ON JAPAN
Japan exceeded every single sky high expectation I had, and without a shadow of doubt, I’ll be back.
While 2.5 weeks certainly wasn’t enough, it made a lasting impression. Japan is both wildly vibrant and stunningly serene, it’s bustling but also calm, it’s supremely formal but also brimming with creativity. Before visiting, I always heard people talk about the dichotomy of “traditional versus modern” in their descriptions of Japan and while that element certainly exists, it’s not what bent my mind when I reflect back on our time in Japan.
The level of civility, consideration, and elegance is nearly inexplicable. In public, everybody acts like they have some damn home training. During the 17 days we spent in Japan we took ~40 metro rides and not once did we hear somebody listening to their device without headphones. MARTA could NEVER. RTD, not for one single ride. THE SUBWAY!? Don’t even play with me, y’all…
People line up in a SINGLE FILE LINE on the train platform as they wait for their train to arrive. At a crosswalk?! A single file line waiting to cross. On the escalators everybody adheres to the one side for standing, one side for walking rule…everybody. Can you imagine?! Unless you’ve been to Japan or grew up in a society that is not the US you actually can’t.
37 million people in Tokyo and we heard but ONE SINGLE person talking on their cell phone during the morning commute. We didn’t see a SINGLE traffic jam in Tokyo because the metro is so efficient people don’t need to drive. Nary a horn honk to be heard and I’m not being hyperbolic… To purchase a car in Tokyo you have to prove you have a designated parking spot at your home before a dealer will sell you a car so as to not clog the streets. Mind, bent.
My highlight from Tokyo is that Tokyo simply does it better.
Fashion?! In Paris’ wildest dream they are but a shadow of Tokyo’s best dressed. I can promise you’ve never seen a better dressed city. It’s as if nobody is wearing clothes but rather everybody is wearing outfits.
Public Spaces?! The busiest train station in Tokyo has 1.4 million people pass through it each day and there was not a SINGLE piece of trash ANYWHERE. Q and I made a game of trying to find a piece of trash in the station. We went through at least 6 times over the course of the week and there was none. With over one million people passing through per day. Can you fathom?! Again, you cannot.
Safety?! Elementary aged children take the train by themselves to and from school because there aren’t safety concerns?!
Vibe?! You step out into the streets and you can’t help but feel like you’ve arrived. The neon signs that are so synonymous with Shinjuku live up to the hype. I wept twice while walking the Shibuya crossing because it so perfectly aligned with my expectations.
Quality of life?! The bathrooms in even the metro stations have infant seats to put your child down in, a “privacy setting” that plays music so nobody has to hear you go, and if that’s not enough, the bidet has a setting to wash the skid mark off the toilet. IN THE GODDAMN SUBWAY. The whole of downtown Denver doesn’t have a public restroom and these random metro stop bathrooms have bidets that play music and are self cleaning. Byeeeee.
Tokyo was extraordinary and it sparked within me a desire to travel much much more in East Asia.
From Tokyo we headed 7 hours south to Yakushima Island. Yakushima is tucked away in Japan's Kyushu region and it's the kind of place that transports you to a world of tranquility and wonder, with jaw-dropping scenery at every turn. You can breathe deeper on Yakushima Island.
The highlight was seeing Quintin happier than he’s ever been. I’ve truly never seen him so chipper, so alive. If visiting Yakushima was a 10 for him, our wedding weekend was a 5. The island inspired his favorite movie, Princess Mononoke, and everywhere we went he was like “OMG this is where Ashitaka saw Princess Monoke for the first time! OMG can you feel the spirit of the forest?! It’s all around us!” On one of the hikes he disclosed that “I’ve almost wept several times” and he didn’t stop excitedly chattering for 4 whole days. He saw god in those tree’s.
