The Japanese Bullet Train. October 2014.

I almost can’t contain my excitement that i’m travelling to Kyoto today which was the capital of Japan for over a thousand years. Kyoto was at the head of the atomic bomb target list but an American general had spent his honeymoon there found it so beautiful that he managed to get it delisted. I have high expectations for Kyoto.

The last few years when I have been travelling my biggest wish has been to see certain ever elusive (cloud cover) mountains, not any old mountains either but very beautiful ones. One year I HAD to see Kilimanjaro, and the other year Mount Damavand, the highest mountain in the Middle East. My trips would never be complete without them. I actually saw a clear Kilimanjaro twice and once Mount Damavand while driving into Tehran. Those years I must have been good as my wishes came true. Now i’m in Japan and I MUST see Mount Fuji, notorious for almost always being blanketed by clouds. If I don’t Japan will never be complete and I will look back on the past year as a time of personal failure. I know this is bordering on superstition but for me it really matters.  It just happens that the train to Kyoto almost touches the lower slopes of Mount Fuji!

We got up at 6am, had breakfast in the hotel and then walked through the old Yakuza (Japanese mafia) area of Golden Gai and across Hanazono Shrine towards the subway station. Golden Gai is interesting because it’s a snapshot of how Tokyo looked before the war, low two story buildings seperated by narrow alleyways. While we were walking a short, plump salary man in a dirty suit was staggering drunk infront of us. The zipper of his laptop bag was wide open, the bag was empty except for a few pieces of paper. I just thought God, what happened to him, has he been mugged or something?

We got to the subway station just in time for the rush hour, I had visions of us being pushed into the carriage, sardine style, by attendants like you imagine the Tokyo rush hour but everything was orderly and on time. It didn’t even seem that busy and we were on the Maranouchi Line, one of the main arteries. We got to Tokyo Train Station, the Bullet Train’s terminal on the other side of the city near Ginza, the former downtown area, and bought tickets for the Nozomi Shinkansen, the fastest Bullet Train in the country.

I’ve travelled on the Thalys, Eurostar, ICE and the TGV but I was expecting alot from the Nozomi, not only because Japan is famous for being technologically advanced but because Japan is the birth place of the high speed train. We got to the platform where our train was waiting and before we knew it were were passing through Shinagawa, Kawasaki and Yokohama. First impressions of the Nozomi, it wasn’t spotless like high speed trains in Europe but looked slightly worn, the chairs were comfortable and there was alot of space. Plus power points to recharge. The conductors bow everytime they enter and leave the carriage, how cool is that?

Japan is a very beautiful country. Once we left the Tokyo conurbation mountains appeared on the right side, and glimpses of the Pacific Ocean on the left. I kept an eye on the horizon for Mount Fuji.  While I imagined Japan to be more focused on agriculture there was alot more industrial factories that you would imagine. Paradoxically it was how I imagined it, little almost cardboard box looking houses and small towns crammed between the mountains and the sea, their streets lined with bulky almost toy like cars, now and then a little allotment for vegetables. I realised as we were approaching Nagoya that my chance of seeing Mount Fuji was over, there had been too much cloud cover. I felt my heart sink and although it was hard to accept, this year I had negative karma.

Please go away clouds….I must see Mount Fuji!

I think i’m beginning to like Japan. I appreciate their transport system, their politeness, their cleanliness, even the conductor on the train burst into a smile and became almost extroverted when he saw us. Or, is this how Japan Rail employees are taught to interact with foreigners and he was just following the manual?

First impressions of Kyoto

Our train pulled into Kyoto, often described as Japan’s most beautiful city but I wasn’t feeling it. As the Bullet Train pulled away the conductor waved to us enthusiastically from an open window.  We walked through futuristic Kyoto Station and into the streets. Alot of countries have their historical city, Italy has Rome, Peru Cusco, Iran Isfahan, Belgium Bruges. While Isfahan and Bruges are beautiful as soon as you arrive and very characteristic Kyoto is not. It is huge, concrete, modern and not what you expected. I noticed immediately though it was alot quieter than Tokyo.

It’s now make or break time for Japan, let’s see why all those travellers keep gushing about you.

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Observing Tokyo. October 2014.

 Walking in the darker part of Shinjuku.

Tokyo, or should I say it’s entertainment district Kabukicho really lives up to it’s nickname Sleepless Town. I got out of bed last night to get something to drink and glanced out of the window. It was almost 5am and across the street on the eighth floor was a woman sitting in a chair getting her hair styled! Who on earth goes to the hairdressers at 5am, or even more importantly where else would you find hairdressers even open at that time? The street ten floors below was filled with cars stuck in a traffic jam, drunk people staggering along the street, someone lay unconscious in a doorway and what’s even more compelling it was only a Monday night. Even the birds in Kabukicho don’t have a chance to sleep as here the sky never gets dark, the blaze of neon lights up the sky, the land of the never fading sun.

