your girlfriend’s guide to Japan

Umi no Hi is one of my favourite holidays, and this year I’m taking the whole week to get reacquainted with the ocean. Tonight I’ll be taking a ferry to the Izu Islands, but I wanted to leave you with some blogs I’ve stumbled across and have been enjoying lately. Japan related, naturally.

Summer is a good season to drink. So much so that Yahoo’s weather page will tell you how thirsty you’re going to get.  Tokyo through the drinking glass will certainly inspire you, and possibly help you learn more about one of Japan’s favourite drinks: sake.

With drinking goes eating. The Japanese Food Report is one of the best researched, written, and photographed blogs focusing on Japanese food. If you’re looking for inspiration (or an excuse) to visit Japan, or if you’ve been and can’t find the food you want back home, it’s a good place to spend some time.

And, just in case you thought I do nothing but eat and drink, here’s some less culinary reading.

From what it is possible to learn about a city from its railway station, Sendai is busy, modern, and flat. The area around the station is so characterless that this in itself becomes a character. Caught in the idle hours between a morning bus and an evening ferry I wander through the underground food hall – where my heavy pack gets in the way – and the elevated pedestrian walks above the bus station, which makes me sweat.

I assume there’s not much to be seen in the time I have, and thus accidentally miss Masamune’s mausoleum and castle, proving I’m not what I used to be on four hours of sleep and a total of nine hours on two busses. I head back into the station to pick up an ekiben, and catch the first bus out to the ferry terminal, which takes me through more flat and modern before depositing me at a working wharf that makes no attempt to be scenic, though the terminal building has classic plastic chairs that were no doubt put in when the whole thing was modernised in the seventies.

The ekiben, however, is a good one. Super- early mornings really prune back my adventurous streak, and I passed up on the beef tongue option.

“What’s the most popular one?” I want to know.

I am met with hesitation from the girl behind the counter.

“Well, what’s Sendai famous for?”

She is happy to answer this one: “Seafood. We’re famous for seafood, being so close to the sea, you know!”

I bought the seafood one.

Unlike most ekiben, the rice comes separate in this one, wrapped in a dried bamboo leaf that imparts a kind of summery straw taste to its contents, and topped with little dried fish and salted vegetables. The okazu, or toppings, are in a separate box, and are all excellent: fishcakes and salmon, mostly, but all fresh and tasting distinctly of themselves.

There might not be much to look at, but they clearly don’t mess about with famous products in Sendai.

Kamikochi – Japan’s most popular alpine wilderness – is surprisingly wild. Sure, the parking lot may be full of tour busses, and in the height of summer the tumbled white rocks that line the rushing snow-melt waters of the Azusa River are packed with families from Osaka and Tokyo, but the forests are majestic, the mountains rugged, and the rivers startlingly clear. The morning air is alive with birdsong, troupes of wild Japanese macaques roam through the canopy, and populations of Japanese black bears live in the higher mountains. Kamikochi is volcanically active, and Mount Yake – an imposing looking summit slightly apart from the Hotaka range – is recently responsible for forming several of the geographic features of the area.

For hikers and rock-climbers, Kamikochi is a gateway to the peaks: paths starting at the visitor’s centre lead up to Oku-Hotaka, Japan’s third highest mountain, and well beyond. Starting at Kamikochi you can hike the trails through the Alps without meeting a road for weeks. For the less physically adventurous, Kamikochi offers a quiet place to wander the gentle trails along the Azusa, and spend a night in the real mountains. Accommodation ranges from the fairly luxurious to simple hostels, though prices can be a bit higher than other areas. For real budget travellers, there’s a peaceful camp ground with good facilities, and although the excellent bath house is only open for two hours each evening, the extra cost is well worth it.

It’s easy enough to get there: from Matsumoto there are a couple of direct buses a day, or take the train out to Shinshimashima Station and catch the bus from there. From Takayama, catch the bus to Hiranoyu Onsen and transfer to the Kamikochi-bound bus there. If you’re feeling very energetic, you can hike in (in about four hours) from the top of the cable car from Shin-Hotaka Onsen.

Further reading:

The playground of the Far East

Hiking in Japan (Lonely Planet Walking Guides)

There is an ongoing debate as to whether or not Japan is an expensive country. People argue vehemently for one side or the other. I take my favoured position: I fence-sit.

Like most countries, Japan can be both expensive and cheap. You can travel Japan on a shoestring, or you can blow the bank. Partly this depends on which guidebook you buy, and partly on your perspective.

