 | Yes, you should. The end. Shortest post ever! JK LOL |
But seriously, I think you’d really like it. But why chose it over any other Asian country? Why fly across the world for sushi? You probably didn’t take Japanese in high school, and you might never have watched The Seven Samurai. You might not even like fish. But there are still plenty of good reasons to go.
First, the food. Oh, my word, the food. All the sushi is great, but conveyor-belt sushi is a kick. You pick what you want on a little screen at your seat, and in a minute your sushi comes flying down the line. Then there’s shabu shabu, where there’s a bowl of boiling broth on your table and they bring all-you-can-eat raw meat and vegetables and you cook it and eat it with your friends. It’s very social. Or there’s teppanyaki, where there’s a hot grill at your table and the chef grills up your dinner right there. And don’t forget tonkatsu, which is breaded, fried pork cutlets, or udon (noodle soup), or ramen (which is also noodle soup but more complicated). They do things with omelettes that you wouldn’t believe. Bento boxes are the cutest lunch anywhere. The rice is the best I’ve ever had. Hot sake is delightful. And if you get homesick, there’s McDonalds, KFC, Starbucks, and Outback Steakhouse.
First, the food. Oh, my word, the food. All the sushi is great, but conveyor-belt sushi is a kick. You pick what you want on a little screen at your seat, and in a minute your sushi comes flying down the line. Then there’s shabu shabu, where there’s a bowl of boiling broth on your table and they bring all-you-can-eat raw meat and vegetables and you cook it and eat it with your friends. It’s very social. Or there’s teppanyaki, where there’s a hot grill at your table and the chef grills up your dinner right there. And don’t forget tonkatsu, which is breaded, fried pork cutlets, or udon (noodle soup), or ramen (which is also noodle soup but more complicated). They do things with omelettes that you wouldn’t believe. Bento boxes are the cutest lunch anywhere. The rice is the best I’ve ever had. Hot sake is delightful. And if you get homesick, there’s McDonalds, KFC, Starbucks, and Outback Steakhouse.
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If you’re an introvert, Japan is for you. The number one thing that kids are taught is “don’t bother anybody” so everybody keeps their head down and carries on. No eye contact in public. No hugging or shaking hands, just bowing. Tokyo subways are dead silent. People line up in crowded areas without being told. There are footprints at the checkout areas of stores that show you where to stand in line. Everybody speaks softly. Signage is good, even in English in big cities, so you don’t have to ask for directions. If you do have to ask, ask a young woman--they’re the most knowledgeable, IMHO, and willing to talk. Chatty Cathy will never strike up a conversation on the subway. You could probably go for days without talking to another soul. It’s wonderful!
I’m not sure what happens when a true extrovert is born in Japan. That might be hard for them.
Getting around is easy. Well, it’s easy once you get the hang of it. Buy a subway ticket, read the signs, look at the map, google the directions. I didn’t try buses because the subways in Tokyo and Kyoto took me everywhere I wanted to go. And--bonus feature--you can use your Tokyo subway ticket in many major cities in Japan! Genius! They’re interchangeable. Next time I go to Japan, I’ll go to more out-of-the-way places and figure out the bus system, but this time subways were enough.
Between cities, the trains are great. The Shinkansen (bullet train) is lovely, smooth and quiet. A cart lady will come by with food and drinks. You can do it.
Money math is easy. It’s about 100 yen to 1 US dollar. Just move the decimal! Boom! Much easier than all that mental math you have to do with forints or ringgits.
It’s beautiful. The older architecture has clean, elegant lines and muted colors. New structures are classic and tasteful, nothing gaudy. Streets are clean. There are parks and greenspace. The air is clean.
I’m not sure what happens when a true extrovert is born in Japan. That might be hard for them.
Getting around is easy. Well, it’s easy once you get the hang of it. Buy a subway ticket, read the signs, look at the map, google the directions. I didn’t try buses because the subways in Tokyo and Kyoto took me everywhere I wanted to go. And--bonus feature--you can use your Tokyo subway ticket in many major cities in Japan! Genius! They’re interchangeable. Next time I go to Japan, I’ll go to more out-of-the-way places and figure out the bus system, but this time subways were enough.
