Japan I - Toyko, the home of Mario

Three weeks in Japan is going to take a lot of documenting, so this is going to be the first of quite a series of entries on the Blog.   If you've nothing better to do with your time and want to gain an insight into some of the quirkier idiosyncrasies that make Japan fascinating...then stay tuned!

A twelve hour flight from Heathrow to Narita, Toyko, which to be fair to Branson Air, was very good, still left us washed out and bleary eyed by the time we'd cleared all the formalities.  We then had to sort out our Japan Rail (JR) passes (of which more later), book reserved seat tickets on the Shinkansen for the 5th May (of which a lot more later) and finally find our way to the Narita Express, a direct JR non-stop line into the centre of Toyko and beyond and then to our first hotel at Ikebukuro.

Except it wasn't running.

 Much deep bowing and apologies from the young lady at the desk, but no, there'd been an accident and it wasn't running...so sorry.

So there we are, completly bewildered in a totality alien (or it seemed at the time) environment, with no apparent means to get the 100 miles or so from the airport to the hotel.

Great, just bloody wonderful! Bugger!

A little sign language though and some help from another member of staff found us on the JR slow train into Toyko central, where we had to change trains (eeeek!!!) to find our way to Ikebukuro, where the Toyoko Inn hotel (shown above) could be found about about 10 minutes from the station.

Toyko is big.  If you thought London or any any of the other major cities in the United Kingdom were big, they pale when compared to Toyko.

It's big, period.  In fact the vast majority of the Japanese are crammed into the coastal plain between the mountains and the sea and at the last count, Toyko central's nearly 12.5 million people (with a density of 5655 k/m) comprises almost 20% of the countries population.

Greater Toyoko is a complete and continuous conurbation almost from Narita to way beyond Yokohama, which is nearly 50 miles away.  Forget all frothy notions of rolling green English fields, with lambs skipping around and daffodils under oak trees.  In this part of Japan, any flat land will have a building on it and if it's not a building, it'll be a rice field. More to the point, it's so densely packed that the next building or house will be squashed in tight (a matter of feet) against it's neighbour.

Sounds like a bit of a nightmare, but there you'd be completely wrong.  The Japanese, being the people they are have managed to make Toyko and indeed the whole of Japan an enthralling and exhilarating place to visit but there are three crucial words you need to take into account...

Order, harmony and obedience...and those three words go a very long way to explaining the national psyche, but not all, as we shall see.

Just to illustrate.  There are no old cars and no dirty cars.  Traffic sticks rigorously to the speed limits and throughout the tour, I never saw any car overtake another!  There is no litter anywhere (and I don't exaggerate)  There is no graffiti...none.  There are no fat people (and apologies if the scales grown when you get on them)  In fact the best way to encapsulate the atmosphere in a nutshell is to imagine a scene from a Jim Carrey film, 'The Truman Show'...the whole country is like Switzerland on steroids!

Toyko is vast (but you know that already), however it's not quite as mind numbingly vast when you consider that for all practical purposes, it's a series of smaller 'towns' linked together by the sprawl of the conurbation which is in turn linked by the rather excellent (of which more later) rail network, thus we have places like Ginza, Shibuya, Shinjuku, Ikebukuro, Ueno and Asakusa which are all part of Toyko but  which have separate identities in themselves.

Amongst the sea of skyscrapers are several ancient gardens which provide an oasis of tranquility.

 

The pic above was taken from the 42nd floor of an office block and shows the Hama-rikyu Gardens, one of the oldest in Japan and adjacent to the world famous Tsukiji fish market.

Remember order and harmony?  All the many gardens we visited throughout the tour were stunning and laid out in a meticulous, calming way...

...with many of the full sized trees being trained to conform to a particular style (the one shown above was  outside the Imperial Palace) with Alyson...

...in a couple of shots, with the Palace in the background.















To take just one further example, the pic above shows the world famous Shibuya crossing, taken as I was going across it.  Doesn't look much from the ground, but when it's seen from the railway station...














...you can see the tide of humanity crossing, and remember, this wasn't the rush hour.  Then it becomes something very different!

As our first taste of Japan, I found Tokyo and it's inhabitants fascinating and so much more could be written, but I haven't quite finished with it yet as the next exciting instalment will reveal but for that, you'll just have to be patient.

And what's all the stuff about Mario?...again, patience is a virtue.

To be continued.

Japan X1 - The Inner Bloke

Some bloke sitting on a white horse a couple of centuries ago is reputed to have said the immortal words...'an army marches on it's stomach' though they might have been uttered a couple of millena before that by Claudius Galen, the chief physician of the Roman Army.  Whoever said it, the phrase is no less true today as our intrepid little band found out in Japan, as we ploughed our way through all the culinary delicacies on offer.

We were initially a little sceptical about the food, believing as many do that the Japanese exist solely on a diet of raw fish and rice, but nothing could be further from the truth as the range and quality that we tried was quite bewildering at times.  Make no mistake...it is different, but it's part of the experience to have a go at everything.

I had two caveats, the first being that I wasn't going to resort under any circumstances to the old standby and the second was that if it was still moving on the plate, it wasn't coming anywhere near me!

The traditional British pub exists nowhere else (apart from the ubiquitous 'Irish Pubs' to be found in every city and resort in the world...and the less said about them, the better!) but the Japanese have their own version, the 'izakaya' where food is served.  It's a good place to try out loads of varied dishes ranging from 'yakatori' (ALL bits of the chicken on a skewer) 'tempura' (deep fried anything in batter) 'edamame' beans (rather like broad beans) and many others.  Strangely, there's nowhere in Japan, unlike the UK, where you can just go for a drink or twelve...if you drink, food needs to be ordered.

