Source : INDIA TODAY NEWS
To the world, Japan is that country in the Far East that has really done it all. It runs so effectively that you are left looking for words. It is not Europe. The people here are humble, quiet, respectful, and overall, extremely helpful. No airs. No frowns. No scowl and no snark if you miss a station exit. They take you by the hand and guide you to your destination if you’re lost. And all of it, with a smile and a bow in tow.
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I spent two weeks backpacking (with a suitcase, nevertheless) across the more touristy places in this slice of land in the Far East and saw my life change at every turn. But none of that made saying goodbye to this country as tough as saying it to the restrooms did.
Japan is the gold standard when it comes to a lot of things… but the restrooms?! Hold my sake — are pure poetry.
You enter any public restroom anywhere in the country, and a Toto WC will smile back at you; spotless; sitting pretty next to a panel from your wildest hygiene dreams.
There are switches to clean every bit of your body that you would use in that restroom; and at the risk of sounding scatological, is just what the cleanliness gods ordered.
So, you can imagine what two weeks of getting used to this care can do to you when you’re leaving Japan.
Anyway. Moving on to the slightly more pleasant stuff…
When I took off for Japan sometime at the fag end of March, I boarded the flight with almost an empty mind. Tabula rasa was necessary. I did not want anyone or anything to colour my perception of this country that I was travelling to; to see the cherry blossoms, to immerse myself in the sheer energy of its cities, and to fall in love with the meditative quietude that Japan has to offer; damn those Instagram Reels.
The archipelago of Japan rose out of the ocean in front of us as my plane hit the tarmac in Osaka. It was a sunny Saturday afternoon. Once immigration and customs were cleared, I headed out to the railway station at the airport for my first bite of the legendary trains of Japan.
The Nankai Limited Express, named Rapi:t, was my steed from the airport to Namba, the area I was staying in. As the beautiful electric-blue train rolled into the station, all cameras went clickety-click. It was quite a sight!
This round-paned train takes its windowspiration from an airplane and hits 120 kmph on that line, taking you from the Osaka Kansai airport to Namba in a mere 34 minutes.
Namba station is the gateway to Osaka’s most happening area: Dotonbori. Dotonbori is a blinding-bright neon dream that comes to life as the sun goes down. The lights come on. The activity kicks off. The aroma of food wafts across from the numerous street-food stalls that flank the alleys of Dotonbori and soon, you’re lost in this maze of what-to-do and how-much-to-eat.
It is in this district that I waited longer for half a dozen Takoyaki than I have for food at the finest of fine-dining restaurants in India.
Takoyaki, the famous Osakan wheat-batter balls with an octopus filling, is hands-down its most delicious too. But if you are in a hurry to devour it (like I was), be prepared to have your oesophagus scalded. Take your time to eat these. They are worth your patience.
Japan is a sea- (and general) food paradise. If you are a vegetarian though, may the force be with you. You might find an Indian or Nepalese restaurant jostling for space next to the endless rows of fried-roasted-steamed-raw-younameit seafood stalls; but don’t go foraging for the taste of home because you won’t get it. Fall back on your ready-to-eat MTRs and Haldiram’s. The food and snacks in Japan, otherwise, deserve a separate novel.
Tokyo is the home of Asia’s best restaurant, Sezanne, but turn a corner on any street and watch your tastebuds treated to the best of Japanese food, from unagi, or eel skewers to yakitori.
Such is the variety here that you could live here all your life without having the same dish twice… what could ten short days do! The Seven-Elevens, Family Marts and Lawsons are replete with snacks and meals cold and hot. At no point will Japan let you miss food – such is this country!
What Japan will let you miss, however, are dustbins. You will be at your wits’ end trying to find one on the streets. The dustbins here are all manned. The ones not manned are restricted to accommodating only bottles and disposables.
The threat of terrorist attacks got Japan to abandon trash cans almost overnight.
So, if you are getting a coffee at one of the many convenience stores, you can drink it and leave it with them. The story is the same everywhere: you cannot drop anything dangerous into a dustbin anywhere in Japan. The ones in the tourist spots are transparent polythene bags. No sneaky business in this part of the world.
Japan, after all, is the laboratory where the world’s first nuclear attacks were conducted. It has been eight decades since those fateful August days in 1945, and while Japan has risen from the ashes and dusted all that devastation off, not for a moment are the attacks forgotten.
The starkest reminder of the nuclear attacks is in Hiroshima, the city that Little Boy ripped through on a regular August morning, just a few hours after sunrise in the Land of the Rising Sun.
