Japan V1, 01 - 30 June
Japan in June (Cutting Japan into two posts since we were here so long)
Apologies for all of the ramen, sushi. and bidet pics...
We have wanted to see Japan for years - it’s been at the top of the list for both of us but we could never pull the trigger for some reason, so we decided to stay for two months! We also got lucky and two sets of friends had coinciding vacations so wife got a lot of good quality deflection-from-Chris time!
So what is Japan like??? It’s like a polite, adult country that is run by engineers and rational people…and chefs, lots of chefs. The trains and busses run almost EXACTLY on time. They don’t stop serving beer in the 7th inning. McDonald’s employees take pride in their hamburger making skills. Taxi drivers don’t cut you off. Tipping can be seen as an insult. They are competitive gift givers. They teach personal responsibility and manners in kindergarten and it shows. It’s the single most responsible/respectful place I’ve ever been. I’m paraphrasing this from our new friend Mark, who lives here - “Japanese people are brought up as part of a group and the group comes first and the group rewards you”, so basically it’s living within a collective. But not a crazy religious one.
There isn’t trash on the ground. You rarely find public trash cans because you’re expected to take care of your own trash. This can be somewhat maddening to tourists, when you’ve just finished a 7-Eleven ice cream bar and have a sticky wrapper in your hand. Also, it’s frowned upon to eat or drink while walking in the street so you rarely see anyone, other than tourists, gulping a Starbuck’s or walking along a sidewalk with 7-Eleven Ice Cream bars in their mouth!
People bow and wave repeatedly to each other in a big circle on the street when they are leaving a restaurant. One beautiful elderly owner of a restaurant bowed as we left her restaurant and walked down the street…and she kept bowing and waving until we were out of sight. I know she was probably just happy to see us leave and thinking to her self “Dude, that old white haired guy is sexy AF but he’s going to die from soy sauce overdose soon - I hope that lady has life insurance on his salt deprived ass!!!” But it sure came across to us as lovely.
When you see a landscaping crew with a mower or a weed eater operator, there are usually two other workers walking on the people or road side carrying a large screen to keep passersby and cars safe from flying debris! The workers also have these amazing vests with fans built in to keep them cool - it was the craziest thing to see them from a distance at first, I thought, “It’s 95 degrees outside, why do these crazies have on puffy coats????” But then you get closer and realize their jackets have two fans built in that are blowing up the jacket with cool air. Cool stuff over here!!!
Heated toilet seats everywhere. And amazing space age bidets. Read more about bidets in the July post - it's riveting, let me tell you. I already miss the toilets.
Japanese baseball games are SO much better than American there is no comparison. Same can be said in Korea. Nonstop chanting and cheering. Cheerleaders. Condom blow-up in the 7th inning. People take their own trash to the waste bins. Not as many home runs but it's a lot more lively.
There is almost no crime…sure you get a little but people don’t worry about getting pick-pocketed in the streets or someone snatching their purse in the train station. Bikes are largely left unlocked. Homicides are a tenth of the US. Homelessness is almost nonexistent (2500 out of 120 Million + pop!) Nearly everyone works or can find employment. And it is as beautiful as everyone says it is. There are some big cities and dense populations - it has roughly 120+ million people - about a third the population of America but about 9/10 the size of California. If you are curious what typical people are like, check out this Facebook guy (Paolo from Tokyo) who does some amazing vignettes into Japanese daily life. The spots on school children and garbage men are excellent snapshots into Japanese values and upbringing.
Speaking of teaching responsibility, one of the cutest sights I’ve seen anywhere actually happens regularly here. In the train and subway stations in the late afternoons, you’ll see small groups of 5-6 year olds, in their adorable matching school uniforms and precious little brightly colored “commute” hats and big reflective placards on their matching backpacks, calmly walking from stop to stop, ON THEIR OWN! There are community volunteers assigned to help them at checkpoints but this is the level of responsibility they teach kids here. Five year olds…leading other five year olds without adults, around Tokyo subway stations - it’s the most responsible and stinkingly cute thing I think I’ve seen on our trip. Even cuter than baby elephants play-fighting.
And speaking of cute, one sushi restaurant we went to had a robot dog that wandered about and kept making little dog sounds and batting its eyes. I couldn't tell if it left little micro-chip poops scattered around for us to step on. I was fine with the robot waiters but I'm not always a dog person to begin with, so a cute robot dog wasn't my idea of dining entertainment. The sushi was amazing, though.
Another note on dogs and Japanese responsibility/respect for others - in Osaka we saw a group of people walking four nearly identical big fluffy white (real) dogs on the sidewalk. As soon as they crossed the street, two of the dogs decided it was suddenly time to do their business, right in the middle of the walkway. One of the ladies dug in her bag, pulled out some plastic bags and promptly picked up the poop. Then, she dug back in the bag and pulled out a spray bottle and a brush, which she used to clean up the street of any remaining waste. This is the level of civic duty/responsibility/sense of community you see here daily. Also, we’ve NEVER seen a stray dog or a dog off leash, except that robot dog and a 17 year old furry wiener dog that could only waddle like a harbor seal because he was so fat.
