Booking Hotels in Japan February 13, 2008

We booked our hotels last night. I’d say all-in-all, we spent 5-6 hours researching hotels and locations before we could pick. We decided, though, that even before we had figured out what we wanted to see in Japan, we needed to book hotels. Because apparently hotels for April book up very quickly. It’s not just that the weather in April is supposed to be fantastic, but starting 29 April is “Golden Week” where everyone in Japan is on vacation for a week (this happens again in October under a different guise). But just like everywhere else, when you get a week off of work for free, why not take a week of vacation time and make it two weeks off! Or a month! So, anyway, April is part of vacation month, and the crowds abound!

The schedule is that we will arrive at Narita around 4pm and we will have to stay one night in Shinagawa at the Prince Hotel (it doesn’t make sense to go to Kyoto that night). Shinagawa is a Shinkensen stop, so we will take the train to Kyoto early the next morning and stay three nights at a hotel in the center of everything. The morning of Kyoto-departure (probably) we will see Nara and catch the train back to Tokyo where we will stay 4 nights in the Shinjuku district.

We really like to save money, but we’re also realistic about what it costs to stay in hotels overseas, especially given that we wanted to stay places central to the subway and action. (my first choice hotel is the one from “Lost in Translation”, but it worked out to about $650/night… Holy Crap!) Most of the time that we spent “researching hotels” was really spent figuring out what district or area to stay in. Wikitravel.org and tripadvisor.com were both helpful in the quest. In Tokyo, it turned out that there are three fun districts (maybe more) where we would have considered staying: The Ginza district (but it seemed like a place business people being wooed and wooing clients stay), the Shibuya district (seemed to have fewer hotels, and better to visit than stay in), and Shinjuku (like the Times Square of Tokyo). Kyoto is small enough that we felt comfortable picking a hotel right smack in the middle of town (on a subway stop, so we don’t have to carry bags far). It’s about a mile from all of the attractions in either direction. But the bus system there is supposed to be great, so it all works out, anyway. So we picked “Good” locations and “mid-range” hotels.

After comparing and recomparing prices of the hotels we liked best, we booked two of the hotels on travelocity and the third on its own website, where their price was better.  Funnily enough, we got a huge discount for staying long-term (3 nights is apparently long-term) in Kyoto.

With the hotels booked, we can move on to the sight-seeing agenda! I was reminded yesterday that while thinking about temples and shrines, do not forget about just walking around experiencing this culture that is so foreign to me. Stopping in stores to wander around and look at stuff and stopping in restaurants to pick up a foreign snack. And certainly do not forget to pick up kitschy Japanese souvenirs! Oh, I certainly will not forget to do THAT!

Experience Tokyo! February 10, 2008

Sumo.  These guys eat a lot of rice.  They have public tournaments around the country multiple times each year.  Unfortunately there will be no tournaments while we are in the country (boooo!).

Kabuki.  This has become kind of a tourist thing, given that the locals don’t go out to Kabuki every weekend.  But it’s a type of traditional Japanese theater, a theater of the masses, rather than of the kings.  The plays are about history, morality, and love.  Men play women because women were outlawed long ago from performing in the theater.  There are performances in the Ginza district of Toky and they come with English-speaking headsets, to explain what is going on.

Harajuku.  Also the name of Gwen Stefani’s backup dancer group,  this is a place in Tokyo where people dress up like anime characters and the cutesy, all-too-modern, breaking-with-the-norm look that Japanese school-aged kids sometimes take on.  Much like the dog statue (waiting for its dead owner to return home for 15 years) elsewhere in town this seems like a popular meeting place for people to see and be seen.

Tokyo Metropolitan Government office building. On the 45th floor of this buildling (Tochomae subway stop) is a free observation deck with a better view than those you have to pay for, and on the 1st floor is a tourist information booth.

Pachinko.  This gambling game was “invented” by a ball baring company that had over-manufactured barings one year and didn’t know what to do with them.  Brilliant!

Tsukiji Fish Market.  This open air fish market is open every morning starting at something like 3am.  If you get there by 5 or 6, though, you’ll be fine.  It’s closed on Sundays and every other Wednesday (or so).  They have all kinds of fresh fish in their original form, including octopus.  I think this will be REALLY, REALLY fun.  And there are no doubt the most-fresh sushi places around right there at your fingertips.  According to National Geographic: “Tsukiji is a fish market in the sense that the Grand Canyon is a ditch…”  Niiiiiice.

And I haven’t even gotten to the temples, gardens, and shrines yet!