I’m going to leave extreme budgets out of this. If you’re the kind of person who’s comfortable sleeping on beaches and hitching rides, there are plenty of beaches (Japan, is, after all, an island nation), and plenty of friendly drivers. Besides, you’re probably not reading money-saving travel tips on the internet anyhow.

For those of you who stay in resorts, five star hotels, and fly classes that aren’t economy, Japan is full of luxury options – one of the best ways of taking advantage of these is to book through a specialist agent, who will be able to suggest things you didn’t know were possible.

For the rest of you, youth- hostellers, campers, and over-night-train-riders, Japan is full of cheap, interesting experiences. Twenty pieces of sushi at a cheap kaiten-zushi restaurant? One thousand and fifty yen. A cheap sleep in Tokyo? Three thousand yen. Night bus from Tokyo to Hiroshima? Six thousand one hundred yen.

Sure, it’s not India. But you can eat well for under five hundred yen – bakeries are great for this if you don’t mind the occasional surprise, and there are usually plenty of cheap noodle shops and hole-in-the-wall eateries around the stations. Beer can be bought from the convenience store and freely enjoyed with a picnic meal in the park. Larger grocery stores (particularly those in department store basements) have plenty of food samples for a quick snack.

There are association Youth Hostels, friendly cheap minshuku, and basic but convenient business hotels. Ryokan, on the other hand, despite what you may have heard, are not cheap, and can be phenomenally expensive. Overnight busses and ferries can save you paying for accommodation, and there’s always WOOFing. Although entrance fees can add up, few are prohibitively expensive, and plenty of places are free. Volunteer guides can be arranged for free at many of the historic sites.

Maybe these shoestrings are a bit longer than in much of the rest of Asia. If, on the other hand, you compare Japan to Western Europe, or Canada, or Australia, you can do pretty well on a budget. And still have a bit of money left over to buy that plastic sushi you’ve always wanted.

Tokyo can be a bit much. The city is one of the largest and most modern in the world. The Greater Tokyo Area is home to thirty five million people; the city itself has a population of eight million. There are buildings, billboards, and bicyclists on the sidewalks. Skyscrapers line busy streets, in the summer the sun beats down unrelentingly and equally on the crowds of people, and on the glass and concrete and steel.

Even for city lovers (which I often am), this can be overwhelming. Thankfully, within this mass of humanity and architecture, there are lush green spaces, pools of relative quiet and spreading lawns under trees: places to escape, temporarily, the bustle of the city.

One of the best of these is the Hamarikyu Teien. Once the seafront property of the Shoguns, the gardens now encapsulate much that is best of Tokyo: the mix of modern and traditional Japan that makes the metropolis unlike any other city in the world. The garden is a fairly typical strolling garden, with landscaped tsukiyama hills, ponds, cherry trees, and a rather lovely tea house (where you can stop for a whisked cup of thick green matcha tea and a sweet). Hamarikyu Teien would be pleasant enough anywhere. What makes it stunning is the borrowed scenery – a kind of optical inclusion which allows, say, a distant mountain to become, visually, part of the garden.

That Hamarikyu’s borrowed scenery has sprung up considerably more recently than the garden itself makes it somehow more breathtaking. Behind the thick greenery of the trees, and reflecting in the still waters of the ponds and canals, are some of Tokyo’s most modern skyscrapers.

The gardens are an easy walk from the Tokyo Central Wholesale Market at Tsukiji, which makes them, for three hundred yen, the ideal place to walk off an astoundingly fresh seafood breakfast.

Further reading:

The Lure of the Japanese Garden

Japan – domestically, that is – is well known for culinary regional specialities. Where the landscape is divided by mountains, food, like language, develops dialects.

Although a trusty guidebook will often point you in the right direction, it can be hard to find regional delicacies, particularly without speaking the language. Ekiben, the distinctive boxed lunches sold at nearly every railway station, are a brilliant solution to this problem, featuring, as they do, the local specialities of each region.

Yokohama is most famous for its Chinatown, and the Yokohama Shumai Ekiben reflects this. Featuring plump shumai dumplings, the Yokohama Ekiben was ground-breaking when it was released in 1954, and now up to fifty thousand Shumai Ekiben are purchased and eaten daily. The classic, with shumai dumplings, pickled bamboo shoot, and rice with black sesame, is pretty hard to beat, especially eaten outside as a picnic lunch with old friends, as I had mine.

