Arrived 22/06/19
First Impressions
As arrivals go, this was one of the more straightforward. The immigration procedures went swiftly, I was able to change the last of my HK $ for Yen, it was easy to find and get a ticket for the train into town and then I found my hotel without a hitch. I must be getting the hang of this at last.
The hotel is interesting. In Hong Kong I had a small room in someone’s flat. Here I am staying in a 3 star hotel, although the room, if you can call it that, is much smaller again: it is a box. Well, Japan is famous for its capsule hotels, so it had to be done, and it is cheap: at around £97 for 6 nights in an expensive country I have a bargain. Size notwithstanding, it is actually very good. Everything is carefully thought out. There are separate floors for men and women, each floor having toilets and showers and lockers. Bedding is changed every day, as are towels and your personal bath mat, and a small packaged breakfast is provided. You even get fresh pyjamas daily and use of a mobile phone with unlimited data and calls, both national and even a few international (not the UK). Shoes are left in another locker at the entrance; my reputation had clearly preceded me: they gave me locker number 007. The downside, apart from the small personal space, is that you have to be out of the building between 11.00 am and 3.00 pm, but then you don’t visit a city to stay inside your hotel room all day, no matter what size it is. Everyone is very quiet and respectful of others so sleeping, on the first night at least, was not a problem.
And then there are the toilets… They come with heated seats and an array of electronic buttons. Since the instructions are in Kanji characters my understanding of them is somewhat limited; even my one incredibly useful Chinese character was of no help here, so I pressed a few to see what would happen. Without wishing to get into too much detail, let’s just say I had my posterior washed for me. All very clever. Rumour has it that they are working to add a pubic hair trimmer; it would have been ready by now if a couple of unfortunate mishaps at the testing stage had not cocked things up, so to speak.
My hotel is in the Dotonbori area of Osaka, which is largely dedicated to tourists. There are restaurants and shops everywhere and the main streets are packed with people, although there are some rather quieter ones as well. The overall feel of the place is a little more relaxed than Hong Kong and quite a few of the very polite Japanese speak at least some English.
So far so good.
More impressions
Fruit machines seem to be very popular here. I had a look inside one establishment in a shopping arcade that had over 400 machines spread over 3 floors, players, if you can call them that, intent on the whirling coloured wheels in front of them. I have never been attracted to gambling, and when, as with these machines, you know the odds are stacked against you and you will definitely lose over time, it seems even more pointless and joyless. Add to that the incredible noise from 400+ machines all turned up to the max and it felt like a version of hell. Still, each to their own I suppose. Nutters.
Japan has been easy compared to China. More people speak English, ATMs accept my debit card and establishments my credit card. Food can still be tricky, but it is easier to find something palatable. There are more westerners here, but strangely this is the first place I have felt a little lonely. On the long train journeys and the Mongolian tour there were companions; in China there were few foreigners and people were interested in the different looking guy; when I did meet a fellow westerner it was natural to strike up a conversation. Here those things do not apply and the capsule hotel is not a good place to meet people; even in the small communal areas we are supposed to keep quiet. Not that people here are unfriendly; on the contrary, people are very helpful; it’s just that I am just another tourist in a big city amongst tens of thousands of people all busy going about their business. Still, hey-ho, all part of the experience.
I thought we English were good at queuing but we are not a patch on the Japanese. When queuing for service in a shop they always form a careful line and give the person currently being served plenty of room. When I got off a train in rush hour at a busy station the people waiting to board had formed lines either side of the door stretching back across the platform. They then boarded in a very orderly fashion that I have observed nowhere else.
Final Impressions
Japanese Towns
I cannot describe the towns in the corner of Japan that I have seen as beautiful. Nor are they ugly, just rather bland: anonymous concrete office blocks and apartments, and small houses crammed together. Terraced houses are hardly to be seen, but the detached houses are so close together, often only inches apart, that they may as well be. Older buildings with character are almost nowhere to be seen, and although individual houses vary, the overall impression almost everywhere, to my unaccustomed eye at least, looks the same. The exception is central Tokyo, where huge modern and actually not unattractive office blocks dominate the view.
Trains and Buses and Bicycles
The public transport in the towns and radiating to the outlying areas is excellent. Buses and trains run frequently and always exactly on time. People queue politely and the guards on the trains even give a little bow when entering and leaving the carriage. There are on board displays and announcements in both Japanese and English giving the next stop and the destination. Local travel is inexpensive, but the Shinkansens (bullet trains) are not cheap.
Route planning and navigation is complicated by the fact that multiple companies operate the trains and have separate areas in stations, sometimes widely separated by confusing concourses with walkways branching off in all directions on multiple levels. This is especially true in Tokyo where there are two subway networks and any number of different lines, not to mention the JR trains that are different again. I found a very useful app, Tokyo Subway, that works out the route for you. Even so, there have been occasions when there are signs to umpteen lines and places but not the interchange line I am looking for, or when I have followed signs only to end up on a street where there is another entrance to another line somewhere, but nothing to help find it. I do seem to have spent an inordinate amount of my time in Japan generally, and Tokyo in particular, walking around subway stations.
Japan does not suffer from the silent electric scooter menace I had to watch for in China. However, strangely for such a well ordered and polite society, cyclists seem to have carte blanche to go anywhere. Many is the time I have been strolling peacefully on the pavement minding my own business when without warning one has whizzed past from behind me at high speed. One sudden sideways move and I would have been impaled on the spokes, bringing my blog to a premature (or possibly welcome, depending on your viewpoint) end.
Rob's Roads 