One of the meals we had was at a tempura restaurant, where a chef coats the item (veg or fish) in batter whereupon...

















...they get deep fried.  And very pleasant it was too.

Not quite so pleasant was the traditional Japanese breakfast, although what the monks  at Nagano had...

...was slightly better than most, but even so, a few different varieties of tofu, a sticky rice ball and a bowl of miso soup wasn't really my bag...I need strong coffee and lots of it!  Together with the breakfast there's always the obligatory green tea...

 ...served everywhere in Japan and this was much more acceptable, though it's far superior to the rather bitter, insipid stuff we get in the UK.  Even better is 'hojicha' or brown tea, which is low in caffeine.  We liked it so much that several large bags of the stuff found their way back to England!

Perhaps one of the best meals we had was at the ryokan in Takayama, where the evening meal required us to dress in a yukata, or cotton kimono tied with the obi, or belt.  Later on, I found a good selection at the Kyoto Handicrafts Centre and brought one home, but I still haven't worked out how to tie the obi correctly.

The meal was quite delicious but the centre piece was the bowl of...

...Hida Beef, which was cooked over noodles and mushrooms.  Later on, Tom took us out to a tiny little restaurant tucked away in the backstreets that specialised in the beef where they without doubt...

...served the best hamburgers in the world.  In fact, so good where they...


















...I had to go back on my own the following evening just to make sure!

There were lots of markets in Japan, where all sorts fish and veg were for sale, but so different were the foods, that I failed dismally to identify many of them.

If you can recognise any of the food (apart from the crabs and octopus, which tastes a bit like a mushroom) you can have free readership of the BlokeBlog for life...an offer not to be sneezed at!

Miso soup is an obligatory part of every Japanese meal and is unquestionably an acquired taste.  Some of it is quite good...


























...especially at this miso 'brewery' in Takayama, but in other places it was awful. In certain parts of Toyko there's an all pervasive pong of the stuff which I found distinctly unpleasant.

You can't go to Japan without trying sushi, of which there are dozens of varieties.  We had a couple of really tasty meals, but the cast-iron prerequisite is that the fish must be absolutely fresh.  Alyson is looking a little...

...apprehensive here, but was much more enthusiastic...

























...about the conveyor belt sushi in Kanazawa...

...where she eventually polished off more than me!  The waitress is shown reading the bar-codes on each plate and it's this that determines your bill.

Whilst we were in Kanazawa, Tom took a couple of us on a bit of a 'pub' crawl where we eventually ended up in the 'standing bar', a tiny little establishment that served the cheapest beer in Japan.  The lady behind the bar also supplied us with copious amounts of nibbles and fresh tempura.  Later on in the evening we were befriended by a group of Japanese business men who insisted on buying drinks for us and sharing their food, so that a slightly inebriated night was had by all!

Did I mention that I like sake?

After the war, there was a desperate shortage of food in Hiroshima and to relieve the suffering, the Americans supplied vast amounts of wheat flour, common in the west but relatively unknown in Japan. The inhabitants of the city then developed their own speciality using the flour, the 'okonomiyaki' or Hirshoshima pancake.

This consists of a pancake base layer, cooked on a hot plate...

...over which are gradually added layers of different ingredients...

...so that eventually, after many turnings and 'squashing-downs'...

...the thing is cooked.  Delicious!

I can't finish this account of the culinary delights of Japan without a mention of something I simply had to have every day.  Forget Ben and Jerry's, Haagen-Daz and the rest of them...

























...green tea ice cream is the way forward!

Japan VIII - Kanazawa

The next port of call (literally) was Kanazowa, bordering on the Sea of Japan.  The first two pics were taken from the train and again show just how densely packed the houses are...I don't think a lawnmower business would do very well...

One of the highlights of Kanazowa are the Kenrokuen Gardens, supposedly one of the most famous landscaped gardens in Japan.  Some of the features were completely exquisite and totally beyond my feeble attempts to capture them on film, but the link and the following shots give just a flavour of the place...

Alyson on one of the many stone bridges spanning countless small rivers...


















....with a view of one of the main lake, complete with landscaped features.

















At the top of the hill, there was a large statue of the Buddha, beside which was a vast pine tree of some description where the branches were supported on wooden poles...

















...with another enormous tree, similarly supported, close by.  Note the deliberate 'exposed root' style of growth, where the small tree has been planted on a mound and over the decades, the soil has been gradually scraped away to reveal the roots, which then harden off.

We also paid an early morning visit to a Geisha district...

...before hordes of tourists descended.  Note also the deliberate and complete absence of electrical poles, which are...

























...one of the more unpleasant features of any town or city in Japan.  Being prone to earthquakes, I suppose it's a 'good thing' to know where all your power lines are in case any of them come down in a 'quake and probably also much easier to fix in the event of one of Mother Nature's little grumbles.

An interior of one of the geisha houses is shown, which is still a working business.  There will be more about geisha later in the Kyoto post, but suffice to say that hiring one of these ladies to entertain for the evening is not for the faint hearted.  Even more so if it's the end of the month and you're a bit short of cash as you'll need to stump up 60,000JPY...

...per hour!











































 One of the rooms in the house contained a display case of of the many types of combs that a geisha requires in order to effect their elaborate and traditional hair arrangement. I took this picture and really didn't think too much about it until I saw a shop in Kyoto later that specialised in geisha combs...a 'simple', two prong, black lacquer comb with extremely delicate inlay was for sale at a very modest price of 460,000JPY.

























There's also a very good Samurai district in Kanazawa and we paid a visit the the Nomura household, where the original armour of it's owner can still be seen in glass case.

 The house also had one of  the most delightful and tranquil small gardens of any that we saw in Japan.

 Finally,  London isn't the only place...

...with Boris Bikes, but these are a bit smaller!