Osaka is so humid, the women carry umbrellas. There are 80 ads in each subway car. Stuffed animals are plentiful. Wandering in the sweltering heat down the throbbing streets of Shinsaibashi, I have to stop and marvel at what Japan has become. The’s not a trace of calm or spirituality visible in the frantic mess of plastic and humanity, the answer to every appetite cobbled together into an unholy hybrid, like something out of The Fly. Everything seems to revolve around commerce, cuteness, and coupling; it’s a place where the strobing lights can send even a normal person into an epileptic fit, a land with a service industry so eager to please that even the toilet seats blow water up your ass….
For this jet-lagged traveler, the glitzy arcades and high-priced shops, the deafening pachinko parlors and storeshelves lined with Walt Disney and Hello Kitty icons, the lingerie boutiques and innumerable stands selling green tea-flavored ice cream and octopus balls (To paraphrase Marilyn Monroe, "Isn’t there any other part of the octopus you can eat?") converge into a single, sustained, materialistic scream. The malls of my youth seem like Zen temples in comparison.
I am in Osaka to visit Kaiyukan, one of the world’s best aquariums, for an upcoming story. Kaiyukan is truly an amazing place; one begins at sea level and descends ever downward through the enormous tanks, ’til sharks and rays graze at waist-level and the aquarium’s "Main Creature"—a huge, gentle whale shark named Yu-Chan—circles above like a restless blue cloud. Even the gift shop is amazing; I could have easily dropped a thousand bucks on Giant Spider Crab screen savers, stuffed whale sharks, and squid-shaped cutlery.
Another respite comes during a day trip to Nara, one of
Japan’s ancient capitals. Humidity is again the theme of the day; there’s so much water in the air I practically dog-paddle between temples. My companion, Tomoko, is a terrific boon won simply by visiting the Tourist Information Office. There are free, English-speaking guides available every day. The woman on duty placed a call, and Tomoko arrived, as promised, "in seven minutes." Her English is excellent. We spend hours wandering the sultry wooded pathways of Nara Park, runing at one point for shelter when the sky blackens, the wind swirls up in a typhoon, and torrential rain begin pelting the Kirin vending machines, giant plastic ice cream cones and Buddha-booger stands lining the "Traditional Pathway."
Tomoko is a wealth of information. She tells me that Japanese temple roofs are rippled to resemble the surface of a lake, and the finials the tails of fish; a talisman, she explains, against fire. She also claims that just a few centuries ago, deer were considered such pests in Japan they were hunted to near extinction. Today, Nara is a deer sanctuary; a nod to the Buddha’s first teaching in Sarnath’s Deer Park. I spy one teen wearing a somewhat baffling (and typically Japanese) T-shirt with the slogan, "Save a Deer: Eat a Vegetarian." In any event, both Tomoko and I consider it highly providential when I unwrap our afternoon treat—a bar of bittersweet Scharffen Berger chocolate—and find the image of a deer imprinted on each delectable square.