Our family headed to Tokyo and Kyoto for our annual family trip from August 5-11. The reason we chose Japan is because it’s relatively close to all of us now that Jie has moved to Shanghai!
Furthermore, Mei, Mom and Dad visited in 2005 and could navigate the places relatively easily.
Agenda in Tokyo and Kyoto
- Day 1: Arrival, Shinjuku, be amazed at Japanese snacks
- Day 2: Meiji Shrine, Clinton Street Baking Co for blueberry pancakes, Ginza, Sanrio store, 12-story stationary store, dinner at yakitori restaurant, meet up with Aunt gugu and friends
- Day 3: Train to Kyoto, Nishiki market, Inari Temple
- Day 4: Nara, Gion, Junsei tofu feast
- Day 5: Bamboo forest, Zen vegetarian cuisine at Tenryu-ji temple
- Day 6: Disney Sea
Flying in from China, the Japanese seemed exactly the opposite of the Chinese to Jie. They are considerate, polite, and go out of their way to make sure that others are well taken care of. One good example is the little baskets that waiters put under every table in a restaurant for you to put your things in when you sit down. In addition, they feel personally responsible to address your needs – at one restaurant, we requested a change to our order, and our server must have wiped sweat off of his forehead multiple times in his efforts to understand and make sure he had our order correct. At the Disney Sea gift store, the cashier made sure to slip in a few additional plastic bags into the original one in case you bought presents for others and needed more bags to give the gifts in.
The Japanese are also very quiet. The kids are well-behaved and rarely cry or make noises. On our way from Kyoto to Nara, Jie was sitting next to an old lady on the train. After observing Jie type furiously on her laptop and witnessing her phone alarm go off twice during the otherwise silent train ride, the old lady disapprovingly asked Jie if she was from China. Because there was no possible way she could be Japanese given how noisy and disruptive she was!
Finally, the Japanese are exceedingly polite and pay painstaking attention to detail. ‘Srimase’, or ‘excuse me’, is a term that’s frequently used in every sentence when you want to get someone’s attention. They have also mastered the art of avoiding conflict and distress by apologizing for any inconvenience in advance with a written notice and an understanding smile.
Lastly, everything is punctual. The train leaves on time, every time, and our Japanese friend arrived at the exact time we were supposed to meet. A good description for the Japanese would be, “quietly efficient”.
Restaurants
There are many different types of food in Japan including ramen, udon, soba, sashimi, yakitori, curry, tempura and many more.
One distinguishing aspect is that in Japan, stores tend to specialize in one thing compared to Japanese restaurants abroad which have everything under one roof. They are also masters at creating spectacular displays of plastic food in the store windows, which look almost exactly like the real thing.
Although food is generally healthy, we had difficulty finding vegetarian food, as most items include seafood, or are made with a fish or pork-based based broth. However, in Kyoto, we were able to find a few restaurants specializing in tofu for our mom who is vegetarian, including a fantastic restaurant called Junsei which was surrounded by beautiful Japanese garden and provided what you could describe as ‘tofu twenty ways’.
We also loved the Japanese pickles which were often served as a condiment to accompany the main meals. We found many restaurants in small alleys as well as ones in the large shopping centers. However, unlike other parts of Asia, basement food courts are more like gourmet food markets, where there are no tables and chairs to dine in so you need to pick up the food to go. We found the packaging, particularly for the desserts, to be amazingly intricate. Mei found it slightly overwhelming, as she just wanted to try and buy everything she saw! We were also impressed by how anything could be wrapped and displayed like a present, ranging from mochi balls to pieces of fruit.
Transportation
The best form of transportation is the subway. It’s cheap and you can get almost everywhere on them. There are several different companies responsible for the subway lines, which made it slightly confusing since they required different tickets and didn’t connect with each other.
We bought a JR pass for a week and it worked well for all lines that are part of the JR Railway company. We bought the vouchers outside of Japan, and all four of us exchanged the voucher for the actual 7-day pass either at the Narita airport or at major JR train stations.
Although this was the cheapest option, walking around the subway with our luggage was a workout! There are a lot of stairs linking the different underground tunnels and few elevators and escalators. The subway and train network is also pretty confusing due to the multiple lines. It took all four of us to navigate the system, even after a bunch of research from Mei.
