Albatross133

...Japan, where the people live in the expectation of the next earthquake and accompanying Tsunami with a stoicism unique and enviable. March 11 2011, possibly the strongest earthquake for a thousand years, put that stoicism to the test but life goes on...and that's what its all about in Japan.

Intro

     The fact that I was on my way to the land of the rising sun was a result of a lot of personal curiosity and right timing and I could count myself twice lucky because I had 2 introductions to Japan and the Japanese culture: The "typical" introduction, that of bumping into a traditionally dressed girl texting on her mobile and a" not so typical" one.

     My "not so typical" introduction happened at Heathrow while my son and I were taking place in the BA747 that was to take us to Japan. But I'm still trying to get to grips with my darned selective memory and remember what made me absolutely want to fly BA, in a 747 and from Heathrow!!! Souvenirs of transiting Heathrow some 3 years earlier were still fresh in my mind but I must have decided that the enormity of the trip was worth the experience and who knows perhaps the customs and security procedures at Heathrow would had improved since, especially as I wasn't heading for the States but the other way...

     Alas no sooner had my flight from Lyon arrived than I found myself herded into the arrival reception hall along with hundreds and hundreds of other passengers arriving from everywhere, stoically waiting to go through customs.
Normally in any major airport you would expect and find sufficient check points to allow a fluid movement of passengers. Not so in Heathrow! At the time you had to wait patiently for the one and only airport official on duty to check you through and woe betide the impatient traveler who didn't read and heed the signs on the walls warning passengers not to vent their spleen on airport officials, they are only doing their job. As far as I was concerned I would have been better disposed toward the poor hard worked airport official on duty at the time had he looked poor and hard working and not ambling around like he was killing time before clocking off!

PS. I recently went back Heathrow and was relieved to see that things had changed. Although the famous signs were still there the arrival hall had received a coat of paint and there were actually 3 customs officials checking passengers through!!!

Ryo Sakamoto

A"not so typical" introduction

     Enough complaining and back to the tale of my " not so typical" introduction to the Japanese culture. With the frustration of long wait in the arrival hall behind me I climbed into the waiting 747 and found that British Airways, not realizing that I was traveling with my son, had placed us in different seats, him across on the right hand side of the plane near the windows and me on the outside of the left hand side. I was a bit annoyed at this but it didn't seem to worry my son in the slightest. He was surrounded by Japanese women with whom he quickly struck up a conversation, punctuated by giggles, exclamations and compliments on his knowledge of the Japanese language.

     As for me a 40ish Japanese woman sat down next to me, on my right. Ho, ho, I thought! The woman introduced herself as a teacher and we started exchanging niceties. I responded to her questioning with what I considered the correct amount of courtesy but what I didn't realize was that her talking was in fact a sign of her growing nervousness. The poor woman must have thought I was a potential predator... or was latently claustrophobic and I was intruding in her "Lebensraum"... or simply maybe because the prospect of spending the next 11 hours next to a ±100 kg snoring Gaijin was simply more than she could take!

Imperial Palace Tokyo

     What ever the reason the Japanese woman was getting more and more agitated until finally, some 10 minutes after taking her seat and polite discussion she excused herself and went of in search of a stewardess. I don't know what made me look up but I saw her talking to the stewardess but being too far to hear I could only notice her gestures as she looked in my general direction I realized she talking about me. I didn't mind that but the lady started putting her hand over her mouth as if to protect herself from an offensive odour. A couple of minutes later the stewardess came over to me and asked if I would like to change places and move into the business class, tantalizing me with tales of larger seats, TV screens in the back of the seat, meals, drinks and god knows what.

     Being my mother's son the cantankerous in me started surfacing and pointing in his direction I informed the stewardess that I was traveling with my son. I said that instead of separating us further I would have preferred that the stewardess sat us together. The stewardess checked her list and saw it was true and promptly apologized, for the inconvenience and for the fact that BA had not placed my son and I together and finally it was the Japanese lady who moved, not into the business class but across the aisle and still within view of me! When I later told the story to my son he chuckled laconically, more at my reaction than the incident or the woman, and told me pragmatically that I should have taken them up on the offer especially if there were free drinks and a better meal... but like I said I am my mother's son.

