Notes From A Far Country

Table Of Contents

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Introduction

The cultures of contemporary Japan and the United States of America look at each other fascinated, as they always have, across a vast and fundamental difference of perspective. The most fundamental difference I see is what each considers to be the cornerstone of its culture -- in America the priority of individual perogative and in Japan the value of tradition and the discrete behavior needed to live in extremely crowded cities. I believe the differences are precisely what makes each country and culture so intriguing to the people of the other. The misconceptions each creates and harbors about the other, the facile and gross over-simplifications each presumes about the other, and the cultural self-near-sightedness each maintains, even amid obsessive self-introspection, insures that their mutual study of each other will continue for a long time to come.

I have studied Japanese culture from afar for more than a decade. However, the more I research it and the people who comprise it both at home and abroad, the less certain I become of whatever conclusions I have achieved. It seems I am doomed to a lifelong struggle to understand a culture so basically different from my own that there will always be more unanswered questions than solid conclusions. But the investigation of those questions promises to be interesting and rewarding, while at the same time remaining unpredictable and probably often frustrating.

Nonetheless, this webpage contains insights and tips from my first visit to Japan. It was a five-week research trip taken in the spring of 2004, specifically April and early May. We arrived in time to catch the last of the cherry blossoms and left before the oppressive humid heat of early summer descended on the land. Hopefully the info on this webpage will be of some small value to you if you are considering a trip to Japan.

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Security In Japan

While Japan can be overwhelmingly intimidating with its plethora of foreign and unexpected sights, sounds, smells, locales and situations, I found the courtesy and polite behavior of the Japanese people insures a visitor's safety and well-being.

The people of Japan, individually and collectively, are intensely focused on insuring that their piece of the cultural machine works perfectly. A visiting tourist getting mugged would be an inexcusible affront to whichever person is responsible for the business, museum, temple, or other locale where the visitor was impaired or inconvenienced. Likewise, the person performing such an act would suffer universal condemnation by his fellow Japanese. Therefor, the population as a whole is working very hard to provide you a high degree of safety and convenience, to the limit of their abilities and reach of their responsibility. And that reach can be very impressive to someone not used to such a high level of dedication to insuring someone else is well cared for before you release your responsibility for them. (more on the service level this engenders is written below)

My initial impression of Japan and the Japanese people, compared to the cultures I've experienced while living and traveling in the USA & various European countries, coupled with the cultural exposure friends from Africa, Australia, and Asia have been kind enough to provide me on their homelands, was that Japan must be one of the most civilized countries in the world. While other countries I have visited, lived in, and had natives explain to me may offer relatively high levels of courtesy and longevity of cultural heritage & tradition, the absolute safety of an average American tourist wandering lost on virtually any street in the country does not match that of Japan. The exception would be perhaps some of the streets in the Japanese port cities, which can apparently be as rough as any other port city in the world. However, it is easy to avoid these rough areas during your travels in Japan.

Your role as the visiting tourist, in exchange for the high level of safety and courtesy you will be accorded, is to exercise a bit of restraint on your words and actions. Consider it a matter of matching in a small degree the circumspection of the local people. In Japan such restraint is the cornerstone of getting along in a very crowded country. I found that doing my best to mimic the voice levels and relatively restrained range of body motions of the people around me set a decent standard for not insulting their sensibilities, at least as much as I could perceive without understanding the Japanese language or the many subtle social rules by which the people there coexist.

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Service In Japan

As a tourist you will be expected to pay without visible consternation the relatively high prices for commodities and services that are the standard at businesses, museums, temples, and other locales throughout the country. But in return for paying that price, be prepared to experience a level of customer service so high that it is a mad dream for most American businesses and personnel. Much of the internal Japanese economy seems to be a service economy. The service providers in every locale we visited seem to take their role very, very seriously and work at it very conscientiously. To get a vague notion of this service level, imagine an entire country served by service counters like those once common in American neighborhood stores where the person behind the counter's sole purpose was to serve the customer facing them. I found Japan to be like that, only not just in stores. It was a service ethic operative in every shop, eatery, transit booth, tourist stop, taxi... Everywhere. It can be eerily spooky to have your momentary needs met by someone who appears to be ignoring you, if visible at all, but materializes with just what you want or need as if answering some unperceived signal.