Between cities, the trains are great. The Shinkansen (bullet train) is lovely, smooth and quiet. A cart lady will come by with food and drinks. You can do it.
Money math is easy. It’s about 100 yen to 1 US dollar. Just move the decimal! Boom! Much easier than all that mental math you have to do with forints or ringgits.
It’s beautiful. The older architecture has clean, elegant lines and muted colors. New structures are classic and tasteful, nothing gaudy. Streets are clean. There are parks and greenspace. The air is clean.
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Nijojo Palace, Kyoto
 National Art Center, Tokyo |  Fendi Building, Ginza |
Speaking of clean, it’s super clean. Everything is clean. Streets, subways, public toilets. Everywhere you go, there’s somebody with a broom and dustbin or a squirt bottle and rag. There are very few trash cans around town because everybody takes their trash home with them. Vending machines have recycle bins next to them. Since the Fukushima disaster, nuclear power is out and fossil fuels must be imported and burned for fuel, so recycling is hugely important. Burnable trash is used to heat swimming pools, and the smoke is filtered before it leaves the facility. Everything else is recycled, and if you don’t put out your garbage sorted in the appropriate manner they can evict you. Yes, evict you! They are very serious about trash. There are, however, cigarette butts because smoking is very popular in Japan. I know this because my friend’s dog eats the cigarette butts and she finds them later in his poop. Maybe the dog is trying to recycle the cigarette butts? He’s a very conscientious Japanese dog.
People are polite and appropriately friendly, but that’s it. If you ask for directions, they will probably point you in the right direction, but they won’t take you there. Service people will greet you with a nod and complicated Japanese verbal greeting and count your money back to you slowly and accurately. When you meet people, they will bow. However, that’s as deep as it goes. Nobody will compliment your elementary Japanese. Nobody will tell you that you’re pretty. Nobody will ask where you’re from and how you like Japan. Taxi drivers will not make conversation. That’s good, because I’m not searching for a new best friend, I just wanted to look around. (Again, Japan is good for introverts.)
It sounds nice. We’ve been in Asia a lot this year, and I’m really done with the pentatonic scale. There are a limited number of combinations of those five notes, and then it gets repetitive real quick. I’m also done with folk instruments. China might be an ethnomusicologist’s dream, but it’s a classical musician’s nightmare. (Modern instruments can be tuned, and the diatonic scale has many variations. I rest my case.) Anyway, in Japan, you’ll hear classical music, American pop, Japanese or Korean pop (not the most original stuff out there, but it’s painless), and a little bit of country. They also like jazz and instrumental covers of American popular music, which I find tolerable for short periods of time. You’ll be humming Oops, I Did it Again for the rest of the day, racking your brain trying to think of where you heard it.
Also, in Japan, unlike the rest of Asia, there is hardly any busking, thank God. Asia has produced many fine classical musicians in the past few decades, and their pop scene is extremely, well, popular. The street musician situation, however, is appalling. On the streets of Taipei, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and other major metropolises with piano teachers as numerous as cockroaches, the buskers are terrible. Mournful love songs with karaoke machine accompaniment on the sidewalk, rhythm-deficient guitar players covering John Denver, Broadway show tunes on battered erhus and pipas. The best street musicians I’ve heard so far on this trip were in Vienna and New York, although Jerusalem could give them a run for their money. In Japan, the streets are blissfully silent, except for traffic. That’s fine with me, because once you’ve heard Edelweiss on the erhu, you can’t unhear it.
Accommodations are not cheap, but they are affordable. I recommend Airbnb over hotels, because you can get a two-bedroom apartment with Airbnb for the same price as a double hotel room. I have no idea why. Airbnb lodgings also seems to hold to the same standard internationally, as far as cleanliness, owner accessibility, decor (they all use Ikea), and neighborhood descriptions, but Japan’s hotels vary widely in style, size, location, decor, and neighborhood. Airbnb still has its challenges, such as finding the place, finding the lockbox with the key inside, and working the heater which only has Japanese instructions, but Japan is a very safe place and I’d rather have some more space and put up with a little inconvenience than have questionable dinky hotel rooms.
