A Sleepless Journey through 3 Japanese Concepts
Enryo (en-RYO) — The Japanese concept of Enryo is a form of reserve that’s demonstrated for the sake of other people. Whether refusing to take the last bite of food or refraining from talking on the phone while on the train, it’s a big part of Japanese social behavior.
I began hallucinating when I landed in Tokyo. Doing my best to appear normal, I leaned against the clinical walls of the Tokyo Skyliner train to keep from collapsing on my new Japanese colleagues. Enryo, I told myself.
Iridescent lights, clattering intercom announcements, & flashes of rice patties through the train window confused my senses. I zoned in & out of consciousness listening for one word — Nippori, Nippori, Nippori. I had to get to my hostel before I passed out.
After 72 sleepless hours in Korea, I was beginning to experience the effects of prolonged sleep deprivation. Perceptual distortions were easier to ignore on the plane, but I had yet to make friends with the new green & yellow shapes that appeared occasionally.
Stumbling out of the metallic train doors at last, the sea of Shinjuku train station pulled me in. An average of 3.5 million people use Shinjuku station each day, making it the busiest station in the world in terms of passenger numbers. More green & yellow shapes, more Japanese colleagues, and a stronger need to adhere to customs.
A large train-station map drew me to the present. Concentrating now on the google maps screenshot I had taken with airport wifi, I started spinning to orient myself.
“Konnichi wa sir, you need help?”
I was confronted by two suspicious & blurry characters.
Dear God Yes. Yes I do.
I didn’t have the willpower to figure out my way around town & the data-less phone I bought off the cat lady on the island of Koh Phangan was not cooperating. I had been without a sim for over a week in Hong Kong & Korea but my current incapacitation would not allow for any creative problem-solving.
These were heaven-sent Japanese train-station employees.
“Doctor?”
“No, uh, Shinjuku Kuyakusho Mae Capsule?”
The angelic guides drew out directions, highlighted the street names for turns, and gave me an emergency medical number to call. Clearly, my incapacitation was showing. But it didn’t matter, I was within reach of a futuristic, cozy Japanese capsule hotel, and a hot shower would solve all my problems.
As I stepped out of the train station, new shapes began to appear along the Tokyo cityscape.
Wabi-Sabi (WAH-bi SAH-bi) — Wabi-sabi is at the heart of Japanese aesthetics, and does not have direct translations into English. Wabi (rustic simplicity) and Sabi (taking pleasure in the imperfect) refer to a mindful approach to everyday life & design. Whereas Western ideas of beauty are often rooted in the concept of the “perfect” form, the Japanese concept of beauty lies in appreciating beauty that is “imperfect, impermanent, & incomplete”.
Wabi-sabi calls attention to the soul of an object by integrating three simple realities from Zen Buddhism: nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect.
It’s made up of seven core principles(Roughly Translated) — Kanso (Simplicity), Fukinsei(asymmetry), Shibui(subtle aesthetic), Shizen (naturalness), Yugen(hidden beauty), Datsuzoku(freedom from habit), Seijaku(tranquility/solitude).
Tokyo’s industriousness stood out at me — efficient, quiet, rightly placed.
Compact, neutral-colored buildings & squarer cars than usual followed me & my backpack at every turn. The buildings, although sizable in width, were generally lower in height in this part of town — making it feel as if you were walking around a miniature architectural model.
A mosaic of concrete legos & anime superheros colored the facades of entire buildings. Foreign caricatures & advertisements probably meant for toothpaste mesmerized me as I tried to keep my balance. Discerning between the yellow & green shapes and Japanese street signs was becoming harder now.
Adjusting my 40L, 50lb backpack and my chaco strap, I walked faster down the street to join the city’s pace alongside the business professional locals. Tokyo is the largest metro area in the world, hosting over 36 million people — whose eyes now felt like they were following me. Wearing my Thailand elephant pajamas, carrying front & back backpacks, and stumbling side to side did not help me fade into the crowd.
