Two weeks - over 4.000 km
Since I was a teenager I wanted to travel to Japan – definitely direct connect to my quite high consumption of animes at that time. After a couple of years of working and saving it was time for my first big trip after finishing my Bachelors degree. 3 months of traveling and the first stop was Japan for two weeks. Overall I travelled over 4.000 km within Japan thanks to a two weeks pass of the extremely well and fast public transport with japans bullet trains.
Tokyo
I had no specific expectations about Japan when I arrived and just had an open mind about anything that may come. A couple of things which stroke me most: Japan is extremely clean and people are extremely polite. After I left, I was still bowing a little every time I said thank you or good bye as it was just already part of common behaviour seen and acted every day.
I stayed in a very small and most cheapest room I could find. The beds are different to our western countries, traditional ones have a futon, which is basically just a thin mattress which can be folded or rolled up and stored away during the day. This saves a lot of space in the very small apartments. The entrance has a small step, at which you are supposed to remove your shoes. One thing germans and japanese people have in common: Hausschuhe (shoes for inside of the house, mostly some kind of slippers).
As expected I was drooling mostly about the food at Japan. As a huge lover of all fish dishes I was at the right place. Unfortunately due to my quite limited savings and the general hesitation on spending money, I did not eat much at the local restaurants but mostly from supermarkets. Japan will be visited once again in my life and at that point I will not show any hesitation on eating whatever I like 😉
One of my highlights during my stay in Tokyo was a quite lucky coincidence: one of my favorit bands was touring right at that time in Japan and thanks to a friend of a friend I could get on the guestlist (I would also have paid for the ticket but there was just no chance to translate the japanese booking pages..) for their concert in the saitama super arena. While Zebrahead was playing in rather small audiences of 2-5k people in Europe, this concert hall reminded me more of a Rammstein concert. After that I went with some of the japanese Zebrahead Fanclub and the band to the aftershow party. Quite some concert to remember!
Pokemon center
Not really related to the Pokemon centers of the game but still a place of dreams of any Pokemon merchandise fan. The things you see in here don’t really reach Europe and it was a hard decision what to get as I was travelling on budget and with carry on luggage only.
Tokyo city
Pretty busy and pretty full. The streets are crowded and plastered with advertisement. What stroke me most was that people in Japan do not eat outside of restaurants of dedicated places for eating – which I realised when I had a small snack in the subway and got some very strange vibes from the glances of other people.
Houses & parks
Depending on the area you can also run into beautiful traditional houses and castles. I got very curious about seeing a “real” japanese home from inside and how they live – but since I didn’t know anyone and getting invited to a home is a very intimate thing to do in Japan, I sadly did not get the chance for that yet.
Nagoya
I spend one day in Nagoya in order to explore the Nagoya castle from 1615. I nearly skipped this stop and was very glad I didn’t. The castle is now a museum on multiple levels and has a wide area of park and garden attached, which is rebuild to represent the original setup. The museum covers multiple topics on history of war and architecture and was in a perfect condition at the time of visit.
Osaka
If I would move to Japan, I would move to Osaka. It is the second biggest city in Japan after Tokyo and I felt a little bit of tension regarding the opinion of each cities citizen regarding the respective other city. In general I enjoyed Osaka much more as it was less giant than Tokyo and felt much more relaxed. I spend multiple nights here and explored the local food scene. I got lucky to meet a japanese english teacher on an international meetup, which took me to the local places and recommended me food to try. The longer the evenings, the more the people in the small stalls lost their shyness and he was quite busy in order to translate all the questions stranger people had to me. I could finally get a glimpse into the real life in Japan. Sadly it was not really possible with only speaking english without any proper local connections.
The so called “Izakaya”s are very small and sell mostly alcoholic drinks and small snacks. On the picture here you see the “chef” behind the bar, who was cooking and a small campfire and could barely turn around to open the fridge for getting drinks. I loved the intimate atmosphere within it and the hearty small snacks cooked and served directly in front of you. Sake was not only served in a glass, but also a wooden box (called “masu”). It shows the generosity of the host by filling the glass until it overflows and as well provides a different taste when the sake is drunk directly out of the box.
Kyoto
To get to Kyoto I took a train from Osaka. Kyoto is considered the “cultural capital” of Japan and is a mayor thing for tourist. When you arrive, you can relate why. The City is stuffed with shrines, temples and parks, all of them taken care of very well. Sadly most of them were in process of renovation during my visit. One of the most popular things to do here is to walk the “Senbon Torii path” – a path leading through hundrets of gates leading through multiple shrines and ending at a temple on top of the mountain. After the first kilometers most of the tourists gave up and it was a wonderful experience within the forest without all the voices of humans.
Hiroshima
This city is probably most known next to Tokyo for foreigners. Hiroshima as well as Nagasaki were the two places which were attacked with an atomic bomb to the end of the second world war. The building in the picture was the only structure left standing near the hypocenter of the first atomic bomb which exploded on 6 August 1945, and it remains in the condition right after the explosion. The city was full of groups of elementary school kids which wanted to make conversation and fill out answer on their papers. I visited the memorials and the history museum which had further insights about the situation before and after the bomb.
Fukuoka
I visited Fukuoka because one of the very talkative people in the Izakaya in Osaka told me a lot from his home city. I arrived at noon and strolled through the city. I felt a bit lonely for the first time after starting my trip, even the oversized Mumin plushies in the Mumin Cafe could just stared and me with their soul-less eyes. I missed Osaka and having a social connection to the local people.
Nagasaki
Nagasaki was my last stop at the south of Japan. The climate changed a lot while travelling more and more south and the coast and the beaches already looked quite tempting. It felt hart to combine the hard history with a place that feels already like summer vacation and I left back to Osaka after a day to have one last evening at the place I liked most before departuring to continue my trip in Australia.