Japan Trains February 9, 2008

The Shinkansen is the super fast, bullet train in Japan.  Superman couldn’t catch this thing.  And what’s more, there are a ton of them.  From Tokyo to Kyoto there’s one leaving every 8-10 minutes.  In order to ride it, you have to buy a ticket (of course) which should be easy, but it’s not.  On top of the base fare to get from here to there, there are all sorts of “extras” to choose from: reserved seat, unreserved seat, fewer stops, more stops.  They all have different fees, and the charts are somewhat confusing to a layperson like myself.  Luckily for me, the American, I have one more option: the Japan Rail Pass.

The Japan Rail Pass (JRP) is a 7 or 9 day pass that you can buy to ride almost any train in Japan unlimitedly for its time period.  The catch is that you must, must, must buy this ticket in a country that is not Japan.  Did you catch that?  You have to buy it before you get there from one of their listed travel agents.  Don’t forget or else you’re out of luck.  Once you get to Japan, you can activate the JRP for its specified number of days.  So that you don’t have to worry about activating the card while you’re stressing over finding a train going to your destination, you can even pre-activate it for days in the future, as in “start this 7 day pass in 3 days”.

The JRP costs ~28.000Y and the exchange rate is about $1=106Y as I write this, so an easy estimate is to just divide by 100Y to get $.  As far as I can tell, the JRP is not good for the city subway, but it is good for the train between Tokyo and Narita, which is usually ~3.100Y each way.   The round trip ticket Tokyo-Kyoto is ~27.000Y, so that extra trip to Narita makes it worthwhile.  It’s even more worthwhile if you take a day trip to Nara or Hiroshima from Kyoto (we plan on going to Nara).  But you can’t take the express train, called the Nozomi, on the JRP, so beware.  I think the Nozomi only accounts for a small fraction of the trains, anyway, though.

The Tokyo subway system seems to work a lot like the DC metro system: at the end of your ride, you find out if you’ve paid enough based on where you got on and off.   So even when you can’t find a ticket machine in English before your ride, you can pay the least fare possible and if you paid too little, just fork over the rest as you leave.  I like that system.  Of course, I also like the Boston way of doing things: flat fare all around!  At least that way there’s no fear of getting trapped in the metro station with too little money…

Finally, when traveling between Tokyo and Kyoto, try to get seats J-H on the train for an excellent view of Mt Fuji.  You can get off at the Mt Fuji stop, but I think it’s another 2.5 hours to the mountain, itself, and then another day to climb.  Most of the climbing is above the tree-line, leaving you with boring old rock, so perhaps seeing the mountain from a distance is really for the best, anyway.  If climbing is your thing, though, they say the sunrise is the best part, so an overnighter would be required.

Learning Japanese Tradition February 8, 2008

I’ve learned a lot in the past four days about Japan and its customs and traditions. These traditions are in place to make society a better place to live, and for the most part I agree with them, though I am certainly not used to them. I will go through some of the ones I find more interesting here, granted they’re only interesting to me because of the strange culture in which *I* live — the US!

Shoes. Of course we all have heard that you do not wear your shoes in a Japanese house or restaurant (or perhaps any establishment?). But what I didn’t know is that they provide communal slippers in many places, restaurants especially, so that you aren’t wandering around sock footed. Part of the reason for not wearing shoes indoors is because if you’re sitting on the floor, you wouldn’t want to sit in a muddy/grassy/wet/dirty footprint, right? So there are communal slippers. And you put them on at the door and leave your shoes. If you do end up sitting on the floor, like in a restaurant, you take off the slippers and place them beside you. Put them back on when you get up! And if you go to the restroom (the toilet!) you will be putting on special toilet slippers, leaving the room slippers outside. Do not wear the toilet slippers out of the toilet. This is a major faux pas, almost as bad as…

Nose blowing in public. Is a no-no. A major no-no. Sniff all you want, but God help the person who blows his nose in public! I actually like this because there are too many people who are just not polite when they blow their nose.

Bath. The toilet is not located in the same room with the bath tub because this would be gross. I can get on board with this; it’s even appearing in more and more American homes. Cool. Taking a bath, however, is very different than I am used to. You sit on the side of the tub, on a chair, perhaps, and soap yourself down and wash all of the soap off. You’re clean (although I don’t see how you’re clean, really, without a full, long shower). Now that you’re clean and have rinsed all the soap, you can get into the warm tub water and soak. It is soothing. You get out and dry off. The next person (usually a family member) will do the same, using the same bath water once he is clean, too. I think this is originally to save money on heat or water, but you were clean when you got into the tub, so it is presumably still clean water. Maybe not quite as warm any more.

