Posts tagged with japan
Tokyo
Writing about Tokyo isn’t as simple as the description of our time in Kyoto. My experience of Tokyo wasn’t linear or as clearly definable as our days in the quieter, older city.
We had a list of things to see and do plotted semi-randomly against our calendar - recommendations from friends who had been to Japan and a lot of reading online. Catherine bought the wonderful Hello Sandwich Tokyo guide which helped us find all sorts of tiny and wonderful neighbourhoods we might not have seen otherwise.
On the more touristy side of things, there were the huge suburbs of Shibuya and Shinjuku, Tokyo Disney, Studio Ghibli, the Mori Tower and for a few of us, the Tsujiki fish market and tuna auction.
There were the contrasts: beautiful minimalism and glaring neon at the Pachinko parlours. Quiet trains during the day which were a hub of noise and activity late night. The beautiful, eclectic fashion sense of the young girls and the strict business dress code.
My favourite thing to do was explore little neighbourhoods like Shimokitazawa and Daikanyama. Tiny streets, small restaurants and a lot of observation of regular Tokyo life. We’d go, wander around and not see another tourist for miles. Even in our own neighbourhood (Yotsuya), there were plenty of random & wonderful things to find, like a BBQ restaurant where we sat around barrels and cooked our own food the first night we arrived to the sound of businessmen laughing and clinking their beer mugs.
It was so easy to move around within Tokyo and become a part of it. The rest of the story is in some of the pictures, or a few anecdotes that we should share over a nice cold Asahi sometime.
See also:
My full set on flickr | Sneak’s on Flickr
Kyoto
For a couple of years a group of our friends have been talking about visiting Japan. The ideas crystallised into a plan and “Japan Club” was born: Catherine, Matt, Morgan, Selena, Mike, Darren and me. We agreed that it was a loose group travel arrangement - we’d wander and explore and if it ended up being separately during the day, we’d meet up and share our stories over a nice cold Japanese beer.
We headed from the airport to our accommodation, the traditional ryokan/inn-style Nishiyama Ryokan in Kyoto. We enjoyed the 90 minute drive, exclaiming over the efficiency of the toll booths, the branding of hotels and buildings along the highway and our first look at the autumn foliage. November was the right month to travel here. It’s very warm in the sun though cool in the shade, and the colours of the leaves are stunning. Arriving at the ryokan (a traditional Japanese inn) was a delight. We dropped our bags off, re-grouped a little and headed straight back into the streets. Even the street we were staying on was so lovely - clean, soft colour, bikes everywhere, vending machines and a lot of plants. Getting to our accommodation had been no hassle whatsoever and we figured the train station might be where we first started to come unstuck with only a handful of Japanese phrases between the 7 of us. It wasn’t to be though and we figured out the train ticket machines with minimal help from the “English Guidance” screen. All the stops have a code and a price for the distance, e.g. T-15 or K-20 so you are able to tell where you are, where you’re going and how much it will cost to get from A to B.
Taking the different JR line system was no more difficult. We went out into the outskirts of Tokyo to enjoy a river boat ride down to Arashiyama and see the bamboo forest there. The boat ride was great and extremely picturesque with clear water, rocks and the beautiful colours of the autumn leaves. The 3 Japanese men rowing the boat chattered away to the other passengers in Japanese, joking and laughing the whole way. We occasionally went over some small rapids but mostly it was a gentle glide along the river. Arashiyama was the busiest place we’d seen since arriving. As it is tourist season and there is a public holiday on Tuesday, there were a lot of people on holiday there - more Japanese than foreign as far as we could see. We walked through the bamboo forest and then headed back into Kyoto to get settled in our rooms at the ryokan and find some dinner.
The vending machines fascinate me here. They’re all on the sidewalk and not necessarily attached to a shop. The most common ones we’ve seen are for drinks and cigarettes, though we’ve also seen ice creams and soy bars. They are incredibly easy to use. Initially we only bought cold drinks though on the way back from Arashiyama Matt was brave and selected a can of hot chocolate. We were prepared for it to be cold as the majority of the drinks in the machine were, however it was hot! You could also buy a variety of coffee drinks and what appears to be corn soup (though no one is willing to try it).