For example, one odd hotel we stayed at was comprised of several buildings, so we checked in to the hotel in the tiny, smoke-filled lobby, then a staff member showed us down the street to an unmarked building. She led us up to the ninth floor in an elevator that was sheathed in plastic and duct tape, took us down an exterior hallway, and showed us the room. It was a dorm set-up with four twin beds, the furniture was mismatched, and the beds had wheels so when we leaned on the wall to read, the bed scooted away. If I had been traveling solo or just with my kids, I would have been nervous because there were a lot of sirens during the night and I had no idea if the neighbors were hotel guests or just random people down that exterior hallway. It was in the party neighborhood. Another hotel, for the same price, was a standard hotel with a lobby so pretty they did a bridal photo shoot while we were there, restaurant, beauty salon, and elevator where you scan your room key to go up. It was in a business district. On the other hand, for the same amount of money, we got a two-bedroom Airbnb with kitchen and washer in a chic little neighborhood that had restaurants and grocery stores. We paid about $130 per night for each of those places. If I had it to do over again, I’d go Airbnb all the way.
By the way, I prefer to stay in Airbnbs which adhere to the original idea of renting out your spare room, not buying property to rent out and then forcing the neighbors out by raising neighborhood rents. I know those are valid concerns, but in this case the Japanese hotel industry failed us and Airbnb provided a much-needed solution. First of all, Japan just does not have enough hotels, and Airbnb filled that gap in the last few years. Tokyo is hosting the Olympics in 2020, so they’re starting to build some hotels, but for now Airbnb still offers a much more secure, cost-effective deal. Second, I’m trying to keep my family happy. Sam and Kid 3 are both larger-than-life people. They talk loudly. They gesture broadly. They are fussy sleepers. One of them snores like a train. They need food all the time. They are both extroverts who still need lots of alone time. They both love me desperately and tell me their deepest, darkest secrets. Put it all together, and the three of us in a 200 square foot hotel room is a highly flammable situation. Airbnb gave us peace.
If you are young, or if you’re used to sleeping on the floor, or if you’d like something old-timey, I recommend staying in a ryokan, a traditional Japanese guesthouse. They look homey and cozy and quaint, and next time I travel solo in Japan I’m going to try that.
People are polite and appropriately friendly, but that’s it. If you ask for directions, they will probably point you in the right direction, but they won’t take you there. Service people will greet you with a nod and complicated Japanese verbal greeting and count your money back to you slowly and accurately. When you meet people, they will bow. However, that’s as deep as it goes. Nobody will compliment your elementary Japanese. Nobody will tell you that you’re pretty. Nobody will ask where you’re from and how you like Japan. Taxi drivers will not make conversation. That’s good, because I’m not searching for a new best friend, I just wanted to look around. (Again, Japan is good for introverts.)
It sounds nice. We’ve been in Asia a lot this year, and I’m really done with the pentatonic scale. There are a limited number of combinations of those five notes, and then it gets repetitive real quick. I’m also done with folk instruments. China might be an ethnomusicologist’s dream, but it’s a classical musician’s nightmare. (Modern instruments can be tuned, and the diatonic scale has many variations. I rest my case.) Anyway, in Japan, you’ll hear classical music, American pop, Japanese or Korean pop (not the most original stuff out there, but it’s painless), and a little bit of country. They also like jazz and instrumental covers of American popular music, which I find tolerable for short periods of time. You’ll be humming Oops, I Did it Again for the rest of the day, racking your brain trying to think of where you heard it.
Also, in Japan, unlike the rest of Asia, there is hardly any busking, thank God. Asia has produced many fine classical musicians in the past few decades, and their pop scene is extremely, well, popular. The street musician situation, however, is appalling. On the streets of Taipei, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and other major metropolises with piano teachers as numerous as cockroaches, the buskers are terrible. Mournful love songs with karaoke machine accompaniment on the sidewalk, rhythm-deficient guitar players covering John Denver, Broadway show tunes on battered erhus and pipas. The best street musicians I’ve heard so far on this trip were in Vienna and New York, although Jerusalem could give them a run for their money. In Japan, the streets are blissfully silent, except for traffic. That’s fine with me, because once you’ve heard Edelweiss on the erhu, you can’t unhear it.