Ryokan. A ryokan is like a hotel, except that it’s more like a B&B, and to get into the nicer ones (which aren’t necessarily more expensive) you need an invitation or introduction by a Japanese person familiar with the establishment. When you arrive, the hostess serves you tea. In the morning you are awoken (around 8, I believe) by the hostess, who serves you breakfast. In the evening, after dinner, the hostess rolls out your futon for sleeping. It’s very traditional. And unless you stay in a ryokan with a private bath, your hostess will schedule your bath time (keeping in mind the toilet is separate from the bath). But keeping in mind what I have said about the bath, above, you will be sharing the bath water with other guests (who you do not know and who may not be Japanese or understand Japanese tradition as well as you do). You should rinse all soap before entering the tub, but to me, you’re still sharing bath water with strangers. There’s something weird about that to me, no matter the “cleanliness” of the person preceeding you. It’s like a pool, except it’s not chlorinated, and what if the person failed to get clean… you can construe all sorts of other issues to go along with this, too!

I have learned so many other Japanese facts, a lot of how-to’s, in the past few days, and I will share more soon. They include things like: how to use the train, (re)filling your companion’s drink, eating at a sushi bar, attending sumo and kabuki, seeing Harajuku, buying electronics,… Look forward to these!

Japan February 6, 2008

We took Japanese last Spring at the community college’s night classes.  We took it because I insisted that I needed to know how in the world those characters made any sense and how the heck this language worked.  It really didn’t have a lot to do with Japan at the time, although I did find the culture very interesting and fun to learn, too.  Also, I just adore Japanese food.  Adore it!

Who would have thought, then, that our trip to Europe in 2008 would be replaced by a trip to Japan.  Not I!  Maybe a trip to Brazil, but Japan?  I had not considered it.  But Numero Uno’s job has agreed to send him to Misawa, Japan, on business for a week.  Rather than sit around moping and wondering why my job won’t send me to Japan (although I admittedly did some of this, too), I booked myself a ticket, too.  We are spending a week in Tokyo and Kyoto in April (when the cherry blossoms are out, I hear) before Numero Uno goes north to Misawa and I return stateside.

I did some research into going to Misawa, too, but there were a few drawbacks that would have made it way less than “Lost in Translation”, and I would not hear of that!  The biggest drawback was that I would have had to rent a (probably stick-shift) car (driving on the left, which is a proven skill of mine now) with an international driver’s license to see much of anything, given that the north of Japan is more spread out.  Though I could have taken a train to place X or Y, it would have been hard to get to the sights at place X or Y sans car, and especially as a day trip.  Or maybe it’s not hard, but it looked hard to me, anyway.  So I am bowing out of that.  Numero Uno will hop on a plane at Haneda while I am hopping on one at Narita.  Then he will come home a week later.

Now that we have settled on a destination, we have to brush up our Japanese skills (murasaki sukiyaki = purple noodles) and alphabet (Hiragana is better than nothing!) and decide where we’re staying and what we’re seeing.  Right now I know there are historic things to see, temples, museums, gardens…  but all I can think of is the giant, early morning fish market in Tokyo that Anthony Bourdain talks so much about.  I have big plans to get up early to see it and to then eat my weight in sushi and sashimi by week’s end.

Where the Sidewalk Ends January 27, 2008

If there were an “end of the world”, as in “where the sidewalk ends”, would it be a popular tourist destination? And if so, how popular? Disneyland popular? This was a question posed by a small group of people sitting near us when we were out to dinner the other night. They were arguing adamently about it for a very, very long time: yes it would be a tourist destination, but how could you fit that many people at a point at the end of the world; how much would one charge given that it would probably be popular; what kind of souvenirs could one sell; is there upkeep involved, does the edge of the world erode periodically into nothingness; would one need mega-insurance to handle someone falling over the edge (presumably into abyss)…

While I am sure that the space at the end of the world would be a popular destination among a very large set of people, I’m not sure I would ever travel there unless they assured me it was safe in the same way that, say, Niagara Falls is safe: it’s unlikely that I would tumble over the Falls, but there they are, anyway. I’m also not sure what there would be to “see” at the edge of the world? What *does* abyss look like? Are there trees and “nature”, or is it just dirt? Might there be an actual sidewalk, a la Shel Silverstein? Oh, it’s all so philisophical! (I might say “deeply philosophical”, but then you’d know I was lying.)

“The end of the world as a popular tourist destination” … a topic that I think should be addressed more frequently in highschool and college debate. You have 30 seconds… GO!