The currency exchange rate while we were in Japan was about 100-110 yen per dollar. That translates to each yen being worth approximately 1 U.S. cent. This fact made it easy to translate prices posted in yen. We could simply disregard the last two digits of larger yen prices to get the price in dollars. Small amounts were easily transposed into their dollar equivalents by moving the decimal point a couple places to the left. Thus a 160 yen subway fare would be $1.60 in US dollars.

A study released during the month of June, 2004 named Tokyo as the "Most expensive city in the world in which to live", a somewhat dubious position it has occupied for a fair percentage of years since the 1980's. Osaka was also in the top five listing from that same study. So while you will be safe during your travels in Japan, your budget may be endangered by the prices you pay for goods and services. Expect it....It is one of the realities of travelling in Japan. Nonetheless, as outlined below there are some ways you can reduce your traveling expenses while visiting Japan.

• Get drinks from the ubiquitous sidewalk vending machines instead of dropping into restaurants, coffe shops, or bars when you get thirsty. We followed for the most part Evelyn Leeper's advice to get our drinks out of the sidewalk vending machines instead of restaurants or coffee shops when we were in Japan. The sidewalk vending machine prices were $1.20-$1.60 per can of juice, soda, or the half-liter size bottles of cold tea or water. Coffee shop or restaurant prices were about $3-$5 per drink. As Evelyn notes on her webpage, Japanese eateries typically provide a glass of water or, usually, a cup of tea with meals. See the Acknowledgments section for a link to Evelyn's excellent webpage journal of their trip to Japan.



• Instead of going to a restaurant, chow down in small neighborhood eateries specializing in noodles, bowls of rice with meat or fish on top called don-buri, bowls of soup, curry rice, or other workmen's meals. Surprisingly, we even discovered that sushi on its home turf can be cheaper than many of the other meals available.

  The plastic food in display cases often found outside such eateries shows you what to expect inside. It helps to know the name of some foods in Japanese, since the proprietor(ess) may only speak Japanese. A phrasebook can come in handy at times like this. In extreme cases it can be easiest to simply take the waiter outside and point to the item in the display case you want for your meal.

  By eating in these small and sometimes out-of-the-way shops you not only get some surprisingly good meals at more reasonable prices than charged by full-blown restaurants, you also get a chance to do a bit of circumspect observation of the Japanese people interacting with each other in a venue that is for them both familiar and casual. Don't worry, they'll be observing you too and perhaps wondering how you found your way to their particular neighborhood hangout.

  A word of warning for the first-time traveller in Japan: due to an obvious lack of governmental standards for such establishments and the fact that many of them seem under-illuminated by American standards, these little eateries can appear to be unsanitary upon casual observation. We found that appearance to be misleading. A lot of the proprietors' time is dedicated to wiping down surfaces and generally polishing up the typically tiny, by American standards, working area of the eatery.




• Bento box meals are Japan's version of fast food. They are an assortment of rice, pickled vegetables, and a vegetable, meat, or fish entree that was traditionally provided in a lightweight wooden box container. These days they come in plastic disposable boxes with see-through lids and are Japan's "grab and go" food.

  Like American fast food, we found them priced in the $3-$6 per meal range. Bento boxes are widely available at the 24-hour convenience stores (Lawson's, 7-11, and Circle-K were the ones we spotted most), as well as grocery stores. The convenience stores have microwave ovens to heat bento box meals that are to be eaten hot. Bento are considerably cheaper than a restaurant meal, but you need to find someplace to eat your bento box meal. Some of the larger convenience stores have seating areas where you can eat your meal. Of course, the smaller ones simply don't have space for such a luxury.




• In larger department stores you may discover two possible alternatives for eating at less than street restaurant prices. One is the basement grocery store. The other is an in-store restaurant for shoppers, as well as the walk-in public, that some department stores have on upper floors of their building.
  
  

  The department store basement grocery stores are built around the concept of service counters staffed by a veritable army of smiling and exquisitely courteous personnel. Many of the counters offer samples of whatever foodstuff they are selling. Be forewarned, to the uneducated some of the items are beyond guessing what they actually are, but proved pretty tasty nonetheless. If you ask, the staff will do their best to tell you what the food is. But due to lack of a comprehensive common language, the description often comes down to "It's part of a plant" or "It is a kind of fish". These rather sketchy descriptions do little to reassure a skeptical foreigner that the sample will suit his or her palate.

