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The last week in Japan we stayed at two nice couch surfing hosts in Tokyo. In this huge metropole we wondered around areas such as Asakusa (market street and Senjo-ji temple), Akihabara (electronic market), Omote-Sando (fancy shopping street leading to Meiji Jingu Shrine) and Otemachi (Imperial Palace and business areas).
   
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Our first wedding anniversary we spent in wonderful, quiet location by Lake Ashi in the Sengoku-hara Highlands (Palace hotel Hakone). We even got a room with window facing to mount Fuji as they didn’t find our booking at first. Perfect. We were lucky with the scenery the first day, as the second day the weather was rainy and completely foggy. We didn’t dare trying climbing mount Fuji this time, as climbing there is not recommended outside official climbing season, weather was unstable and our knees have been complaining already after carrying the big back bags.
   
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Interesting experiences in Japan

Getting used to the green tea, which in Japan is offered nearly with every meal, cold or hot, took us some time… We got our first experience with it already on the plane. We thought we had apple juice in the glass, but were surprised as the taste felt to us more like a fish liver oil or something… When I asked the air hostess what we had been served, she kindly brought me a second glass without asking. I guess this is Japan: weird food, misunderstanding english, but very polite and friendly people. The air hostesses at Japan airlines were the nicest ever with best service. They gave us champagne and a handwritten and signed card because of our honeymoon.

What comes to food, we mostly ate sushi and noodles, so there we didn’t have any big surprises. Tempura (fried vegetables, meat or seafood) sometimes offered special tastes. What was especially interesting in Japan were their desserts. Most of their desserts are made out of rice or red beans, which in european point of view hardly qualifies as a dessert, because they are not very sweet. Very good thing in Japanese restaurants is, that many of them have plastic example models of the portions on the restaurant window, so it is not so hard even for a foreigner to know what to order.
In Japan, there is an important effort made on the display of whatever is served to you. And even if you want something quick for lunch, it is possible (and popular) to buy a “bento”, a lunch-box, with a very nice box (wooden-made or plastic-that-looks-like-wood-made), with separate compartments for the different and very colourful pieces of food.

Japan is traditionally a cash economy when it comes to shopping, and only during past few years the acceptance of credit cards has increased. But it is still hard for a foreigner to find a cash machine which accepts foreign cards, at least Visa. We spent over two hours in Kyoto visiting around ten cash machines without finding one that accepts Visa card. Mastercard would have been accepted in some of them. We finally managed to find some foreigners who advised us to go to 7eleven shop for withdrawing cash. During this whole episode we experienced our first heavy rain in Japan, and even though we had umbrellas, our stuff including Netta’s passport suffered some water damage.

In Japan it is hard to find people who speak english. English at school is taught with a Japanese pronunciation, which doesn’t help conversation with them. Japan’s tourism industry targets mostly domestic travelers, and not all the information can be found in English. Even common things such as post cards can be hard to find.

In Japan old men seemed to be the most interested to come to talk to us and ask where we are from, even with very limited english. One man in the streets of Kochi bought us a small dictionary and invited us for a dinner in his house. We didn’t dare to go but later thought he probably would have been very happy to receive us. On our wedding anniversary very surprising thing happened. We were looking for a sushi restaurant, when a bit drunk older man insisted to help us. He led us to a restaurant, talked to the staff and left. After we had been eating for awhile, the restaurant staff came to us with 5000 yen (bit over 40€) note saying just about the only english word they knew, with japanese pronunciation, “presento”. We didn’t get it first, but the man had left the note to pay for our dinner. We felt really bad and asked them to give the money back for the man when they see him next, but they said they don’t know him. Finally we didn’t know what else to do but to enjoy huge amount of sushi plus some sake and be thankful.

Probably the funniest incident in Japan occured when we happened to leave few coins of tip for a young waiter. 5 minutes after leaving the restaurant the guy biked to catch us with a tiny bicycle and brought the coins back to us saying we forgot them. In Japan people don’t leave tips, and if you do they get confused. Plus here you can also see how honest they are. In Japan it is very safe and you don’t traditionally need to worry about your belongings. Although we heard from a local that things are also changing in Japan because the gap between the rich and poor starts to be bigger.