For more of my rantings, look below all of the pics.
Hokkaido (Northern island, including Sapporo, Otaru and Hakodate)
Sendai
Tokyo - started with a SHAKE!
Kanazawa
Osaka and Kyoto
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In Japan, I don’t measure time by the clock (unless boarding a train or bus), but by how long it is until my next feeding. As much as you might know about sushi or ramen, it’s just the tip of all the amazing things they serve here. I’m not a huge red-meat eater and was skeptical of the Wagyu because it just seemed like a waste of money back home. But here, it’s a completely different taste, sort of like Spanish Iberico Jamon versus country pork. It’s just better. They put the same precision from every other facet of their world into their cooking, also. It’s now my favorite food country and I have an unhealthy ramen problem.
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You might see some pics of an adorable little boy, Kai. We were in a hotel in Hakodate and wife went up to the roof lounge to have a drink while I dried off from a rainstorm. She texted me a short while later that I needed to come join her - she’d made some new friends. This isn’t abnormal - she makes friends everywhere, but this one was special. Kai is almost four and was there with his parents, Rieko and Roy. Kai is not hard to describe - adorable and life-of-the-party would be understatements. By the time I came up he was climbing across wife and the chairs and laughing with these big belly laughs through long floppy bangs. And as soon as I came up he just plopped over on my lap like I was his personal Santa. Wife showed him pics of our estranged stray cat, Rutger, and he went into hysterics. Sometimes you meet people and right away, you simply just like them. That’s Rieko and Roy. Fortunately Roy previously worked for a British company so his English was excellent and we didn’t have to rely solely on our translation machines. I probably could have stayed talking and sipping on my beer all night, but, it turns out, four year olds have similar bedtimes to 60 year olds. We traded numbers and met for dinner the next night, where Roy introduced me to Pufferfish Sake. I suspect it was a dare between them to see what they could get the honky to drink/eat, because it actually was a chunk of a pufferfish floating in a cup of warm sake. Roy stopped me before I ate the pufferfish and I wish he’d stopped me before I drank the sake. Warm sake is not my thing. But I did love sake and especially plum sake later in the trip. Roy, Rieko and Kai live in a southern part of Tokyo and we felt fortunate to spend part of their holiday with them. And when we made it to Tokyo we met them again twice during the rest of the trip. It’s amazing to travel, but when you are able to befriend locals, it allows you a much better feel for the culture. It also just makes living on the road a LOT more fun.
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I’m asked pretty regularly if I get homesick and I always answer the same way - I don’t really get homesick but I get peoplesick. We miss our people - a LOT. So it’s a really special treat when we get to see our people out along the path somewhere. When we were in Ireland last year for our nieces’ wedding, some of our favorite people, Dick and Kristine, spent part of their vacation in Dublin and we got to spend a few days together. We spent a few weeks with them in Germany for the World Cup and travelled to Austin for an F1 race, so we know we travel well together. This time they brought their son Christian, who had just graduated from UCLA. What’s with all our friends and their Smart kids??? We got to spend a little over a week together, touring Tokyo by go-kart (!), temple hopping in Kyoto and marveling at Christian’s sushi intake in Kanazawa. Their first night in Toykyo, as they were muddling through jet lag, we all met up with Roy, Rieko and Kai for a local Izakaya dinner, where Kai quickly found his way onto Kristine’s lap. Not sure if that helped or hurt her jet lag, but that kid is a pro at finding new laps!
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For years we hosted touring cyclists through an organization called Warmshowers.org. It was one of the most rewarding things we did when we were “housed” as we got to meet a lot of fascinating people. One year we met two Japanese cyclists, Saki and Yuta, that were separately cycling across the states and just so happened to be at our house during the same week, so they got to meet and hang out together for a couple of days. They were there during our Independence Day holiday so we showed them what American BBQ was all about - FYI, be careful what you offer mid-20’s cyclists - they can put away some impressive amounts of Pappy’s…and beer, also! Both, also coincidentally, lived around Tokyo, but didn’t know each other before the trip. We’d been looking forward to seeing their slice of Toyko. Saki took us sightseeing and to an amazing conveyor belt sushi lunch during the day while Yuta finished his air traffic controller shift. And then Yuta joined us later for dinner, where both moonlighted as Okonomiyaki chefs for us and Dick, Kristine and Christian. Okonomiyaki is sort of a Japanese equivalent of a slinger, but using slightly healthier ingredients. You start by putting a lot of cabbage and bean sprouts (or noodles in southern Japan) into a pile on a grill and then cook it down, adding eggs and other mystery stuff, and about 15 minutes later you have this fat quesadilla looking thing that, if done right, is amazing. We had previously tried one on our own and realized that grill restaurants that don’t have good ventilation leave you really stinky! We walked out of the first one and the lady had a bottle of Fabreze ready to spray on us, it was that smoky. Anyway, having local personal Okonomiyaki chefs is the way to go! It was wonderful getting to spend some time with Saki and Yuta and learning a little about everyday Japan from some locals, plus it was just good to see them both and how they're making their ways in life. It turns out that working and living in Japan are not that different than what kids have to face in America, or Europe, for that matter. They all need to find their own way in a crazy world with a thousand things hurtling at them every day. These kids are so smart and so interesting and I'm so happy that we got to meet them and see them again!