  You can almost make a complete meal by sampling your way around these grocery store premises, which can be surprisingly extensive for a country where many facilities are seriously small-scaled due to lack of physical space. We found that buying a few items at these basement grocery stores or simply grabbing one of the ubiquitous "to go" bento box lunches made for a pleasant picnic lunch or a quick easy meal to be eaten in our room with a cup of hot tea at the end of an over-scheduled day.
  
  

  The upstairs restaurants at the deparment stores had many of the trappings of a regular street-level restaurant, including very clean modern fixtures & seating and a staff of very efficient punctual waitstaff. But the prices seemed to be cheaper than their street-level equivalents by about one-third. Sometimes these in-store restaurants were cafeteria style and other times we ordered food at a counter, then the food was delivered to our table. Like the hole-in-the-wall smaller workmen's eateries, these restaurants had display cases with plastic food in them, often numbered for ordering convenience.




• Do laundry at your ryokan laundry facility instead of taking them to a laundry service. Many ryokan have a washing machine and dryer on site. Note that these are much smaller models than are typically found in an American home. A load of laundry in one of the Japanese machines would be a couple pair of men's slacks, a small handful of tee-shirts, plus some socks & underclothes. At the time we were in Japan, it cost around 300-400 yen (about $3-4 USD) to wash and dry a load of laundry at our ryokan.



• Use a Japan Railways (JR) Pass if your itinerary requires much inter-city travel. The JR Pass is similar to the Eurail Pass you may have used while traveling in Europe. The JR Pass is valid to ride on the trains, busses, and subways of the JR system. While the JR system is rather comprehensive, note that there are some regional and municipal trains, busses or subways in Japan on which the JR Pass does not work. The JR Pass is especially handy and thrifty for using the high-speed Shinkansen bullet trains to cover a lot of ground in a hurry if you are interested in seeing a number of widely seperated cities.



• Shop for souvenirs and gifts at flea markets. These informal gatherings are apparently a fixture in Japanese cities, since our Fodor's guidebook to Japan described the time and place for several of them. There you can see offered an astonishing array of items ranging from ordinary everyday housewares in brand new through rather well worn condition to mind-bogglingly exotic items that escape identification. The flea markets that occured during our visit were recurring monthly events usually held in the courtyards of temples at a fixed date (the 15th day of the month, maybe) or repeating time (3rd Saturday of each month, for example). This makes sense in that the temple courtyards are one of few public venues in a very crowded country that are large enough to accomodate several hundred stalls of a few square meters each.

  If the flea market we attended in Kyoto was at all typical, food to take home or prepared dishes to munch while strolling through the maze of stalls is common at these concentrations of mayhem. I found that following my nose was usually reliable for locating the food vendors. These markets can be a place to find items that are uniquely Japanese at bargain prices, if you happen to spot a particular item you are seeking. However, some of the prices seemed pretty much on par with street vendors for similar items, which these people may have been when not set up at a flea market.

  Even if you don't spot an irresistible treasure among the myriad offerings spread out on tables and blankets, these markets can be a fun browse or an amusing way to occupy a few open hours on your schedule. They also offer a venue to observe the people socializing in a casual setting outside the normally very strict rules governing respective roles and behaviors when Japanese people meet.

  Virtually none of the stores and vendors in Japan haggle with customers over prices. I think such an activity would be much too directly confrontational and free-form for a culture ruled by rather rigid tacit social decrees dictating courtesy and civility at all times. I found the flea markets to be an exception to the fixed price mindset. I hardly speak the Japanese language at all, let alone well enough to try bargaining with the stall owners. But if I picked an item up a few times to inspect it closely and didn't seem inclined to buy (not that I could say "This is interesting, but no thank you" intelligibly to the stall vendor), the vendor would sometimes indicate that the price could go lower. At least that was the case at the end of the day toward pack-up time when we were there. Or, if I did buy some wares, they would slip an extra little item into the bag with what I had purchased. I guess that was a "thank you" for saving them the hassle of packing up and hauling home the item I'd bought, which I would subsequently pack up and haul home.

