80 Days

My last two days in Japan, and for a complete contrast to Tokyo I venture up into the hills for some peace and solitude - yes, its possible to find it in Japan, in a place called Nikko where there are temples, gardens and something which I didn’t expect to find - a national park. On the way there I tried another uniquely Japanese custom - the railway lunch box. As the majority of commuters travelling by train don’t seem to have time to stop for lunch, they make use of what would otherwise be wasted time by consuming a beautifully presented selection of sushi with chopsticks provided ( in spite of continued attempts to get used to using these bloody things, I still find them a pain to use - they are definitely not suited to my level of dexterity) On the subject of food, there is a commonly held belief that Japanese food is nothing but Sushi - not true. There is a whole range of noodle and rice based dishes along with just about everything that you could possibly deep-fry in tempora batter. I saw a hilarious translation for one of these dishes which went something like ” what levelled, with dust of bread on surface”. There is also a Japanese equivalent of cooking at your table, which I tried one night. It consists of tender strips of lamb served with bamboo shoots and onion, a bowl of consomme and a bowl of steamed rice. ( I think I’ve been reading too many menus)

I wake up on my last day to the sound of pissing rain - that’s put the damper on my plans (get the pun?) It will be no fun strolling round Ossaka in this. So I opt for the contingency plan. I spend the afternoon going up the river and back to see the 20 bridges which link the two sides of Tokyo - once you’ve seen one bridge, you’ve seen them all, you say . Not so, all 20 are very different ( Poor old sod, he’s getting all excited by bridges now - all this travelling has obviously gone to his head ) Well it was something easy to do on the last afternoon.

I know, I know, I promised no more things to notice but I have to remark on the cleanliness of vehicles. The taxis are immaculate, even the dustbin wagons are spotless, and this morning on the way to the station I spotted an absolutely pristeen, but not new, cement truck. And just to make it a nice round 10 things to notice, the japanese really do say ” Aahhh soh, weelly” when you tell them something only vaguely interesting - as I often did of course.

Sayonara

Tokyo Jo

This entry was posted on Friday, May 16th, 2008 at 4:42 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.