It’s a strange time to be a foreigner in Japan. The number of inflowing visitors has increased ten times since I first arrived – last year 36.87 million of them flowed into the streets of Kyoto, Kamakura, Tokyo and everywhere else in search of ramen and sushi and anime characters and pictures in rented kimono in front of Mt Fuji and fronds of sakura, and the people are not liking it.
Yes, it is fantastic for business. The yen is weak – you get amazing value for your money. I personally think in yen, but even then, a lunchtime set in a decent eatery – we had a delicious Taiwanese rice, main, three side dishes and a dessert for 1,100 yen the other day in Yoyogi, a generous and nutritious Korean bimbimbap in nearby Nakano – and it is unbelievable that in pound sterling that only comes to about 6.50. No wonder tourists can’t get enough of it.
And Japan needs their custom. The government wants to double the influx of inbound passengers from alien territories over the next few years – at least they did until the recent backlash when the subcutaneous xenophobia that always exists here was given free reign by right wing politicians decrying immigration and the special treatment that foreigners get, etc etc etc – it might all sound familiar (Frump continues his insidious spread through the global stratosphere as inescapably as everywhere else – we have the Nihonjin First! posters everywhere on the ride from the supermarket and so on and so forth – it is certainly making me nervous, and I really do have enough to contend with already at present.)
So what gripes does the average Japanese person on the street have about all the greedy gaijin flooding their shores? ‘Manners’ are one: they leave trash everywhere instead of taking it home with them (revelation: neither did Japanese people for many years until the government randomly removed all the rubbish bins from city stations and streets a few years ago, when bins overflowed just like any other country, at first this was done because of security for some G7 baloney or other, and then because of festering coronaviruses lying in wait in old rice ball packets- at any rate, they were goned. Completely. Now there are no dustbins/garbage receptacles whatsoever.As a result, unsuspecting foreigners guzzling soft drinks and sandwiches have no idea where to dispose of their wrappers and leave them on the ground or wherever they happen to be standing. Me included sometimes when the pointlessness of the change gets totally on my wick. Whoops, did I just write that?
What else? ‘They’ don’t understand Japanese ways. This is true: I was indignant the other day on the behalf of J-jin sat on the Keihin Tohoku line when I was on the way back from a doctor’s appointment and three Europeans, who were sitting dispersed among them, hollered over to each other and across the other passengers to continue the conversation they were having: I would never do that in a million years but then I have been here a whole lifetime and know better than to shout in a loud voice on the train when you are supposed to make yourself as churchmousey as possible and not disturb the surrounding passengers. I could feel their discomfort though.
Foreigners walking along eating noisily. Foreigners taking up all the hotels so that Mr Businessman can’t afford a room anymore when he comes up to Tokyo from Osaka. Foreigners showing off their tattoos on the beach. Foreigners getting special tax discounts at Muji and Uniqlo. And so on and so forth. PLUS: the Peskies are eating all the raw fish as the unstoppable rise of washoku and sashimimania inhabits the earth (George I hold you personally responsible! ) ; rice prices have gone up astromonically, causing seismic political consequences – of course non-Japanese are blamed for that as well, pigs who just can’t stop eating tonkatsu-don the second they arrive in the country with supposedly the best cuisine on the planet. Good honest Ms Suzuki and family in their modest apartment in Kawasaki are thus saddled with untenable costs for their monthly bag-o-gohan —– and they just can’t take it any longer!
And ! now ! the supply of matcha – powdered green tea – is also running low, as Starbucks Frappuccinos and their many imitators suck up all the pulverized camellia sinsenses from the silos and a world health craze featuring the polyphenolic miracle means everyone is clammering to put matcha tea in every ‘beverage’ they can get their hands on and draining the native supply. Farmers and green tea manufacturers- who refuse to compromise on quality, as the ‘way of tea’ that has been passed down for generations – a rigid aspect of Japanese culture I do admire – are saying that for the time being, if stocks run low or even out, then tough titties desu – or perhaps there is a more polite expression for it. In any case, matcha tea does, certainly, have a holy sanctity in the nation as the basis of the tea ceremony, hours long; glacially paced as a Noh play; a shuffle of a tabi slipper here; a whisk of the powder there; the slow contemplation of eternity etc etc (or just ultra torturous boredom not to mention the strain on the knees) : these bygone, ultra aestheticized austerities hardly feature in the lives of the everyday Japanese, who are more likely to have their matcha in a cheap boiled sweet.
Because what does really feature in everyday Japanese life, powdered green tea wise, is the taste of matcha powder as a vital ingredient in quotidian comestibles. It is indispensable here. I had some matcha covered Mexican polverone cookies the other day from 7 Eleven (like Scottish shortbread a la beurre but cut into little round balls) and goodness were they delicious; the naughtiness of the butter offset by the bitterness of the green tea around the edges; a contradictory thrill. I swear I could feel the health benefits suffusing my body the second I swallowed one – they were perfect with an early afternoon hot cup of coffee. Matcha ice cream always competes with vanilla for the favourite flavour in gelato-parlours; it’s in so many sweets and drinks and beauty products it is not surprising that the locals are pissed off that the sacred powder is being hoovered up by slovenly ogres in ill fitting shorts and t-shirts that now dominate the sightseeing landscape wherever you look (whatever happened to an outfit in summer, by the way: where the hell are all the Diana Von Furstenberg wrap around dresses, the floaty floral summery flimsy? Why are people fine lumbering about looking like mouthbreathing meatballs? I am hardly Beau Brummell myself but Jesus people, how about a squidgeon of slight elegance once in a while – or am I starting to sound like a ‘race traitor’).