If I don't mention this, wife will get her feelings hurt. We were getting rained out in the afternoon and decided to sneak (haha) into the Ninja and Samurai Museum, out of the rain. The tour and information was great, chronicling the lineage and history of the Samurai and Ninjas and Ronins over the years. But the highlight was at the end, when the guide herded all 20 or so of us into a padded room with targets all over the walls. Then he gave us these hard plastic Ninja Throwing Stars for a contest. We all took a few practice throws, with surprisingly NO ninjuries, and then started the contest. Round one, about ten of us stayed in the competition. Round two weeded out a few more and then finally, round three saw only 6 or 7 of us still standing. Even better, ALL FOUR of us in our group were still alive, Saki, Yuta, Wife and me, along with some other bruiser looking dude that was our only real competition. Final round, I hit the target, Saki and Yuta each came close and the bruiser dude cracked under the pressure. And surprisingly, in the "I'll never stop hearing about this" category, wife, with her modified Mexi-Ameri-jutsu throwing style hit the bullseye, and won whole contest! If she ever just out-of-the-blue starts bragging about her Ninja-ette skills, believe her - she'll put your eye out with a plastic death toy.
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For the second time on our trip, our first day in a city (Tokyo here) we were walking on the street and got simultaneous phone alerts for an earthquake and a strong 5.5 scale shaking of the ground. Talk about an efficient and prompt system! Everyone looked around and then went right back to what they were doing - business as usual.
Note - later in the trip we were lucky to get out of a city (Kumamoto) three days before one of the largest earthquakes ever hit it. Sadly, it was still rebuilding from a 2016 earthquake that devastated much of the city. We were especially relieved because we were staying in one of the only buildings there over 20 stories, and we were on the 21st floor, so that would have been nervy.
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For some crazy reason, with all of the rule followers and careful drivers here, they allow go-kart gangs on the main roads. You'll see a group of go-karts roll up with all of the drivers wearing bright anime costumes and furry hats (no helmets), just blending in with normal traffic. We tried it and it was exhilarating. Scary, especially when you're going 60 KPH (about 40'ish MPH) on a main street, with a semi-truck right next to you. I forget how fun go-karts can be but I was also a little shaky at high speeds. I was also surprised how accomodating the drivers were with groups of karts sharing the roads. The go-kart leaders are really strict with rules and kept us very safe, but still, I felt a couple of times like I was about to spin out when I hit road bumps at high speeds. Yet again, there is no bigger grin on wife's face than when she is driving something at high speeds!
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I’m not used to not being in the drivers’ seat when we travel in the states. Over the past 18 months we’ve been in a lot of planes, trains, busses, Ubers, scooters and even a rickshaw or two. We’re currently traveling through the Japanese countryside, which also looks like a never-ending Japanese city, on a Shinkansen, or Bullet Train. Throughout the country, once you get away from the cities, there are vast swaths of greenery, with crop fields, picture perfect rice paddies, forests and mountains and seas as far as you can imagine. But as we approached Tokyo and then quickly left it on the way to Kanazawa, a couple of hours away by bullet train, the landscape has turned to a sea of housing. It’s different than a lot of the other big cities we’ve been to recently, in that it’s not made up of skyscrapers but is largely neighborhoods of single and two/four family houses with medium apartment complexes and factories thrown in. The notable tall structures that keep popping up are driving ranges, and there are a lot of them. One was built into the side of a small mountain - I’d like to have had a better glimpse of it, but at 200 MPH we passed by it pretty quickly.
I like this passenger side of travel…sitting in my window seat watching Japan pass by, while Lyd watches Netflix - it’s really soothing. The ‘Not Driving’ part of it is great as it allows you to actually see a bit from ground level and not have to concentrate on the road. And the thrill of riding along at 320 KPH (200 MPH) is real. These trains actually look like bullets - they’re long and sleek and sexy smooth. The sound isn’t loud, like in a plane - you can still have a decent conversation without disturbing others. But they are NOT cheap. Slightly less than a flight and probably quicker, but be prepared to spend some cash if you want to ride them. For us, each ride was roughly $80, each, one way. I felt like they were worth it but they quickly add up if you are moving around alot.
More next month...
That looks super fun and very tasty! Miss you guys!