My grandmother used to say “Boring people get bored” and I have to admit, I may have become a boring person because I am abored as fuck with tourism. At my house or anywhere I live, I don’t particularly get bored as I can usually find something to do but in a city that seems to be so driven by tourism and status brands as Tokyo is – I’m really fucking bored.
I made a few friends though the teacher training (before I got bored with it and resigned – haha) and they seem pretty excited about the nightlife here, the activities (like driving Mario go-karts through the streets), the exotic nature of it all – the big lights, the crowds – I can see where it’s all pretty exciting. I take pictures of it and share them on my instagram, but the truth is I’m bored with it all. I would just go get drunk somewhere but I’m bored with that too and it feels much worse than it used to for much longer afterwards. No thanks.
I went to a beautiful shrine temple forest park today Meiji Jingu – beautiful temple, beautiful gardens, beautiful forest – all I wanted was to be able to sit somewhere quiet and engage in a little bit of contemplation – but there wasn’t really anywhere to sit, the paths were crowded with tourists (including me), and going off the path wasn’t allowed.
I’m finding fashion and design more interesting than most things. Looking at trends and styles. People are (of course) turning themselves into anime versions of themselves and the desire to wear expensive fashion and brands seems to be at a peak sickness level here. Here it is more of the ‘fashion houses’ that are on display – gucci, prada, patek phillippe, and others that all cost more as individual pieces as my house and likely some of them more than your house too. In Hokkaido (which I seem to enjoy a lot more) people tend to be flashing North Face, Timberland, and other ‘outdoor’ luxury brands.
I wandered into one building that was very interesting to me today. It was a downtown, very expensive, very chic retail mall building in the Tokyo style – multi floor department stores with individual retailers running each department – but the interesting part here was that this was all focused on emerging syle and design, creative arts, fonts, and to some extent anime, Jpop, and food. They had a sort of membership lounge that is a place for creatives to mingle and network – like a hostess lounge, I guess but creatives instead of hostesses. They had a pop up kiosk, pop up shelf, pop up gallery, pop-corn theatre, lounge, and art wall – all for individual members to sign up for and display in. The kiosk doubled as a DJ mixing board as well. And that was just one section of the entire open floor – other sections were retail, gallery, design (fonts!), and even a design library. It was really unique. I think I’ve adopted this for my coffee shop/tea shop design someday…
I wonder if my boredom is because I have changed or because the nature of travel itself has changed so much. I think it’s a combination of both, but probably mostly me – although – so much of what people are doing is so incredibly boring to me. Fun would be getting a go-kart with a few friends and raising hell driving them around the city like crazy people – and probably endangering our lives and those of others – which isn’t generally cool at all – I know that at this point in my life – but when I was doing that stuff – man, it was really fun.