Skip to main content

Reflections on the running water - Japan

It's now a week since we returned from Japan and there has been time to reflect on the journey.

Negatives first. I feel that the holiday was too short, too rushed. We seemed to spend a good portion of each day travelling on trains. For me, that is not unusual as my daily commute to and from work is at least three hours by rail. But B didn't enjoy the non-Shinkansen portions and it was difficult to relax with her unease.

More difficult was, I think, that there were only a couple of locations where we stayed more than one night. From all our travels we have learned that it staying a few nights in the same place can make a large difference to your enjoyment. There's less packing and unpacking, dragging luggage around. You get a feeling for the rhythms of the place, can revisit a restaurant or shop that you especially like. There is less pressure to make instant decisions knowing that you cannot revisit them.

Following on from this were the hotels we stayed in. I think that we have become a little spoiled lately. None of the hotels were awful, but a few of the locations didn't offer non-smoking rooms and smelled rather musty as a consequence. On the plus side, they all offered free internet access in one form or another. We also enjoyed the Japanese style room at the Hotel Hana in Takayama. The tatami mat floor feels so good to walk on with tired feet and I enjoy sleeping on the futons. I have to recommend this hotel if only for the very friendly service and the potato salad at breakfast. The Osaka Cross Hotel also wins plaudits from us, especially the Japanese bathroom.



Despite the hurried pace of this trip I really did enjoy the places we visited. Each had something special and different about it. B and I agree that our absolute highlight of this trip was relaxing in the teahouse at Ritsurin-koen in Takamatsu. Sitting on a tatami mat with the shoji screens opened to let in the breeze and the beautiful garden views was wonderful wherever we were in Japan and I should have liked to stay in a suitably scenic ryokan to enjoy such experiences longer.



Perhaps Tsumago might be such a place for a ryokan stay. Despite the tourist buses the tiny historic town retained a sense of peacefulness and of a life lived despite the cameras. I would have enjoyed walking the trails around the town and sinking into life in the town away from the neon madness of Japan's cities.

Some of the craziest areas of Japan can be found at the main railway stations of major cities. I love the mini-cities that are such stations with so many hotels, restaurants and shops surrounding the station that you often feel that you don't need to leave the station grounds except aboard a train.



The thing about Japan is that on the surface it can look pretty boring. Grey suburbia and factories, yet another castle or temple. But scratch the surface and it feels like there are an infinite number of things to see, do and enjoy. Each time I leave Japan I do so feeling like there is so much more I want to experience.

In part 2 I'll reflect on the flights.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Asagaya and heading home

How can I be happy? I am about to return to a country where the toilets have at most two buttons and no seat warmers. But the tickets are booked and there are no cyclones, typhoons or other disasters standing in our way. It's almost time to go back to my first home. First B wants to do some "local shopping". So we catch the Chuo Line up a few stations to Asagaya, a residential area with a number of Shotengai, covered and uncovered arcades leading away from the station and narrow alleys lined with bars. It is an interesting area for a wander around. We are mainly looking, do some shopping for toothbrushes and sweets from Seiyu, a Wal-Mart owned supermarket/minor department store. We skipped breakfast and lunch is ramen and gyoza at a small restaurant near the entrance to the Pearl Centre shotengai. With the help of a staff member, I manage to purchase tickets at a branch of Lawson to the Ghibli Museum for a friend travelling to Japan in May. There are some...

IKEA Museum

We have a packed itinerary today. Flat packed and assembled with an Allen key. There are patches of snow on the ground that weren't there the previous evening. We are a bit sad to leave the Duxiana after the comfy beds and the breakfast of cold cuts, fruits and hot waffles. I tried the Swedish caviar on my boiled egg. It was... Interesting. I was very disappointed to realise that, after talking it up for months, I had forgotten the Disgusting Foods Museum in Malmö yesterday. Too late now. We catch another Oresundstag train, for a bit over an hour. Past yesterday's Lund, past increasingly white fields and towns to Älmhult, home of IKEA. The conductor warns us that the train will split in two so we have to move carriages forward. Unfortunately, there we no spare sets of chairs for all of us. The IKEA Museum showcases the history of the furniture company, along with temporary exhibitions. One of these was "Hacking IKEA," about using IKEA ob...

To Melbourne on the XPT sleeper

Excited by the prospect of reliving the experience of seeing my very first movie and hearing the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra perform it I bought tickets to The Empire Strikes Back in Concert in Melbourne back in February. Then I did nothing about actually getting there. Much as I love Melbourne, due to family commitments I didn't want to spend more than the Sunday away. Flights there and back made sense, but  my flight down to Melbourne in late October reiterated the fact that I usually don't enjoy descending into the city. And the concert was in December, a season of summer storms. I really didn't feel like driving the whole route alone and in a hurry, so that left one choice. The train. My very first trip up to Sydney from Melbourne was aboard the luxury Southern Aurora. Or it was supposed to be luxury. I wouldn't know because I spent the whole ride up very sick with the flu lying in the top bunk, unable to stay awake for my whole of night vigil. Now only...