  The flea markets are usually well-noted in English and other foreign language newspapers for visitors and the ex-pats living in Japan. From what I've read on the web, they are popular as a way for ex-pats to equip housing cheaper than shopping at department stores or other retailers of new products. So the periodicals catering to in-country foreigners conscientiously inform their target audience of the times & locations for the flea markets. If you don't have access to such a newspaper or if the markets aren't covered in your guidebooks, check with the staff at your hotel, ryokan (bed & breakfast inn), or hostel to see if they have any info on the "who, what, when, where" of upcoming local flea markets.

I found the Japanese populace was uniformly polite and courteous to me, even when confronted by a sometimes distraught tourist who seemed capable of saying litte more than "Good Morning", "Thank you so very much", and repeating in a terrible accent the name of some place he was trying to reach. Five weeks of travel through the country, watching Japanese people interact without being distracted by an understanding of their language, convinced me even more of the high level of courtesy and civility maintained by the Japanese people.

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Getting Around: Trains & Ticketing

We found that Japanese cities have extremely well developed and coordinated public transit systems. The punctuality of Japanese trains, subways, and buses was a study in precise timing. This is especially imperative in cities like Tokyo, where there are 12 million people and not enough driving and parking space for every family to have an automobile. My impression is that a huge percentage of urban populaces used public transit for all their daily travelling.

Consequently, the coverage of these transit systems is extensive & comprehensive, arrivals & departures at each station are frequent, and the price is kept affordable for even those working at much less than average wages. In fact, public transit was one of the better bargains we found among the typically expensive prices we paid for goods and services in Japan. Our subway and local train journeys in the Tokyo area usually cost from $1.60 to about $3.50 one-way per-person.

The exception to this affordability of travel was the Shinkansen bullet trains. They were relatively expensive. I recall the trip from Tokyo to Kyoto on a Shinkansen train costing about $230 one-way per person when we were there. This is why a JR Pass is so highly recommended if you need to travel quickly between cities or areas on the Shinkansen. A JR Pass that costs more than $500 may seem expensive on initial inspection. But its cost becomes reasonable if you need to take long-haul Shinkansen trips to keep your itinerary on schedule. It can save you more money if you then use it to ride local urban transit like the JR trains or subways that service Tokyo.

To get a JR Pass is a two-step procedure.

• The first step is to get a JR Pass assigned to you before you depart for Japan. As part of this assignment of the pass, JR sends an Exchange Form (outlined below) to your home address. Check with your travel agent to determine how long before your trip you need to order a JR Pass to insure that the form will reach you before your departure date.
• The second step is to exchange that form for the actual JR Pass when you are in Japan.

When you buy and order your JR Pass, a filled out Exchange Order Form from the JR system is sent to you. This form is JR saying that you are a person permitted to possess a JR Pass. The JR Pass is a device to entice foreigners to visit Japan. Local Japanese people aren't allowed to use them. Whenever you want to put the JR Pass into effect after you arrive in Japan, you turn in the Exchange Order Form for the actual JR Pass at a train station. The date on which you exchange your Exchange Order Form for the actual JR Pass can be the "start date" for your pass's timeblock (7, 14, or 21 days) or you can specify a later starting date on which the pass will take effect.

Not all train stations can do this exchange for you, especially those in small rural locations. But it should be easily accomplished at primary train stations in major cities and those at large airports. The following webpage lists the stations that can do the exchange for you and their hours of operation: http://www.japanrailpass.net/eng/en07.html

If you have a valid JR Pass, you can use it to ride on trains, subways, or buses that are part of the JR system. To enter the platform areas controlled by automated gates (as outlined below) via your JR Pass, you will go through the staffed window queue at the station instead of through the automated gates. Show the attendant at the window your JR Pass. They will manually open the gate for you to pass through or simply wave you through if there is no gate at the staffed window. At the terminus of your trip, you again show your JR Pass to an attendant at a staffed window in the exit area of the station.

This can be a problem at small stations that don't have staffed windows. If you start your trip from such a station, you will have to buy a ticket instead of using your JR Pass. If you end your trip at such a station with only your JR Pass in hand, instead of a paper ticket to feed the machine, you will have to jump over or duck under the gate to exit the system.

