A Blast From The Past Featuring Previous Adventures
Hey, everybody! After struggling with my WordPress for a few hours yesterday, I finally got a helping hand from my wonderful(and much too smart for me) girlfriend Bethany. She had my site issues fixed in about 10 minutes. So Happy Valentine’s day to her and happy new post to us today!
I figured I’d call the ongoing retroactive series “Vagrant Tales” to keep the name relevant despite the site change. I also figured I’d kick it off with my stay in Japan as that’s the picture I used for yesterday’s post. That said, let’s move on to the land of the rising sun with all of it’s arcades and bullet trains. I’ll be sure to keep in the occasional mountain.
Retrospective Before Return: Japan
September 1, 2017September 26, 2017 By AFlynn
Japan is still fresh in my mind. Having just left there not even a month ago, this almost doesn’t even feel like a proper retrospective. But I’m going to do my best.
Japan was interesting because it was somewhere between the other traveling experiences I had. For the first three weeks, we would travel all around the country from the northern island of Hokkaido all the way down to Kyushu – spending time on each of Japan’s main four islands. In that time we got to see FAR more than one might think possible with the use of the country’s famous bullet trains (“shinkansen” in Japanese). By far, it had the best transportation of any country we’d ever been to, something we thoroughly appreciated, and for those of you looking to travel Japan, be sure to check out my guide on the rail passes available to foreigners. They’ll save you a ton of money and make your life as stress-free as possible.
Aside from the three weeks of traveling, Bethany and I spent the good part of the rest of our two months in areas around Tokyo, spending about three weeks in a seaside vacation town called Atami. If you’re in Japan during the summer, check out my article on Atami for a great place to stay in the mountains. This was also where Bethany and I would be parting ways as I waited two weeks longer in Tokyo to head to Malaysia and India and she would travel Europe with her brother. Overall, Japan was a hell of a lot of fun as it was both a place where I lived and a place where I heavily traveled – somewhere in between the long stay in Australia that mainly focused on living and saving money and Indonesia that was a month’s worth of feverish traveling.
And after all that I have to say Japan took me off guard the most. Although I don’t think I’ve ever experienced culture shock in the ways you typically hear where travelers are completely blown away by the way different countries operate, Japan left an impression on me unlike the other destinations. There’s this weird dynamic in Japan where the people are quiet and reserved but the entertainment and advertising are crazy, colorful, and loud. You might walk down the street past emotionless crowds of business people and school children all dressed in matching outfits, but then a man with a microphone and a bright yellow robe is shouting and trying to get people into his clothing store. The dull silence of the masses is often broken up by the digital beep of a crosswalk or automatic door. The punctuality of the transport and precise lines that form on train platforms is oftentimes thrown into chaos as people are literally, with a forceful push, crammed into crowded cars like pieces of paper in an overflowing trash can. Manners are first and foremost in this country and you’re expected to work for hours past the time you get off, but loudly slurping your ramen and going out drinking heavily with your boss falls into the category of being polite. Lastly, convenient stores are huge in Japan and offer the essentials of life in them alongside countless dirty magazines and cheap beer that you can drink wherever you please.
It’s a weird mix of being quiet and being surrounded by all of these loud, exciting things that threw me for a loop. But I guess I can’t say I was completely unprepared. I do enjoy Japanese culture through video games and movies, and I have been told people are encouraged to blend in and find their place in society so they can contribute their fair share, but you just have to go there and experience it to understand how that looks and feels. And to be quite honest it was a bit tiring for me after a while.
I knew enough Japanese to get by and I was gradually getting better with apps and a healthy amount of practice, but I was always worried I was offending someone. Everyone’s so to themselves and it makes this sort of awkward, yet peaceful ambiance that I felt I was messing up every time I struggled to quickly cover a sneeze or brush past someone on the train. Japan, to me, was like that quiet kid in school nobody has an opinion about because they’re so to themselves. There’s never any expression on their face when you walk past them in the hallway. Then one day you find out the kid watches dirty cartoons, smokes, and gets wasted on the weekends. You knew they like to make a good impression on the teacher and they’re always at the top of the class, but apparently, they also love to party just as hard. That’s Japan, and that was always a hard duality for me to get a feel for as the person that I am. And it made me appreciate the fact that one of the main reasons I am who I am is because of the place where I lived.