After the bombing, one of the buildings that still stood, albeit dangerously dilapidated, was the Hiroshima Prefectural Products Exhibition Hall.
It took the Hiroshima city council a decade to reach a consensus on what to do with the green-domed building. Finally, in 1966, the council passed a resolution to preserve this erstwhile hall as the A-Bomb Dome, a sombre symbol of the depths of depravity of humankind.
When we got to Hiroshima, a torrential downpour blocked out the sun, there was a tsunami alert in Japan, and a massive earthquake had just had Taiwan come crashing down. It was a complete washout. From under the transparent umbrellas, we took Hiroshima in, in the post-Oppenheimer world.
The Ota River, on whose banks this memorial rests, is sullen on this day. Its banks are lined with hundreds of cherry trees in full bloom, threatened by the rain today. Dead leaves blanket the wet ground. The white and pink sakura join them after the rain.
A walk along the Promenade of Peace is humbling, funereal on this gloomy April day, almost a throwback to everything that Hiroshima has rebuilt itself from.
My next stop is the island of Miyajima in the Hiroshima Bay. The walk to its giant torii gate is muddy and grey.
The many deer that roam around this island have found themselves a spot under one roof or another. A wayward adolescent makes its way to the ferry dock, making way for much commotion among us earthlings.
This deer snatched a food pack from one of us, left a few others shaken, and walked out quietly, the way it came in. Magical Miyajima lived up to its reputation even on this downcast a day.
Deer perhaps outnumber all other animals in Japan. In the Nara prefecture, for example, you find 1,300 and a few deer sitting across from you and waiting for food. Get a stack of shika senbei or grass biscuits, choose the deer you want to feed, approach it gently, and bow. Wait for it to bow back… and see the magic unfold. Occasionally, you will find a bully of a deer trying to take someone else’s grass cracker. Stick to your deer.
The Nara Deer Park complex also houses Todaiji Temple, one of the most important Buddhist temples in Japan. This temple was constructed in 752 as the head temple of all provincial Buddhist temples in Japan.
Over the next decades, it became so powerful that the capital was moved away from Nara in 784 just so Todaiji’s influence on government affairs could be reduced.
The temple is home to a gigantic 15-metre Buddha flanked by two Bodhisattvas. The grounds are sakura-pink when we drop in; numerous cherry trees in full bloom and tourists to outnumber them all.
March-April is the busiest time to visit Japan. Its fabled cherry blossoms drape the country in pink and white from Osaka to Tokyo and everything in between. The prices are sky-high everywhere in Japan during these two sakura months.
A Japan Rail Pass or JR Pass is your best friend when in Japan. Especially if you are planning on traversing the length and breadth of the country. The pass saw a price hike last year, but is still a superb option to see Japan. It covers the Shinkansen lines.
If you are in Japan, obviously you wouldn’t want to come back without a ride on its lightning-fast bullet trains, or the Shinkansen. These trains regularly hit 300+ kmph. Your ears will know the impact as you zoom through Japan from Osaka to Kyoto or Tokyo in the blink of an eye.
The trains are always on time. Delays, few and far between, are adequately apologised for, by the PA system announcers to the ticket checkers, who bow and tell you why the train on that particular day is a minute late.
Japan is well-connected by trains from the cities to the smaller towns. One of the smaller towns on this trip that had me enthralled is Takayama.
This little town is doable on foot. The charming city lies in the Gifu prefecture and is famous for its Edo-era architecture, and a quiet, quaint old town where the lanes are lined by wooden houses on both sides. Your experience of Old Japan is incomplete without Takayama.
The city also serves as a portal to Shirakawago in the Japanese Alps. Shirakawago is a fairytown in winter and photographers head to the UNESCO World Heritage Site by the hundreds to shoot the Gassho homes against the white backdrop.
You could mistake Shirakawago for Grindelwald in Switzerland, its sister town at the other end of the earth, but for that ubiquitous Old-Japan charm.
Nowhere does that Old-Japan charm hit you as hard as in Kyoto. Japan’s thousand-year capital city, Kyoto, will leave an indelible mark on you. The city is as ancient as time itself. It has seen many emperors come and go, and is synonymous with that high-brow, old-Japanese tradition that we have seen and heard so much of.
Kyoto is home to kimono-clad geishas if you were to venture out to the Gion district. There are tea ceremonies galore, your sip of classic Japanese culture.
The showstopper in Kyoto, apart from its 1,600 Buddhist shrines, is Ninenzaka Street, where your eyes don’t know how much to feast on. Ninja lessons and Starbucks coexist in Ninenzaka like it’s no big deal.
