Alex goes to Japan

Arriving in Japan from the United States is like being turned upside down. This condition lasts for much of the first week. When I visited in November, the time difference between Tokyo and New York was 14 hours. "The floating world" is a term for the pleasure-addled urban culture of Edo-period Japan, but it's also an apt description for the twilit and not-entirely-unpleasant weirdness of first arriving in Tokyo. Everything seems slightly unreal.

- ALEX HALBERSTADT

I'd come to Japan for several reasons, one of which was simply to spend more time in what for me is the most enjoyable place on the planet. Another was to explore the country's distinctive listening spaces, which I've been thinking and occasionally writing about over the past few years. During that time, listening bars and cafés from Boulder to Sydney have been popping up like mushrooms after a rainstorm, and for many of these new venues, Japan's jazz kissas (or kissaten in the Japanese plural) are both the model and spiritual mothership.

Much has been written about the Japanese penchant for jazz and other aspects of American culture. This affinity is paradoxical and complex, taking root despite the horrors of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the ambiguities of the US military occupation. But in Japan, jazz remains nearly unavoidable, to a degree I haven't encountered anywhere else. During a snowy week spent on the northern island of Hokkaido, I had a memorable lunch at Takutsu, an eight-seat sushi counter in the quaint port city of Otaru. While the chef handed out beautiful pieces of sailfish and mantis shrimp, Thelonious Monk played on the sound system. That evening, when I sat down at Nanakamado, an ice cream shop in Sapporo crowded with 20-something couples, Monk was on the speakers again. (To be precise, Nanakamado serves a Sapporo specialty called shime parfait-a wildly elaborate dessert containing ice cream and at least a dozen ingredients that's consumed after a night of drinking, the way ramen is in Tokyo. Sapporo is very cold. I don't know what to tell you.)