AP in Japan

The Land of the Lising Sun

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Hi all, or should I say konichiwa!

Keith and myself were fortunate enough to have been on a holiday to Japan recently and were lucky enough to be there when the azaleas were in bloom. As these are in abundance in Japan and are widely used as hedging material the show of blooms alone was worth the visit - see the photo below.

It all started on May 7th as we took off for our overnight flight to Tokyo armed with our luggage, cameras, video recorder and Keith’s half dozen phrases of Japanese that I think got us into more trouble than they got us out of !

Upon arrival in Japan we very dismayed to land in a storm and, as the rain poured down, we stepped from the plane with Keith practising his ‘konichiwas’ and his ‘sayonaras’ on the slightly bewildered looking air hostesses we thought that maybe we’d been diverted back to Heathrow without our knowledge. All was not lost however as the next morning after a fairly sleepless night due to the jetlag (that lasted for four days) the weather had brightened up and we had warm weather for the rest of the holiday with just a few late evening and early morning showers that were fortunately not a problem.

Like any foreign country the language barrier can sometimes be a problem but a surprising amount of people that we came across could speak at least some English with hotel and tourist industry workers obviously having a better grasp of it than other citizens but even with those people that can not understand you, and vice versa, a few gestures, a bit of pointing and a few feverish attempts at sign language interspersed with plenty of laughter usually get you what you want in the end. Or get you arrested if you are particularly unlucky!

Ordering food in eateries is not usually a problem as most restaurants and cafes have pictures of the available dishes outside the door or even have the prepared meal wrapped in cling film as a display means so it is simply a matter of dragging one of the staff to the door and doing more of the aforementioned finger pointing before hoping that they correctly judged which meal you were actually pointing at when it arrives in front of you! Iced water is served free of charge as soon as you sit down in most establishments and the water is quite safe to drink in Japan. If you order green tea with your meal that will also sometimes come free of charge, and after tasting it I’m not surprised, especially at a tea ceremony where the tea is whisked before being served and finishes up looking more like pea soup!

The price of food and other items is certainly not anywhere near as high as the stories that we had heard and the cries of “you know it’s eight pounds just for a burger over there don’t you”, that we had heard before going were grossly overestimated, in fact in nearly all the small restaurants a basic meal such as rice and beef for instance will cost you 700 yen - about £3.80. Following the locals to the where they eat is as always a sure fire method of ensuring that you find the best and cheapest places to eat.

Anyone worried about whether they can manage with the ‘foreign food’ need not worry as there are literally thousands of places to eat with an abundance of choices not to mention McDonalds, (pronounced Macadonaldos by the Japanese), Mister Doughnut, sandwich shops and some wonderful cake shops that I spent so much time inside making purchases that it became an in-joke with everyone on our tour and I regularly had to show them my latest purchases whilst cries of “how do you eat all of them and stay so thin” constantly rang in my ears !

Fortunately all went well on the holiday apart from a few minor disasters such as the saga of my lost glasses, our very nearly missing our ferry from Miyajima island and our getting lost in Hiroshima thanks to my amazing map reading skills that saw us going a complete 180 degrees in the wrong direction to where we should have been whilst my feeble excuse of “it’s your fault for letting me read the map” fell on deaf ears.

Luckily for all of us on our tour our excellent guide ‘Hiro’ had a much better sense of direction than I have and also just happened to speak fluent Japanese enabling us to visit some beautiful and interesting places. The mixture of old and new in Japan with ancient castles and tranquil temples nestled in the midst of bustling modern cities is quite a sight to see and despite spending every day sightseeing around Japan there was still not enough time for us to see a fraction of the beautiful sights and scenery and we could quite easily of stayed for a month without seeing everything. It seemed like every turning had a photo opportunity which is why everyone on the tour including Keith who says that he never bothers much with photographs on his holidays returned home with an armful of used films and a head full of lasting memories.

Sayonara Tony