Leaving Japan

I know we’ve only spent 2 weeks in Japan, but we’ve packed so much into them it feels a lot more. We’ve travelled over 2000 miles here, seen some truly weird things, and eaten very odd food. And Gary’s run away from the odd monster crab or two.

As for the highlights, well, we love Tokyo for its liveliness, but it was a great contrast to see Toyako Onsen for its remote, very Japanese serenity, and of course it’s welcoming film crew! I loved the volcanoes, lakes and monster crabs of Hokkaido, but then again it was really good to see the elaborate shrines and temples of Nikko. I don’t know, but even though I can’t wait to explore China I’m really sad to be leaving Japan. We will definitely come back here in the future.

Anyway, after India we thought we would construct a good versus scary list for each country, so:

Some things we’ve found great…

1. The Japan Rail Pass. This wonderful little card with a nice picture of a Tsunami on the front gives you unlimited travel on all Japan Railway trains (except Nozomis). This means you can wiz up and down the country on the Shinkansen seeing loads of different places for a reasonable price. Try the Shinkansen without it only if you’ve recently inherited a fortune or two from a long lost Aunt.

2. Food. OK, I know a lot of you aren’t fans of raw fish (even though we think Sushi and sashimi are delicious), but even so I’d recommend trying some Japanese dishes. The variety is startlingly good. For instance, noodle dishes with Udon or Soba are great served in hot soups or cold with dipping sauces – I know this sounds vile (the first time we had it was by mistake from a menu with no English!) but its actually really nice. These are great with tempura, lightly battered and deep-fried vegetables, fish, prawns etc. Or another type of noodle soup would be ramen, a clear broth with a host of vegetables, meats, seaweed and even the occasional egg floating on top! And if you don’t like noodles there are rice based dishes, or yakitori (meats or vegetables barbequed on skewers), or even simple things like Teriyaki chicken which you’ve probably all tried. OK, there is one serious deficit in Japanese food, varied though it might be – sweets. See below.

3. Lively cities. Really clean, bustling, easy to navigate – a pleasure to explore. With really helpful, friendly, courteous inhabitants.

4. Temples. Japanese temples and shrines are generally beautiful and serene. OK, the magnificent complex in Nikko was anything but serene due to golden garnishing and the hordes of school kids, but generally temples are remarkably peaceful places. They often have very beautiful gardens attached too.

5. Gardens. Simple, in a very high maintenance (and elaborate) way! Japanese gardens are very distinctive with their tranquil ponds, giant carp, beautifully manicured miniature trees and painstakingly weeded shrubberies. Bizarre.

6. Mountains. Particularly volcanoes – especially if they are actively steaming, and preferably situated around lakes. Toyako Onsen was the very good for this, and had the added benefit of hot-springs too.


And some scary things…

1. Crabs. Especially the ones in Hakodate with legs over a meter long. These things did not originate from this planet, and should not be seen on it. Especially not hanging out of your bowl of miso soup!

2. Octagonal things. Glutinous, grey or green. And we think you are meant to eat them. Don’t try it! Japan may have some of the most delicious food I’ve ever tasted, but it also has the most stringy, gloopy, slimy stuff too. And loads of innocent things such as ice-cream and iced coffee are contaminated with green tea. Why? It makes them vile!

3. Japanese sweets. Who came up with the idea of red bean paste as a replacement for chocolate? Not the best move. Especially as they are roughly the same colour, so on pictures when ordering you can easily make a mistake!

4. Japanese writing. It’s very beautiful. Artistic even. However, given a menu with no English and no pictures makes for an interesting meal! Getting off at the right train station can be similarly challenging, especially if you are off the beaten track.

5. Pachinko. We vowed to try this, but chickened out! We can’t understand the attraction of sitting in a smoke filed hall, deafened by noise, watching a series of little steel ball bearings fall down something that looks a bit like a slot machine.

6. Japanese TV. It all seems to be game shows! Lots of canned laughter. But they lack the appeal of the truly awful camera work you see in Indian soaps.

7. Toilets. Warm seats, flushing noises played automatically as you sit down to spare embarrassment, bidet jets, shower jets, and some mysterious vacuum suction called the ‘powerful deodoriser’! And much, much more! With control panel instructions only in Japanese of course. Use at your peril!


Anyway, we would love to see you out here if you get some time free. Let us know! Oh, and please keep in touch. We’re just sorting out Skype out here, so should be able to make free phone calls to anyone else who has it installed on their computer (and a suitable handset – ours cost £3). Install it, let us know your account name and we can catch up properly!

Japanese Bathrooms

Japan is great. Strange, totally incomprehensible in some ways, but great. It has some of the best food on the planet - and on the other hand, it has some of the most terrifying food on Earth too! It has beautiful scenary, spectacular cities, and as people are usually very friendly it’s a brilliant place to wander around it. However, some things about Japan really really scare me from time to time.

For instance, toilets. Now it can be a little difficult to believe when you walk into a plush department store or hotel that the traditional Japanese toilet is a squatter. The loos installed in these places look as if they`ll launch you into orbit!

We went to a department store in Sapporo today and used their toilets after lunch. In the ladies they had a whole selection of goodies for children: little urinals for little boys visiting with their Mummy, mini toilets in the cubicals next to the real sized toilet for little girls, a baby holder seat in each cubical to keep little devils from wandering around while Mum is otherwise engaged… And the toilets came accompanied by some fun things too – toilet seat disinfectants (which are a bit boring now we’ve seen them in the UK) and an ‘auto steriliser’ – some mysterious device you seem to activate by putting your hand over the back of the toilet to give it a mini-flush!

As for the toilets themselves, well, as you might expect they are the highlight of any Japanese bathroom. They vary a bit in complexity, but the ones we just met in this department store were some of the best I’ve seen. First, the toilet seat is warmed for optimal comfort. And as you sit down it flushes a little water to make sure everything is clean (a bit disconcerting before you get used to it – I jumped up the first time wondering what was happening!). Then you have a whole control panel of different options at your fingertips. As you can see from the photos, the ones in this store were scarily all in Japanese characters, so you wouldn’t have a clue what you were pressing. Very dangerous! I know for past from more helpful control panels with English text or pictures some of the things these loos can do. They can play relaxing bird song or the sound of the sea washing against the shore to cover embarrassing noises. You can control the temperature of the seat in case it gets a little chilly. And most terrifying of all, you can use them as a bidet! At the touch of the wrong button these evil things will launch vindictive jets of water up out of the toilet bowl at you! The diagrams I’ve seen imply that you can of course choose the ‘aim’ of the jet and the ‘water pressure’ as you desire. And people use these things to feel cleaner afterwards? Euagh!

Anyway, I hope this is a useful warning for anyone coming to Japan. On the plus side, going to the toilet in the UK is never this interesting, whereas here the sheer weirdness of it can make it the most memorable thing of the day!