Konnichiwa!
It’s great to finally be here. Japan is somewhere we’ve wanted to visit for years but up until a week before we got here it wasn’t a place we were going to visit on our current Asia trip. Its not really a place you can do on the cheap even when you’re really trying hard to keep costs down. Anyway we’re here now and although its every bit as expensive as we feared its definitely worth it. The people are great – really friendly although very few of them speak any English at all. You get by with lots of gesturing and pointing at things!
We flew into Toyko from Hong Kong and spent a few days there doing some last minute planning. The problem with deciding to go last minute was not having any time to plan before we got here. Luckily I’d started planning a rough itinerary over a year ago, (when Japan was going to be our first stop in Asia after sailing from Vladivostok in Russia) so I had a sketchy idea of some good places to visit. We bought our Japan Rail Pass voucher in Hong Kong and decided to activate it just before we left Tokyo so as to get the maximum usage of the 21 day pass.
Since then its been a non-stop roller coaster of a journey all over the country, and we’ve been so busy we haven’t had a chance to write a single blog entry until now – just 2 days before we sail to China! So we’re busy today putting together a few entries that sum up the country and the people in all their crazy glory!
So how do you sum up a country like Japan? Well, I guess its not being able to understand 99% of what’s being said around you, not being able to understand any of the adverts on billboards or the huge TV screens. Turning the TV on to see some green puppet screaming at children in a way that’s bound to give them nightmares even though the kids are clearly loving it. Or maybe its the way all the lamp posts sing at you when you walk down the street. In fact the way lots of things, that normally wouldn’t, sing at you given half the chance; lamposts, cashpoints, toilets, vending machines, hand dryers, trains – each station has a little unique tune that it sings when every train arrives and departs.
The food, from raw horse meat to sea anemone, is completely unappetising but sits next to gorgeous tempura, yakatori and sushi which we have exported to the West.
The teenage fashion of sexy school girl meets anime character is a bit disturbing, as is the skinny white perfection to which most try to conform. Maybe its because we’re foreigners here in the truest sense, but for me all these things add up to make Japan, and the Japansese seem completely and uttery insane!
This ‘I’m walking around an insane asylum’ experience is all part of the fun travelling in Japan though. It’s complete sensory overload, but your senses are saturated with things that make no sense at all. I think if you understood Japanese it actually wouldn’t be half as fun, because you’d recognise that the singing lampost is just saying its safe to cross the road, the adverts would be trying to sell you car insurance or something equally boring, and the vending machine would be just be telling you to take your change.
Japan for people who don’t speak Japanese is a really crazy and confusing place, made accessible and enjoyable by the friendlyness of everyone you meet.
Andre and Susan All Over Asia 