Accommodations are not cheap, but they are affordable. I recommend Airbnb over hotels, because you can get a two-bedroom apartment with Airbnb for the same price as a double hotel room. I have no idea why. Airbnb lodgings also seems to hold to the same standard internationally, as far as cleanliness, owner accessibility, decor (they all use Ikea), and neighborhood descriptions, but Japan’s hotels vary widely in style, size, location, decor, and neighborhood. Airbnb still has its challenges, such as finding the place, finding the lockbox with the key inside, and working the heater which only has Japanese instructions, but Japan is a very safe place and I’d rather have some more space and put up with a little inconvenience than have questionable dinky hotel rooms.
For example, one odd hotel we stayed at was comprised of several buildings, so we checked in to the hotel in the tiny, smoke-filled lobby, then a staff member showed us down the street to an unmarked building. She led us up to the ninth floor in an elevator that was sheathed in plastic and duct tape, took us down an exterior hallway, and showed us the room. It was a dorm set-up with four twin beds, the furniture was mismatched, and the beds had wheels so when we leaned on the wall to read, the bed scooted away. If I had been traveling solo or just with my kids, I would have been nervous because there were a lot of sirens during the night and I had no idea if the neighbors were hotel guests or just random people down that exterior hallway. It was in the party neighborhood. Another hotel, for the same price, was a standard hotel with a lobby so pretty they did a bridal photo shoot while we were there, restaurant, beauty salon, and elevator where you scan your room key to go up. It was in a business district. On the other hand, for the same amount of money, we got a two-bedroom Airbnb with kitchen and washer in a chic little neighborhood that had restaurants and grocery stores. We paid about $130 per night for each of those places. If I had it to do over again, I’d go Airbnb all the way.
By the way, I prefer to stay in Airbnbs which adhere to the original idea of renting out your spare room, not buying property to rent out and then forcing the neighbors out by raising neighborhood rents. I know those are valid concerns, but in this case the Japanese hotel industry failed us and Airbnb provided a much-needed solution. First of all, Japan just does not have enough hotels, and Airbnb filled that gap in the last few years. Tokyo is hosting the Olympics in 2020, so they’re starting to build some hotels, but for now Airbnb still offers a much more secure, cost-effective deal. Second, I’m trying to keep my family happy. Sam and Kid 3 are both larger-than-life people. They talk loudly. They gesture broadly. They are fussy sleepers. One of them snores like a train. They need food all the time. They are both extroverts who still need lots of alone time. They both love me desperately and tell me their deepest, darkest secrets. Put it all together, and the three of us in a 200 square foot hotel room is a highly flammable situation. Airbnb gave us peace.
If you are young, or if you’re used to sleeping on the floor, or if you’d like something old-timey, I recommend staying in a ryokan, a traditional Japanese guesthouse. They look homey and cozy and quaint, and next time I travel solo in Japan I’m going to try that.
| Finally, you might like Japan because of its kooky love of robotics. There are machines in restaurants that put a plastic sleeve on your wet umbrella. The cat cafe has a slipper dispenser. There are vending machines for every kind of drink, hot and cold, on every block in town. In the hospital, you get a number from the receptionist and when that number comes up on the screen, you go to a machine and pay your bill. In some restaurants, you order your food and pay for it from a machine that looks like a vending machine, then sit at a counter and the cook makes the thing you ordered and gives it to you--no waiter, no cashier, just a cook. When you take the bullet train, you put your ticket in the turnstile at the beginning of your trip and when your journey is over the final turnstile takes your ticket, just like some subways--no conductor taking tickets on the train. The toilets are completely mechanized, from seat warming to flushing and everything in between. And did I mention conveyor-belt sushi? It even has a hot-water spigot on the table so you can make your own tea. Next time I go to Japan, it will be even more perfect for introverts because there will be no people working in stores and restaurants--just machines. Except in the cat cafe. Machines can’t replace the cats. |  Vending machine, Sam paying his hospital bill |
Did I convince you? Are you going? Have you been to Japan? What did you like?
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