Beyond… to Switzerland January 3, 2008

I think we might go to Switzerland in lieu of Russia this year. Numero Uno likes the outdoors, and while I am an indoors-person to the bitter-end, I figure there must be something special about walking in the Alps. It’s like an outdoor museum, I think, and I like museums! The compromise is that hikes won’t be ridiculous uphill battles (I hear there are trams to take you up a lot of the way where you can then just walk up and down over meandering peaks) and that there will be no day-long or overnight hikes — I want to be back in “civilization” long before dark.

I’ve never thought much before about wanting to see Switzerland, but now that I think about it, it has been placed on the list of places I would like to see (luckily for this trip, I think). However, since it has never been in the Top Ten, I think we will fly open jawed into another city prior to visiting Switzerland and then out of Zurich. It looks like it might be a ten day trip, which means four days in one place, six in the other (or something similar). I was thinking of six days in Switzerland, specifically and four in one of Paris, Milan, Venice, or Frankfurt (Frankfurt because it’s a really cheap flight from the US right now). Each are between 3 and 5 hours by train from Zurich, closer and further from other places in Switzerland. There are a few places in Switzerland that have been recommended to me, besides the larger cities of Bern, Zurich, etc. Oeschinensee, Murren, and Kandersteg come to mind first; Kandersteg is in Interloken which is where my friend Boris used to vacation, so it can’t be all bad! Boris is not outdoorsy. Lakes, mountains, trams… everything one could ask for in Switzerland.

I have also heard that the train/bus system around Switzerland is quite excellent and complete, so there would be no need to rent a car: a plus! And even though Switzerland is rumoured to be one of the more expensive European nations to visit, it can’t be more expensive than a trip to Russia would end up! (Or can it!?) Tonight should begin the planning phase, although surely real planning won’t begin for at least two weeks. We’re like that.

Russia? Or beyond? January 2, 2008

I have for a while been considering a trip to Russia for the springtime.  I was going to go in the winter, when tickets and lodging are cheap, to experience the “true” Russia — freezing cold temperatures of 17degF below, snow all over the ground and buildlings, warm fur outerwear, people huddling together as they walk… but then I was reminded of what a wimp I am in the cold.  I would love to see it and experience it, but when I want to get out of it… well, it would probably still be there hampering my “tourist” experience.  So, the springtime, it is!

The flight would go into Moscow where we would stay for probably 3 days to see the museums, cathedrals, subway, and get a short handle on the culture.  Then we would travel to St Petersburg where we would stay about 6 days.  There are all kinds of historic museums, palaces, cathedrals, and shiny, gold things to see, from my understanding.  And there’s vodka.  I was told that, not knowing the language, it would be best to get a driver/escort to show us around, translate for us, and keep us from overpaying due to the language barrier.  An escort makes the trip seem less spontaneous somehow, and a Visa is kind of a pain, but I can handle that.  I just really, really want to see a part of Russia.

But then I keep thinking of how I haven’t really seen much even of Europe.  And maybe it would be an easier (and cheaper) trip to go to Hungary or Germany or Belgium or Switzerland this year.  Maybe then I could see Swiss watch makers in action or go walking through the Alps or drink German or Belgian beer or eat real crepes or see Budapest.  And then I wouldn’t have to hassle with the visa to Russia or the cultural barrier.  But I also wouldn’t see the shiny things or be a part of the culture that I kind of can’t comprehend without seeing it first person.

So which will it be?  Because this is supposed to be a spring trip, decisions have to be made soon, and maybe because it’s a spring trip, I’ll take the easy way out.  Stay tuned to find out what happens while I ponder over the next destination!  Or if maybe I win a contest!

Aquamarine October 5, 2007

Another CNTraveler entry:

In St Thomas, the vibrant colors of the water aren’t the same as in pictures; they’re much more brilliant and alive! Here at Sapphire Beach, there are at least seven hues of blue comprising the sparkling view over the sea. The snorkeling in this crystal water is magnificent: the coral just below the surface comes alive with beautiful creatures. The experience is both completely soothing and wonderfully breathtaking — the perfect day.

Late for the Vatican September 3, 2007

Incidentally, this is also one of my entries for the Conde Nast Live the Cover contest:

On our second day in Rome, we had an early tour of the Vatican Museum. We had just bought a new travel alarm for the trip and didn’t realize that we had set it incorrectly, so it didn’t go off. So with jetlag, we overslept! We quickly got up, dressed, and ran out of the hotel. We ran the entire way along the Tevere toward the Vatican, passing this fanciful wall painting, among other sights, but there was no time to stop! We made the tour in time, and in the rush, the mural was forgotten. I’m grateful that we walked everywhere in Rome (so much that my shoes fell apart!) and were able to accidentally reencounter this whimsical scene and capture it. It is my favorite “quintessential Roman life” photo from the trip, and I feel lucky to have had a second chance to seize the moment.