they scream through the traffic and they are the size of a coffee table. 
They exist in a variety of configurations; small sports roadsters like the 
Honda "Beat" (a kind of high-speed skateboard for two, through 4 door sedans 
to mini delivery vans (the S-Cargo or the Honda-SV, popular among the younger 
set). Most of these vehicles would fit in the back of a North American SUV. 
The popular trend is to get a Toyota Celica or similar and equip it with a 
very loud muffler, it does not pay to modify the engine much as 99% of the 
time you are stuck in a traffic jam anyway. However, you sound really cool 
sitting there in the street with the engine making loud noises!
 Tokyo is also home to every fad known to man. The younger kids and teenagers 
will adapt very quickly, for the week end they outfit themselves with wigs, 
strange footwear and even stranger clothing and become weekend radicals, come 
Monday morning they are back in school uniforms and look quite "normal". It 
is an electronically wired society, you see small kids wearing cellphones 
around their necks, everybody carries electronic daytimers, and cars are 
often equipped with GPS (it must be comforting to know that you have moved 50 
feet in the last hour on the Tokyo Expressway!). 
 The conglomerate of districts that make up the greater Tokyo area holds 
about the same amount of people as Canada (around 30 million) and it is a 
credit to the Japanese sense of organization and the inherent courteousness 
of the Japanese that the system works. Trains leave on time, buses advertise 
how long the travel time is to the main stops, subway systems somehow manage 
to integrate and although it can be crowded it all works to move a huge 
amount of people through the core of the city.
 This time I had opportunities to see more of the countryside of Japan. My 
friends decided that some culture was in place and last Sunday we departed by 
car to Nikko, about 150 km north of Tokyo. It was Dr Tokio Oshka from KEK 
(High Energy Accelerator Research Organization in Tsukuba), Shintaro and 
Kenjiro Yaginuma (Shintaro is a photographer and also expert painter of 
cameras and Kenjiro is working for a transport company) all three good 
friends of ours. We piled into Tokio's Toyota Corolla (the only unwashed car 
in Japan, Tokio's Canadian side shows in this flagrant disregard of Japanese 
tradition). Tokio, apart from being a nuclear physicist and a professional 
opera tenor, is an expert on Japanese history and a superb tour-guide. The 
main reason for going to the temple in Nikko was to see the 12 pillars at the 
entrance to the Toshogu Shrine (built in 1617). These pillars represent 
"entropy" to the Japanese. These pillars are beautifully carved wood and as 
"the higher the level of perfection, the faster it deteriorates", one pillar 
is installed upside down. It must have worked, because after almost 400 years 
they are still there. I think it is an excellent philosophy, next version of 
the Rapidwinder will be named 
"Entropy" and maybe Leica should re-label the R8 to R8E (E for Entropy). The 
heat and humidity was brutal and after having seen the famous gate and some 
of the more spectacular Temple's on the Nikko grounds we escaped up to the 
Nikko National Park (about 1000 meter above sea-level and considerably 
cooler). Nice lake and waterfall cool greenery and plenty of cold drinks. I 
was also talked into trying a local snack, whose name sounded like "Konjak" - 
a form of tofu, looking like a potato and with the consistency of dense foam 
rubber, smeared with mustard. Obviously an acquired taste, but supposedly it 
requires more calories to digest than it provides. So it would be a perfect 
diet food! 
 As this is the LUG, a quick run down on the Leicas in the car, a grand total 
of 9 (mostly M2 and M3 as well as M6's) and a lonely Hasselblad SWC as well 
as an old Bessa-2 for 6x9 cm transparencies. I brought along the Bessa-L with 
the 15/4,5, a couple of M6's with the new Nokton 50/1,5 and the 75/2,5 
Color-Heliar and a M3 with a 35/2). We returned to Tokyo on Sunday evening - 
inching along the Tokyo Expressway as all the families returned from their 
outings. The local motorcycle clubs were out in full force, Harleys roaring 
down between the cars, "Hells Angels" look-a-likes on them and it is fun 
trying to imagine these guys showing up to work on Monday morning, temporary 
tattoos removed, wigs stored away and all dressed in the national dress of 
the Japanese salaryman, dark suit, white shirt, black shoes, dark tie and 
looking forward to next weekends motorcycle run! To be continued (see PART 2)
Tom A