Of Routes, Tracks and Paths

After a phallus-heavy few days in Tokyo the time came at last to activate our rail passes and go off to explore a little more of Japan. This was an exciting moment - I am by no means a railway fanatic but I have to admit that Japan's Shinkansen, or bullet train, is pretty fantastic. I didn't think one would notice much of going at over 300km/h (190-ish mph), but even in the completely sealed train (to avoid eardrums bursting in tunnels) the rush of speed is apparent. It also helps that Shinkansen trains look pretty badass; there's simply no way around it. 

Looks like SPEED. I have also never seen anything that looks so different from front and side as a Shinkansen engine. The wind and blast when these things rush through a small station at 190mph are pretty intimidating - definitely not a country where you'd want to stand inside the yellow line...

In true Japanese style, the service on the Shinkansen is impeccable. Ticket inspectors bow upon entry into the carriage and recite something polite-sounding, and bow again upon receipt of every ticket. Before every new journey the train is cleaned by a small army of pink-uniformed cleaning ladies who are ready and waiting on the platform for the train to arrive. People are accustomed to this and queue up happily while the train is cleaned, waiting for the moment they are cleared to board. This is another great moment to pause and behold the art of queueing in all its glory. On every platform, the places where the doors of the stopping train will be are pointed out with stickers, numbered by carriage - for every possible length of train. Instead of a crowd along the whole platform, therefore, dozens of little queues will form at each train door, up to half an hour before the train is even due to arrive. Often, queues start forming for the next train while the one before it has not even arrived on the platform. 

Ready for action.

This conductor leaning out the train window proved shy - looked like an interesting shot, but this was the best I could get.

Possibly the biggest joy of Shinkansen journeys is boarding the train in the smug knowledge that you just got a seat for "free" while the locals pay for hellishly expensive tickets (100 pounds from Tokyo to Kyoto, a trip of under 2 hours). Not that the rail pass itself is cheap - I paid 400 pounds for my 3-week one - but it turned out to be absolutely incredible value; I suspect I travelled away 3 or 4 times its value quite easily...

Having been deposited in Kyoto after a sunset train ride past a resplendent Fuji-san (the mountain gets the same suffix as the one used when respectfully addressing an elder), we set out trying to see as many of this remarkable city's temples as we could without growing tired of them. The first day we managed to see all of two shrines, but these were arguably the most remarkable ones. 

Fushimi Inari-taisha is a shrine devoted to Inari, the patron of business and wealth often depicted as a fox. It is located on a hill - covering the whole hill, really - and consists of literally thousands of red torii (archways) snaking up the various paths to tucked-away mini-shrines and all around the hill. They are donated by businesses around Japan who hope for good fortune from doing so. It is remarkable, really, that in a country as high-tech and seemingly beyond religious values, so much money, energy and effort is still readily poured into monuments and shrines by both people and completely secular organisations. All the better for us, though, because there was no entrance fee: not what one would expect from one of the highlights of Japan's arguably most famous collection of temples and shrines! 

The entrance into the warren of torii "tunnels"...

...and inside. The orangey-red makes for weird light!

Helena thoroughly enjoyed the foxes stationed everywhere - each with a slightly different expression!

We made it to the top without incident, witnessing a surprising number of wedding-style photo shoots on the way - the Japanese seem to love nothing better than photos of themselves - and found dozens of little sub-shrines and rest stations with tea and mini-torii for sale along the way. 

On the way down, however, we got quite spectacularly lost - given the fairly obvious markers literally covering the right way(s), I'm not sure how this happened, but it made for an enjoyable ramble through a quiet and pleasant bit of forest before we realised we had no idea where we were. 

Hard to miss, you'd think...

Of the next temple I have no photos as they were strictly forbidden and it was imposing enough a place that - like at the Taj Mahal - I never even considered disobeying. Unlike at the Taj Mahal, everyone else was similarly complicit which was a nice change. Sanjusangen-do
contains 1001 bronze(?) statues of the thousand-armed Kannon, although he was more conveniently depicted with 42 arms each. Considering each statue was slightly different and unique, it must still have been a faff to cast them...

