David's Big Adventure in China

On Monday, July 13, I left Nanning on an overnight train to Guangzhou. I needed to go to Guangzhou before I went to Japan to buy my Japan Rail-pass. I bought a 3 week pass for about $600 which allows me to ride on any Japan Rail company trains, buses or ferries without any additional cost but the pass must be purchased outside Japan and I couldn’t buy it in Nanning. I spent 1 night in Guangzhou then went to Hong Kong and spent one night there before taking off for Japan. I found a cheap hostel in HK for $20 for a room that was about 5 feet by 10 feet including the bathroom but it was clean and sufficient for one night. While I was in HK I was reminded how HK is an “anything goes” town with so many people from all over the world.

On Thursday, the 16th I left HK for Tokyo and after 1 bus ride, two flights, 3 trains and a short walk later I arrived at my hostel. I had a 5 feet by 8 feet room without a private bathroom for $28 per night for the first two nights before I moved to the hotel that was part of my tour package with Intrepid Tours. On Friday, I began exploring Tokyo on my own and at lunchtime a Japanese friend I met while we were both living in Tampa joined me and spent the rest of the day showing me around. We visited some of the famous sites after having a nice sushi lunch. We had dinner at TGI Fridays (I know you will find this funny but remember, I don’t get a chance to eat at western restaurants where I live except McD’s, KFC or Pizza Hut). On Saturday I visited some other places in Tokyo on my own before joining the tour group folks Saturday evening. I had booked a two week guided tour and the tour started Saturday evening. Our group was only 6 people and most of the group was mid 40’s to late 50’s in age (and 4 of us are teachers). It turned out to be a great group and we all got along well. There were 4 Americans, 1 Brit/Aussie and his Brazilian/Indian wife. Our tour guide was a Japanese lady who lived most all of her school years in the states and has traveled more of the world than all the rest of us combined.

My overall impressions of Japan are that it’s an incredibly clean, organized, and rule abiding country. Everyone obeys traffic signals including pedestrians and you rarely see anyone talking on their cell phone on buses, trains or restaurants although they are using the phones for text messages, playing games or to do other things. The people are very polite and generally use soft voices when speaking. Yes, you can really set your watch by the trains and the trains are a great way to travel……so clean and efficient although the subways are incredibly crowded during rush hours and they really push and shove to cram into them. The train stations are also very clean (including the rest rooms) and have tons of places to buy food with much of the food being very good. There are also tons of vending machines in the train stations and everywhere else and they have cigarettes and beer (not too common) in vending machines. One thing I saw very little of in the stations was trash cans which is apparently due to the Serin gas attack they had in a Tokyo train station many years ago. Another thing I saw very few of was places to sit. The trains run so frequently that you rarely wait very long for them. Some of the long distance trains are bullet trains that go up to 180 miles an hour and we were on some that went up to 120 miles an hour. Surprisingly because Japan is such a high tech country, there are not that many atm’s in Japan and most of them have limited operation hours.

Hiroshima was the city that I enjoyed the most as it was big enough to have plenty to do (population of about 1.2 million) but small enough that it was easy to get around. We visited the atomic bomb museum and peace park there and also had a private meeting with a bomb survivor. The museum treats the dropping of the bomb as a singular horrible event and doesn’t do much to put it in the perspective of the entire war. There were about 140,000 people that died in Hiroshima as a result of the bomb and of course the museum mostly focused on the civilian deaths of women and children. After spending about an hour in the museum I found myself wanting to tell the people in charge to tell the rest of the story. There were references to the deaths of the foreign prisoner workers as a result of the bomb and also about the death of 100,000 to 300,000 Chinese as a result of the atrocities committed in Nanjing, China (although they glossed over the brutality of the Japanese soldiers). There was one small mention of the “mistaken national policies” of Japan in starting the war.

