Arigato

Wary of summation, knowing the pitfalls of characterisation after the briefest of times, it is hard to describe the two weeks in Japan. Having been in Vietnam for nearly three years I know how initial impressions of a place can be tempered into something different. What seems strikingly different can turn out to be remarkably similar while cultural quirks can become intractable ticks, the slide from the unexpected to the familiar.
Whatever.It was great to be somewhere both foreign and familiar. It felt much more foreign to us than Vietnam; the lack of English spoken and the scarcity of English language signs even in parts of downtown Tokyo made communication a Manuelesque farce of hand gestures and bad mine and made navigation a confusion as we traversed stations as big as small towns each with subterranean layers of anime shops and chocolate markets.
And familiar because the use of privacy seemed so Western or do I mean British? Maybe it's in contrast to Saigon where Vietnamese, as well as a lot of SE Asians, believe that personal space is something to be shared so that on holiday it would be perfectly natural to sleep in multiples in rooms whereas in Japan we found no double beds either in the ryokans or in Hotel Halftime, a Lynchian, Murakami business hotel we stayed at in Nara.


Favourite moments have to be cycling around our ryokan through the blaze of sakura and the quiet streets chancing on temples, graveyards and singular shops selling reams of origami paper or yet more cartoon icons. Or chancing on a live band in Osaka playing on a flyover after we had searched for a veggie restaurant for an hour that turned out to be closed - on this occasion an Indian restaurant nourished us. Or the kind man who stepped out of the shadows in Kyoto when we had just about given up trying to find a cycle hire shop, who went out of his way to help us as he stammered out a little English. Or the electric toilets that played music when you sat down and offered vari-speed hosing. Or on the Nozomi train and dozing off both ways as we passed Mt Fuji. Oops



Didn't want to leave. Got to come back. Still much to digest. A good sign.