Since I have no photos of the inside of the temple, here's one from the interwebs. The 1001st statue sits amidst the other thousand life-size ones and is many times bigger. It also seems so holy that even google produces just one photo of it. (The gift shop, of course, had various crappy-quality reproductions of the whole thing...). At least I managed to get a few impressions from the gardens...

That evening, we wandered around Gion, the traditional Geisha quarter - and not bringing my camera and tripod here just might have been the biggest mistake I made this whole trip. The area is absolutely gorgeous and full of character, and we caught the last vestiges of the cherry blossoms adorning the branches of willows drooping over the narrow river onto which the old geisha establishments back. Even had I made it back to Kyoto at a later point, the cherry blossoms would have been gone. Yet again, the interwebs will have to make do (eg. here and here and here). Still, we had a lovely dinner of various Japanese things in an izakaya - the Japanese version of a pub. They take their snack food seriously here - as much as I love pork scratchings, sashimi does take things to a whole different level. That said, sea-snail sashimi (we think...) was probably the least tasty thing I had while in Japan; a rather brackish and gelatinous affair!

Snail sashimi in the near corner, along with (presumably) the animal's shell...

We finished our time in Kyoto with a general wander through the city's temple district (characterised by an even higher concentration of shrines and temples than elsewhere). Here we found what was probably my favourite garden in all of Japan - they really do know how to make them. The midday sun, of course, did its best to wash out photos I took, but such is life. I am often gutted about the lack of quality photos I have taken, and have to remind myself that this is a travelling trip first, not a photography trip - if it were, I would have structured it very differently. But then that's not an excuse, really - ANYWAY. No point ranting about what can't be changed. 

Meta.

After a quick wander down part of the Philosopher's Path, a supposedly tranquil meander near the city's edge which turned out to be rather crowded, we decided to call it a day as we were both getting a little temple-weary. Kyoto does that!

However templed out I may get, I don't think I'm ever going to tire of cherry blossoms...

Maybe it was because Kyoto was so stunning that I was left a little underwhelmed by Nara. This is the old royal capital and praised to the skies by guidebooks and fellow travellers alike for its castle- and shrine-type endowments. I have to admit that besides probably being oversaturated with temple-type stuff from the last few days, the layout of the place didn't add much: grassy expanses cropped close by hungry and rather forward deer separate various sites and sights.

The only one that really impressed us both was the giant buddha housed in Todai-ji temple. This 15m-high bronze affair was certainly worth checking out, despite the crowds clamouring all around it. Of course, we also kept up our duties as gimpy tourists...

To compensate for such obscene levels of temple-hopping, we spent a day in an outrageous onsen (thermal spa) out in the hills near Kobe. Arima Onsen is only accessible by a tiny single-track train line which emphasises how out-of-the-way the place really is. 

A far cry from the Shinkansen!

What a way to unwind this was - we got a proper tatami (woven straw mats) room, got given fancy robes (yukata) upon arrival and could book private onsens instead of the normal gender-segregated public baths. 

Radium and carbonate in the ginsen water...

...and kinsen, water coloured ochre by iron and salt. 

And then, of course, there was breakfast. I was a bit worried about portions being small in upmarket resorts such as this one - but boy, was I mistaken. We counted a grand total of 21 dishes each, 18 of which contained food of all sorts. It being a Japanese breakfast, things were mostly fish- and/or pickle-based, but tasty without exception. Finishing everything was quite hard work and almost painful towards the end, but let's face it - not finishing was not an option.

SO. FULL. But the waitress offered to take a picture, so who are we to say no?

And so (more or less) ended Helena's adventures in Japan - apart from a rather stressful last-minute arrival at the airport and a mad dash to the check-in desk...

In the next instalment, I head off to the northern and western ends of Japan and get used to travelling on my own again!