The traditional Japanese inns that we stayed in most nights were sparse rooms with tatami mats on the floors and futon mattress on the floor for us to sleep on. The last couple nights which were after the guided tour ended were spent in Osaka where I stayed in a capsule hotel for about $29 per night. Check out the pictures……I slept in the capsule and they have some common areas for you to relax, watch tv, shower, etc. along with a locker room where you store your stuff. Soaking in a hot tub is a big deal there and many hotels have special rooms with big tubs. Below is a detailed list of where we went and what we did provided to us by our tour guide in case you care to read all the gory details (I suspect most of you won’t). We had several non-Japanese meals since 4 of the 6 of us in the group don’t live in our native countries and were hankering for other foods. (Of course you know where I live, my roommate lives in Bangkok, and the married couple lives in Papa New Guinea.)

Sat July 18 – We met in Ueno (part of Tokyo) and went down the street to Japanese modern tapas bar Wara-wara where I ordered and we shared different dishes. After, we went to Shinjuku to go to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, then had a look around the East Exit, visiting Memory Lane with the yakitori skewer shops.
Sun July 19 – Free day in Tokyo – most of you went to Harajuku to see the girls dressed up, maybe checked out Meiji Jingu Shrine and saw some weddings in there, or Shibuya for Hachiko Crossing (the 8 way crossing) and in the evening we took trains to Nikko
Mon July 20 – Toshogu Shrine in Nikko. We visited the sake brewery in Imaichi before heading to Hipparidako for yakitori.
Tues July 21 – We did a morning walk to Ganmanfuchi Abyss with the rows of Jizo statues, and the walk up to Taki-no-o Shrine before taking the train to Odawara. This is where you went in the food hall of the department store. Then we arrived in Hakone by bus. We took the pirate ship over to Hakone-Machi where we visited the Detached Palace Garden and Cedar Avenue. We went to Hoshi-no-an for dinner (most of us had some sort of soba noodle dish)
Wed July 22 – Sightseeing in Hakone — bus, funicular, cable car, sulphurous vapor erupting area, the Hakone Open Air Museum. Dinner was at Hanasai – our first sitting-on-the-floor experience!
Thurs July 23 – We were trainspotters and arrived in Takayama. Our orientation walk took us to Hida Kokubunji Temple and we split up in the Old Town. We had the lovely included dinner at Asunaro Ryokan. We all went for archery after dinner (Japanese archery is called Kyu-do)
Fri July 24 – Morning Markets, Hida-no-Sato Folk Village, Hamburgers, and boooowwlinnng! 🙂
Sat July 25 – Travel to Hiroshima, dinner at Okonomiyaki Village, the pancakes cooked in front of us (cabbage, konbu seaweed, tempura bits, egg, bean sprouts, optional noodles, bacon). Mac bar for your favorite music requests.
Sun July 26 – out to Miyajima in the rain. Gyukaku for Korean BBQ dinner, drinks at Kemby’s.
Mon July 27 – FREE DAY – you guys went to Otis! For dinner and Kemby’s after.
Tues July 28 – Talk with Kei-san, Hiroshima A-Bomb Survivor. Himeji Castle, Kyoto arrival. Tour of Kyoto Station.
Wed July 29 – Early morning start with walk to Kiyomizu-dera Temple, passing through Ninenzaka and Sannenzaka. Kodaiji and walked through Higashiyama area and Jingu-michi area.
Thurs July 30 – Morning hike at Fushimi Inari Taisha (10,000+ Torii gates), finished up at Tofuku-ji, free afternoon. Met for final night dinner, all-you-can-eat Shabu-shabu and Sukiyaki at Gyuzen.
Added by David: Friday/Saturday – stayed in a “capsule” hotel in Osaka and spent most of the day Saturday in Nara, an old capital of Japan. Visited the Nara National Museum which in addition to its regular stuff also had a special exhibition called “Sacred Ningbo: Gateway to 1300 Years of Japanese Buddhism” which covered the impact that Ningbo, China had on Japanese Buddhism.