A stone’s throw from Ninenzaka is Hanamikoji Street. Just about a kilometre long, Hanamikoji Street in spring is, simply put, overwhelming.
Cherry trees line the road by the canal. As you stroll along the manicured trees, keep an eye out for an elusive geisha emerging out of a tea house here.
Walk down the Kamo River to the Yamatobashi Bridge for some of the best cherry blossoms in Kyoto.
During the blue hour, right after dusk, yellow lights flicker to life in Gion to take you to that place between dream and reality. Blink, and the reverie’s up.
Kyoto has one too many spots to spend your days in, from the eight hundred orange toriis at the Fushimi Inari shrine, to the thousands of bamboo trees at the Arashiyama Bamboo Forest.
Arashiyama casts a spell on you. The light-and-dark of the bamboo trees lead up to the Nonomiya shrine where star-cross’d lovers hang up their wishes on timber plaques.
At that moment, I, too, was Princess Kaguya, wishing upon a piece of wood at Nonomiya, writing up a Sutemaru who I wouldn’t mind leaving the Moon for.
The other town where I found myself yearning to lose my way is Kawaguchiko. It is at the foot of Mount Fuji.
Among the five lakes that paint the landscape of Kawaguchiko, the most famous is the eponymous one. There are cherry blossoms to go picnicking under as the imposing Fujiyama looks upon you. A walk around the perimeter of Kawaguchiko will take you back to the slow life, beyond ticking clocks and looming deadlines.
Soon, it was time to leave Kawaguchiko for the other extreme that Japan has to offer: its larger-than-life, neon-lit, maddening capital, Tokyo.
Tokyo is as city as city gets. It is home to your weirdest-gadget and wildest-sex dreams. Servers dressed as nuns ply you with drinks at a pub called The Church here.
A turn away is Shibuya, the famous road crossing that is a constant on your Instagram timeline if you have ever typed ‘Japan’ on the app. But all of the energy of Shibuya is dwarfed in front of the statue of Hachiko, the Akita dog that waited nine years and nine months for his master, Professor Ueno, to return. The professor never did.
Hachiko waited at Shibuya till his last breath and was immortalised just outside the station.
Today, there is an endless stream of visitors waiting for their few seconds near Hachiko, to get a photo clicked with the goodest boi in history.
A ten-minute train ride away is Shinjuku, the station with 200 – yes, 200 – exits. Making your way out of Shinjuku can be mind-boggling; so keep Google Maps handy. Shinjuku is a street-food haven. Shinjuku is also a shopper’s paradise.
All of Tokyo, in fact, from Ginza, to Harajuku, has stores big and small where you can find the best of the best in terms of clothes, brands, shoes, and everything else under the Japan sun.
There’s so much to see, do and learn about in Japan that one lifetime is not enough.
One of those days, walking around Kyoto, we stumbled upon a quirky little temple in the Gion district, called Yasui Konpira-gu. The shrine is famous for helping break off bad relationships and start good ones.
As I crawled in through a hole in a paper-wish-laden bull, there was only one wish on my mind. Let me return to this magical city, for longer, forever, perhaps.
FACT SHEET
Where: Japan lies in the Far East. Air India, ANA, Japan Airlines all have direct flights from Delhi to Tokyo. All major international carriers fly to the country. A direct flight from Delhi to Tokyo takes about nine hours.
When to visit: March and April are the busiest tourist months in Japan. The prices are sky-high, and you will find crowds at every spot of interest. The autumn months of October-November are equally beautiful. Plan your trip in advance to avoid steep flight ticket prices and hotel rates.
What to see:
- The main island of the Japan archipelago is Honshu. The largest cities in Japan; Tokyo, Yokohama and Osaka, are all located in Honshu. There’s a lot to see in Japan.
- Its cities deserve a separate holiday if you don’t want to club them with the smaller, more picturesque towns. Kawaguchiko and Takayama serve as the gateways to Mount Fuji and Shirakawago respectively.
- The island of Hokkaido in North Japan has Sapporo, the coldest and fifth-largest city in the country, famous for some stunning ski slopes.
How to get around: Japan is supremely well-connected by train. A Japan Rail pass covers quite a bit of its train lines, but you will need separate tickets for limited express or city metro.
For Indian passport holders: From April 1 this year, Japan kickstarted an e-visa for Indian passport holders. The single-entry visa allows a stay of up to 90 days in the country.
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SOURCE :- TIMES OF INDIA