Odds and Ends from Tokyo

My arrival into Japan was a bit of a protracted affair. Five flights over 3 days (Rarotonga-Auckland-Sydney-Hong Kong-Osaka-Tokyo) were followed by a night at Tokyo airport to meet Helena when she arrived to spend a couple of weeks out here with me (thank god for airport showers...). After all that sitting around and waiting in fairly unexciting environments it was high time to plunge into the confusing maelstrom that is Tokyo when you don't speak Japanese! 

Tokyo is HUGE. This is from the 26th floor in the middle of the city, and there was no end of the high-rise area visible in any direction...

But before I get ahead of myself, a quick few photos of my first day - alone still - are in order. Having most of the day free between flights, I decided to see if I could get around the area cheaply to get a bit of a feel for how Japan works. Fortunately I discovered that a one-day rail pass covering the whole Kansai area (some 10% of Honshu, the main island) was cheaper than a return ticket from the airport to Osaka, so off I went. I decided to head to Himeji to have a look at one of Japan's few original castles (ie not concrete imitations, which most of them are) - and the finest one according to many sources, no less. This turned out to be a day well spent - besides catching the cherry blossoms around the beautiful castle grounds in full bloom, I felt slightly better prepared for tackling Tokyo the next day.

I learned a few things about how things in Japan work at this early stage:

• In a country with as many old buildings and shrines as Japan, renovation works are inevitable. What I did not expect was that instead of keeping scaffolding as subtle as possible, the building to be renovated is enveloped in a temporary building. When I got to Himeji the castle's hill was marred by an enormous (think 10-story building) factory-like abomination that had me wondering how permission to build anything like that right by the castle had ever been given. I was flummoxed to learn that this was, in fact, the castle - the main keep was completely hidden from view by this giant grey cube with an outline of the castle drawn on it. Great. Fortunately, though, the remainder of the castle was still pretty stunning!

• It is also perfectly accepted practice to rebuild ruins using modern materials in order to give visitors a spotless attraction. People seem to think that this is more important than the authenticity of what they are seeing. 

Yeah. Don't really know who thought that was a good idea...the real deal must look pretty spectacular, though!

• People will queue for everything here, and with levels of stoicism and even delight unheard of even in England. Up to 20 minutes before a train pulls into its platform, people will obediently queue - unmoving - across half the platform to where the train's doors will be (as shown by stickers on the ground). At a bus stop I saw people queueing huddled under their umbrellas in the pouring rain, not even utilising the stop's shelter. 

• Comic/anime-style illustration is not restricted to children's books/art. It is utilised in maps (rendering them spectacularly useless), infographics and ads targeting every age group. The Tokyo underground's mascot is a blue anime platypus who passes out with ecstasy upon seeing the benefits conferred by the city's Oyster-card equivalent in videos played on screens in every train every minute or so. 

Osaka's Pokemon Centre - frequented not just by kids...

There are a great many other oddities and idiosyncracies worth mentioning, but I'm sure I'll get to them in good time. For now, fast-forward to Tokyo! Helena and I made it into town from the airport after just two attempts to get hold of the right ticket; Tokyo is crisscrossed by trains run by 2 (3?) different companies who sometimes share stations and sometimes don't, but definitely don't share tickets. Our hotel, too, was easily found. It proved fortunate that it was near the Yamanote train line which circles central Tokyo and would prove to be our lifeline. 

It left a few seconds behind schedule once. It was shocking.

Heavy rain on our first day dampened our (well, mine, anyway...) enthusiasm for immediate exploration a little, but the ubiquity of umbrellas - we were handed two by a receptionist startled by the sight of us attempting to leave the hotel without one - helped. Still, we stayed in the local area for most of that first afternoon and evening. To our delight we found that food was cheap, quick and extremely tasty without being particularly unhealthy in the many little eateries clustered around the station area; ramen (noodles and pork/spring onions/soybeans/various other goodies in a tasty broth) in a small place with seats at the bar has remained one of my mainstays throughout my time in Japan. In general, fast food not being synonymous with awful quality and ingredients - being based mostly on rice, noodles, egg, seafood, seaweed and soybeans - makes it a pleasure to indulge in. 