It’s one of those things that I’d figured out at a young age but was never able to feel that understanding. Being in Japan made me feel that my constant sarcasm was something that I was allowed to have – a piece of my personality that someone decided to let me continue to grow and work on. I feel that in Japan, that sort of nonsense would have been ended right away or it would have been allowed in certain situations. And keep in mind that I’m not saying one way is right or wrong, who knows, if I didn’t joke around so much that could have turned me into a more focused, driven individual. It just really made me appreciate how a person can be molded based on where they’re from and how that shapes the face of a country or region.
But enough philosophical mumbo jumbo. The places I went to in Japan include Tokyo (most of the big neighborhoods), Kyoto, Hiroshima, Kumamoto, Fukuoka, Nikko, Osaka, Takamatsu, Nagoya, Kuroishi, Iwakuni, Atami, Sapporo, Hakone (very briefly). Many places we only spent a day or two in, but we spent a decent amount of time in Kyoto, Tokyo, and Atami with Kyoto being Bethany’s favorite and Tokyo being my favorite. If you’re a big anime or video game fan, this really is the place for you. My expectations were about as high as they could be, but Japan completely crushed ’em with the time I spent in Akihabara, Nakano Broadway, and Den Den Town. And even when you’re not looking for gaming or anime, you’re bound to find it at the super common “Book-Off” which is essentially a salvation army filled to the brim with manga, anime, and old video game stuff all at very affordable prices. Be warned, though: if you go to Japan intending to buy collectibles or retro games, give yourself a generous budget. You’ll thank me later.
We saw a lot of castles on our trip and I have to say that while they always impress with a sense of mysterious majesty, they do get old and the novelty wears off more and more quickly. See Himeji Castle and one of your choosing and then enjoy some other attractions as there’s plenty to do inside and out of the major cities. My big suggestion would be to find an “izakaya” (Japanese bar) that offers what is called a “nomihodai.” Here, you’ll pay about 2000 yen ($20 USD) for two hours of as much alcohol as you can stand. We were lucky enough to have a friend in Japan show us a place that offered all-you-can eat and drink for two hours at 3000 yen/person. Here you’ll see all the businessmen as they get off of work and enjoy more than a few rowdy drinks with their friends. The energy is lively and the drinks are abundant. What more is there to say?
If you’re a gamer, you’re probably already planning on heading to Akihabara and the other places mentioned above, but also be sure to check out Anata no Warehouse (also known as Kowloon Arcade) in Kawasaki, an arcade that’s dressed up like the Hong Kong city of the same name. It’s cool and creepy in all of the right ways and the games are fairly cheap compared to the numerous Sega arcades in Akihabara. Baseball fans should also be sure to buy tickets to a game if they’re traveling in the Spring or Summer and Studio Ghibli fans should buy tickets to the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka. Both were reasonably priced and uniquely Japanese in feeling. Just be sure to either buy tickets for the Ghibli Museum online before you go or buy tickets at the Lawson convenience store for the next month if you’ll be there for at least six weeks.
If I had to sum up Japan in three words, they would be “solitary,” “efficient” and “technological,” but I do have to say the word “solitary” doubles as “spirited.” Out of all the places we traveled and things we did, you have to climb Mt. Fuji (if you’re there during climbing season check out my Fuji article for details), explore Tokyo and all it has to offer, and do the same with Kyoto as it’s the more traditional less chaotic version of Tokyo. Those are pretty broad options, but they offer a wide list of activities to do rather than a few specific ones that might be suited to you. Either way, do plenty of research before you go because Japan is filled with stuff to do during all times of the year, the most notable of which being cherry blossom season and the festivals surrounding that.
And that’s the end of the planned retrospective articles for now. Darren and I will be on our way to India tomorrow and I’ll be putting out as much content as possible on our experiences for the next couple of weeks. Wish us luck!
-Vagrant
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