Underground Coffee Shop (in the subway)

(2019/07/23 (火) 7:50 a.m.) - Central Tokyo.  Underground coffee shop (within the subway system).  Looking around on this Tuesday morning, I note the new (from my perspective anyway) and typical arrangement for 21st century coffee shops and fast food restaurants:  Electrical outlets in front (or to the side) of every seat power and/or charge the micro-computers nearly everyone has in front of them - with all users looking down at their devices and poking the small touch screens with one finger (except one soul using a laptop computer, who has an actual keyboard to use)....

- Probably 70-80% of the men are wearing stark-white shirts, which I'm wondering about... are they a throwback to the pre-bubble years?  Certainly when I came to Japan in 1984, it seemed like nearly all the men were wearing stark-white shirts... or is it just because it's summer and stark-white is cooler out in the sun?  Whatever... what I can say about stark-white shirts is that I began to see more people wearing shirts with strips and color during the bubble economy years - along with interesting and colorful ties, the design of which has gone back to 1950's style standard stripes (which is not necessarily a complaint... simple designs are often good).

- What really is different now is how people never seem to be where they are but instead concentrate on distant people and events via their micro-computers.  Since text entry is cumbersome and slow via the touch screens, people seem to write less and less.  (I'm writing this now via pen and paper... writing into a small notebook.  To use the text, I'll have to type it into a computer later.)

- Speaking of writing, what I'd really like to do now is walk around the room recording video and sound... and you could see and hear the space for yourselves, but the arrangement of the seats is such that there's no way I could meaningfully record it without also disturbing/irritating the people here, so all I can do is pull out pen and paper and write.
- To the current young generation... well, to those in the current young generation who do not see a need for writing things by hand - this is an example of why writing is still important. Aside from being a way to record things when you can't use a camera, you can mix in your impressions with the description of the space you are in and writing by hand via pen and paper is light years faster than touch screen entry of text.... Light years? Well... it's way faster! And there's a fluidity to writing by hand that computer text entry interferes with.
- 8:14 a.m. - I enjoy writing by hand, but it does consume time!  (Compared to typing on a proper keyboard that is!)  A few people at the entrance to the coffee shop are looking around at the full coffee shop - willing some people to leave so they'll have somewhere to sit.  I and the person sitting to my right have been here about 25 minutes.  at least 70% of the people here were here when I arrived and they are poking away at the screens of their micro-computers.  They look like they've been here for a while and will probably stay here until just before 9:00 a.m. when they'll head off to work.
- Ah!  It suddenly occurs to me that maybe that should have been my first observation.  Flex-time has largely disappeared, so the only way to escape the pressure of the crush-rush peak commuter hours is to leave a couple of hours (or more) early and then find a way to kill time on the other end of the journey (until the entrance to the workplace opens).  Actually, that's precisely why I'm here myself.  The earliest trains are full of (mostly) men in their fifties, and then as 9:00 a.m. nears, you see more and more young people - including a tiny percentage of dangerous young males too eager to engage in physical confrontation... it is due to them that "Violence is Illegal!" posters have been periodically put up on train station walls.

- 8:25 a.m. - No one waiting at the door and people are suddenly heading for the exit one-by-one.  Time for me to join them and head off to work.
- 7:20 p.m. - Ginza, Akihabara, Shinjuku - Foreign couple on Ginza side street... descent into Kyobashi Station... sparklingly renovated Kyobashi Station via old narrow atmospheric stairs from street level.  Akihabara - more old things gone, empty lots, new construction, used computer street with small army of Kissaten (メード喫茶) Women handing out fliers, used equipment with decent CPU's but not very much memory.  Walk up hill to Ochanomizu Station, hamburger for dinner, Chuo Line to Shinjuku, interesting crowds, difficult/problematic to record, so... no video, a place to sit, a little time to think.  Thoughts of a locked door to a roof in a burning building... memories of three decades ago when roof access was typical... open fire escape stairs, unlocked roof access doors....

Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
youtube.com/lylehsaxon
lylehsaxon.blogspot.jp/
lookback1997.blogspot.jp/

Subterranean Coffee Shop on a Hot Day

On a brutally hot day last week, when I found myself on the Marunouchi Line en route to Shinjuku with a few hours to kill before an evening appointment, what I wanted more than anything was to stay out of the heat.  Normally, I don't like being cut off from daylight in the daytime, but on this day, daylight was connected with the concept of being outside, and being outside meant suffering in high humidity heat - heat that killed some and caused heat stroke in many others.  So as the train approached Shinjuku, I thought "How can I most speedily get to an inexpensive air-conditioned coffee shop in Shinjuku without going outside...." and the best option appeared to be to find one underground.  I was already on the subway, so I just needed to stay underground.

Exiting the Marunouchi Line, I went over to an underground mall that I've briefly gone into from time to time over the past three decades, but never wanted to spend much time in, as I've always preferred to be outside.  But not this day!  Never had the thought of being deep underground (it's two levels down) felt so good!  First I found an inexpensive coffee shop and bought an ice coffee there for Y200.  I sat at a counter facing the window, and watched people walking by in the subterranean passageway (tunnel really).  I had some work-related text to work on, so I pulled that out and got a little work done while fighting off sleep (I'd only slept for two hours the night before).  I was there for about 45 minutes, but it was very crowded and noisy there, so I decided to get out of that space and do something else.

Leaving the coffee shop, I did a leisurely stroll through the rest of the dual-tunnel area (with shops on both sides).  I noticed there were more restaurants down there than I had realized, but they all seemed to have nothing cheaper than about Y1,200, which was slightly more than I wanted to spend.  I also wasn't overly enthusiastic with how they looked inside... but then I came across a classy looking coffee shop, and they had a good-looking pasta dish in the display window for Y800 and the atmosphere inside looked really nice.

So, in I went, and it really was a nice, relaxed atmosphere, with comfortably chilled air (perfect after rolling my sleeves back down).  The pasta dish was good (eaten while a beautiful young woman sitting at the next table ate some kind of snack she had brought in while she slowly drank the ice coffee she had ordered and worked on her schedule (going back and forth between a thick schedule book and her smartphone).  After the pasta, I ordered a slice of cheesecake, which was kind of disappointing.  it had plastic wrapping on the side (indicating it was delivered to the store that way after being made elsewhere) and it was overly sweet.  Also they never refilled my water glass.  (It occurred to me that they may have been miffed by my not having ordered a drink?)

One other comment about the shop.  Nearly all the other customers were women, including a pair who initially sat to my left (the snack-eating woman was on my right), who were doing an interesting trick I've observed several Chinese people doing over the last couple of years.  It goes like this.  A Chinese person is talking to someone (in person, or on the phone) in Chinese and as you come near and begin to think "Ah... that's not a local - that's a Chinese visitor..." they say some things in (properly pronounced) Japanese and you (the first time it happens anyway) think "Oh!  I guess I misheard them!  They're Japanese after all!".  But if you stay in the vicinity, they eventually go back - at a slightly lower volume - to Chinese and by tuning into the slightly disturbed radio waves in the air you begin to get a clear picture of what's happening and why.  It's quite clever really - and works amazingly well, unless the people nearby are being more perceptive and tuning in more carefully than most people do.

Oops... sidetracked by the stealth Chinese women!  Back to what I wanted to say about the shop having mostly women customers.  Sitting there quietly, hand-writing some things, and looking around a little from time-to-time, I could feel a kind of nearly-all female atmosphere, and by the time I left, I was beginning to feel like I didn't belong in the space.  Not strongly so, but I did imagine/think/sense that the women around me would be more comfortable with the male at my table (me) not there (particularly when the two Chinese women left and a pair of local women sat down in their place who appeared to be in female-only mode).  It was a nice and interesting experience, but probably wouldn't be if I went there too often.

Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
youtube.com/lylehsaxon
lylehsaxon.blogspot.jp/
lookback1997.blogspot.jp/
tokyoht.blogspot.jp/