Selection of Bento boxes at Tokyo station - unlike the good old English sandwich, there are enormous food courts here full of delicious-looking goodies. We spent a good 45 minutes here trying to decide on a snack...

As for things we saw - Tokyo is big and diverse and interesting enough that I could easily write a post on each day we spent there...but I won't do that. Instead, I thought it'd be easier to write a little about the things that most readily spring to my mind when I now think of Tokyo. The Imperial Palace has to top the list, with the Japanese emperor as one of those quintessentially Japanese institutions. The castle itself is off limits on 363 days a year, but a stroll around the palace gardens, where the cherry blossoms were in full bloom at this point, was very pleasant. This being one of the first places we visited in Japan, we revelled in being somewhere so decidedly un-Western. Armies of immaculately clad office workers swarm the park - one of central Tokyo's woefully few green areas - at lunchtime with their chopsticks and bento boxes, which will be filled with edible goodies pleasing not only the palate but the eyes with their precise arrangement and design. 

A little tranquility in downtown Tokyo

The next morning (I think - my chronology on those action-packed days isn't great!) we got up bright and early to go to the famous Tokyo fish market: after watching the tuna (up to 300kg) the thing to do here is to get some sushi or sashimi for breakfast - it doesn't really get any fresher! Sadly, despite getting up at 4.30 we missed the auctions as super-keen Japanese tourists apparently start queueing at 2am to snap up the limited viewing spots, so after a wander around the bustling premises we contented ourselves with raw fish - perfect for 6.30am! 

The place was crazy - far too huge, one would think, for much order to prevail (65000 people work there), but somehow things get done. Unfortunately we didn't spot any of the gigantic knives they use to fillet the tuna (apparently they require 2 people to handle them), but weaving around the enormous processing buildings around wholesalers undoubtedly sick of tourists bumbling in the way, there were tasty things of all sorts to be seen. 

The cool contraptions the workers zoom around on - the steering wheel is directly connected to the front wheel.

Akihabara, semi-informally nicknamed Electric Town, is what most people would first think of when thinking of Tokyo. Bathed in neon and covered with anime adverts the size of buildings, this is the home of cheap/grey/black-market consumer electronics, maid cafes (where cosplaying waitresses "treat you like a prince"), hentai (manga porn comics) and sex shops more generally. Slightly surprisingly, teenagers/young men were far from the only clientele; Japan's society is suffused with comics - and, apparently, with lonely men - to an extent that the two seem to combine into a passion for frankly seriously, seriously weird smut comics. 

Not actually taken in Akihabara, but the strange/slightly creepy mannequin seemed fitting...

Of course, the sex shops also catered for all sorts of tastes, but with some of their wares I was genuinely unsure how they would actually physically serve a sexual purpose...

Sage advice for visiting sex shops - exhibits tend not to be edible...

Ultra-realistic cervix - what more could a man want...?

And the plaster cast of dozens of vaginas - with the women's ages written underneath - which hung on this particular store's wall I won't even go into. 

And just to end on yet another bizarre note, our last day in Tokyo was spent at a fertility festival which seemed mostly to pay homage to the penis. Set in a usually undoubtedly tranquil shrine, this features several gigantic phalluses which are then paraded through nearby streets - and the area is absolutely packed. 

...and so the huge pink cock begins its slow, majestic parade down the streets of Kawasaki...

The crushing throng trying to get hold of the ever-popular lollipops (cock-shaped proved more popular than pussy-shaped...make of that what you will). A few of these even made it back to Cambridge, to the delight of their new owners from what I'm told!

Of course, no penis festival would be complete without its share of ladyboys...and dancing monkeys. 

"...and they think they evolved from us..."

Right - for the moment I think that's that for Tokyo. It may not seem like it, but we did see a lot of non-genitalia-based stuff as well! But parks and temples and beautiful places general civilised Japan-y things we found in subsequent cities as well - and I shall get to them in the next post.