It was around noon when our Lost in Translation drama started. One thing that is very odd about this mega metropolis on level with London and New York is that unlike those cities you can’t even get a sandwich to eat. All the food displays in the windows are just plates of rice or noodles with a bit of meat on top. We also noticed on many dishes they just can’t resist adding the piece de resistance, a shrivelled shrimp, which became an in-joke between my boyfriend and I “…look over there, there’s another shrimp!!!”.

My heart sank as this was nothing but bad news for me. I went to restaurant after restaurant pointing to the menu and saying in Japanese “i’m a vegetarian” and they would always apologize and say they weren’t a vegetarian restaurant. This was so frustrating because I was asking them if they have any vegetarian dishes and everytime they assumed I was asking if they were a restaurant for vegetarians. How more lost in translation can it get? My patience cracked when someone produced a map and drew a circle on the other side of Tokyo and told me there was one vegetarian restaurant there. Eventually we found a buffet place. They had margherita pizza but the rest of the dishes had meat or more argh!…..shrimps.  More madness in the buffet place you could only get one slice of pizza at a time. I burst out laughing when my boyfriend took the whole pizza section out of the buffet area and we had the whole pizza to ourselves. Some Japanese people were glancing over but who cares, if you don’t get it and refuse to become a world metropolis catering to foreigners then food terrorism like this will continue!

I’m not asking for much, just a ciabatta mozarella pesto and a cup of tea… Spot the shrimp!!

After lunch we met an old Japanese friend who we knew from Amsterdam. I was excited, now was our chance to slip below the surface of Tokyo into the hidden world of Japan which few foreigners would ever see. He took us through the streets of Kabukicho to…….an Irish bar? I knew he thought we might be dazed by Japan and decided to take us somewhere familiar but we didn’t travel across eight time zones to go Irish. After drinks we said our goodbyes and decided to go it alone, we were tired of being lost in translation.

Meiji Jingu In Yoyogi Park…all to ourselves!

We just wandered through Shinjuku feeling completely isolated as if we were aliens peering into a strange abstract world. We made our way towards Shibuya and through evergreen Yoyogi Park and as I noticed mosquito bites on my arm I tried to work out if it was this park or another park that was experiencing the dengue fever outbreak. We noticed two massive torii gates and walked through the trees until at dusk we came to Meiji Shrine, one of the most famous shrines in Tokyo. I guess we got there at the right time as it was almost deserted, just they way I want holy places. It was really nice but in the back of my mind I wasn’t as impressed as seeing the temples in India or S.E. Asia, after all Meiji Jingu was built in 1913 then rebuilt in concrete post WWII.  What impresses me the most is the date of iconic structures, the older the better. Even though the shrine is precious to the Japanese people it is still an infant within the greater picture.

Back in Shinjuku what I imagine were fortune sellers set up little lonely stalls lit by candle. On a street corner was a tall, skinny transvestite with auburn cropped hair wobbling about on a pair of 12 inch high heels while handing out flyers. A foreign couple, maybe European or Australian started snogging at traffic lights which caused a commotion Japanese style, i.e. quiet, expressionless, side glances. Illuminated trucks with huge billboards drove past advertising scantily clad girls. All the while the most suffocating, crushing feeling of impersonal formality pervaded to a backdrop of mass consumerism. A man in a uniform rushed over with a little silver tin and told my boyfriend to extinguish his cigarette in it and pointed along the street to a designated smoking zone. How ironic is that, a place where every restaurant is full of toxic cigarette smoke and you can’t smoke outside?

Anyway, even though we’ve just gone through one of the most ironic days of our lives I think i’m going to like Japan. It’s not like India or Iran where curious people rush over and invite you to their homes or just want to talk in general. The Japanese are not accessible and this could ruin my stay in this country, only time will tell.

Tokyo’s Terrible Typhoon. October 2014

“Cabin crew resume your duties but please be careful!!”. The plane had been thrown around like a ragdoll for the past twenty minutes and the pilot was obviously concerned. I had even been amazed that our flight had taken off from Dubai as planned, Typhoon Phanfone was scheduled to hit Tokyo around the time we were due to land.

The Hindu Kush through Emirates grubby windows…just before the blinds were snapped shut!!

