Japan!!

The first leg of our journey takes us to Japan: Land of the rising sun!
Esther met Pepeeto and Kayo (our Japanese friends) 14 years ago during language school in Exeter, UK. All those years we stayed in touch and finally it was time to visit their home country.
What can we say about Japan? Well . . . . it's different.
How different could a country be from the countries we've already visited? Very different!

Just the language, written and spoken, is for most westerners incomprehensible. We only use 26 letters and 1 alphabet, they start with 46 going up to and over 2500 and use 3 different kind of alphabet !!
So if it wasn' t for our friends helping us out as guides (domo arigato gozaimasu Pepeeto and Kayo), we would have been lost.
The people themselves are perhaps the most polite humans on this planet; they even apologize for starting to talk to you in an restaurant when they bring you the thing(s) that you ordered, in case you where having an conversation with the people you are dining with.
To us it seems they use the word 'arigato' (thank you) almost every few sentences.
After experiencing this, westerners seem very rude.

Food . . . . hmmmmm Their food is certainly different from ours (at least different from what Esther and I normally eat). Lots of rice (of course) and lots of fish. Normally that wouldn't be a problem, weren't it that we are not fish-eaters. But having an open mind, we thought: 'when in Rome . . . do as the romans do'. So we tried the fish. Guess what? We liked it a lot! I think because the fish is so very, very fresh and well prepared it almost doesn't even taste and smells like the fish as we know it.
Of course we had to visit a Sushibar. It is hilarious to see the food passing by on the moving belt. You just pick what you fancy and eat as long as you like. Pepeeto chose carefully for us, we began with some harmless stuff like rice and vegetables. Soon we moved on to tuna and salmon and other fish. At the end there were the salmon eggs, quite delicate we were told. Esther tried one egg (didn't really like the slimy feeling) and George ate the rest.
We even master to eat with chopsticks. The trick is to fixate one the sticks and only move the other one. Once you know how to do so it becomes quite easy. We didn't use a fork after mastering the chopsticks during our time in Japan!
Every Japanese restaurant is displaying the menu...but they do it in a most interesting way: there would be an artificial plastic model for every dish with hand-painted details. It looks so real that you hardly realize it is a fake.

When you are traveling in Scotland of course you will visit some Whiskey distelleries. In Japan that means you will have to try Sake. It is made from rice and only about 14-20%, so it is actually comparable to wine.

The big cities are (at least Sapporo) unbelievable clean. 1.8 Million people living together and not even a candy wrapper on the streets.
It just shows you, that with proper education and a little effort, a clean living environment is possible even with that many people living together.

The people, as mentioned before, are incredible polite. But also very hospitable; we've been invited by friends and family of our friends to a BBQ and even to spend the night at their houses. They opened their house for us, two strangers! They even gave us some gifts; a gesture we couldn't return at that moment (but we will).

Climbing the local active volcano with Pepeeto was harder than expected. For us anyway; Pepeeto actually seemed to do it with ease.
The view at the top was a bit foggy, and the smell of sulphur reminded us of Iceland, but we had a good time.

Visiting the 1972 Olympics ski-jump slope was a must-do being in Sapporo: seeing such an thing from the top impresses you; they never look this big/high on the television. The accompanying wintersports-museum was a treat. You could do/play/try/test some winter sports yourself on some simulators. The highlight was an actual ski-jump-simulator wherein you was strapped down and got some video-goggles in front of your eyes displaying the actual slope. You than had to time the moment to stretch your legs at the end of the virtual slope so it could calculate your flying distance. Very high tech!

Pepeeto also took us to a nearby Shinto-shrine. A impressive building (actually several ones) were we also happen to see a traditional Japanese wedding (both bride and groom in white kimono's). Our paper "oracles" we got gave us all good luck for the remainder of the year. 3 And 7 year young girls and 5 year young boys were also dressed up and in the temple-complex because it was their special day.

Another great experience was that even if you speak different languages you actually can have sort of a conversation. Yui (Pepeeto's 5-year old daughter) was eager to talk to us...in Japanese of course but she didn't mind if we did not quite understand. Signing and guessing can do a lot. We were pointing at things and would say the word in Japanese and English (grape - budo, green - midori, etc.). The result is that we do know now all the colors of the rainbow in Japanese.

After a week in Sapporo on the Island of Hokkaido we said our goodbye to Pepeeto and his family (Shuko, Yui and Rei) and flew from Hokkaido to Fukushima on Honshu to meet Kayo and her husband Patrick.

There is another typical Japanese thing: Karaoke! We had some doubts about doing it, but after some LC (liquid courage, thank you Patrick) in the form of beers, we just joined in and had a great evening. There was really big book with all the songs listed one can choose. At a certain time Esther even found a German song (Nena - 99 Luftballons) and this one had to be done. Surely this must have been the first time this song was chosen in that karaoke club!

Kayo drove us around quite a bit and we got a good impression of the countryside. We were astonished how much forest there is. The landscape is really hilly and the one in the backseat of the car would get an upset stomach caused by all the hairpin-curves. As it was the harvesting-season for rice, we saw al lot of rice-fields in all different colors because some were already emptied while others still contained the yellow rice-plants.
We were shown quite a hidden place with some Shinto temples. They are really remarkable. It is one the places you have to know about. If you are just a tourist you would never find it. So thanks to our guide Kayo to share that place with us!

We attended a traditional Japanese tea ceremony. You sit on the tatami (straw mats), drink really strong green tea and eat some sweets made of soy bean.

Did you know about the heated Japanese toilet seats? Well, we did not. So the first time you will sit on the toilet you are quite surprised. It is really great and nice and comfy and you do not want to get up again!!

We spend our last night in Japan in a traditional Japanese hotel. That will say, you sleep on the floor on a relatively thin futon. (They made my bed with 2) Luckily I found another 2 spare futons in the cupboard and piled them up, so it looked and felt more like a matras. I slept really comfortable.
This was also the first hotel where I had to take my shoes off at the entrance and was given slippers.

Going from Shirakawa-city to Tokyo we had three ways of traveling: by airplane, by normal train en by the 'Shikansen' (Japanese bullet train).
There was no contest really. . . we took the Japanese version of the french TGV! Fast, clean and on time we arrived in Tokyo main station.
After taking another local train to the airport, we collected our stored luggage and got ready to board the plane to New Zealand.

Overall, Japan (pleasantly) surprised us . . . getting to see a different way of living refreshed our mind in a way we never imagined.

Needless to say, we will certainly return to Japan.