A quick word about train and subway tickets. If you do not have a JR Pass, you will need to buy a ticket to ride on trains or subways. You can get these tickets from vending machines or staffed windows at train or subways stations. Some stations only have the vending machines, which take both coins and bills. Picture of a ticket vending machine courtesy of nihongo.human.metro-u.ac.jp website.

After getting your ticket, to get to the platform area of the station for boarding a train or subway you pass through an automated gate with two slots in it. There is a picture of these gates here. In the picture here is shown a bit better the slots for the ticketing process described below.

As you enter the gateway, you insert your ticket into the slot at the front of the gate. This slot is usually at or near the top of the short post supporting the front of the gateway. There is a rather prominent arrow showing where to insert your ticket. Watch other travelers to see where they insert their tickets, if you are in doubt on this process. When you insert your ticket, the machine grabs it and pops it up at the second slot, which is placed beyond the gating device itself. The gate will drop when the machine pops up your ticket. Walk through the gate and grab your ticket from the second slot as you pass through the gate.

DO NOT FORGET TO GRAB YOUR TICKET!! You will need it at the end of your ride to exit the system. To insure that I didn't lose track of my ticket, after grabbing it from the second slot in the gate, I always placed it in the same pocket every time I used a ticket to ride on the trains or subways. That way I knew exactly where to reach for it in the typically mad rush to clear the gates at the end of the ride. I kept it in a pocket with loose coins, so it was the easily identified and grabbed at the end of my ride because it was the only paper item in that pocket.

As you exit the platform area at the end station of your trip, you again feed the ticket into a slot at the front of an automated gateway. This time, however, the machine does not pop up the ticket. Instead it displays "Thank You" on the small LCD screen next to the slot where you inserted your ticket, and drops the gate so you can exit the platform area.

If the exit machine beeps and does not drop the gate, there is some sort of problem with the ticket. When it beeps, the machine will pop your ticket back out of the slot into which you inserted it. Usually such a rejection of the ticket by an exit gate means that you travelled further than the price of your ticket allowed.

Not to worry, there are adjustment machines located near the exit gateways where you can fix the problem. At the adjustment machine, you insert your rejected ticket and the display screen will tell you how much more money is needed to cover the extra cost of the trip you have taken. You feed that amount of money into the adjustment machine and it spits out a new ticket. You then feed the new ticket into the exit automated gate and go on your way when it drops the gate.

NOTE: When a sign in a Japanese train station says "Line" it means what in English we would call a "Route". In American railroad terminology, the term "Line" is often used to denote seperate rail or transportation companies, as in the Burlington Northern Railroad Line being a seperate company (with seperate routes) from the Union Pacific Railroad Line. But when the sign in the Tokyo train station says "Shinjuku Line" or "Ginza Line" it is merely denoting different routes travelled by trains that are part of the same company and system, i.e. JR trains.

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A Rule For Travelling In Japan

There are many, many subtle and often not-very-obvious rules for conducting oneself properly in Japanese society. I do not know the vast majority of them. However, the following rule served me well during my stay.

"Just keep bowing."

The Japanese don't shake hands as a standard practice, nor in general ever touch each other in what we Americans would consider a casual social gesture. Instead of shaking hands, they bow to each other. When you meet anyone, bow to them. It is a standard and customary part of Japanese greetings. Likewise, when you are taking leave of someone, bow goodbye to them.

After about a week, it became automatic and normal for me to bow at the beginning and end of any interaction I had with anyone, especially when I was telling them "Thank You" for helping me navigate through their city or neighborhood. I may have bowed more than I needed to, but I doubt it. I was simply following as best I could the mannerism I noted in the native populace. When simply saying "Good morning" to someone on the street, the bow might be as small as a nod of the head. When greeting someone deserving more respect, traditionally your elders or someone of higher social standing, or when expressing gratitude to someone who has done you a favor the bow becomes deeper and more formal by bending from the waist.

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Removing Your Shoes

It is customary to remove your shoes when entering a Japanese home, Bed & Breakfast, the interior of many temples & shrines, certain parts of some businesses (the staff will alert you to take off your shoes if this is the case), and always when you enter an area covered with the rush-covered tatami mats.

