|
The other day myself and a good friend of mine from Suffolk were sat in a coffee shop in Toyama musing upon the youth of Japan. Indeed, we had good reason to do so, we come into contact with them every weekday you see. What had brought about the topic however, was that seated to our right was a group of girls, maybe of koko (Senior High School) age who were eagerly discussing some topic that was likely to be of no interest to anywhere. "They\'re everywhere!" I exclaimed, "wherever I go, school, the railways station, print club..." "Well you do hang around in places where fifteen-year olds traditionally congregate" retorted my companion. Point taken, he was right. "My problem is the opposite" continued my friend. "I can\'t get away from old people in Japan. They too are everywhere, the onsen or public bath, the railway station,temples." "What do you mean by old?" I enquired. "Well, not old, old, but over thirty." And he was right, and I also. For we both realised there and then, that whilst Japan is teeming with people, none of them seem to be between the ages of 20 to 30. Do they exist? I am sure they do, for if no one had been born here between 1971 and 1981 I have no doubt that it would have been reported on the BBC. So where are they then? We were indeed perplexed. Toyama, as a city is of a similar size and population to the combinded metropolis that is Stoke-on-Trent and Newcastle-under-Lyme, regarded as the centre of the universe by many eminent people (who\'s names I can\'t remember since I met them in the bar of the Butcher\'s Arms pub way after closing time). However, that it seems is where the similarity ends. Hanley City Centre alone (Stoke has seven centres actually but this is the biggest), contains around seven nightclubs and countless pubs. Toyama, on the other hand has (to my knowledge), two nightclubs, the biggest being called Mario or something similar. The nightclubs of Hanley are generally packed on Friday and Saturday nights; I went to Mario on a Saturday with three friends, we doubled the attendance for that evening. Ok, so the Japanese don\'t do nightclubs then, so what else do the masses do to entertain their little selves. Why, karaoke of course, Toyama city centre has several karaoke joints, perhaps this is where they hang out? Now, you are talking to someone here who is a bit of a fan of karaoke. I\'ve been doing for years before I hit Japan and indeed one of my main reasons for coming here was not anything to do with CVs or careers, but more that I had heard a rumour that there are 5,000 karaoke bars in the country. Since arrival, I along with several trusted companions, have made a dedicated effort to explore these bars and indeed sample as many as possible. Yes, I would know if the young do karaoke or not. Now, some young Japanese people do get in, that is true. Far more than the nightclubs. But even if we assumed that only one tenth of the young population of Toyama-shi went to karaoke on a Saturday, that would probably mean that the city had a 20-30 population of around 2,000; considerably less than it\'s counterpart at the epicentre of the universe where such a number may be found in one pub alone. Hmmm, they must be somewhere else. Thus myself and my comrade set off on our mission to find the Japanese. We tried the Pachinko parlours first. Pachinko is a game similar to pinball where you sit by a machine all day long, feed ball-bearings into a machine and lose money in the process; very good for people devoid of a life for example. However, in each packed parlour we found few cavorting couples or young guns. Ok, next stop, Print Club. Print Club (or more accurately "Purinto Kurabo"), are those machines which take your photograph, let you select a tacky background, let you put cutesy hearts and stars all over the photo, and then write a cheesy message in a variety of colours. Understandably this cheesy activity is very popular in Tacky Toyama, and at the top of the CIC department store one may find the Print Community where around twenty machines are concentrated. This is of course, a place that I am very familiar with. So myself and friend took the lift up to the appropriate floor. The place was teeming with young girls, Vladimir Narbokov would have been in heaven! Unfortunately they were all below the age of nineteen, (either that or they were older but had just forgotten to mature physically and take off their school uniforms). We departed quickly for fear of being recognised by some of the lambs in our flocks whom were milling around. "Hmm," mused my mate, "what about the railway station or restaurants?" But alas, the same answer, none of \'My Genration\' to be seen, (well barring another JET who we met getting onto a train). University! That\'s it, they are all at uni! Wrong! Japan has a lower percentage of students going on to uni than the UK, so they can\'t all be there. Nonetheless, we figured that there must be some there and perhaps all the others were hanging around in bars about the campus? So we got into the Mattmobile and set off to Toyama University. The campus was eerily quiet. There were students about it\'s true, but where were the bars, the clubs, the heroin addicts lying in the park, those stoned to bits philosophising at bus stops. Well, not here it seems. We had reached the end of our tether, we concluded that they had all vanished. Perhaps Japan had compulsory national service but had forgotten to tell the rest of the world? We had failed in our quest in locating the youth of Toyama. Maybe they didn\'t exist after all? Later on in the week, still despondent, I decided to take the easy option and ask one of my colleagues, Shingo Yamanishii (you may remember him from an early musing, he is the one who cannot stop talking). Maybe sitting in the pub all day is not so sad after all. |
Artical Related:
Americans Pay the Club Med Price
Athens at Full Blast
Symi Style
How Japan Invented the Travel Industry
An Innocent in Ireland