The flight from Dubai had been weird. We left DXB around 3am although I had planned it that way as I wanted to watch the sunrise above the Hindu Kush where we would be flying over. What was weird was the way the cabin crew treated us. As the sun rose a steward had demanded that all of the blinds be shut. I, for one, would not close the blinds, I wanted to see the peaks of the Hindu Kush, one of the most famous mountain ranges in the world. Another passenger started arguing with the steward and refused to close the blinds, other people came to the passengers defence. I can now see why cabin crew act like this, it’s not to help passengers sleep (they all have free eyemasks handed out with the Emirates night kit), it is just to make the plane seem dark so that passengers will sleep and in doing so give the cabin crew less work. For me it would be the last time I would ever book a flight with Emirates.

Once we were allowed to open the blinds we were above northern China, the landscape seemed a scarred rust yellow. Last time I had flown over China it was the southern regions on my way to Hong Kong (and ironically also into the path of a typhoon) and all I can remember were endless green mountains. Just before reaching Japan we had an amazing view over Seoul and parts of North Korea.  It was when we reached the islands of Japan that things changed, we could see nothing with low visibility and white fog, it would remain like this until a few seconds before landing when runway lights appeared. My first impressions of Japan at Narita airport: dark and depressing, super polite airport staff. Narita was also a surprise, the arrivals area where we were funnelled through to passport control and customs seemed very basic and dated, I had imagined a sleek Tokyo, especially at Narita!

We took the Narita Express train to Shinjuku, translated as New Town, an area that had become the new center of Tokyo after WWII leaving Ginza in it’s shadow. After the tsunami of 2011 the Japanese government has been trying to attract foreign visitors, we felt the benefits straight away, flash your foreign passport and you get the N’Ex (Narita Express Train) into town for half price. It was on the N’Ex that I noticed the futuristic Japan, on an electronic LED display in the carriage was a timeline of our journey and was showing our exact point plus connecting lines. A woman came through the carriage with a cart selling snacks, I was amazed at her voice which my boyfriend and I nicknamed “baby voice”. Baby Voice was to follow us all over Japan.

By the time we got to Shinjuku Station the streets were literally flooding with the torrential rain. We walked through the train station and got a taxi to our hotel. I read so many times about the maze that is Shinjuku Station, the world’s busiest travel point, and how many a traveller had gone into it’s labyrinth never to be seen again. Nowadays with Google Maps I just followed the yellow signs to the East Exit, no big deal really.

We had decided to stay in an area called Kabukicho, nicknamed as Sleepless Town it is Tokyo’s red light district. Why? Well I had this nagging perception that with Tokyo you have to be careful where you base yourself, I imagined some areas like Asakusa and Ikebukuro to be a bit deserted at night and as I thrive on chaos and noise it could only be Kabukicho for me.

Sleepless Town

The taxi driver drove us along Yasukuni Dori, a long famous boulevard surrounded by a sea of flashing neon. As I stared out onto the deserted soaked streets I tried to remember what I knew about Japan and realised it was very little. I had tried to read about Japanese history, religion and culture but it just didn’t click with me, there was ofcourse geisha, sumo and Monkey Magic a seventies t.v. show I used to love. I sat through Japanese cinema and most times turned the movie off half way through bored to tears, all except one movie called Tokyo Story by Yasujiro Ozu. What a contrast with my trip to Iran and my obsessions with Iranian New Wave Cinema and everything else that comes with Persian culture. I had wanted to fly to Osaka and stay in Kyoto, Japan’s historical city but it was my boyfriend who decided we must stay in fashionable Tokyo. I was not expecting much as this city had been practically reduced to rubble with the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923 and then again with the fire bombings in the war. I imagined Tokyo as a larger version of Hamburg and Rotterdam, only clad in neon, exciting yes but sadly lacking in historical sights.

Our first evening was uneventful apart from a pair of my shoes falling apart while walking through the ankle deep flooded streets, it was too soon after the scorching sand dunes of Oman for them to survive. While we were fighting against the elements I nudged my boyfriend and told him to look at a woman infront of us who was dressed in high heels, a mini skirt and knee length stockings….she was basically naked and we were in the middle of a typhoon! We popped into a smoke filled cafe and sat there, a teenager of about 13 years old was bent over unconscious on a chair, other people looked about expressionless avoiding eye contact or staring into smartphones. Why would someone just fall asleep in here, where are his parents? Maybe there were travel delays due to the typhoon that we didn’t know about. So that was that, our journey to Japan…oh and I forgot to mention the terrifying sirens at 10am the next morning when we took a direct hit from Typhoon Phanfone, the sirens were scary enough but it was the shouting through a loud speaker that made it all so freaky.

I recorded this from our hotel room, the shouting on loud speakers freaked me out!

Half an hour after Phanfone hit blue skies appeared and it was the end of our depressing Japan, from now on it would be incredible!