| Submitted by: Evelyn C. LeeperUnited States |
| Submission Date: 09 February 2005 |
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'Four black dragons, spitting fire,
And the earth trembled, and the sky cracked,
And I thought it was the end of the world.'
'And it was.'
-exchange between two characters at the beginning of Stephen Sondheim's Pacific Overtures, describing the arrival in Japan of Commodore Perry's 'Black Ships'
October 6/7, 1996: flight and arrival
October 8, 1996: Ueno Park (Tokyo)
October 9, 1996: Imperial Palace area and Ginza (Tokyo)
October 10, 1996: Kamakura
October 11, 1996: Ikebukuro and Shinjuku (Tokyo)
October 12, 1996: Tsukiji and Asakusa (Tokyo)
October 13, 1996: Shibuya and Harajuku (Tokyo)
October 14, 1996: Odawara and Nikko
October 15, 1996: Matsumoto
October 16, 1996: travel to Kyoto
October 17, 1996: Hiroshima and Miyajima
October 18, 1996: Himeji
October 19, 1996: Nara
October 20, 1996: Hikone and Nagoya
October 21, 1996: Kinkaku-ji Temple and Ryoan-ji
Temple (Kyoto)
October 22, 1996: Imperial Palace and Festival of
the Ages (Kyoto)
October 23, 1996: Nijo-jo Castle and The Ghost
of April (Kyoto)
October 24, 1996: Higashiyama (Kyoto)
October 25, 1996: The Path of Philosophy (Kyoto)
October 26, 1996: Kyoto National Museum and Eel Festival
(Kyoto)
October 27, 1996: Osaka and return
The answer is, 'No, not really.'
When people asked us if we had any big vacations planned and we said, 'Yes, to Japan,' the first thing everyone asked us was, 'Isn't Japan very expensive?' Well, it's not the cheapest place in the world, but it isn't that expensive either, or at least doesn't have to be. In fact, the per-day cost for us was about the same as for our last trip to Britain.
Someone described Japan as being unique in that it is the only non-Western 'First World' country. Certainly my expectations were different for this trip than for our others. I expected a modern infrastructure, but I also expected a very different culture. Did I find it? Well, read on.
[Almost all prices are quoted in yen. When we went the exchange rate was US$1 to ¥110.62, or conversely, ¥100 to US$0.90. (For the mathematically challenged, just assume one yen is about one cent, so ¥680 would be US$6.80.) People using other currencies should make the appropriate conversions, because I don't have all the current exchange rates handy. The only prices quoted in dollars will be those we paid in dollars, such as US$950 each for airfare from Newark, and in the cost summary at the end, with an occasional one here and there for reference. Part of my assignment on this trip was to determine how much it might cost my brother the baseball fan to make a trip to Japan to see baseball. While I will not be pricing baseball tickets themselves, the rest should be helpful. The JNTO [Japan National Tourist Organization] or the JTB [Japan Travel Bureau], both with offices in New York, should be able to give more information on sports and sport tickets. I'm also using a 24-hour clock and metric measurements.]
This log is shorter than some of my previous ones. For one thing, I am finding it harder to keep going as constantly as before. After a long day of sightseeing, I don't have as much energy to write in this log as I used to. For another, Japan is in many ways a less exotic culture, or at least one that more people are familiar with than, say, Thai or Lithuanian. I suppose this is because it is a First-World economy, and has adopted much of the First World's patterns. (For example, buying something in a store in Japan does not involve bargaining, nor is there one counter for paying and another for pick-up. Come to think of it, Foyle's in Britain had the latter system when we were last there.) But also, most of the things to see in Japan don't have long historical notes behind them. In Finland, when we saw the harbor fortress, there was history that I could talk about which would be meaningful. In Japan, there is some historical association connected to a temple, but not much that is understandable without giving far more background than I could.
We have a friend who said that we would find Japan the most different place we had been to. I think he meant it was the most different place he had been to, forgetting that we had been to places like Egypt, India, and China.
The Lonely Planet guide says, 'As in India, rail is the way to travel in Japan, but there are few other similarities. Japanese rail travel is usually fast, frequent, clean, comfortable, and often very expensive.' In India, on the other hand, it is usually slow, infrequent, dirty, uncomfortable, and often very cheap. Well, in most ways that a tourist interacts with Japan it is the opposite of India. That is, in India, the language is the same, but everything else is different. In Japan, the language is different, but everything else is the same. And this probably summarizes my reaction to Japan. Yes, there are some differences, and yes, the underlying philosophy is different, but in most of a tourist's dealings, everything is the same except the language. In India you haggle when you buy things, ride rickshaws, worry about the water, see everyone wearing Indian clothes, and chase away vendors. In Japan you pay fixed prices, ride the subway, drink the water with blithe abandon, see everyone wearing Western clothes, and no one pesters you.
Japan is also the First World country furthest from its nearest First World neighbor, for what that's worth.
I suppose I should mention what resources we used.
