A week ago I made a short train ride over to the town of Akashi. I had seen the place in the distance before from Tarumi, the area which I live. People told me there's nothing really to be found over there... however, when Japanese people say there's nothing in a place it usually indicates the lack of a Luis Vuitton and a Gucci store in close vicinity of each other (and as it happens there usually is in most Japanese towns anyway). I honestly don't know what constitutes a city as "having something" for Japanese people, unless it's a lack of night clubs or bars, which most people who comment on a city "having nothing" don't even seem to go to. So I was pleased with what I found in Akashi. Although at first I went to West Akashi, which in fact did have nothing, until I found a bus back to the main Akashi station.
Usually I don't make plans before going somewhere. I don't look anything up, I just go and hope for the best. It doesn't always work out so well, but this time I found plenty worthwhile. Akashi Park is an enormous (for Japan) stretch of greenery surrounding a lake, several athletic fields and Akashi castle, offering a nice long walk and a rare feeling of nature in the heavily metropolitanized Japan.
Akashi also had a rather large fish market in the main area of the city. Around the area there were many shops for "Akashi-yaki" which is a variant on "takoyaki", octopus balls. The difference is that Akashi-yaki is served with a special soup used for dipping. It's about 500 yen for 15 at most restaurants in the area. The fish market featured a long street with relatively cheap-priced seafood. While I'm no huge fan of seafood, fish markets are something that strike me as uniquely Japanese, more so even than visiting shrines or any of the other stereotypical cultural facets. Because seafood has been so important to the Japanese for so long, and the Japanese would probably not stop short of scraping clean the ocean floor to get it, the kinds of fish and other sea creatures that are sold outrange anything I've seen in the United States.
Aside from the park and the fish, however, I felt my time in Akashi was running dry. I wanted to at least stay for dinner and get somewhat intoxicated before taking the train home. Outside the Akashi train station, however, I spotted a couple of buskers playing on African tribal drums. I threw some coins into the up-turned hat that sat passively in front of them. When they took a break we struck conversation and they let me play along on one of the drums. Eventually settling into the most simplistic of rhythms I could muster, we got to know each other under the puzzled and amused looks of the passing pedestrians. One was a man in his thirties, but certainly not someone who had settled into the expected young to middle-age Japanese lifestyle. The other was a girl my age who would look right at home at Evergreen, with her pseudo-dread-locked hair and vocal emulations and dances of indigenous peoples. Along with them was a guy who spoke little until he had a lot more to drink, after which it was hard to quiet him down. We bought each other beers and eventually went to eat Akashi-yaki, followed by karaoke.
The thirty-something man certainly left an interesting impression. He had traveled all over Asia and lived in the United States for a good deal of time. His similarity to my friend from school who also comes off very underground and "bohemian" was also striking, as it went hand-in-hand with his eclectic tastes in music. While younger Japanese are commonly quite Westernized, ones who truly come off as individuals fit into a certain mold: tastes in music and other cultural mediums that their peers have no clue or interest about, an interest in associating with foreigners (not really in the superficial, sexualized sense but in the desire for conversation that can't usually be had with other Japanese), and a general dismay or abandon for the common conventions of Japanese society. In a culturally homogenous society like Japan, it must feel isolating to have diverse and off-putting tastes in a largely like-minded culture. While Westernization, Americanization and all that blankets the superficial level of Japanese society, but doesn't nearly touch the thousands-of-years old culture built from Confucian roots and strongly bound through years of national reformations. In a sense, if Japanese society is healthy, prosperous and strong, the Japanese as a whole will feel the same, while no matter the weather forecast, there are individuals who put themselves out in the cold. It's not at all different from individuals in Western society... the superficial level of "individuality" often functions to empower ordinary people into believing they're something extraordinary, even if they aren't. So being an individual or being like everyone else are still superficial aspects of any culture. Some people, because of who they are, cannot fit into any superficial category. While I don't if this is true for the tribal drummer I met in Akashi, it was the first time I'd seen tribal drum-busking in Japan.
In the end the same aspect of Japanese culture that causes them to say a certain town or place "has nothing," I was able to find some things that a lot of people wouldn't register on their radar as "something". It was certainly worth as much as visiting any larger town in Japan.
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