category archive: Japan, October 2007

Please note that the articles are in chronological order. For all other categories, the latest article is at the top of the list. But due to the 'trip reporting' nature, the sort order has been reversed for the travel categories.

Japan, here I come

Saturday, 4 Aug 2007 | Journal

The other day I was reading my email (yes, on my new phone) and I got a message from Natalie confirming that she had booked a ticket. She will visit me in Thailand first and then on her way back visit another friend who lives in Japan. When she told me of these plans, I decided (and she didn’t mind, or so at least it seems!) to join her for the visit to Japan. So I’ll be looking at some tickets this week.

Visiting Japan has been a dream for a long, long time. I have all these wild ideas about Japan, dreams that in some cases without a doubt will turn out not to be true at all but in other cases I expect Japan to be even weirder than I think it is. It’s only 11 weeks away now!

I know a few people here in Bangkok that have lived in Japan and they will hopefully provide me with some ideas. Natalie without a doubt has a lot of things planned. And at some point I’ll do some research myself of where I would like to go and what I would like to see. I might also use this as a scouting trip, spending some time trying to network a bit. We’ll see I guess.

Lots of traveling

Friday, 17 Aug 2007 | Journal

This morning I walked into the office sipping my coffee and as I walked past our office manager, I asked her to confirm the ticket to Tokyo she had reserved for me, to book me a ticket to Delhi for a week and a half from now and a ticket to Singapore right after that. Delhi will be another business trip, Singapore is combined business and tourism.

Tokyo is obviously the trip I look forward to the most, but being 9 weeks away it feels like an eternity for me. Putting down the actual number of weeks though, makes me wonder what I will be doing when I am there. I previously wrote that I might make it part to be a scouting trip as it is not a destination I will visit very often for quick trips in the future. I’m certainly going to enjoy stuffing my face with sushi every meal of the day. But other than that, I really should set aside some time to figure out what else is worth doing there.

Lots of travelling ahead of me, but that seems to be the norm rather than the exception this year.

United we fly

Sunday, 21 Oct 2007 | Journal

My very dear friend Natalie has been visiting Thailand, Cambodia and Laos the past couple of weeks and I’ll be sure to write about that sometime soon. I’ll see if I can get her to publish her top 10 myths, top 10 facts and top 10 tips on here and then comment the hell out of them! Should be amusing. It is so cool having her here. And it’s looking to become a rather busy visitors season too, but I’ll write about that another time.

Natalie and are now aboard United Airlines flight UA838 on our way to Tokyo. She had booked United for her entire trip and so I thought I’d join on the same flight. I’m still not in ‘holiday mood’ and rapidly firing off emails to people at the office. But I intend to change that soon. I’m looking forward to a week of sleeping in and relaxing. I’m staying at a hotel right downtown Tokyo.

Did not get a lot of preparing done. Basically consulting Lonely Planet, WikiTravel and getting some tips from others is all I have for this trip. I’m sure I’ll be filling my days quite rapidly. I’ll be in Tokyo for the first 4 nights, then take the bullet train to Kyoto and spend 2 nights in a temple there. Basically, 5 full days for doing tourist things in Japan!

First impressions of Japan

After a pleasant flight, we landed at Tokyo Narita Airport and were welcomed by Chris, a good friend of Natalies . Him and his wife took us around for the remainder of the day, we went to eat sushi (of course) together and at the end of the night I went on my way by myself. I had booked a hotel in downtown Tokyo.

The first thing I noticed when we walked outside of the train station was the fresh air. Living in Bangkok means you never really have to wonder about the weather, it is always going to be around 32C/90F and it only changes slightly with the different seasons. Not so in Japan, as they have real seasons there. Autumn was coming and so the air was crisp and fresh, something you never realise how much you miss it. Also really interesting was that cars turn off their engine AND their lights while waiting at a traffic light, the latter to avoid causing discomfort to other cars. Amazing, it really is true how considerate they are. Although that turned out to be less the case once we started getting into more crowded places and people were pushing in trains and what not.

We all went to the downtown area of Chiba to eat sushi. And the first thing you can’t help but notice is how good everybody looks. Not just compared to Thailand, but compared to the west as well, people went all out in looking their best. The result is a constant fashion show of both men and women. There are different styles and within each style people try to look their best, it might not be your cup of tea but they really do their best. The girls especially look amazing. Japanese women are beautiful as it is, but being dressed up and looking like little dress up dolls makes them all the more a pleasure to look at. I couldn’t stop turning my head as we were walking the streets and expect this not to change anytime soon.