Do not walk on tatami mats with shoes! The sharp edges of a shoe or slipper sole can damage or eventually break the woven rush covering of a tatami mat. Walk on the tatami mats only barefoot or stocking footed. In a Japanese home and often in the ryokan inns, when you take off your shoes at the front door there will be house slippers to slip on. You take the slippers off and leave them outside the door to a room, if that room has tatami mats on the floor.

Note: There are seperate slippers used inside the room where the toilet is located. So you may be wearing house slippers down the hallway to get to the toilet but, when you open the toilet room door, there will be another set of slippers just inside the door. Step out of your hallway slippers and into the toilet slippers as you step into the toilet room. As you leave the toilet room, step out of the toilet slippers and back into your hallway slippers. This slipper exchange becomes pretty automatic after a few iterations. All these slipper changes makes it clear that the slipper manufacturers' bund in Japan must be very powerful.

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The Japanese Bath Experience

The Japanese use their baths (called furo or o-furo) for soaking, not cleaning their bodies. The cleaning is done beforehand with a shower. Also, the water in a Japanese soaking bath is typically warmer than Americans are used to. It can sometimes be very hot! The soaking tub is deeper than an American bathtub and can be big enough for anywhere from a single person up to fifty or more. The larger baths are usually public baths or resort spas. The Japanese people seem to be especially fond of soaking in mineral-rich waters at hot spring resorts called onsen. If the soaking tub is outside, it can be called a rotemburo.

Note that in Japan it is considered normal for naked strangers to share the soaking tub. Depending on your prior experiences, it may feel a bit disconcerting at first. However, if you are a member of a health or fitness club in the USA you probably already share communal locker-rooms and showers with strangers. In Japanese baths, shared showering and soaking is very much the same. Also note that most Japanese baths are segregated; women and men have seperate showering rooms and seperate soaking tubs. Some of the onsen are co-ed and a family may share the soaking tub together.

So here's how the process of a Japanese bath works:

In the room where you first take off your clothes, besides the shelves on which people store their clothes while they are in the bath, will be a stack of towels and a stack of tenegui. A tenegui is a lightweight cotton towel/washcloth, often of thin terrycloth fabric, that is six to ten inches wide and about twenty inches long. After shedding your clothes, take a tenegui and head for the showering room.

The shower room in a typical Japanese bath will have a handheld showerhead on a hose, a small stool, a handheld washbasin that holds maybe a gallon of water, and, at an onsen or public bath, there will also be a bottle of body soap and a bottle of shampoo. You sit on the short stool and use the showerhead to wet yourself down, then do your usual shampooing, soaping and scrubbing. You use the tenegui as you would a washcloth. After rinsing off with the showerhead, you can fill the washbasin with water from the soaking tub, if it's in the same room as the shower, and pour it over your body to somewhat pre-condition your skin for the hotness of the soaking tub to come. Then ease into the soaking tub, lay back, let the heat from the water soak into you, and relax. If the soaking tub is in a different room than the shower, after your shower you use your tenegui to cover yourself (whichever parts you choose) as you walk from the shower room to the soaking tub room. It is typical to not shower after soaking in the tub. The belief is that minerals in the soaking water are good for you. After soaking in the tub, you use a towel in the clothes changing room to dry yourself before dressing again for the street.

In a hotel or inn, the towel and tenegui will often be in your room, along with a yukata to wear to and from the bath. A yukata is a light cotton casual kimono that both men and women wear. While their more common usage is for the bath, you will occasionally see yukata worn on the street in warm weather when their cool breeziness is appreciated. This is especially true in the more casual atmosphere of hot-spring resort towns. Visitors in such towns may be seen strolling in the refreshing evening cool after a hot soak at their onsen hotel. The yukata or perhaps the happi coats that are sometimes worn over yukata may bear the crest (kamon) of the hotel or onsen where the visitor is staying. Thus the guests beome mobile advertising for the hotel.

