Anita Sethi embarked on her 3-month bus trip from the UK to Australia two weeks ago and kicks off her regular column in The Guardian today.
A totally eco-friendly choice to travel across the world and on the way, she’s made 39 new friends and had loads of fun. A wonderful experience to read but I wonder how many people would have the time and energy to follow suit?
Getting up at 5am only to see some auctions at a fish market isn’t really my cup of green tea, but we did manage to catch some action when we arrived at the market just before 7am. The Japanese seemed to have forgotten all their manners when it came to business - the usual bowing and smiling were replaced by lots of shouting and pushing. Don’t wear your best clothes and shoes is the obvious advice.
After an hour of photographing massive tuna, giantic octopi, and king crabs with super long legs, my parents and Brad headed to a sushi restaurant for their breakfast, while I had a wander around a nearly temple for fishermen.
Travel Tip: The Tsukiji Market doesn’t open on Sundays. It’s alwasy a good idea to check the calendar before you go.
Suggested schedules drafted by a friend who knows Japan really well (times are approximate):
Our only full day in Tokyo and we decided to have a little adventure without following the schedule drafted by my mum’s friend. Brad and I spent the best part of our morning in ITO-YA, a 9-storey stationery shop with some of the most peculiar products, for example, a leather pouch for your tin of mints.
Our next destination was the paradise for all geeks: Akihabara, Tokyo’s famous electric town. It was one of the busiest parts of town on a Sunday. We walked into a shop with rows and rows of toy vending machines and some of them contained pornography plastic figures! With Japanese Yen being quite strong, we didn’t see much point in buying gadgets there. So we ventured to another bizarre part of town, Harajuku.
We were hoping to take some interesting photos at Harajuku’s Cos-play-zoku (or Costume Play Gangs) that assemble in Jingu-bashi (the bridge linking Meiji-jingu with Omote-sando), but found that the whole thing was just another touristy trap. We quickly moved on and were more fascinated by some girl dressing up like a French maid doing some shopping nearby.
Mum and dad met us for dinner at a Korean BBQ place, where they spoke no English at all. We managed to stay away from anything that is too authentic by pointing, nodding and smiling (like a bunch of idiots).
After dinner, Brad and I went to do some night photography at Shibuya, which Brad insisted on seeing as it was heavily featured in Lost in Translation.
We were surpised to see such a huge amount of food for breakfast. This time we cooked the slightly strange squid sashimi with the boiling miso soup — I know this isn’t right, but it did taste better.
Our hiking plan was disturbed by the frequent rain showers during the day. We spent most of the day in and around Kinugawa Onsen’s centre instead and stumbled across a local festival with residents performaning Japanese dancing and singing. Since we were the only foreigners there, the locals welcomed us with some food and gave Brad a cotton scarf as a souvenir.
Travel Tip: When in doubt, always bow to express apology or appreciation.
Suggested schedules drafted by a friend who knows Japan really well (times are approximate):
A good night sleep was followed by a simple Japanese, starch-heavy breakfast and an early start up to the mountain. The bus journey was quite long and windy and mum wasn’t feeling great on the way back. But the view on the top was magnificent; with impressive landscape such as Lake Chuzenji and Kegon Falls.
Toshogu Temple is worth seeing if you haven’t already seen thousands of other temples in Japan, and we couldn’t be bothered to pay to get on to the Sacred Bridge.
It was strange to get on the train again after yesterday’s 15 hour travel. We were all very looking forward to the traditional Japan dinner at the Kinugawa Onsen Hotel and a hot spa afterwards.
Dinner turned out to be a two hour ceremony with over ten interesting but suspicious-looking dishes, served by a lady in a traditional kimono. It was 100 per cent fun, but I wasn’t really that keen on the raw baby squid.
My mum and I enjoyed the hot spa and tried out different pools of varying temperatures. Brad wasn’t pleased to find out that we were not joking about having to be naked in the segregated hot spa but enjoyed it in the end.
Travel Tip: You are required to wash before getting into the hot spa and no clothing is allowed. A night for four at the Kinugawa Onsen Hotel including dinner and breakfast costs ¥55,200 (less than HK$900 per person).
Suggested schedules drafted by a friend who knows Japan really well (times are approximate):
The long start to our trip commenced at 5am and eventually ended in Nikko at 8pm as we settled in to our first guest house. The fifteen hours of travel consisted of a 45-minute taxi journey to the airport, a five-hour flight to Tokyo Narita Airport, Airport Express into the city centre, a slow two-hour train journey to Nikko, and lastly a 30-minute taxi ride to our guest house for the night.
Travel Tip: Buy a travel pass for Nikko at Asakusa Station. We bought All Nikko Passes for ¥4,400 per person that can be used on all trains and buses (including the winding bus journey up the mountain) for four days.
Suggested schedules drafted by a friend who knows Japan really well (times are approximate):
While my mum and Lisa went shopping for leather gloves, we decided to get the most out of the good weather and walk up into the hills. It was weird to walk past the flat I used to stay (yes, with the horribly dirty host family!) and the memories all came flooding back of when I used to walk up to the Forte di Belvedare to watch the sunset and write my travel journal.
An astonishing coincidence took place during the two-hour walk — I ran into an old school friend who I hadn’t seen for ten years. It turned out that she was on holiday in Italy for four days before heading back to Hong Kong. We didn’t see anybody else on the walk. SPOOOKY!!
Our last morning in Kansai. The flight was about midday and we decided to have a light breakfast at the Kyoto Main Station, as neither of us were too keen on the food on Indian Airways.
The light breakfast turned out to be a full Japanese breakfast, which comes with a bowll of miso soup or undo noodles, as well as some rice or sushi.
My mum and I took our last chance to do some last minute shopping. We bought some Japanese rice cakes (which I love!) and some spicies for Mary. The most interesting discovery was the instant red bean dessert soup with little pieces of rice cakes in it. They cost about £1 per pack and actually taste OK.
Our first stop in Kyoto - the Kiyomizu Temple was impressive.
I wasn’t expecting something quite so big and peaceful (not on a public holiday!). We spent hours wandering around and taking photos. I was surprised to see so many people wearing kimono both on the street and at the temple.
The Chawan-zaka (Teapot Lane) on the way to the temple was full of traditional pottery shops. My mum spent £100 for a hand-made ceramic box, only because she got the currency rate wrong! It was a stylish, detailed box though.
We were too tired to have dinner in town as our hotel (Holiday Inn Kyoto) is miles away from the city centre and the shuttle bus is only available every 30 minutes. Luckily, there is a shopping mall on the lower floor of the hotel and we had all kinds of bizarre raw seafood (tempura for me) for dinner.
We are only in Osaka for one day (or half, after all the travelling and checking in to the hotel). The flight with Indian Airways was OK - no great service or food, but cheap! It was only about three hours’ flight after all. Me and my mum even watched “Bitched”, the movie, in Japanese and some other language at the same time (one language per ear!)
The train journey from the Kansai airport to Osaka was very pleasant. The train operator was so polite that it was a bit tiring responding to his endless bows every time before and after he left the carriage.
My only experience of Osaka was restricted to the area around Soemon-Cho. We went for a stroll before choosing a restaurant (among hundreds) for dinner. We ended up having barbecue for dinner while dad was making plans for his second dinner and dessert.
I am looking forward to seeing Kyoto tomorrow.