We also found out the hard way that subway doors don’t screech very loudly before shutting, so beware of abruptly closing doors. This happened to us when Mei jumped into the subway without knowing that it was closing before the rest of us could jump on-board. So the rest of us took the next train to meet up with her. In addition, there is great respect for privacy and quietness, reflected by the practice where most people don’t talk on the phone in the train. If you want to talk on the train, you go to the ends of the train car.
An interesting observation is that your train tickets always come up the right side up, no matter how you insert it into the machine. Taxies are also available, but they are very expensive. However, this is an option when you’re tired and hot from the Tokyo heat.
Internet
Internet is fast and Jie found this to be a huge improvement over the internet in China. In fact, Japan is ranked top three for fast internet. However, more free wifi hotspots would have been convenient. For those visiting for a week, buying a Sim card at the airport for 1G worth of data is a great choice. It is about $30 for a week and there is always the option of adding money if you need more gigabytes.
Toilets
The toilet culture is fascinating in Japan. Not only are the stalls immaculately clean, but almost every single toilet is high tech, with an automatic seat warmer, flushing sounds to mask potentially embarrassing noises, and various buttons for spraying and cleaning functionalities. In fact, it was so high tech, we didn’t know which buttons to press other than the one used for flushing. Unlike any other country, going to the bathroom in a public space was a pleasure in Japan. They have managed to completely turn a potentially negative experience into a consistently positive one.
Highlights
We are definitely one family. Mei looks more like dad, but she shares many of the same habits as mom, including her taste in food. While Jie looks more like mom, she has many of the same habits as dad.
This was especially apparent in Kyoto, when Mom and Mei automatically wanted to eat sweet buns for breakfast, while Dad and Jie headed for a full Japanese meal of salted fish, rice and pickles. Luckily, it was easy to split up to eat our own breakfasts and everyone was happy.
Mei was excited to see the wild deer in Nara, which was about a 45 minute train ride from Kyoto. There were hundreds of deer roaming around freely in Nara. They looked like bambi, but they definitely were not well-behaved, and most certainly did not smell like flowers. Mei and Mom took out biscuits that they prepared to feed them, and the deer jumped and head butted each other to get to the biscuits. There was a funny incident when this happened to a petite looking Japanese lady, who kept on protesting, “Chotto mate!” as she tried to calm the aggressive, nose-butting deer to no avail. Mom put up her hands in surrender after two deers chased her down. These deer have seen one too many tourists!
At Shinjuku on the second night, we met up with our friends from grad school who are both living in Japan. Both traveled far to meet up with us at the hotel. Mei’s business school friend had funny stories to tell about her Japanese dog who gets letters from dog services that are formally addressed to his name. The dog also thought he was a human for the longest time because he didn’t have other dog friends and would be afraid to look in the mirror because he didn’t know what was in the reflection. Jie’s environmental school friend works for one of the top advertising agencies in Japan developing environmental campaigns for the government and must work really hard, because he regularly camps in his office overnight. Both friends gave good advice on where to visit in Kyoto including the Inari Temple and the Bamboo Groves.
Lastly, we had a very unique experience at Disney Sea, which is the more grown up part of the Disney empire, and the only such park in the entire world. Disney Sea is a nautical-themed park, and looks like a massive port with ships, trolleys and a volcano. For Mei, the most amusing part of the park was actually the crowd! We observed that many Japanese head to Disney Sea with their girlfriends / boyfriends or close buddies and agree to wear matching Disney outfits, including matching hairstyles and make-up. This spanned across age ranges, from teenage kids to parents. There was also a huge presence of ‘Duffy the bear’, which we later found out is Mickey’s stuffed bear who brings happiness and good luck wherever it goes.
Apparently, his popularity has far exceeded that of any other Disney character, because almost every person there had a stuffed Duffy bear under their arm or in the form of a pouch. Mei also thoroughly enjoyed the Disney gift shop as well as the Mickey-mouse shaped churros and popsicles.
Japan really is the poster child of “civil society” with a toilet culture far above and beyond any other one in the world. If we ever come back, Mei and Jei want to spend more time outside at night, because that seems to be when things start happening. We also want to do more shopping!