Yakushima is the type of place where none of the guest houses have an automated booking system, and no website is modern enough for google to translate it. All of the guest houses have phone numbers, but no email addresses. Given we speak all of 5 words of Japanese (hello, thank you, good morning, good afternoon and good evening) we really took a shot in the dark in booking our accommodation. We deduced the owner said “yes, there is space” and we showed up after dark hoping for the best… and the best is what we got. A personal home turned hostel for motorbikers that is 100 percent still the personal home of the cutest, cat loving woman you’ve ever met (more than once I shrieked at her outfits and then learned my 6th Japanese word, Kawaī, which means CUTEEEEEEE!). We got a thirty minute check in explaining every single detail of the island's preposterous bus system, home cooked lunches of onigiri and cold tea to take on our hikes, advice on which onsens were the best and ten million manga for Quintin to choose from.
Yakushima Island is heaven and I’m so thankful Q insisted we go.
Following several perfect days on Yakushima Island, we headed to Kyoto where my highlight was seeing not one but TWO real life geisha’s on their way to entertain for the evening. Of the many pictures I had in my head of Japan, the image of the geisha was one of the strongest, probably because of my affinity for the book “Memoirs of a Geisha.” Well, as it turns out the book was so horrifically inaccurate Nitta Sayuri rewrote the story herself to more accurately depict reality. We hate a misrepresentation so eager to unlearn the fantasy that is “Memoirs of a Geisha” I found a guide who specializes in geiko culture and could walk us around Gion, a neighborhood renowned for this traditional form of entertainment.. Walking through Gion’s narrow cobblestone streets, we found ourselves surrounded by ancient wooden machiya houses, adorned with traditional latticework and paper lanterns, exclusive tea houses and ochaya (where geiko and maiko (apprentice geisha) entertain guests with performances), boarding houses, and the agencies that manage bookings.
A fun fact that I LOVE and that perfectly crystalizes this trope of “ancient versus modern” in Japan pertains to something we learned on this tour! Geisha’s hairstyles are quite dramatic and they only get their hair done ~once per week, meaning their hair is professionally done at all times. They entertain more than once per week, so they keep their hair done basically at all times. They even have special pillows to sleep on so as to not mess up their hair between gigs. It would look preposterous for a geiko to be walking around doing her day to day activities with her hair done in the traditional way, but in regular clothes, no makeup, regular shoes, etc. So what do geiko do when they want a Starbucks?! They Uber Eats it! Hahahahahaha honest to god, we’re walking around this beautifully charming, somewhat ancient feeling neighborhood talking about geisha culture and it’s just like...so yea, to get their Starbucks they do what literally everybody else does and they Uber Eats it because they can’t go out into public half done up. Tradition and modernity, all right here!
At the end of the tour after having learned so much we’re walking to the last stop and bazinga! There she goes, clomping about in platforms that rival Lady Gaga, hair and makeup straight out of fairytale, adorned in accessories that brought me to my knees, in the most stunning kimono you’ve ever seen. I stifled a shriek, willed my hands not to fly up to my heart clapping and cracked my neck spinning around to ensure Quintin was keyed in to this historic moment.
Because I love Japan so much I’ll leave you with a bonus highlight. One night in Tokyo we went to a restaurant that served conveyor belt sushi. We intentionally chose this restaurant so as to avoid the rigamarole of the language barrier. Even for the most shameless of us (Quintin) the dance of a language barrier does weigh on you after a while and at this point we’d been fish out of water (read: not speaking the language but also not reading the alphabet) for three months straight. This restaurant style was the perfect solution ...walk in, sit down, and the food comes around on the conveyor belt so we don’t have to order from or hassle anybody.
UNBEKNOWNST TO US the sushi on the belt is mostly there for…inspiration?!?....decoration?!?!?!…but nobody was taking it off the belt to eat. To actually ORDER you shout your order to the chef. So there we were, in a tiny ass restaurant, sticking out worse than two sore thumbs, having to shout our order to the chef as the whole restaurant stares along and the chef curses the day Japan reopened its border to the western world. NOW I’LL REMIND YOU it’s sushi so each “order” is two bites of food meaning we have to relive this horror of shouting our order in broken “Japanese” across the restaurant 26 separate times to get a proper meal in. It was chaos, cringe, my worst nightmare and thank heavens Q has no shame and saw it as a fun challenge because I was ready to go hungry.
