Teens , travel and tribulations in Tokyo

by Alison Linn (Australia)

A leap into the unknown Japan

After a few hours tearful and gut wrenching hours in search of the passports ,wisely secreted in a safe place some days earlier, I found myself plane bound to Japan with four teenagers. I passed each teen their bundle of Yen , to be examined , exclaimed over and pocketed amid catcalls when I cautioned them not to lose their stash of cash . That was my second surprise of the trip , with more to follow. Japan , so tech savvy and yet very much a cash economy . Each transaction met by an eager-eyed "cashu?". Cashu? I kind of expected a Japanese word , not some bastardised form of English . Pinko another , can you guess ? I digress. Our taxi driver was our first contact with a local and he evidently appreciated our wonder and teen number 4 , expensively educated and purportedly fluent in Japanese , shyly stepping up to the plate of group expectation and mouthing out signage along the freeway to the city . We checked in , lobbed our bags in to our rooms and stepped out in a general direction . Tides of coated , scarfed Japanese all moving swiftly along in almost silence . Even the traffic . Our strident Australian voices in united wonder and excitement already attracting downcast eyes . A choreograph of two hands and a bow with every 'cashu' transaction and with it the feeling for the first time we were here, in Japan and really , really , really in a different culture that they kindly forgave us for not yet understanding the minutae of . Now I will answer your question .Why travel with teens , let alone four of them . Strategy is the answer . Motivated teens , can navigate to any place from anywhere and come up with an itinerary that takes in the whole experience . Japan looms large in the teen Zeitgeist. All the more facilitated when you have a pretty blonde teen fluent in Japanese ; her efforts to communicate greeted by beguiled smiles and wonder . In no time I found myself at the teen cultural centre of Japan via a subway system with toilet floors I could eat my dinner off . Except there is no eating on the move here. Akihabara aka Electric Town . A concrete neon city within a city devoted to all things electronica and devoid of the narrow , wonky buildings we had remarked upon . While the teens excitedly worked their way through their Yen without a ken for future costs , I dangled off a side railing and watched the humanscape flow by me . Pasty young men sliding out of doorways , brown paper bags full of Manga porn folded neatly under their arm sylphing into the night for their dose of solo gratification . Manicured women pushing pampered pooches in prams . Loud foreigners . Litter . I spied my only litter of the holiday and that too was Japanese to the core , the ends of the bag tied neatly into an equal weighted bow. Talking of litter we secured tickets to the Sumo wrestling after standing in an orderly and long file in the cold dawn . At the end of the day's parading , pagentry and grapples a lone finger walked the rows with a large yellow plastic bag . The cleaner . When she arrived to our row at the end of her shift I noted the bag was only one fifth full . I smiled and used the ancient art of arm waving to indicate the lack of litter . She pointed inside and said "Chinese '. It snowed . Great soggy blobs slapping down on Tokyo streets . The first time for three years. The heaviest in twenty three years our reception reported and Tokyo slowly ground to a halt . Not so the teens two of whom had never experienced snow . Much snowball throwing and shrieking was had with ever silent side stepping us with downcast eyes . An already wonderous city made extra worldly as the snow gathered on manicured trees , shrubs and the curved roof tops of the many temples . We quickly made haste to Shibuya Crossing , strike me down I had never heard of the place , so that we could could be a few of the one million plus who daily track across this icon but made special by the snow falling ever thicker . A world within a world .