Funny things in Japan included toilets with heated seats, music, controllable flushing noise and pressure-adjustable bum washing facility. We never understood how to use those things.

Amazing was that there is hardly any trash cans around. People are expected to carry the trash home with them, and it seems to work, everywhere is actually clean.

We have had a great time visiting this country ! Now it’s time to move on to our next destination: South Korea.

On our way to Kyushu island we stopped by in Fukuoka, where they have a small “Disaster prevention centre”. In Japan they have frequently earth quakes and occasionally volcanic eruptions and typhoons. In the Disaster prevention center one can experience how it feels like to be in the middle of a strong earthquake or high wind, or to escape a house on fire. The center hosts mostly school groups, but anyone can go there for free.

In Kyushu we had one of the nicest days of our whole trip. In Aso there is the biggest active volcano in Japan called Aso-san, that we wanted to see. When taking the bus in the morning the weather didn’t look promising at all. It was so foggy we could only see few meters far. But the weather changes quickly there and in the beginning of the hike it started to get better. We climbed on top of Nakadake and Takadake mountains next to Aso-san. On the way we met a guy from Hong Kong and climbed the rest together. From Higashimine lookout there are wonderful views over fields of azalea flowers, the volcano and down to the valleys. It was a great feeling to walk along the borders of the mountains, it’s so peaceful there and feels like you are on the roof of the world. Could have stayed forever. Next to the volcano it smells sulfur, which makes you cough easily. People with asthma or heart problems should not enter the area.
   
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We didn’t unfortunately have enough time to reach the Japanese alpine area in central Japan, but we did visit 1998 winter olympics city Nagano, along Jigokudani Yaenkoen. It is a special place, because there you can find Japanese Macaque monkies taking baths in hot springs. These monkies are also called snow monkies, as in this area the snow covers the ground for one-third of the year. It was funny to follow the tricks and the games of the monkies. It’s interesting how much they resemble humans sometimes.

After seeing the monkies enjoying the hot springs, we also wanted to have a bath in the areas natural waters. In Yamanouchi town we had difficulties finding an outdoor bath, and just when we were to give up, we were greeted by friendly english speaking Japanese lady, who invited us to enjoy their luxury outdoor private bath on the roof of their hotel. Afterwards we ended up talking with the owners of the hotel until late evening. Another great experience about Japanese hospitality.

We regretted that we didn’t have time to stay in the area, as Shibu spa looked very interesting. People (especially young people) walk along small, nice streets wearing Yukata’s (summer Kimonos) and wooden sandals. They visit Shibu’s nine public baths as it is believed that bathing in all nine (Ku) Sotoyu washes out worries (Kuro) and gives benefits of warding-off evil, good health, safe child-birth, healthy children and longevity.
   
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Japan has thousands of hot springs. The bathing places which use this natural water are called “onsens”. Onsens can be found in hotels and many public bathing places. The bathing places which don’t use the hot spring water are called “sento”. There are separate baths for women and men, and everyone goes into the bath naked. Before stepping into the hot bath you need to wash yourself well. The washing happens in an interesting way, by sitting down on a small chair. What we didn’t quite get, was how to correctly wash your bum like this…

We wanted to visit all the four main islands, but started to run our of time, so our visit in Hokkaido was short. Our destination there was Sapporo, where at the time of our visit happened to be a shrine festival.
We walked through a market street, selling different kinds of food and toys for kids, and saw a small shrine parade.
   
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On the way to Shikoku island we stayed with a Polish woman and her son in Okayama. They were very generous and showed us around. We became friends and will most likely meet again. Gabi has lived In Japan and taught english for 8 years, and among other things we had very interesting conversations about the schooling system there.
   
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Shikoku is more quiet island with lots of forests and mountains. Hiking tracks were difficult to reach without a car, but luckily we found something else to do. For quite some time now we had wanted to try river rafting. In Shikoku, on the Oboke river, we found a company called “Happy Rafting”, run by an Australian guy. We got a private course and had a fun filled day.
   
