Having been a Londoner, my father often told me that if I were to wait at Piccadilly Circus for long enough, it wouldn't be long before I bumped into everyone I had ever met. Having worked at the Embassy of Japan in Piccadilly now for ten years, his words have not yet proven true: maybe I have never stood under Eros for long enough at any one time. I suspect, however, that it is more to do with the increasingly globally-connected world in which we live. At one time, London was the centre of a vast commercial global empire, and Piccadilly at the city's heart was its busiest point. No wonder my father said I would meet everyone there. Today, there are so many great cities around the world of which the same can be said.
It was in October 2011 that I flew to one of these great world cities, Tokyo, to participate in a training programme at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for locally employed staff from Japan's overseas missions. Although I am no stranger to Japan, having spent some time in Kagoshima in the 90s, it is always a treat to visit Tokyo. Its dynamism is intoxicating. Whenever I'm there its quick pace of life feels as if the rest of the world is playing catch-up. Its ever-changing skyline defines its modernity, such as the fast-growing Sky Tree, and its downtown communities ensure the city maintains its links to its traditions. Whether I am in a skyscraper in Roppongi or a ramen bar in Nezu, the experience is always thrilling. Piccadilly Circus is nothing compared with Shinjuku.
I was promised beautiful weather, yet I arrived to overcast skies and uncomfortable humidity. Japan's famed autumn sunshine failed to materialise for the duration of my stay. When the weather is not that good, it does mean, though, that classroom time is much more bearable. There were 21 of us altogether from 13 different countries around the world, Japanese and non-Japanese alike, involved in varying aspects of work in Japan¡Çs overseas missions. We were given various lectures and went on several excursions covering topics from administrative and consular affairs to public diplomacy and international law.
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We were divided into three groups, with my group concentrating on subjects relevant to our work at JICC. All our instruction was in English and I was humbled by the excellent English-language ability of so many of my fellow participants. One major reward of this programme was to come away having met so many talented and interesting people. Every Japanese mission overseas has it own flavour and it was good to understand what particular issues face different missions and yet it was reassuring to learn from my colleagues that many of the challenges that we may face in our day-to-day work are the same, wherever you may be: be it Korea or Croatia, Malaysia or Mozambique.
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Minister of Foreign Affairs, Koichiro Gemba and Simon Wright
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Out of the classroom came some of the trip's more interesting experiences. Time was set aside for each of us to pursue what interested us individually. I had appointments to see my counterparts in the British Council Tokyo, to meet long-established textile-dyeing families with businesses by the small rivers of Ochiai that have been active since the Edo period, artists from the kabuki theatre and contemporary art curators, teachers and students from a variety of organisations. And it is always the unexpected events that turn out to provide the most enduring memories: the time spent and conversations had with the people you meet incidentally.
Images from the Tohoku region of the terrible events of 11 March may still loom large in our minds when thinking of Japan - they tend to define Japan at the moment and will forever be a pivotal moment in the country¡Çs history. But what is it like for the citizens of Tokyo? Before I visited, I did not know what to expect and did not want myself to force the issue either. Life in Tokyo proves to be as hectic as ever. One would hardly know that the country had experienced the effects of two major natural disasters only seven months earlier. Yes, the streets may be a bit darker with the lights off in places as electricity is saved but everyday life continues apace. You would not realise.
The people I met, old and new friends, would not initially speak of their fears of what had happened in March. Yet once relaxed and some way into the conversation, the subject would turn inevitably to what they had been doing on that fateful day, how they had reacted, who they had been with - who they had not been with yet needed to contact - what was not available in the shops, what their fears were for the future and how they were to deal with them - all conducted with a remarkable stoicism and tendency for understatement. I suppose the people I spoke to naturally tend toward modesty and actively wish to avoid hyperbole in their recounting of their stories, but I came away from those conversations with a feeling that we had come to a greater understanding of the transience and impermanence of things - what Japanese Buddhism calls mujo - both for them and for me.
I met a couple of Japanese friends for dinner. We chatted about what we had been doing since we last met, our pleasures in life, our jobs; we ate, we drank and we laughed. The evening was coming to an end and the dishes and empty glasses of shochu were being cleared away. As one of my friends stood up to leave in order to catch one of the last trains north out of Ueno, she casually looked at her iPhone and the app that measured the amount of radiation at her destination. I didn't question it.
All too fleetingly, my time in Tokyo came to an end. I would like to thank my colleagues in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Kasumigaseki whose friendliness, frankness and courtesy made my stay in Tokyo a very pleasant one. If you have never been to this great city, I highly recommend it; if you have, then you¡Çll know what I¡Çm talking about. It never fails to amaze me and that is often so much down to whom one meets there: "the people are the city".
Remarkably, during this visit in just ten days, I ran into three people whom I know and I would be delighted to see if I met them on the street in London, let alone in Tokyo. Can you imagine my astonishment (and those of my fellow participants on the training programme, no less, who witnessed these chance meetings)? There was the photographer friend shouting my name when she recognised me at Yasukuni; the old friend from my home in Oxfordshire, a circus performer, who bumped into me as he and I were browsing in the same shop in Asakusa; and I shared the same bus in Akasaka with an art historian friend and her husband. This certainly doesn¡Çt happen to me in Piccadilly. I would suspect, that if I were to stand by the statue of Hachiko in Shibuya for long enough, it would now be in Tokyo, and not London, that my father's prediction would come true.
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