     So what was I to think of the incident? Did it influence or disturb me? Actually thinking back yes it did. I felt this woman, what ever her personal reasons or problems, had irked me and had succeeded in strongly influencing my initial impression of the Japanese before I even set foot on Japanese soil!
Whatever the woman's problem it occurred to me that you could have replaced the Japanese women in the story with a French or American one, obnoxiousness being universal, but a French or American person would have told me what's up to my face not gone slinking off to the stewardess.

     Yost Scriptum. All's well that ends well... As I was getting off the plane the stewardess flashed me a charming smile and reassured me that such incidents were common occurrence. Apparently she'd seen worse and told me that I was right to have stood firm and oblige the Japanese lady to move, not to the business class with the large seats, personal TV screens, drinks and better meals but to less 5 metres from me and still within sight. It did not fail to occur to me that as the women had lost out in the deal she had certainly lost face and I already knew enough of the Asian culture to know that losing face is the ultimate sanction for an Asian... I held my revenge!

     The souvenir of the incident quickly dissipated as I made my way from the plane, through customs and out of the terminal and it was then that my "Typical" and classical introduction to Japan took place, one probably experienced by millions of visitors to the land of the rising sun: I caught sight of dolly pretty Japanese girls everywhere, milling around in traditional Kimono dress speaking into mobile phones like people would in any airport, anywhere in the world but it was traditional dress that enthralled me. With that sight indelibly burnt into my memory we stepped out of the airport terminal and into the Narita Express that was to take us, in the space of some 45 minutes, to Tokyo - Shinjuku and the start of 3 weeks of bustling adventure in the land of the rising sun.

Preparing to get there

     I knew Japan was a long way away (± 11 000 kilometres) but I understood that geographical distance wasn't the only gap I had to cross, there was an enormous cultural divide to cross as I knew that with a lot of people in a small space a fair amount of mental preparation was needed as well as some research so after flying in from Lyon and having a couple of hours to spend in the transit hall at Heathrow I bought a couple of books about Japan to read while waiting, the inevitable "Time-out", a couple of magazines and a book called "Living abroad in Japan" by Ruthy Kanagy.
I didn't intend going to Japan to live as a gaikokujin but if I did I would read the book a 02nd time , especially certain chapters that deal with to how obtain documents and how to observe and respect certain local and residential customs, like beware of paper thin walls , remember to respect the dustbin code (what days for what, etc...) and do not ever feed or encourage the crows....there are hundreds and hundreds of them and they are a more serious nuisance than you ever thought they could be!!!

     "T ime-out", on the other hand was full of the usual info about what to do and where to go but every now and again I stumbled on interesting and amusing bits of info. One particular article talked to women about the joys of Tokyo's subway system and warned women, especially Blondes, about the gropers and the grabbers and offered advice on how to react, i.e. Holler!!!. Another article explained that if upon arrival western women noticed their husbands paid them less attention they shouldn't be concerned. Its normal, the article wrote, and only to be expected with all those dolly pretty Japanese women around looking the men square in the eyes with their dolly like eyes. The article confirmed that it was temporary and that all would return to normal. The article even suggested that western women might like to take a leaf out of any Japanese woman's book as far as seduction was concerned and offer their husbands a souvenir to remember... I hasten to add, and very quickly, that the article was written a woman not a man!!!

     Another article told the tale of the "Miracle man" and the "Miracle man" syndrome. Let me quickly explain. Some years ago there was a TV serial in Japan, of the same name, apparently about the vicissitudes of an good looking western man in Japan. To cut a long story very short as a result of this TV serial any European man visiting Japan, especially outside of central Tokyo, should be prepared for a very bizarre but flattering experience. When walking the streets in Japan it's common for Japanese women to walk up to a western man and stare him straight in the eyes. The article advised western men not to get upset, feel aggressed or get carried away as before a western man stands any chance of sweeping a Japanese woman off her feet he must first open the 5 gates that lead to her inner sanctuary, and only then may he dream of standing a chance. But having experienced the "Miracle man" effect first hand myself I can say that its an agreeable experience to be taken as it is presented ...at face value!!!