Yokohama’s Shumai Ekiben costs seven hundred and forty yen and can be bought at most Japan Rail and many private train stations in the Yokohama area.

Further reading:

Ekiben: The Art Of The Japanese Box Lunch

Like the two currents that sweep along the coast of the archipelago, creating Japan’s unique climate and influencing its seasons, the religions of Shinto and Buddhism combine to form the complicated but seamless mix that is Japanese culture. Rituals permeate every facet of Japanese life, and much of Japanese etiquette stems from ancient practices.

Shinto is based on ideas of ritual purification and cleanliness. The spiritual and physical are interconnected; cleaning the body purifies the spirit. It is no coincidence that the Japanese word kirei, for clean, also means beautiful.

Take, for example, the etiquette surrounding footwear. It is customary to leave your shoes at the genkan, or entranceway, of a house. Inside, you wear slippers. In restaurants, go barefoot in the tatami covered zaseki seating areas. Slippers or sandals are provided for trips to the toilet, inside which is yet another pair of slippers. Change into these, leaving your own slippers outside. Aside from the practical benefits, this means ritual uncleanliness is not carried into the house on the souls of your shoes. Few visitors, though, escape Japan without once finding themselves wearing pink plastic slippers in someone’s living room, the word “toilet” emblazoned across the toes.

Shinto rituals also come into play at the dinner table, where you clean your hands on the damp oshibori towel before eating, purifying yourself before the serious ritual of a meal. Cleaning your face, however, is not generally considered in good taste, despite how good it feels in the humid midst of summer. Using another’s chopsticks, or hashi, is considered unclean, and disposable wooden chopsticks are common in Japanese restaurants. If you’re concerned about your environmental impact, Japanese department stores will stock myhashi, a duo of chopsticks and carrying case which are designed to be taken with you to restaurants and used instead of the waribashi.

Hashi themselves have their roots in ritual purity. Eating meat, technically prohibited in the Buddhist religion, is tolerated across much of East Asia, however those traditionally working as butchers in Japan were so ritually unclean as to be untouchable. In order to circumvent the impurity of cutting meat at the table, food was all cut into the bite-sized pieces so easy to eat with chopsticks.

The two main taboos when eating both have their basis in Buddhist ritual. Though there are many minor dos and don’ts at the table, there are only two that should absolutely be avoided: standing your hashi up in your bowl of rice, and passing food between chopsticks. These two practices are firmly associated with death, and are practiced only just after the death of a family member, when the deceased’s portion of the meal is placed on the Buddhist alter with their chopsticks standing vertically in the rice. Passing an object from hashi to hashi is a funeral ritual, and should not be done at the table. This, and this alone, will make people shudder, even though travelers are not expected to know all the rules.

A version of this article was printed in the inaugural issue of Taste of Asia Magazine.

Further reading:
Japan - Culture Smart!: a quick guide to customs and etiquette (Culture Smart!)
In the Know in Japan: The Indispensable Guide to Working and Living in Japan

Luggage is always a problem. Even the kind with wheels. It’s heavy, awkward, and gets in the way. Possibly the ideal way to travel is with no luggage at all, or perhaps just a towel. For most of us, this is impossible, even in a country where you can buy clean underwear at any convenience store and even some vending machines.

One of the joys of traveling in Japan is that they have solved this problem.

Courier services have long been part of Japanese culture. In the Edo period, hikyaku couriers put modern bicycle couriers to shame, literally running parcels and missives between major cities. Official post offices were introduced to Japan from England in 1871, and took over the carrying of small items. Between 1927 and 1942 the rail lines operated a parcel delivery service dealing with larger items. It was, however, in the years after the war that the private takyubin delivery companies began to come into their own. Three main companies now operate throughout Japan, and will deliver anything from refrigerated items to furniture to, yes, your luggage.

Yamato Transport, Sagawa Express, and Nittsu Perikanbin are all well known by their cute logos and all basically offer the same service: overnight door to door parcel delivery. For travellers in Japan, this generally means one thing: getting your luggage sent on to your next destination.

Yamato, or Kuroneko, is the most famous, but they are all reliable. From your hotel in Tokyo, you can send your bags on to your next hotel, ryokan, minshuku, or hostel. Generally the hotel staff will be happy to help with this. If they’re not, you can simply pop round to the nearest convenience store and send your luggage from there. Each bag will set you back about two thousand yen, but they can be sent from anywhere to anywhere that has an address. Delivery generally takes twenty four hours, though sending bags to or from Hokkaido or Okinawa and other similarly remote locations can take two days, and will probably cost slightly more.

