japan

Phoebe and I went to Japan for two weeks.

The Japlanning had been ongoing for a few years but the trip was delayed by Covid and other factors. Still, that gave us time to confirm fully that other potential travellers really did not want to join us and, crucially, to save up thousands of yen (¥215 to £1 atm which is incredibly favourable for us and fun to calculate conversions at pay points.)

We decided that as this was our first trip, we’d keep it simple with a Tokyo-Kyoto-day in Osaka-Tokyo itinerary rather than try to do too much travelling. I had a list of things I wanted to see and do: have an ekiben on the Shinkansen (bullet train), see some Hiroshige woodblock prints, buy Japanese fabric, sashiko needles, sumi ink, brushes for suminagashi and cyanotypes, gamble on gashapon machines (1 in 5 chance of getting the tiny piece of plastic/pottery you want, my sort of odds), improve my dreadful chopstick skills, eat ramen, soba, tempura, udon, gyoza, conveyor belt sushi, wander the side streets to see where people live, seek out displays of replica food, go on public transport, buy a knife for Simon, see a few shrines and temples, visit the one-book bookshop in Tokyo, find nice stationery, soak up everyday Japanese life in big cities. I managed all of this except the chopstick skills which are still appalling; I can feed myself with them, but it’s not pretty. (It still puzzles me that I can knit etc but not manipulate chopsticks.)

Phoebe had a list of her own which, fortunately, overlapped quite well with mine, although I didn’t have a head spa or manicure, I tend to fade in make-up and beauty aisles, and I think matcha is disgusting, like drinking blended grass cuttings.

I took a printed Rough Guide and she used TikToks she’d been collecting for a while, and I can confirm that old-fashioned guidebooks are just that: old-fashioned, outdated, and out of touch. By contrast, the places and recommendations Phoebe found online were brilliant, up to date, easier to locate. And it must be said that she used her phone to navigate impeccably some of the busiest stations in the world including Shinjuku Station, the busiest of them all, not to mention getting us round cities which have a very different address format to the one we are used to.

We missed out on just one thing, which was my fault because Osaka-umeda Station is not the same as Osaka Station (they are 300m apart) and I guided us to the wrong station. But it didn’t matter, we still got the cheesecake we came for which we ate on the bed in our clinic-style hotel pyjamas while watching Brooklyn 99. There’s only so much new culture you can take in in a day.

It was sunny, warm, then hot, we walked and walked, talked and talked, took off our shoes to walk on the lovely tatami mats in our hotel in Asakusa (no shoes allowed anywhere inside), drank great coffee, saw beautiful kimono, ceramics, calligraphy, collections of traditional crafts in museums, collected museum postcards (much better offerings there), visited the Fushimi Inari Shrine, the one with ten thousand vermilion torii gates and now I think of vermilion, traditionally made with cinnabar and a colour I have always loved, as my favourite colour of Japan.

We whizzed past Mt Fuji which was in grey cloud one way, white cloud the other, and I wondered how Hiroshige and Hokusai managed to get so many clear views of it (jk), as seen in the wonderful ukiyo-e in a vast exhibition in Kyoto (which also confirmed that Hiroshige is my absolute favourite Japanese artist).

We got back on Tuesday and already the lists and Japlanning for a return visit are taking shape. I knew very little about Japan beforehand, apart from some very reductive, simplistic stuff, so went with an open mind. And I can’t believe how much I loved it and how much I’d like to go back to this place of tradition, modernity, endless novelty set against centuries-old heritage, noise, peace, open spaces, closed spaces, lots of bowing, wonderful, smiling service, litter-free streets with complex tangles of cables and power lines overhead, wonderful old buildings and stunning modern architecture, and colour and complexity everywhere.

At the end of each day, Phoebe made a short compilation video to send home, and these are a few of them, used with her permission. They really do justice to an amazing trip.

Happy Sunday!

PS while we were there I reread Tokyo Express for the Japanese train journeys in 1958,

and John &Paul because it’s a great story and because The Beatles were in Japan in 1966.