The Land od the Rising Yen

Special police were being trained to help
visitors, poor innocent taxi-drivers had to attend English classes, and a huge
clock, next door to the Central Railway Station, instead of showing the time, indicated
how many days ahead the opening of Expo 70 was. Osaka looks forward to it with
immense pride and also with dread; the traffic jams will end all traffic jams
and the shortage of hotel rooms will be agonizing. Already there was not one
single hotel room to be had by private individuals for the four pleasant months
of Expo, not only in Osaka but also in Kyoto, Nara, Kobe and Tokyo: they had
all been booked by airlines or travel agents. (There were some rooms for July
and August; and this was the situation eight months before the opening.) But
the eyes of the world will be on Osaka and this will compensate for a lot. It
is the city’s only regret that Tokyo too will benefit, almost equally, in the
boom brought by foreign visitors. I am no Expo-man myself and I would not go
back to see the great show for toffee; but most people are more adventurous,
many millions will see it and there is no doubt that Expo 70 will be terrific
on its own terms and will beat all previous Expos. And it will be — as they not
infrequently point out — the first world exposition in Asia.
    But Expos come and go. Osaka’s moment of glory will pass and the city will have to rely once again not on its
momentary catching of the limelight but on its intrinsic fame.
    Which is growing at an alarming
speed. A Japanese gentleman, an official of the Expo, asked me: ‘Is it true
that they call Manchester the Osaka of England?’
    ‘Well,’ I answered, ‘they ought to,
of course, but they were always a little slow there up North.’

RYOKAN
     
    You will — or anyway you should — stay a
few days in a ryokan, a Japanese inn. They are usually beautiful and
well run and there you can get closer to real Japanese life than almost
anywhere else — except, of course, if you really take the plunge, move to a
Japanese fishing village, and mix with what they call the ‘people’ (as if
city-dwellers were not people). But in that village, again, you are likely to
stay in a ryokan.
    You arrive, say, at 5 p.m. and you
get your first dinner early. Pretty, smiling waitresses in kimonos will
bring in your meal on a tray. You sit on the tatami, the exquisitely
woven straw-mat, on the floor, wearing your yukata and feel that you
look like a minor official of the Tokugawa period.
    You enjoy the food which is tasty
though puzzling. You have no idea in what order you are supposed to eat it and
make the foolish and ridiculous mistake of starting with soup.
    You finish your dinner, the charming
lady — more a hostess than a maid — will come in and within five minutes will
transform your room. It will be a complete change of scenery — and scenery is
the right word because the whole set-up is slightly yet pleasantly theatrical.
The little low table will disappear on to the balcony, two mattresses will be
laid out on the tatami, one covered with a red, the other with a blue
eiderdown. A jug of iced water is placed next to your pillow and a small, weak
foot-light is left on, near the door. In the old days six or eight people had
to occupy one room (this is not absolutely unknown even today in some remote
country districts) and the little light (another piece of stage equipment) was
to ensure that the latecomers or early risers would not tread on the others. In
some ryokans one could not even switch the small light off.
    Next morning the scene is changed back:
the mattresses disappear and you are delighted with your pretty room until you
realize, after lunch, that you cannot lie down anywhere even for ten minutes.
Your mattresses are neatly stored in the cupboard and there is just nothing to
lie on unless, of course, you lie down on the bare tatami — the English
equivalent of which would be to put your knife into your mouth and scratch your
head with your fork.
    The tatami is sacred. You will
be initiated into the shoe-ceremony on your arrival. On coming home, you take
your shoes off and the porter takes charge of them and keeps them for you in
his little hut. You step into a pair of lovely, comfortable slippers, always
placed in such a way that you should be able to slip your feet straight into
them, without touching them with your hands. You use these slippers everywhere
in the house, except... except that you must also learn the loo-ceremony. When
going to