What I never knew was the love Japanese have for gambling. I’m sure you all have heard of a game called pachinko, which they all love to play. This is not a skill game, but pure gambling. While gambling is illegal, the fact that metal balls are used instead of money it seems makes it okay. Doesn’t matter those metal balls can be exchanged for money, thats beside the point. Very Asian attitude! In our stroll around Chiba, I’ve seen countless pachinko halls where people sit in brightly lit and horribly noisy halls playing with their metal balls. Ahum. Yes, that was intentional.

The sushi we had was awesome. To be expected in Japan, I guess. We went to a kaiten zushi restaurant, at which you eat sushi from a conveyer belt, you know, with the little dishes going around. For those who know it, thats also likely the reason why the restaurant I so love in amsterdam is called Zushi. And Simone, the nigiri unagi was to die for - see the close up! All the sushi was really good and I intend to eat a whole lot of it this coming week!

After food a coffee and then in the train to Tokyo on my own. With the directions Chris gave me, I was quick to find the hotel I had booked and was pleasantly surprised. Small, SUPER small rooms, but quiet in a business area of town and with free internet access. So I’m not complaining. It’s also not as expensive as most other hotels, at 60 euro per night! Time to sleep, it was an early morning and I’m very, very tired.

Rules and escaping them

Monday, 22 Oct 2007 | Life in Asia

The image we have in the west of Japanese is that of a humble, polite and considerate people. And this is unmistakably true. But this is only one part of the spectrum, the part of the rules. I get the impression Japanese culture is one of 2 extremes, the extreme of rules and the extrame of the opposite of rules, freedom. Or escape of rules. Whichever.

Japanese are really good at following rules. Even if rules dont make sense, rules are adopted and flawlessly executed. One follows the instructions of the family, boss, the government, society and whomever may come up with additional rules. If they somehow apply to someone, they will be followed. Something like a tea ceremony for example is filled with protocol and Japanese I’m sure feel great pride in understanding and being able to execute this protocol. But always having to follow rules I’m sure makes a person a bit edgy at times, so it seems only natural to find escapes for this. The best example of this I guess can be found in comparing Japanese businessmen during the day and during the night. During the day, they are obedient and respectful workers who never contradict their boss (I’m sure even less so than Thai) and do their job with pride. In the night however, they get super drunk and really annoying at times. The getting drunk is not always an escape from being obedient though. It turns out saying ‘no’ to an invitation from your boss to get a drink is unheard off. You go, you get drunk with him and you will like it. End of story. What is cool about this is that during those two worlds remain apart, in the night you can get drunk with the boss and call him an asshole, this will stay in the bar and not get back to the office provided you show him enough respect from 9 to 5. Or rather, 8 to 8 I’m told.

Plenty of true escapes remain. The most interesting one is the obsession of the Japanese with the fantasy worlds of cartoons. From 5 to 55 years old, they read cartoons on the way to school or work. Discretely covered books (nobody needs to know what perverted manga story you are reading) and smiles on the subway, but it doesnt stay there. Endless rows of stores cater to the 3D version of comics, where you can let your own imagination run wild. Buy the little figurines in stores and you can spend the evenings at home playing out your own comics. Or whatever they do with those dolls, some of the dolls have interesting positions as this $160 little doll in the middle will show you.

And that brings us into the second escape - sex. I think it’s common knowledge those Japanese are fairly perverted people, but I never expected sex or sexuality to be so openly displayed here. An exhibit of this is perhaps the 6 story sex shop I visited where they sell anything you could ever imagine … and then have only covered 10% of the shop. The imagery of sexy girls is used everywhere, on tv and on posters and in screaming graphics praising a certain store. And a lot of the comics, or so I’ve heard, have quite the sexual inclination.

It might perhaps be stretching it a bit, but I had to work this into the story somehow, the so called maid cafes are a combination of these two escapes. Girls dressed up in the uniform of a French maid will greet you at the door with a “welcome home master, please sit down, would you like a newspaper, a drink perhaps?” and even give you a nice shoulder massage. Extremely popular venues, where the men go after work (one boss) to escape from their nagging wives (the other boss) and can relax at least for a little while. I never got to experience it, but I’m told you’re greeted as their ‘master’ and the girls (dressed up in old French maid uniforms) will listen to your complaining, serve you a drink and if they wear a pink dress (there are black and pink dresses) will even give you a shoulder massage.

While they are masters at following rules (perhaps a reason why Japanese are such engineering marvels?), they seem to be equally skilled at finding ways to escape from those rules.

Polite, considerate and respectful

Thursday, 25 Oct 2007 | Life in Asia

One of the things anybody will tell you about the Japanese is that they are a very polite, considerate and respectful people. If or not these people have actually met Japanese generally does not make a difference, I would have told you the same thing 2 months ago. However, I am now certified and experienced with my 5 days in Japan having reviewed this. A few examples.