We started by pretty much following the walking tours in Frommer's
Walking Tours: Tokyo, though we became somewhat disillusioned
with that and eventually used it merely as a framework for putting
our own together (i.e., we dropped almost all the shopping stops,
which seemed to be three-quarters of the stops). We also used
information from Fodor's Tokyo, the Lonely Planet guide
to Japan, and the Internet. Special thanks go to Dave Griffiths
(dgriff@infomatch.com) for his interesting log at
http://www.infomatch.com/~dgriff/japantrip/japan.htm,
to Gerald Masan (masan@iipr00.ifw.uni-hannover.de) and Andre Schramm
(schramm@vaderrec.kyoto-u.ac.jp) for recommending Himeji-jo
Castle, and to Gerald Masan (masan@iipr00.ifw.uni-hannover.de)
and Louise Hirasawa (hirasawa@u.washington.edu) for recommending
Horyu-ji Temple. We have a couple of other books as well, and
we read even more (mostly history and other background-I recommend
Ruth Benedict's Chrysanthemum and the Sword) before leaving.
October 6, 1996: Well, we're not off to a good start. First Mark's watch casing broke where the band is attached, so it became a pocket watch by default. Then we were told there was some fluid seepage from the plane and there would be a slight delay. This 'slight' delay turned out to be three hours while they replaced part of the braking system. Luckily our 'connection' in San Francisco was actually the continuation of this flight, so they held it, though we practically had to run between gates to make it. (They also claimed to have had some mechanical problem on that plane, or so the passengers said.) All this got us into Narita about ninety minutes late, landing about 17:40.
Immigration and customs were pretty fast, and after getting some money from the ATM (one of the few I knew would have English prompts, and one of the few on Cirrus), and changing some travellers cheques (well, we needed more than our daily ATM limit to start out with), we proceeded downstairs to the train area. Everything was very well-marked in romanji as well as Japanese, so we had no difficulty finding the Keisei Line area (well, no more than we would have trying to find our way around, say Penn Station in New York). (romanji is the Roman alphabet. When I say things are labeled in romanji, this often means in English as well. 'Maranouchi' would be romanji; 'Transfer to Maranouchi Line' would be English.) Here we had two choices: a rather daunting ticket dispensing machine labeled entirely (as far as I could tell) in Japanese, or buying a ticket from the clerk. We opted for the latter, it being easier to say 'Nippori Station tokkyu' (Nippori Station limited express) than try to match up the Japanese with the labels on our map. At some point we will try these machines, but right after twenty-four hours of travel did not seem like the best time to start.
The Keisei Limited Express (about ten stops) costs ¥980 per person from Narita to Nippori. I specifically mention this because every place I looked and everyone I talked to gave me different information, ranging from ¥480 to something like ¥3800! There is a Keisei Skyliner, which makes fewer stops and takes about sixty instead of seventy minutes, but costs twice as much. This ride gave us our first view of Japan, and my first impression is that it is a country in love with neon. (Mark notes that the word 'neon' is pronounced very similarly to the Japanese word for Japan, 'nihon.' This must have some deep significance.)
We were just about the only Westerners on the train, and the only Westerners on the next leg on the JR Yamanote line. Changing at Nippori Station was easy, with everything again labeled in English, and a clerk to buy tickets from. (Note: always hold on to your tickets, as you need them to exit at the other end.) On both trains, people asked us if we knew where to get off, and seemed to be very helpful in general.
At Ikebukuro, we had some difficulty finding the 'West Exit' the ryokan had directed us to and eventually had to ask directions to the police box ('Koban doka?') which had a detailed map of how to get to the Kimi Ryokan. With the map we had no problem finding the Ryokan, and after checking in, collapsed onto our futons about 21:00 and slept until 6:00.
October 8, 1996: Our first real day in Japan.
The Kimi Ryokan is not a true ryokan. For one thing, it's much cheaper (¥7500 for a 'large' double) than a ryokan; for another, it doesn't include meals. But it's definitely more Japanese than Western. You leave your shoes at the front entrance. The room seems to be a six-tatami room (we haven't picked up the futons to check), making it about three meters by four meters. It has two futons and a small table, along with a closet for storing the futons during the day if you want, and a small alcove underneath it for suitcases. There are three clothes hooks, placed so high that I don't understand how most people can reach them, and one fluorescent light in the ceiling. There are two (Western-style) toilets on each floor (for about eight rooms), and two showers. There is also a Japanese-style bathtub on one floor.
One other thing that distinguishes it from a traditional
ryokan is that its bulletin board has grown into the Kimi Information
Center, which even has a web site: http://www.ipc.ntt-it.co.jp/kimi.
We had originally planned on going to Tsukiji and Asakusa today, but had also decided that we would not set an alarm to wake up at 4:00 (Tsukiji is a fish market where the main action is from 5:00 to 8:00). Since we slept later than that, we rearranged our schedule, and since it was raining, this seemed like a good day to do Ueno Park, which has several museums that we planned on spending a lot of time in. We dropped into the lounge for green tea, and talked a while to a man from California on his fourth long trip to Japan. |
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