Where are Tinus and Barrie?

Tinus here. I leave it up to Barrie to report on the schedule we’ve followed so far, so we both have reasons to write these blogs. This post will just have a lot of observations, little things and loads of pictures.

When we flew out to Tokyo on 19 May, we did not manage to choose our seats on the plane (long story). Once we were in the plane, we asked one woman to switch seats, but since she really wanted her aisle seat she politely said no. I turned to the Japanese man next to me and started my sentence: “Excuse me…”, but somewhere around the ending of `me` he said: “NO!!!” and turned away promptly. I was gobsmacked; not because he didn’t want to switch seats, but by the brutal way he turned me down. Weren’t Japanese supposed to be extremely polite and indirect? Luckily, the other man next to me switched seats, and Barrie and I were reunited. After a bit, the rude Japanese man felt bad I guess and turned to me and started messing with my personal airplane entertainment system. “Here, watch this movie. It’s about Japanese society. Very indirect. Not me, I am not typical Japanese.” No shit. But Bando, as he turned out to be called, was very nice (in a controlling way) the rest of the flight, and taught me basic Japanese and gave me his cell phone number and email address just in case we needed him.

When we landed in Tokyo, we immediately checked into our hotel and sped off to meet with the lovely T, N, and their daughter A, friends of our friends R and C*. Even though they were immigrating to the US just some double-digit hours later, they took the time to drag our jetlagged asses to a wonderful leek-themed restaurant. A definitive highlight!

Ok, now some random observations and thoughts:

• I’m not made to sit on the floor. Seriously. After two days in traditional ryokan accomodation in which chairs are non-existent and the futons are thin, my hips were shot. I’m too Dutch for this!
• Signs signs signs everywhere!!! Ok, so besides the bombardment of advertisements and other visual stimuli, Japan has a sign for every occasion, just to prevent any possible awkward mistakes.

No walking sigarettes plz

Keep it!

Cow eating its overalls

Just in case you forget how to toilet

It was closed, unfortunately

A monkey, balding frog and a pig are in a car and get sick of CO2…. There’s a punchline here surely

• Everything makes music: trains, buses and trams all have their own music for when they are approaching a stop. And toilets sing you a song while pooping. Yay!
• Plastic fantastic: Japan is obsessed with hygiene and making sure everything is in the right compartment. When we bought our first bento lunch and coffee for our trip to Kyoto, we got about 5 plastic bags for holding the separate bentos, the extra snack we got and one long-ass carrier bag for EACH cup of coffee.
• Now, we did figure out one great thing about all them plastic bags: using them for trash. Seriously, trash cans are as rare here as me elegantly getting up after having sat down on the floor for five minutes.

OMG a trashcan

Japanese: Solving the lack of trashcans, one umbrella at a time

• Toilet paper is so thin in most cases, it just ripsripsrips continously and you just end up with a handful of scraps, which doesn’t really work that great.
• When we entered a restaurant in Kyoto with no English-speaking staff and a Japanese-only menu, the guests tried to explain the menu. I went for safe-sounding options like tofu and chicken, but Barrie bravely just pointed at some things. Still don’t know what it was, but the restaurant owner laughed here pretty head off for what seemed to be a very long time and mimed “no, I think for you”. Since there were tendons on the menu, probably a good thing.
• Due to all the groping action happening in trains and subways in Japan (don’t get me started on the women in Japanese society…), there are woman-only passenger cars. Of course, hilarity ensued when Barrie accidentally entered one.

Barrie feeling left out and awkward in the women-only carriage

• Despite the constant bombardment of information everywhere, I’m totally zen-ning out over here in the beautiful temples and gardens. One highlight was staying in the Daienin monastery in Koyasan, joining the morning prayer and in the evening getting a tour around the premises by the son of one of the four monks living in the monastery. The rest oozing from their pores really impacted me, as did the walk through the nearby forest which houses 200,000 (!) graves.

Sand mandala in Daienin monastery, partly made by the Dalai Lama

Awesome tour guide!

Rock garden realness

Okunoin cemetery and forest.

Yoshikien Garden, Nara

Zenning out

• Bikes are second-class citizens. Most cities have designated parking places for bikes, but they`re few and far between and sometimes require an engineering degree and knowledge of kanji to park them, since there are special spaces that are operated by a machine.
• So much amazing Engrish around here, on signs, shirts and buildings! More will follow.

Sitting feelings!

I totally protected moss!

So, this is the first week Japan Tinus report, more coming up, and some left-over pics for you visually-inclined and not-yet-bored peeps.

Koyasan, party town

Binzuru deity statues get bibs to watch over the health of children

Barrie in his yukata

Yoshikien Garden, Nara

Nara deer ambushing children

Fushimi Inari Taisha with its thousands of Torii gates

Bamboo-zled

Kinkaku-ji, Kyoto, so peaceful…

…from one point of view

* We don’t use real names on this little bloggy thingy, just to keep things internet-anonymous-ish.