In the train on the way to Kyoto as I write this, the high speed train (shinkansen) zooming across the countryside at over 200km per hour. Every 30 minutes or so a lady with a little food and drink cart will walk by. Also, the ticket guy has passed several times. When he does, before he exits the cabin, he turns around and bows to all the passengers and is then on his way.

The weirdest form of this bowing thing was something I noticed in a subway station the other day. The trackside (after the turnstiles) was separated from the unpaid section of the subway station only by a low stone wall. A man and woman were talking about something before saying goodbye. When they finally did say goodbye, they bowed to each other. But the woman continued making bows to him while he was walking away. And even stranger so, continued making bows while he had disappeared out of sight and walked around a corner. She did that for another 10 seconds before walking away.

An example of consideration for your fellow (wo)man, is the covering of ones mouth. In Bangkok tuktuk drivers and others wear those to protect themselves from the air pollution. Chinese tend to wear them to protect themselves from disease such as SARS and what not. In Japan, people use those mouth covers to protect others from their germs. If you have a cold or whatever, put on a mask to make sure you dont contaminate others.

All these kind of protocols are nothing new to me. In Thailand too, there is a lot of protocol in the way people address and deal with eachother. I’m sure the west has similar protocols that I simply not as much aware of as I’ve grown up. And the above and other examples that could be given, are all a matter of following rules. And as I’ve said before, following rules is something the Japanese do very well!

A day in Kyoto

Friday, 26 Oct 2007 | Journal

During our preparations, Natalie sent me the address for the Shinkoin temple in Kyoto, which offered guestrooms for travellers. Sounded pretty amazing and so yesterday we hopped on the Shinkansen for a 3 hour train ride to Kyoto and soon after arrived at the temple in one of the Kyoto suburbs. We took the Hikari service, which means ‘light’ and is one of the slower services, but it still cruises at about 220km per hour. Check out this video (MPEG-4; 1,65MB) to get a sense of the speed! Thanks to Natalie for shooting the video, I never thought of that!!

Kyoto is a very traditional city and the old Japanese lifestyle is still to be found here, long gone from the streets of for example Tokyo I presume. Funnily enough, it is also known for its technology industry - a lot of small tech companies work out of Kyoto for whatever reason. Natalie and I, after dropping our bags, spent the evening wandering around the suburbs and after the downtown area. Funny was that in the suburbs we really did get the feeling people did not get to see foreigners a whole lot, but downtown I spotted so many tourists that it seemed odd that these places were in the same city. Kyoto is a very quiet town, both in the suburbs as well as the city center.

We wandered into a random eatery. The menu was only in Japanese but it looked quite nice inside, so why not go there. After we sat down, we got an English language menu and while I really wanted to eat sushi we ended up in a restaurant that specializes in ox tongue dishes. Gulp. Ok, well, be brave and order something. And so we did. The dinner was actually quite okay (it tastes like roast beef) and we enjoyed our little adventure. Maybe I should try eating the intestines sold on the streets of Bangkok? Nah, not quite ready for that yet. The waitress who spoke very little English was very cute in the way she communicated with us and tried to please us.

The Shinkoin temple turned out to be a family temple, one of many that had all been clustered around a main temple. It was a bit of a disappointment in the sense that it made for a different type of experience. More or less a traditional Japanese house in my eyes, a temple I expected was one with monks scurrying around and things like that. I took it for what it was to me, relaxing time after having run around for a week and really enjoyed the time we spent there. After having slept late in the morning, Natalie was taking a Zen meditation class (I was meditating in my own way!), and the weather not looking very good I decided to stay at the temple and spend the day relaxing. Natalie was planning to do a walking tour, but when the rain started coming down she also decided to stay in for the afternoon. We read, slept and chatted and after the rain stopped took a stroll around the area. We then decided to head back to Tokyo together. Initially I was planning to stay in Kyoto a second night but the trip from Kyoto to the airport would be too long and basically take up the whole Saturday already. So I figured I might as well go back to Tokyo today.

Looking back now, the whole trip to Kyoto cost 2 days and we did not really get to see or do a whole lot. But it was interesting to see another city and a really nice and relaxing experience to stay in the temple. Some true down time in a holiday that otherwise was a lot of running around. And for that alone, it was worth it for me.

The hustle back

Sunday, 28 Oct 2007 | Journal

The original plan was to stick around Kyoto for two days. I left Tokyo with some shopping yet to be done and figured I would get to that on Saturday. When I asked Taka about the trip back to the airport, he painted a picture of a day long travel after an early rise. We all know I don’t like early rises and so it was that I decided to join Natalie on her trip back.

