The Land of the Rising Sun, Part I

The Chinese New Year holiday has come and gone, and Shanghai uttered a collective groan this morning as the workforce mustered sufficient energy to ignore the post-revelry hangovers and return to work.  (Actually, the national holiday technically ended on Friday, and Chinese employees were required to report for duty this weekend as a sort of government-endorsed make up day to counteract some of the production lost to the festivities last week).  I, for one, did not return to work over the weekend, both I figured my absence would go entirely unnoticed (it's not like I'm the keeper of the launch codes around here), and because I was busy enjoying my last two days in Japan.

For five days, I had the pleasure of exploring a new world, one so unlike the one I live in now that I shudder to think that I ever associated China and Japan in the same generic "East Asian" breath.  Whereas China (at least Eastern China) is relatively flat, Japan's landscape undulates in waves of green, as if one is in a constant circular bowl, surrounded by hills, mountains, and trees.  Whereas China (at least Shanghai) is pervaded with the constant noise of a city always on the move, Japan, even its cities, murmurs along quietly and peacefully, as if the entire community (both human and otherwise) works in tandem so as not to disturb one another.  The air in Japan smells like winter (presumably this is only true in the winter), while Shanghai does not do a good job of masking what its inhabitants (both human and otherwise) had to eat the night before.  Put another way -- breathing is a joy in Japan, or, at the very least, it's possible, whereas it's becoming increasingly difficult in the polluted atmosphere of the Middle Kingdom.  All of this isn't to say that I'm dropping everything, casting away my sinophilia in favor of China's political sparring partner to the East.  But to ruin the punchline a bit: I had a terrific time in Japan, and would love to go back soon.

I face the same problem here now as I did upon returning from Vietnam.  A single post on my week in Japan would likely run on extensively, with each paragraph pushing the post farther and farther from anything resembling coherence.  So I'll start with a few random highlights, with the promise that more specific recaps are to follow:

• The trip was a whirlwind, spanning five cities in five days.  I flew into and out of Takamatsu, a small city on the northern coast of Shikoku island.  Takamatsu is conveniently connected to Honshu (the main island) by a San Francisco Bay Bridge-esque bridge that spans the Seto Inland Sea that separates the two.  So, relying almost exclusively on Japan's comprehensive and well-oiled rail system, I was able to  make a circle from Takamatsu to Okayama, Osaka, Kyoto, Nara, and back.
• Of the five cities, Osaka is the biggest, and the only one that really felt like a metropolis.  I can only assume that Tokyo, which I unfortunately didn't have time for, more than makes up for this. Here's a quick view of the Osaka skyline, from the top of the Cosmo Tower on the southern outskirts of downtown:

• There were hundreds of deer in Nara.  A few examples, along with a very funny sign cautioning park visitors about the dangers of fraternizing with the furry friends:

• As mentioned above, Japan is quiet.  That's probably the thing I noticed first about the country.  Initially, I assumed it was just because I had landed in Takamatsu, where there was admittedly not a whole lot going on.  But it pervaded the entire country -- a refreshing, tranquil silence even on the busiest of city streets.  For whatever reason, the cities were able to absorb most of the ambient noise from pedestrian and automotive traffic, to the point where mere steps off of main thoroughfare, it would have been easy to believe you were no longer in a city of several hundred thousand people (which all of the cities I went to, even tiny Nara, can claim).
• The downside of this quiet is that finding nightlife in Japan is somewhat of a daunting mission.  Restaurants and bars are all tucked away, either down alleyways or in the depths of multi-story "high"rises (none are much taller than 10 stories high, except in Osaka).  Everything tends to be quite small, so a bar is either unappealing because of its emptiness, or inaccessible because its dozen or so patrons fill the place to capacity.
• I found that as frustrated as I get with my Chinese here, the gap between my somewhat-proficient Mandarin skills and fluency is probably smaller than the gap between those skills and total incompetence.  My efforts to brush up on my Japanese before the trip were in vain, and I was frequently rendered simply incapable of communicating with local people.  This did not prevent them all from being incredibly friendly to me during my stay.
• One of the nice things about staying in hostels is you meet interesting people.  One guy I met, an Australian Jew of Israeli descent, was studying industrial design in Melbourne while pursuing his own creative passion of making toy figurines.  In the two weeks he's been traveling in Japan (he's on summer break now), he started collecting this set of figures based on the characters from a Japanese anime show called "One Piece."  He told me that there were 82 different figures, 80 of which he had managed to amass in the short time since developing the obsession.  I encouraged him to follow his dreams, and not leave Japan until he completed the full set.
• Japanese trains have something I have never seen before: a car reserved exclusively for women.  I'm told this is to provide a safe haven from male groping.  If groping is seriously a problem in Japan, where everyone struck me as fanatically polite, then I wonder why these cars don't exist elsewhere (like China, for example)?

• There are pigeons in Japan.  Not a lot, but enough for me to notice, and realize that there are none in China.  Maybe they can't stand the pollution...
• One of my favorite aspects of the Japanese city is the prevalence of vending machinese -- ubiquitous sources of hydration for the weary walker.  The vending machines even serve hot drinks: select the coffee drink, and you receive a bottle of hot coffee!

Plenty more to come.