Through my disgruntleness, I began to notice the core principle of Shibui — the Japanese aesthetic of simple, subtle, and unobtrusive beauty. The unique make of the Honda Town box cars, the exact spacing of the light posts lining city streets, and the neatly trimmed, vertical trees that gently swayed in the concrete landscape. The scenes were all attended to — clean & purposeful. Shops upon shops upon shops lined up but only taking as much room as they needed & nothing more. Nothing extravagant. Humble poetic placement.
Yet, there was a certain complexity hidden in the neutral colors — geometric concrete tiles that lined walkways, bright Japanese lanterns adorning the sides of commercial buildings, green & yellow windowsill outlines on shop windows.
Shibui objects are meant to toe the line of balance between simplicity and complexity so that one can constantly finds new meanings and enriched beauty. I appreciated this idea of beauty and decided to keep moving as I realized that the green/yellow outlines may not be part of Tokyo’s design after all.
Arriving on the central road of Shinjuku, large vertical Japanese street signs draped over the sides of the streets & drew my eyes to the the massive Godzilla structure on the rooftops. These hallucinations are out of control.
Shibui, Kanso, and all of the Japanese aesthetics I had read about had been thrown out the window here. I assume because this place wanted to capture the shortened attention spans of its hyperactive tourists. Bubbly anime characters & transformer-like robots covered entire street-facing windows & billboard rooftops. These characters were clearly the champions of the city.
Pictures of Sonic kept giving me nausea & I wasn’t sure if I was hearing his voice from the video game store’s speakers or my own mind at this point.
Just keep moving.
After a few missed turns & fast-walking away from the rally cries of anime characters, the train-station map led me to a construction site. A dingy elevator pod behind an orange working sign designated my hotel name on printer paper. Thin pen handwriting…
Just another Japanese aesthetic, I’m sure.
Gaman (GAH-man) — Whether it’s putting up with an unpleasant situation to avoid disturbing the wa, or enduring the pain of a broken bone with no more than a painkiller, people in Japan are often asked to gaman, or grit it out, as a matter of character building.
To put it appropriately, I felt like a Dragon Ball Z character being transported via space-pod. The cylindrical white elevator had a trapezoidal window that looked out onto the futuristic, grey layers of Tokyo’s cityscape as we leveled up.
The elevator doors opened to reveal a heap of shoes, robed patrons all in white, and a carpeted lobby with a ceiling only 7 ft tall. I took off my shoes, slipped on the white linen sandals provided, and stepped onto the fluffy hotel lobby.
Am I in the wrong place? Have I already passed out? What do fluffy carpet hallucinations even mean?
Speaking to the hotel concierge, I came to learn a few differences between Japanese capsule hotels & western hotels.
When you enter a traditional capsule hotel, you are given a two-piece robe to wear, a few clean towels, and a bracelet key that you must wear at all times. You are not allowed to wear shoes anywhere inside the capsule hotel, hence the linen white slippers. Lastly, its explained that you have to “check out” every time you leave the hotel & give an estimated time of entry… which I found to be odd.
After getting my keys, I tried to drown out Sonic’s voice and made my way to the 7th floor.
As the elevator door opened, the flickering capsule lights and clinical interior design told me that I had not come to the futuristic hotel I had seen online. It looked like an American laundromat but instead of washing machines, there were capsule beds.
Stark white, dimly lit, 3ft by 3ft entry pods — about 400 — on my floor (8 floors total). Most of them unoccupied. It reminded me of the population regeneration rooms you often see in Sci-Fi movies or a well-maintained mortuary. Given my current physical condition, it seemed almost appropriate.
Walking cautiously forward & checking each pod’s number, I found mine on the lower level and crawled inside.
The walls of my “room” were light metallic brown. I was sure that my childhood golden Nintendo gameboy had been transformed into a 3 x 3 x 8 capsule. This was both a dream come true and a nightmare. A small tv is bolted directly in the top right corner towards my feet. The only channel available is sumo wrestling.