Getting there

     Organizing trips like this is today more a question of knowing where to look than anything else, meaning which sites offer the best price, apart from that you can go to Blackpool or Osaka with the same logistics and insouciance. I would even go so far as to say that a lot of the barriers that once made a trip to Japan an expedition rather than a banal flight have gone out of traveling today, and that came from someone who went to Shanghai, Kyrgyzstan, Munich and London in the space of 4 months. But the ease with which people travel today should only make the stays in the different destinations all the more "ludique", interactive and educational, once you get there, otherwise it will be nothing more than another stopover between 2 points, with the same type of hotel room thrown in so as not to disorientate the traveler, and the risk of it being more an anticlimax than an experience is very real , yes even when you go back to London as an "ex-pat" for a business trip can be ludique - By the way, what is an "ex-pat"? I've lived more than 30 years in Continental Europe and have never considered myself an "ex-pat" probably because the distance with my origins is anything but physical!

     But back to the trip in hand. With the flight booked, and at quite a reasonable price too, I turned to lodgings and here again Internet was a precious help. A simple click in a secured page and hotels were booked for the 3 weeks we were to stay in Japan. What a relief and I have to say that thanks to a mixture of luck, some trustworthy offers in safe sites and some personal organizational skills the list I drew up of hotels in Kyoto, Osaka, Hiroshima and of course Tokyo turned out to be quite a good choice with few surprises and no deceptions!. The last parameter that needed covering was the traveling between the different cities so at the time of booking the hotels I decided that as Japan apparently had a sophisticated transport system (a fact I can now confirm without any hesitation) I would leave the inter city travel arrangements to when we were there and here again I was agreeably surprised and relieved to learn that if you want to book seats on the famous Shinkansen bullet trains you can actually get more favourable rates if you book at specific moments, another fact I learnt more by luck than anything else with helped me to make substantial savings in my travel budget!!!.

     Unfortunately, though, I found out that although you can a lot of good deals straight away (cheap flights, hotels, restaurants, etc...) some things are a bit harder to find and so, unfortunately - and this is the only thing I regret about our trip to Japan - I had to renounce going to Sapporo because getting there was just a bit beyond my budget, I thought*. Instead I concentrated on journeying around Southern Japan, promising myself to go to Hokkaido and visit the most northern islands of the Japanese archipelago in the near future.
* NB When we finally got to Japan we found out that we could have gone to Sappora at quite a rate that respected my budget, especially following certain savings I had made on our Skinkansen train tickets!!! Oh well, next time!

What to do, when and where

     Anyway with the stress of booking the flight and the hotels out of the way I started looking at places to go. The choice was quite easy to make and was more or less determined by the Shinkansen rail system and advice from my son, rather than throwing darts at a map. Kyoto, Osaka and Hiroshima, for a very obvious reason, were chosen and of course Tokyo was a must. Other destinations had been considered: Sapporo, Nagano and Nagasaki being 3 notable choices that were put to one side more because of a lack of notion of how to get there rather than a real lack of budget, especially as I learnt later that once you got the hang of the Japanese transport system there were opportunities and at affordable rates too, but too late. We were already there in Japan so rather than regretting not being able to go there this time I decided that a 02nd trip to Japan was a must and moved on with the schedule.

The flight of the albatross(133) in Japan

     So having settled for the destinations we decided that Tokyo was to be the hub, even if it meant going from Tokyo to Kyoto onto to Osaka then back to Tokyo before going back down to Hiroshima for a 2 day round trip! Believe me, this going backwards and forwards would have been unthinkable had it not been for the Shinkansen. The only regret about all this traveling was that I was only able to get Mount Fuji on photo from a distance and in poor light! My logic was that I had seen other people's photos of the mount taken from trains and I thought I would have more than enough chance to get closer and get a better photo.
The problem was that no sooner had I packed my faithful Photosmart 945 back in its sack than we hurtled out of a tunnel and passed by the side of the slopes of the famous volcano. Needless to say my camera was with my son and I was in search of a WC when this happened so I philosophically shrugged my shoulders and said I would be coming back and would catch it on photo then. Error! Never put off what you have to do now, because the next 5 times I whizzed passed Mount Fuji it was raining, or night, or cloudy, or we had gone another route!!!...another reason for going back to Japan...the trip on the train is worth it alone. A word of advice, though, take food and drink with you because by the time the food trolley comes round you stand a fair chance of being where you were wanting to go, the train is that fast!

Talking of fast there we were in Shinjuku. One of the most dense and intensive areas of Tokyo.. to read more follow the arrow... to the next page (coming soon)