Japan was wonderful - well designed, friendly, exciting. It made me remember that Bedfordshire life is not the only life, and that other people might have got the hang of living well better than we have here. Mind you, driving home from the airport we saw a sign tacked to a lamppost on a suburban street: “Have you lost a cat?” with a scanned photo of said cat. I thought we’d stumbled through the wardrobe into an alternate loving universe, one where cats get found rather than lost, and returning from holiday suddenly didn’t seem so hard. Since then, I’ve returned to work which this week has included an 18 hour working day topped and tailed on either side with four hours sleep, and the weekend hasn’t come a day too soon.
In Japan, girls of all ages really do wear schoolgirl outfits, with pleated skirts and long socks, and plastic models of Hello Kitty dangling from their satchel straps. I thought this would be the West’s stereotypical view of Japanese life, but it’s real, just like vending machines at every street corner (the taste of White Strawberry Fanta was worth the price of the trip alone), cute images and slogans plastered over every available commercial surface (kittens on our phone card, bakeries called Mrs Elizabeth Muffin), and technology filling every human need (toilet seat too cold? Well, just turn the seat temperature dial.) Often I’ll travel to a foreign land and feel disappointed because what I actually wanted to travel to was the past, or the future, or a mythic place that only exists in books, films, and Clive James travel programmes from the 1980s. And I’ve felt cheated by McDonalds nudging up against ancient ruins, or Audi garages breaking a Heidi-esque landscape. But Japan is what it says on the tin. It is Lost In Translation, and Blade Runner, and Super Mario Land, and Sunday gangs in Harajuku. And it doesn’t matter that Tokyo is full of Starbucks, because they fit, and because they’re nice Starbucks where they make you recycle your cup.
We toured though four different areas, and stayed in five hotels, varying in style from the high rise corporate comfort of those in Tokyo and Osaka, to the unique Fujiya Hotel in the mountain spa village of Miyanoshita (previous holiday residence of emperors, heads of state, and John Lennon) to a traditional paper-walled ryokan in Kyoto’s Geisha district of Gion.
My favourite was the
Fujiya Hotel, founded in 1878 as Japan’s first Western hotel and still emanating a glorious Victorian grandeur. The Orchid Tearoom serves scones with clotted cream all day, after which one might wish to take an onsen mineral bath in the hotel’s private Mermaid Spa, or sit in the Magic Room and wait forever for a Victorian magician to arrive. We hired the spa one evening and had it all to ourselves, save for the giant faux marble mermaid herself. Little wonder that the International Moustache Club named The Fujiya as their honorary headquarters. Their pictures hang in the lobby (we took a photo, which I’ll post with some others as soon as I can pluck up the courage to attempt it at home with narrowband). Miyanoshita is a good base for exploring the mountainous Hakone national park, as it’s ten minutes on the mountain railway from
the open air museum where children are encouraged to climb on the exhibits, and you can see the celebrated Picasso piece ‘sausage eggs and chips’. Well, it’s not called that, but honest, it’s a ceramic bowl with a painting of a hot breakfast on it, and it wouldn’t look out of place in a Little Chef. Past the museum, it’s all mountain, all the time, so you take the funicular railway and then a cable car to the top, where everyone gasps in wonder as you sail over and see a gigantic drop to a scarred and pitted ground where volcanic emissions steam out - and then coughs violently as their gasp was filled with the taste of sulphur stronger than anywhere else on Earth. Recovering at the foot of the mountain, we took a boat over Lake Ashi where on less foggy days you can see Mount Fuji reflected in the water. This being Japan, it was a purple pirate ship with full mast and rigging.
The cities are as much fun - filled with beautiful people dressed in immaculate fashion despite the 32 degree heat and 92% humidity. Harajuku really is the birth pool for Tokyo’s fashionistas, with shops called Sarcastic Boy and Arnie P’s, the latter being part women’s only golf clothing store and part shrine to Arnold Palmer. There was also a shop dedicated to soft drink accessories, where you could buy coca cola cap belt buckles and a Qoo xylophone (yes,
miss_newham, we took a photo, but sadly the real thing was too bulky to escape excess baggage fines.) We also visited the Pokemon Centre (a tiny plastic Mightyena did make it into the case, and is now looking for an owner,
huskyteer). Tokyo is also home to the Studio Ghibli museum, which is one of the most charming places I’ve ever been. I don’t think I can describe its magic. You’ll have to go yourself. Or perhaps ask Herr Powers to explain.
Kyoto is a mix of the new - for example its 11 storey train station with attending department stores on both sides, both with floors entirely dedicated to cakes - and the old, such as our traditional hotel where our maid served us nine ‘course’ dinners before laying out our futons and bowing out of our rooms. Some of the courses made my eyes water a little, but I did tuck into my eel, squid, raw fish and octopus with as much bravery as I could muster, before running to the department store and crying “give me cake!” Shrines and temples are ten a penny, and as long as you take your shoes off before entering, you can see 1001 gilded statues of Buddha at the Sanjusangendo Temple, each with 33 arms, each arm capable of saving 25 worlds. That’s more than 825,000 worlds. Frankly I needed another cake to cope with the dizzying concept.
And I could go on… bullet trains, and castle floors designed to sing like nightingales, and crazy television programmes, and okonomiyaki, and the world’s largest Ferris wheel, and whale sharks at the Osaka aquarium, and so on.
But in a nutshell, we had a fantastic time.