Justine and Dylan’s Travel Blog

Not quite in the What The category, but thought I’d share them anyway. Safe to say the Japanese do things differently than some and one of the reasons this is a cool place to visit…

• This place is clean. And by clean I mean spotless. Trains, buses, public toilets, footpaths, you name it and you could probably eat off it. Especially the hordes of cleaning ladies in matching pink uniforms that attack the bullet trains at each end destination to ensure it’s spotless for the next trip are a sight to behold.
• These people are polite and very friendly (to tourists anyway ). Manifested in never-ending bowing, thanking (I’ve barely heard anyone say sayonara, ie goodbye, because they are always too busy still thanking you), offering (help or little gifts), it does make for an interesting experience and one that a lot of other nations could learn from.
• This place is small. Small cars, small trucks, small buses, small rooms, small chairs, small beds (my feet always seem to hang off the end) and doorways (I can’t remember ever having hit my head on things so many times in such a short time span), small slippers (come about halfway up my foot), small urinals (I quite regularly have to be careful not to pee on top of them… and no, I’m not using the kids’ urinals), small meals (fortunately sushi just keeps coming out as you order more), etc, etc. The idea of quality over quantity definitely rules here though, so not all bad.
• This place is full. This might be one of the causes for everything being small actually. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, you can never go to far without bumping into people (literally, when on public transport) or infrastructure of some kind. On the other hand, it’s incredible to see the use of space around here.
• This place is religious. Europe has a few churches but I have never come across a similar pervasion of temples, shrines, gates, etc as I have here. It makes for quite a varied landscape or cityscape along the way and in our brief stay here we’ve probably only just touched on how much day to day life must be influenced by religion. Good for the photo opportunities regardless of your views on this
• Plastic bags rule. This probably partially comes back to the clean thing they have going, but for instance go to your average bakery and they’ll put each item in a little plastic bag, after which all the items go in a paper bag which is then put in a large plastic bag to allow you to carry your two items more easily.

You get the picture. Some of it a little annoying, some of it quite refreshing, but all of it quite interesting and very different to anything we’ve come across so far and probably will on the rest of our trip. As a tourist, you just can’t go wrong here really.

The last few days we’ve been busy rounding out our stay here in Japan with stops in Takayama and Matsumoto in the Japanese Alps and of course Tokyo.

Takayama is home to a reconstructed rural town called Hida-no-sata with houses as they were (and in some places still are) a few hundred years ago in country-side Japan. Pretty cool and in typically Japanese style, the meticulous reconstruction (after moving them from who knows how far away) is amazing and must’ve taken a long time.

Matsumoto is known for Matsumoto-jo, one of the best, still original castles around Japan. Castle wasn’t bad, but after having seen Himeji-jo and Nijo-jo, probably not worth the effort.

Unfortunately, the other thing we came to Takayama and Matsumoto for, ie to get a bit of a feel of the Japanese Alps, was not helped by persistent cloud cover. The snow which was still everywhere was quite scenic though.

One thing these two days in the Alps did bring to the fore (again) is how little real wilderness (ie completely unaffected by Japanese infrastructure) there is in Japan. Having not ventured further north than Matsumoto this might be different in say the northern-most province of Tokkaido, but having seen a lot of places in the southern half, there is a distinct trend emerging. I read in the lonely planet guide the other day that they estimate that only three of Japan’s over 30,000 streams, rivers, etc have NOT been dammed. I would happily believe this. Everywhere we’ve been we’ve seen power lines, communications towers, roads, houses, dams, concrete reinforcements (to stop hills eroding), etc, etc and even on our more “remote” walks, we’ve been walking on very well-maintained paths, linking temples, shrines, etc.

Mind you though, none of this is different to the U.K. and probably most of Western Europe, but I’m far from convinced that I’ll ever come back to this country to purely go for a hike (ditto with the U.K.) which is interesting for a country that boasts so many walking opportunities. Fortunately this country is cool in so many other ways that it hasn’t really mattered and we’ve had a great time nonetheless.

Finally, the last few days in Tokyo. First of all a side trip to Nikko of course, followed by a walk on a beautiful day up Mitsu-toge-yama in the Fuji-san area (with awesome views of Fuji). Yesterday we spent looking around the Shinjuku, Harajuku and Shibuya suburbs which are just incredible districts filled with neon lights, shops and people. Interestingly enough, they made our hikes that I referred to above, do seem like they were out into the middle of nowhere. Everything’s relative I guess :)