Anyway. Forgive me. It’s been a while (I will go into all that in another pos)t. Tonight we are talking about the scent of matcha, and I have just had a long and luxurious bath in a hotel room (75 pounds a night! Three stars! In groovier than groovy Tokyo neighbourhood Koenji, where I am having my last pre-operative shout before cracking down to alleged teetotalism at a collective of friends doing a dj night called Egomaniac ! – D has an electrifying set for later, even if I will be sitting for almost all of it in my ‘specially provided chair’- give me new legs so I can dance again!!!! ); he is out, as we speak, with Michael/ Belgium Solanas, sweating like only the gaijin do, rolling out the beer barrels from Shinjuku (and the ingredients for the night’s themed cocktail, white rum based Embittered Peach – very nice, actually – we had some on the tropical balcony the other night and they went down very smoothly indeedy).
Initially, I considered going to the party tonight with just my one shower from this morning. But then I felt a bit greeby just from the hot train journey up (the train was like a fridge, obviously, but all those platform changes do make a difference to your smell-personage )- sometimes you need to perfume yourself just right :::: langurously; to perfection. To just to properly lie in a bath in scented products – the hotel provides very nice bath salts, which I used profusely, blending some citrus selections with a rose, and coming out smelling soapy and clean as a marble Venus. But what to wear? Recently I have been suffocating all and sundry with my tropical florals; total Death By Jasmine, and tonight even I recoiled. I briefly considered wearing Cartier Must II Eau Fraiche – which I see now goes for 75,000 yen on ebay; it is a very strange perfume I have taken to the last couple of weeks; an airy, narcissus honeysuckle vetiver with a strongly citric beginning – it can work, but is a little precarious. And it is hot outside. Baking. I don’t need pissy.
I have also taken to wearing two perfumes simultaneously in the last few months, just so as to be able to smell them better and enjoy while the penniless stocks still last. Obviously, they have to work together for a successful pairing; Lush Lust and my Jasmine Attar Full are utter perfection in tandem, one on each arm as long as you don’t die of indolic asphyxiation in the first twenty minutes or so – after that it is about eight hours of floral bliss and my absolute soundtrack of this strange and difficult but occasionally very enjoyable ‘year off’. This morning, on a new tangent, I was suddenly drawn to a spritz of Rogue Vetifleur (which I have written about before). And then my arm did dart to a forgotten corner of the desk and pick out Satori Oribe (a shocking fact: the perfume is now called Hyouge, but because I featured this scent using its original name, inspired by the master tea ceremonialist Furuta Oribe in my book Perfume: In Search Of Your Signature Scent, it had to be changed due to a threat of legal action by the famous hairdresser Oribe and is now called Hyouge ( the perfumer Satori Osawa was very gracious about it)); a perfume I have only ever previously considered as being delicate, green and rather strange but not necessarily wearable – —a mistake I have lavishly corrected ce soir.
Most green tea perfumes have that built in western comfort zone that makes them smell absolutely nothing like green tea. Whether Bulgari, Elizabeth Arden, L’ Artisan, Roger & Gallet or whoever else, they completely lack the indigenous Japaneseness of bitter green tea with its peculiar, ancient herbiage: even after all these years of living in Japan and quite happily imbibing o-cha once in a while it is a smell and taste I find more evocative than acutely pleasurable. Hyouge (‘Jester’) – is the perfumer having a joke on us in some way here? is also a difficult wear, it has to be said at least I thought so until this morning – when it suddenly made total sense.
On first spray, this perfume smells like a glass of freshly squeezed apple juice sipped in a barn of green straw. Freshly mown grass scents mingle with sage and some very bitter matcha absolute to create an odd but astringently refreshing top accord that is underlayed by some jasmine, iris and violet leaf for more French foundational underpinnings; the base is then a subtle patchouli with the fresh greenness of the whole never quite dissipating. It is highly unusual as a blend and totally original. The Vetifleur (two sprays) on my left wrist is working beautifully as a counterpoint to the piquant – but soft – greenness on my right, on my neck and t-shirt and hair (I confess to having used about twenty sprays as I want to imprint this precise olfactory memory on tonight forever); leaving this room briefly to get an ume and shiso onigiri from the conbini just now, the hot air thwarming with bustle and commuters coming home and the odd wackily dressed anime gajin in ridiculous blue pigtails here and there- Koenji is something of a countercultural institution, home to the student riots of the sixties- I couldn’t actually have been happier with this evening’s scent choice. It is completely unobvious; chic; fresh; and perfect for one of those days, when, in all honesty, I just adore being able to live in Japan.