If you arrive on a morning flight, and want to explore before settling in somewhere, you can send your luggage from the airport to your hotel. At the end of your trip you can do the same thing in reverse, though it’s a good idea to double check exactly how long this will take – none of the companies offer affordable international delivery yet.

Although the faster services can take less than a full day for door-to-door delivery, you can also arrange for your bags to be delivered at a later date, in effect giving yourself a holiday from your luggage. However, be sure to pack a fairly thorough overnight bag of things you’ll need until you’re reunited with your suitcase. I once came down from a week of mountain climbing around Kamikochi, changed out of my hiking clothes, and sent my backpack lock, stock, and barrel off to Narita Airport a week ahead of my flight - with my birth control pills still in it.

No amount of fresh, clean, convenience store underwear is going to make up for that sort of thing. Even if they do have your size.

Suggested viewing:

Hayao Miyazaki’s Kiki’s Delivery Service is a classic anime from Studio Ghibli about a young witch endeavouring to start her own parcel delivery company.

Shinjuku Station is a mad rush, a bewilderment, a confusion of crowds. At night it is the centre of some of Tokyo’s brightest neon, and at rush hour it is the busiest train station in the world. Even in the quiet after the last train and before dawn, homeless people sleep in the shop doorways. Three rail systems and two metro lines converge here, serving three and a half million commuters, shoppers, and tourists daily. At rush hour, the crowds can be staggering.

Shinjuku is big. Japan Rail (of Rail Pass fame) is responsible for fourteen colour-coded tracks, which run from seven roughly parallel platforms and will get you pretty much anywhere in Tokyo. At any time of day the station is busier than most places outside of Japan. Rush hour at Shinjuku is for masochists. Starting in the morning around eight, Shinjuku-bound trains bring workers in from the suburbs, and the circle Yamanote Line and the impressively and famously packed metro system distributes them around the city. In the evening the process reverses, and it’s breathing room only from around six until well after ten.

Once you’re behind the ticket gates, it’s easy enough to follow the colour-coded signs to your platform, though there are the usual distractions of omiyage shops, coffee stands, and stores and kiosks selling the traditional ekiben boxed lunch. It’s getting out that’s the problem. If you’re meeting someone or planning to be somewhere at a certain time, make very sure you know exactly which exit you need. The Odakyu and Keio lines also have separate West and South Exits, and it’s easy to get disoriented. Once you’ve passed through the ticket gates, you’re out, and you’ll find that it’s a long and frustrating walk around the station to the exit you were hoping for. To make this more confusing, there’s never just one exit, and Japan Rail alone has a West Exit, a Central West Exit, an East Exit and a Central East Exit, a Southeast Exit, a South Exit, and a New South Exit.

However, there are two ways of avoiding this: you can buy the cheapest ticket possible and go back inside, or, you can use the corridor conveniently provided by the Lumine 1 & 2 department stores. Lumine is, interestingly enough, owned by Japan Rail, and from near the Keio Line West Exit you can navigate by signs to the South Exit or the East Exit.
Arriving at the station around noon is the best way to actually enjoy Shinjuku, though most of the lockers will be full by then. There’s plenty to do at every exit, so if you don’t have specific plans the best way to enjoy yourself is to relax, wander, and not to worry There are places to eat, both within the Lumine concourse and outside the station buildings, and most of them considerately provide English language or picture menus. Tokyu Hands, Takashimaya, and Yodobashi Camera (plus the Odakyu and Keio department stores) provide enough shopping to satiate even the most purchase-hungry of shoppers, and if you understandably find yourself craving green space there’s Shinjuku Central Park and Shinjuku Gyoen Gardens, signposted both inside and outside the station.

What makes all this work for the traveller is that there are plenty of signs everywhere, for everything, and the trick is to follow them. Unlike, say, Heathrow Terminal 2 , signs for either the JR (South Exit) or the Keio (West Exit) highway bus station will not lead you to a dead end hall or the men’s toilets, but will, eventually, take you to the bus you want, which will depart promptly at the appointed time to whisk you off to some quieter, less crowded part of Japan.

Suggested reading:
Haruki Murakami’s A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel isn’t actually set in Shinjuku, though the station does crop up occasionally, and it’s a good read no matter what your excuse.

urchinTracker();