Just in Tokyo: Page 60

Just in Tokyo by Justin Hall Page #60 This is a browsable copy of the original pdf hosted on Rikai.com If you enjoy this work, please consider donating to the author This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
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60 - Just In Tokyo

For Women

Caroline Pover's Being A Broad in Japan is unquestionably the best
book for western women coming here. She interviewed 250 foreign
ladies about their experience living in Japan and mixed in her own
commentary in this straight-talking guide. While the target audience
is ladies, anyone will find some insight into living in Japan.

Pover's focus is long term living, but she takes up dating and culture.
In short, Japanese men are a bit different. Perhaps shy. As she

observed, western women looking to date
or enjoy a Japanese man might have to
make the first move, multiple times.

On one hand, Japan is safer as rates of
rape are lower. But rape is how you define
it; rates of public molestation are higher.
Chikan are infamous subway perverts who
use the crowded conditions on subways to
find their fingers in someone's panties,
hoping that a woman's fear of drawing
attention to herself will keep her from calling
out. Recently the government and indi-
vidual woman have been fighting these
sorts of gropers more effectively. But
Pover's interviewees observe that reporting
sexual misconduct can often lead to misun-
derstanding and reverse accusation.

Women are advised to keep their wits
about them in spite of the seeming wide-
spread public safety. This is obvious. But
women should find Japan will welcome a
solo female traveller largely with curiousity.
If you are out late drinking, you're tempting
the devil no matter where you live. Japan is
safer than most places.

For Men

Each neighborhood in Tokyo would seem to
have an area entirely devoted to stimulating
the heterosexual male imagination. Some

There is never enough to do
when you travel.
This must be one of the reasons
why travelers the world over are
known for their attempts to pick
other people up. It is not that
they want sex so much as it is
that they want something to fill
the emptiness that their very
freedom has created. And what
else can you do after the coffee
shops, the zoos, the museums,
and the libraries are rifled?
Too - another factor in favor of
seeking sex - there is no more
personal undertaking. Naked,
lying down, one is resolutely
oneself, the person one
otherwise left at home. The
freedom to lose yourself, one of
the great attractions of the sexual
encounter, is based, after all,
upon the assumption that you
have first found yourself.
At the same time - tips for the
traveler - there are few better
ways of learning the language,
of taking the temperature of the
land, of measuring the inner
states of its inhabitants. Also,
there are few more attractive
memories to take home with one.
Sex makes, in its way, the ideal
souvenir.
- Donald Richie, The Inland Sea