Quarantine Day 2
Today I found a plastic bag with clean towels and bed linen hanging on my door but thought that changing it on the second day is not environmentally friendly so I brought it inside for later. Hotel staff cannot clean my room for the whole duration of my quarantine, makes sense, but the room was so dusty from the beginning that I continued my frustrated wet cleaning routine in the morning and realized there is a thick layer of white dust under the bed. The situation called for a vacuum cleaner, so I went to the reception in the hopes they will let me borrow the machine. The woman on duty became totally terrified when she heard my request. “No, no, I cannot let you take it, it’s impossible”. I was kind of expecting this to be honest and asked: “Okay, so what should we do?”. She went to consult her superiors in the room behind the counter and came back holding the vacuum cleaner. “I will do it myself”, she said. Japan is a country of precedents; if no guest was ever allowed to borrow vacuum cleaners before, there is no way it will happen, even if it’s not that problematic considering the other new rules interfering with the usual procedure. The rule of no cleaning in quarantined rooms is reasonable, but it seems that no one among the staff really understands why it was made in the first place, they just follow generic guidelines without questioning them. So she came into my room, zero hesitation about coronavirus. We moved the bed together, but the machine was so old and weak that some areas were left as dusty as they were and the receptionist just pretended that it’s supposed to be like that anyway and left. I got even more frustrated and went out of the hotel again to buy cleaning supplies and finish the job myself because I started getting some kind of allergy already. I figured I will explain it to the university if they will be notified about my absence and thought it should be okay. When I was exploring the pedestrian shopping area nearby in search of a 100-yen shop, I found an absolute gem — La Cittadella, an extraordinary array of “Italian-style” buildings forming a semi-open department store with an amphitheater that has a fountain instead of a stage…
To an ordinary passerby unfamiliar with Italian townscapes it might look pretty normal, but if you’re fairly familiar with European culture, it’s like looking at those extra-realistic robots who resemble humans too much and you get extremely uncomfortable because it just feels… wrong. I will quote a comment from my Japanese architect-friend who spent his childhood in the same neighborhood, often going to Cittadella for movies: “Japanese people have this innocent aspiration towards the Western cityscape, they are used to see it on TV and in commercials. For us it is “Italy”, even though it is a pseudo-experience”. Lacking Western cultural context, it is very easy for Japanese architects to recognize and replicate visual elements and symbols of Italian architecture (fountains, amphitheaters, tile pavements, colors of the facade, even the shape of a piazza), but almost impossible to understand how they are supposed to be linked together (proportions, scales, functional context), so in the end we have a bizarre dream-like built environment, made out of familiar elements but distorted, put together in an unsettling way or misused, misinterpreted. Very similar thing keeps happening to Italian restaurants’ interiors and even the food they serve — looks kind of similar, but tastes slightly (or sometimes not slightly) wrong. I used to complain about it, but let’s remember that we have pretty much the same understanding of Japanese culture in Europe — we love and replicate those inspiring visual elements but don’t have enough information to understand the context.
Today I found a plastic bag with clean towels and bed linen hanging on my door but thought that changing it on the second day is not environmentally friendly so I brought it inside for later. Hotel staff cannot clean my room for the whole duration of my quarantine, makes sense, but the room was so dusty from the beginning that I continued my frustrated wet cleaning routine in the morning and realized there is a thick layer of white dust under the bed. The situation called for a vacuum cleaner, so I went to the reception in the hopes they will let me borrow the machine. The woman on duty became totally terrified when she heard my request. “No, no, I cannot let you take it, it’s impossible”. I was kind of expecting this to be honest and asked: “Okay, so what should we do?”. She went to consult her superiors in the room behind the counter and came back holding the vacuum cleaner. “I will do it myself”, she said. Japan is a country of precedents; if no guest was ever allowed to borrow vacuum cleaners before, there is no way it will happen, even if it’s not that problematic considering the other new rules interfering with the usual procedure. The rule of no cleaning in quarantined rooms is reasonable, but it seems that no one among the staff really understands why it was made in the first place, they just follow generic guidelines without questioning them. So she came into my room, zero hesitation about coronavirus. We moved the bed together, but the machine was so old and weak that some areas were left as dusty as they were and the receptionist just pretended that it’s supposed to be like that anyway and left. I got even more frustrated and went out of the hotel again to buy cleaning supplies and finish the job myself because I started getting some kind of allergy already. I figured I will explain it to the university if they will be notified about my absence and thought it should be okay. When I was exploring the pedestrian shopping area nearby in search of a 100-yen shop, I found an absolute gem — La Cittadella, an extraordinary array of “Italian-style” buildings forming a semi-open department store with an amphitheater that has a fountain instead of a stage…
To an ordinary passerby unfamiliar with Italian townscapes it might look pretty normal, but if you’re fairly familiar with European culture, it’s like looking at those extra-realistic robots who resemble humans too much and you get extremely uncomfortable because it just feels… wrong. I will quote a comment from my Japanese architect-friend who spent his childhood in the same neighborhood, often going to Cittadella for movies: “Japanese people have this innocent aspiration towards the Western cityscape, they are used to see it on TV and in commercials. For us it is “Italy”, even though it is a pseudo-experience”. Lacking Western cultural context, it is very easy for Japanese architects to recognize and replicate visual elements and symbols of Italian architecture (fountains, amphitheaters, tile pavements, colors of the facade, even the shape of a piazza), but almost impossible to understand how they are supposed to be linked together (proportions, scales, functional context), so in the end we have a bizarre dream-like built environment, made out of familiar elements but distorted, put together in an unsettling way or misused, misinterpreted. Very similar thing keeps happening to Italian restaurants’ interiors and even the food they serve — looks kind of similar, but tastes slightly (or sometimes not slightly) wrong. I used to complain about it, but let’s remember that we have pretty much the same understanding of Japanese culture in Europe — we love and replicate those inspiring visual elements but don’t have enough information to understand the context.
When my good Russian friend who lives in Tokyo heard that I am stuck in a hotel for two weeks, she decided to send me some homemade food and books. I was expecting a postman dropping the package off at the reception, but at some point my friend texts me and asks if I see a red flickering light in my room. I couldn’t find it at first but then realized that it was a “voicemail” indicator on the landline phone that I hid behind the TV screen on my first day here because it was umm… ugly. Okay, I saw the light, I texted. Then she said that I need to come down to the reception hall to sign some papers right away because my package had to be delivered personally. Why did I need the light? Okay, nvm. I went out of the elevator and saw my friend standing at the reception desk and waving at me. It turned out she realized it was easier for her to bring the food here herself rather than entrusting it to the post office. The receptionist took the bag from her but couldn’t transport it to my room for some unknown reason or rule and she wasn’t allowed to call me either — she could only activate the voicemail button. Oh well, procedures, procedures. The same polite woman that was so bad at vacuum cleaning the other day asked me to sign a paper without approaching my friend (safety distance!) and only then I was given the bag. My friend was just standing there awkwardly the whole time and we could barely say anything to each other; she told me that the staff got very worried about this unusual situation that didn’t fit into their quarantine rules so she’d better leave fast. When I came back and opened the bag I almost cried: fresh fruit, tomatoes, home baked apple pies and eggplant/tomato paste for breakfast bruschettas packed in a jar + Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina in two volumes! I was truly blessed. In the evening I went out to buy some bread and eggs to complete my divine dinner and also took some photos on my way to the store.