Mar 292006
One place still on my list of Places to See in the World is Japan (Tokyo, specifically). I’ve always thought of Japan as a country that isn’t terribly accommodating to people with disabilities, but those perceptions were corrected when I read Tom Shakespeare’s article on his visit to an accessible Tokyo. Maybe I can become one of those celebrities who is virtually unknown in America but who is a minor deity in Japan. I just have to do something that appeals to Japanese sensibilities, like inventing a wheelchair that can transform into a sixty-foot-tall battle droid capable of leveling entire cities.
Honestly, I don’t get most Japanese anime. Lots of maladjusted protagonists with destructive impulses and the creepy, doe-eyed, hypersexualized women who love them. Bleh.
You forgot the impenetrable psychoanalytic monologues!
I have lived in Japan, and can tell you that you very well might get stared at by children, but it might easily be just as much for your gaijin-ness as for your disability. Japanese people are indeed excruciatingly polite, but that politeness is often mixed with a mild distrust of foreigners among the older generation.
The area I lived in, a suburb of Tokyo, was not very accessible; many streets had to be crossed by use of pedestrian bridges with steep flights of stairs. There were always people ready to pitch in to help carry my manual wheelchair up. That was 20 years ago, and I have a heavy motorized chair now, so I’m not sure how access would be for a person using a motorized chair these days.
I think, as Tom found when he was here, it’s a difficult situation. Certainly for the visually impaired things are pretty much incredible by the standards of most other countries, but it doesn’t always extend to other disabilities. As Michelle said, it’s a Japanese sensibility not to stare, but at the same time if you’re seen as a foreigner you can get some sideways glances. Tokyo is definitely better than some other areas of the country – it’s more cosmopolitan, and recently there are far more varied people living here.
As for access in a motorized wheelchair, I can’t speak personally, but nearly all stations now have some sort of elevator. Those that don’t though will provide some other service (such as stopping the escalator and putting you on that, which may or may not be a good thing, depending on if you want the attention)… you then also have to negotiate all the yellow bumpy road strips put there for the visually impaired!
Japan is a great place though, and it’s not all anime (though there’s a lot of that about 😉