The ryokan rooms we stayed in where lovely - we’d booked two rooms for the 7 of us and had decided to split the group into boys & girls, so I was sharing with Catherine and Selena. We had a lovely space with our tatami mats, a low table & chairs as well as a changing room with screens. Part of the provisions in the room were kimono, jackets & slippers to wear within the ryokan. We didn’t really wear them too much (though Catherine wore hers down to the public bath downstairs) but it was the second morning when we shared the dining room with some Japanese guests who were all wearing theirs that I wished I had too. One of the boys’ favourite features of the ryokan was the Asahi vending machine on the basement level.
The choices for breakfast in the ryokan was Western or Japanese and for the first morning I’d opted for Japanese. The spread was fascinating and each place setting included all kinds of little dishes & bowls. The woman serving us spoke no English but lit our small cookers and demonstrated how to cook the tofu. We also had a packet of nori, sauce and endlessly topped up rice bowls which we ate with our hands, pickles, a salad which was mainly cabbage, some fruit and miso soup. The second morning I opted for the Western which was a slightly odd attempt at bacon & eggs amongst other things but was glad of that because the Japanese was a bit confronting for so early in the morning.
I was very excited but also a little nervous about the ‘Kyoto back streets’ bike tour I’d booked for all of us. We arrived at the bike shop at 9:15 and saw a huge line of people waiting to rent bikes. I’d read that the Japanese travel a lot by bike but hadn’t been sure how true that was - we’d seen rows of bikes and people of all ages riding them all over Kyoto. There are lots of bike parking spaces and everyone rides these lovely street bikes with baskets on the front. Nothing sporty about it at all - they also ride on the sidewalk mostly and without helmets.
It didn’t take us long to get sorted on our bikes and we were off with our guide Naoko. I had a big smile on my face immediately as our single file line took off down an alleyway. The tour was cleverly constructed so that we visited different types of temples (Shinto, Buddhist, Zen and a Chinese-style one with the distinctive Torii gates) as well as a quiet geisha town (where we had to wheel our bikes) and Gion, the geisha district. We saw a few women all dressed up in geisha outfits but Naoko explained that the geisha and maiko (training geisha) would not be out in the street on a Sunday morning so they were likely to be imitation. They also only wear the gorgeous and decorative kimonos when they are entertaining at night, so had we seen them in the day we might not have known they were geisha with their ordinary kimonos on.
I loved the back alleys - everything was so tidy and clean with potted plants, tiny vans and bikes all over the place. We rode along a river and some nice big paths along the canals, which was a nice balance to the tiny alleys. It really gave us a sense of the different parts of Kyoto - we saw heaps of people off to their Sunday activities or celebrating the national tradition of taking their 3 year old girls and 5 year old boys to be blessed at the temples. The kids all dressed up in their outfits were extremely cute! It was hard not to take photos of just about everything along the way - I think most of mine are shops, streets and houses. Everything is so stylish here in a wonderfully understated way. It’s clean & tidy and almost hard to believe that so many people live in close proximity to each other.
After the bike tour we were pretty knackered - and hungry - so we tackled a huge department store to find food. The food floor was called “Eat Paradise” so I was pretty excited but it wasn’t as big as expected. I opted for a tuna sashimi meal (tray?) and was a bit surprised when it didn’t appear as it would have at home - it wasn’t the pieces of raw tuna as I had expected and had been marinated in some tomato-based spicy mixture. It was on rice, cabbage and had an egg in the bowl too. At first I wasn’t sure I could eat it but did manage to get through most of it!
We had considered checking out more temples and the Imperial Palace in the afternoon but the bike tour had covered most of that so opted for random Japanese snacks & cans of beer in our room. The snacks were chosen at the nearby 7-11 based on the pictures on the front (aside from the requisite Pocky and Toppo which are becoming a staple snack). Most of the snacks were really interesting & tasty though unfortunately Mike’s selection ‘The Horn’ tasted like a biscuit version of a slightly off vanilla dairy product like Yoplait. It was a nice way to unwind with Matt playing some music and general discussion of what we’d seen to date. By early evening we were feeling pretty tired - Morgan and Selena headed out to a Michelin star restaurant while the rest of us went to a Spanish restaurant just down our street.
Our time in Kyoto felt like a perfect slice of life in Japan and we were ready to move on to Tokyo.