Note that yukata, like other kimono, don't have buttons or zippers or other fasteners. They close like a typical western bathrobe. You stick your arms through the sleeves, wrap the garment around your body overlapping the yukata in front, and tie it in place with a belt called an obi. Sometimes the obi are very long. In that case you wrap it around yourself twice or more until your run out of belt, then tie the obi off with a knot. While yukata obi are typically woven of cotton and are a couple inches wide, the term "obi" is also used for much wider (approx 10-12 inch) sashes used to fasten more formal kimonos.

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Lodging: Ryokan Inns

With the exception of one night, we slept on futon mattresses placed atop the tatami mats of our room. On top of the futons were feather comforters and pillows. Sometimes the pillows were much like western feather pillows, albeit smaller in size, and other times they were buckwheat hull filled pillows. The buckwheat hull pillows seem to be pretty common in Japan. In the morning, to create space for dressing and laying out our gear for the day's outing, we would fold the futons into thirds against one wall of the room, place the folded comforters on top of the futons, then top the stack with the pillows. Each day the ryokan staff comes through the rooms to spread out the futons again and put on fresh linens. They also refill the air-pot with hot water and put out tea bags along with clean cups so you can have hot tea when you return to your room in the evening

All of the ryokan we stayed at are members of the Japanese Inn Group. The Japanese Inn Group website is at http://www.jpinn.com/list/japan.html. From their website you can get each ryokan's prices, location, phone & email contact info, what amenities they offer, etc. These ryokan proved to be a good source for maps and other info on the local area's cultural and tourist attractions, rail & bus lines, parks & paths, and sometimes stores & eateries. They typically had flyers & pamphlets from local museums, English-speaking walking tour guides, craftsmen, transportation & tour companies, shops & stores, and hostels & hotels in neighboring areas. Besides the printed materials available, one of the best features is the proprietor(ess)'s knowledge of nearby attractions, shops, and eateries.

Note that ryokan will often have a curfew hour at which time the front door is locked. So be sure you get back before they lock the door. The curfew for most of the ryokan where we stayed was in the 11:00 p.m. timeframe. However, if you are going to be out later than the lock-up time, it was usually possible to make some sort of accomodation with the proprietor to get in when you return.

The latest check-out time allowed in the morning for most of the ryokan was 10:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. started the check-in time period. The hours between 10:00 and 3:00 were used by the staff to service the rooms. As a courtesy to the staff, try to be out of your room during those hours as much as you can.

Below are the ryokans that we stayed at, in chronological order, while travelling in Japan. Some impressions and comments on each one follow their name, address, and telephone information.

Narita

In several ways, this was our favorite ryokan. It was quite convenient to reach. From Narita International Airport take the train to Narita city JR Station. It was the first stop from the airport when we were there. The proprietors of Ryokan Ohgiya provided shuttle service to and from the Narita JR train station for us. Over-all we felt warmly welcomed by the hospitality that the staff here extended to us. They also shipped a box (about 16"x16"x24") for us to Tokyo via the Japanese equivalent of UPS or Fedex from their location for around ten dollars.

Ryokan Ohgiya had a pretty consistently traditional feel to it, from the genkan entrance where you remove your shoes to the small engawa (veranda) at the back of the tatami & shoji room we stayed in the one night we were in Narita. Some later ryokan we stayed at mixed these traditional elements and more modern decor pretty freely.

Ohgiya gets bonus points for having a restaurant on the premises that served an excellent dinner and Japanese breakfast. They also had a Japanese soaking bath (furo), which is something that we did not find at all ryokans.

Well worth seeing in Narita is the Buddhist temple that is about a ten minute walk from Ryokan Ohgiya. There are several large buildings on its extensive grounds besides a pagoda, memorial wall, and other smaller subsidiary buildings scattered around the grounds. The picture of the shrine with the red-and-white rope at the top of the page was taken on the grounds of the Narita temple. We also found the garden at the temple to be a soothing place to stroll.

Nikko

We liked this little ryokan a good deal. Its location next to the river gave us the sound of water tumbling over stone to lull us to sleep each night. The proprietors were very nice and helpful in giving us information on getting to the shrine where Ieyasu Tokugawa is buried. Tokugawa was the warlord who first unified Japan completely. The shrine where he is buried is the main tourist attraction in the town.