Coughing, watching my forehead, I gathered the customary white capsule robes & scrambled out on all 4 limbs to look for the promised land for all travelers — a hot shower.
It was about 7 in the evening & the hallways were mostly deserted. Rows upon rows of unattended luminescent capsules and dark hallways.
In Japan, capsule hotels have been stereotypically used by Japanese salarymen who may be too drunk to return home safely, have missed the last train of the day to make a return trip home, or are too embarrassed to face their spouses. I assumed that my brethren would show up later on since it was still quite early.
I spent 15 minutes looking for a restroom sign until I took a chance on an unmarked, hexagonal-glass door.
Inside looked more like a brothel, than a shower. Naked Japanese men roamed the halls. All falling in line towards a steamy door that continuously shut & opened with more exposed individuals. It was a 24 hour gym with no regulations and all the patrons happily showed off their endowments. I slowly began to receive glances in my direction — outsider. I had not seen any other tourists in this capsule hotel and I was beginning to realize that my tendency to choose a cheaper option may have resulted in choosing an older, traditional Japanese capsule hotel.
Exploring inside, there seemed to be four rooms within this “restroom”. Two rooms I had seen before — A room with regular sinks for brushing your teeth & the bathroom with urinals. However, there were two rooms which were not so common place. The first was a room with a lowered sink with all the faucets replaced with extendable shower heads and lined with small colorful stools. Here, I glanced that many of the Japanese men sat down on the colorful stools & washed themselves before heading into the second room — The “hot tub room”. It seemed like a sauna but one in which all the naked patrons gathered around and bathed together.
Many men dipped in and out of the hot-tub, talking casually, & washing themselves in conjunction. For western eyes, this was an odd site but honestly it looked very relaxing.
After a few minutes of anxious pacing, I checked with the hotel front lobby for a shower and they explained that this hotel only has the traditional Japanese bathing facilities — Sento.
Sento is a type of communal bathhouse and bathing style in Japan which requires a formal washing, communal bathing, and drying procedure. Sento communal bathhouses exploded in popularity in Tokyo after WWII since resources were scare. However, many now go to bathe, connect with their community, and enjoy a peaceful, vulnerable time rejuvenating their senses. I began to wonder how life would be different if the melting pot of American human geography utilized Sento on a daily basis.
Now listen, I’ve had to bathe myself sitting down in Pakistan with cold water but I’ve never done it while another man is sitting right next to me. Truth be told, I wanted to experience this cultural process but feeling sick, still seeing yellow shapes, & highly insecure of my hairy body jumping into action alongside traditional Japanese businessmen, I decided to hold back for now.
In defeat & disgust of my own bodily mustiness, I retreated back to my capsule.
Unpacking my essentials (speaker, phone charger, notepad), I took note of my condition — Green & yellow visible shapes, chest congestion, high fever, & heavy bodily aches. A low tone ringing in my ears faded in and out as I crawled inside the capsule.
No doubt about it, I was sick — sick, sick. My body had been beaten and battered over the last month and a half traveling over Asia. I was pushing myself to squeeze out every ounce of this experience. Without a travel partner, I didn’t have anyone to slow me down or help me make better decisions.
Gaman — Gritting it out — leads you to unexpected places, observations, and insights that you would not have had otherwise. Although I felt out of place, hallucinating, and musty from my inability to access a proper shower, my tendency to seek discomfort and follow my intuition began to teach me more about myself, and the contrast between my norms and local lifestyle.
I believe that as a traveler, practicing Gaman, and seeking to always learn and pay attention to the stories around you will reward you with insights that you may have missed in a state of homeostasis. The extremes of physical conditions, the asymmetry of strange places, and the intensity of formless poetry have more to say than the straight lines of the expected.
I still needed to explore my interests in digital art & the influence of design on cultural norms in Japan so I decided to fall asleep watching the Gaman of the sumo wrestlers in my capsule, praying that the shapes would be gone tomorrow.