After I got to Tokyo and said goodbye to Natalie, I was left to find a hotel. I stored one of my bags in a locker at the train station so I wouldn’t have to carry it with me and back to the train station. Then I called the hotel I had been staying at, but they only had more expensive rooms available. I tried to find a capsule hotel and briefly considered booking a love hotel after all, but ended up paying for the more expensive room.

An evening with rain, I did go out for a quick bite and had a drink in a bar, but went to sleep fairly early. I woke up the next morning, had a shower and set out for my errands. A Tokyo city mug from Starbucks, I wanted to get a bag for my computer to take to the office, etc. Walked out of the hotel (they couldn’t be bothered to let me know checkout was at 11am so I had to pay extra) and walked into a very rainy day. Enough of this already, I know I said I was so happy to find fresh air again but I never said I missed rainy days!

Soaking wet from a 200 meter walk to the Aayome-Itchome subway station, I decided to have breakfast before heading downtown. I had a bagel with cream cheese and blueberry, a blueberry juice and blueberry pastry and a coffee. The reason I mention this is because it demonstrates how seasonal things find their way into a lot of things. Fall for example is the season of chestnuts and one can even get chestnut Kitkat and chestnut flavored drinks. This store went the blueberry route and I quite enjoyed. But I digress.

Subway to Shibuya and I was able to find my way into several department stores without getting wet, using the subway station as underground tunnels. I spent too much time browsing (and ended up not buying anything, to make matters worse) and then had quite the hustle to get on the plane. I had to rush from Shibuya to Tokyo station (a half hour trainride) and then take the airport express for an hour. In between, I had to pick up a bag and somehow call the airline to see if I could check in because I would arrive at the airport the same minute the checkin counter would close.

No telephone checkin possible in Japan. Or for United. Or whatever. Thats what the gentlemen told me in the few minutes I had at the Tokyo trainstation to use a public phone. He said he would notify staff on the ground but I was requested to hustle. And so there I was, with two heavy bags running through the airport. I made the checkin, bought myself an upgrade to Economy Plus (same narrow seats, more legspace, 7000 yen (43 euro) and thus well worth it for a 6.5 hour flight) and was instructed to run to the gate in order not to miss the flight. So what does this stubborn guy do? Run in the opposite direction because he HAS to have a Tokyo city mug and Starbucks is in the other direction. Then run back (I really was running!) and in the right direction for the gate. As soon as I spotted the gate and a few people still in line I turned around and went back to the snack shop I had seen flashing by, because I wanted to buy one of those AWESOME bento boxes Natalie and I had on the shinkansen back from Kyoto. Frantically searching around the shop I could only find candy, snacks, cookies and other stuff but NOT the bento box I wanted. And so run back to the gate, board the plane (with time to spare, I was not the last one on board!) and settle in for the flight.

When I get home around midnight tonight, I’ve got one more day to relax and then holiday time is over and it will be back to work for this boy.

Tokyo Number One!

Tuesday, 30 Oct 2007 | Journal

Japan and especially Tokyo have always been at the top of my list of places to visit. After the decision to move to Asia, it was really only a matter of time before I would end up visiting. Taking the first opportunity given (with Natalie visiting) and I was on my way there. One of the things I was really curious about is if I would like it as much as I thought I would. What we in the west perceive Japan to be could of course be way off.

Having spend almost a week in Tokyo, the conclusion I’ve reached is that what we perceive Japan to be in broad lines is true. A very civilized country, a very polite people with strange habits and great food. But it is very obvious, much more so than I’ve found in places like Thailand, that there is a layer beyond what we can see. A layer which we will never be able to see. I don’t pretend to understand Thai society, but when it comes to Japan the message of ‘you will never really understand this’ is much stronger than in a country like Thailand.

When I visited Hong Kong for the first time, it immediately became my favorite city. New York got bumped. Before my trip, I was wondering if Tokyo would beat Hong Kong and sort of expected it to. It has and it hasn’t. There are certainly things about Tokyo which I find much more interesting than Hong Kong, such as the technology industry, the level of sophistication, that incredible attention to details, etc. But Hong Kong also has certain things going for it, for example the fact that it is much more open to foreigners. Both have the elements of surprise which I love about Bangkok and so dearly miss in Singapore.

I can’t seem to make up my mind. So yes, Tokyo is my number one favorite city in the world. And so is Hong Kong. I’m sure they won’t mind sharing the much coveted and highly reveared position of being MY favorite city.