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We got stuck in town of Kochi for three days as we really wanted to see whales, which we missed in New Zealand. Every day they cancelled the trip because of strong wind, so finally we had to give up and move on. We heard that very few people have managed to get on a whale trip in Japan, because they cancel them so often. There are very few companies, and one of them doesn’t accept foreigners on their trips, apparently because of language problems.
We got help from rafting company’s owners wife, and would have been accepted, but were still out of luck. Well, mandatory resting days were actually again very nice and needed. During these days we only visited the Kochi castle.
   
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Next destination was Hiroshima, the target of the devastating atomic bombing. The museum was interesting, but also very creepy when they were describing in detail what happened to the victims. In the evening, we reached close-by Miyajima island.
   
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Miyajima definitely was one of the nicest places we visited in Japan. It is an island famous for a Buddhist gate in water. There we visited Daisho-in Temple, probably the nicest temple so far because of the wonderful surroundings and lots of decorations such as cute little monk statues. We also climbed to the top of Mt. Misen. On the top we sat half an hour by Miyama shrine. The view over mountains covered with trees was beautiful, there was no one else and all you could hear was birds singing. It was so relaxing. On the way back we missed the last cable car down, but that was actually lucky, as on the way down we saw tens of monkeys which live in the island. Really cool!
   
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That took its time, since I’m busy with many other things during this trip, but you can now leave comments on all the videos in Khrystube !
You only need to register the first time, and check you are logged in before leaving a comment. Enjoy !

PS: I’ve improved video quality, so that videos marked ‘HQ’ actually are HQ …

PPS: if you are a webmaster, interested in hosting your videos with the same solution, install package and additional informations are now on a dedicated page, here.

From Australia’s autumn we jumped into Japan’s summer, beginning of the rainy season. We were quite lucky though and it didn’t rain that often. It’s actually easier to travel around when it is not hot all the time, the rain helps. Many Asians hate their summer as it is too hot. June was still very bearable.

In Japan, the handiest way to travel around the country is with the famous bullet trains, “Shinkansen”. Japan is an expensive country, and train tickets are also costly. The best deal for foreigners is to buy a 7/14/21 days Japan rail ticket. This ticket has to be purchased in advance from abroad. We bought our 21 day pass from Australia.

We started our Japan tour from the main island, Honshu. Our first destination was Kyoto, the home for 2000 temples. In Japan there is two main religions, buddhism and shintoism, and both religions temples can be found in Kyoto. We visited over ten temples during two days. Temples are different enough that you don’t get bored. Temples are often built in beautiful locations and they have plenty of forest around. Surprising in Japan was, that even though they are so many people, there is also lots of space for forests.
Interesting information for us was that many Japanese belong to both of the religions. People might stop by to pray in the middle of the day on their lunch break and for example ask to succeed in an exam. They start the prayer by ringing a bell in front of the temple, clapping their hands and throwing small coins in a wooden box reserved for donations. In Buddhism and Shintoism it seems to be a popular habit to buy a fortune telling paper at the temple, make a wish when picking the paper, and after reading it, attaching the paper in a tree or a wooden rack in front of the temple.
   
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From Kyoto we also did a day trip to Nara. Nara has a huge temple, which is the biggest wooden building in the world, and inside there is the biggest Buddha statue in Japan.
Nara is a nice area with lots of parks, where food begging deers run freely.

For Kyoto and Nara we got a local guide to go with us. In Japan we tried first time a thing called couch surfing, where local people, or foreigners living in that country, offer over the internet travelers to overnight at their flat for free. They are interested to meet people from other countries, or in exchange they look for places to stay when they travel abroad. This is a great way to get to know the local culture, habits and people, make friends and of course to save money on accommodation. In our first couch surfing experience we stayed with a Japanese family. It was very interesting and we learned a lot about the Japanese way of living.
   
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After Kyoto and Nara next stop was Himeji castle. Himeji castle is beautiful building with well-preserved walls and gates. It is very interesting, especially as its defense is organised as a maze forcing the enemy to spiral its way around the keep, completely vulnerable. It is certainly the most important castle in Japan.
Osaka castle was nice too, but it differed in that it is a replica rebuilt (Osaka castle has been destroyed few times), that hosts a history museum.
   
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