36. 3 travelling planners discuss their initial impressions of Japanese cities_TMBTP

“Basically if you thought of it, someone Japanese had thought of it before you and catered for it in some way” – three travelling planners discuss their initial impressions of Japanese cities. In this episode of This Must be the Place Elizabeth chats with two traveling companions - Helen Rowe, a transport planner, and Nicole Cook, a lecturer in urban geography – at the tail end of their short trip through Japan. They debrief in a tapas bar at Tokyo main station, amidst one of the many glistening expanses of shopping malls that make up commuter life in Japan and set to the soundtrack of adult contemporary music including “Everybody Plays the Fool”. The discussion isn’t based on any particular expertise on Japanese planning or any research on it – it’s just some initial impressions of the striking features of urban life in Japan. They cover off subways, bullet trains (suggested slogan for Australia – “bite the bullet train”), braille signage, urban agriculture, toilets, car parking, Kyoto’s lost trams, coffee vending machines, love hotels, piped-in street music, plastic food coverings, being uncomfortable to avoid causing offense, smoking laws, crime (lack thereof), criminal law (force thereof), and the mysterious etiquette of slippers. Aside from occasionally feeling like a buffoon and having trouble finding vegetarian food in Kyoto, Elizabeth now suffers from more than a little case of Japanese envy and has taken to unfavorably comparing everything in Australia to things in Japan. For an Australian Japan is a wonderfully topsy turvy world where, for example, it’s illegal to smoke outside but inside restaurants is OK, and instead of having to buy a parking space when you buy a house (because you might get a car) when you buy a car you have to prove you have a parking space in walking distance. If you know more about the topics feel free to correct us or offer explanations - for example, the piped-in Beatles music of Shibuya and the origins of urban agriculture.