If you visit Nikko, try to set aside a couple of hours to visit the Tamozawa Imperial Villa. It is one of two imperial villas, along with the one in Numazu, that we visited. In these villas you could walk the halls and really see into the rooms. In contrast, the Imperial Palaces in Kyoto and Tokyo don't allow you to see much of the interiors of the buildings. They restrict you rather to walking through some of the courtyards and garden areas. By contrast, in the villas you can see the room layouts and accessories as they were when the Emperors lived there. Thus you get to see some of the epitome of Japanese craftsmanship and design, since the Emperor was surrounded with only the very best.

Be forewarned: Nikko is a pretty remote rural area and after 5:00 p.m. finding a meal at a restaurant in the Nikko area proved to be a problem when we were there. This may have been a problem unique to the upper part of town (near Turtle Inn and the nearby Tokugawa shrine) that didn't exist in the area around the train station, which is a mile or more hike down the highway that serves as the main street through the town. Many of the bigger hotels near the shrine seemed to have dining rooms that serviced their guests, but those facilities weren't open to the walk-in public. If you don't take advantage of the evening meal offered by the Turtle Inn staff and are dependent on a public eatery, get yourself fed before the 5:00 p.m. closing hour of the restaurants.

Kyoto, east side

Tucked away on a back street, this ryokan is handy to the east side attractions of Kyoto. Sanju-sangendo Temple with its 1,000 statues of the Buddha is a couple blocks east of the ryokan. The Kyoto National Museum is a block or so east of the temple and likewise a short walk. It's about a two block walk from the ryokan to the west to reach the Shichijo subway stop on the Keihan subway line. The Keihan line gives you access to Kyoto's traditional shopping, geisha, & kabuki theater district of Gion, just a bit to the north of the Ohto's location, and other points further north. On Shichijo-dori you can catch a bus headed for Gion and other attractions along Higashioji-dori (the main north-south thoroughfare through the eastern section of Kyoto).

It was here that I met Michael Hart of Esprit Travel (see Acknowledgements & Links section). We noted him several times in subsequent days headed out with his group to see the sights around Kyoto. One of the nice things about being a foreign visitor to Kyoto is that there seems to be few enough such visitors that, if you stay there for a couple weeks as we did, you learn to almost recognize some of the other foreigners. While visiting a temple or castle you may suddenly be struck with the fact that you saw the person or couple or group in front of you at some other location around town. Or you may bump into someone you know is staying at the same ryokan as you are. This is definitely not the case in Tokyo.

Kyoto, central area

The Murakamiya proved to be a short couple-block jaunt from Kyoto's main railway & bus station. Kyoto's main Post Office is located on one side of the plaza in front of the train station. This makes Ryokan Murakamiya a handy location if you have packages to send back stateside. From the main station, we took subways, buses, or trains for our daytrips, including some trips back to destinations on the east side of the Kamogawa, the river that seperates eastern Kyoto from the central and western districts. Close to the Murakamiya and the train station you will find eateries & bars, 24-hour convenience stores (these are a great place to grab a quick bite to eat and are Godsends to travellers), coffee shops, and department stores (called depato). There is also a large underground shopping mall called Porto that spreads out like a maze under the above-ground plaza and bus stops in front of the train station.

If you walk pretty much straight west from Murakamiya for a couple blocks, you arrive at the large Higashi-Honganji temple complex that lies directly north of the train station and the modernistic Kyoto Tower. From there, it is another few blocks further west to the Nishi-Honganji temple which is a bit smaller, but still impressive.

Beppu, Kyushu Island

On the southern Japanese island of Kyushu, the Minshuku Kokage ryokan is located very close to the JR train station in the hot-spring resort town of Beppu. It is only about a block-and-a-half walk from the JR train station to the ryokan. One of the nice things about Minshuku Kokage was that it had an indoor hot-spring soaking tub that was big enough for probably six people. Besides its many hot-springs, Beppu is known for its bamboo crafts. There are two museums in town displaying amazing artistry and craftsmanship in this versatile material, as well as shops along the streets specializing in bamboo wares.

Nagoya

For our one night in Nagoya, we stayed at the Ryokan Meiryu. It is a bit more difficult to reach than some of the other ryokan we stayed at in other cities. To get there requires that you switch trains (subways) to get there from the main Nagoya train station. Considering that we came to Nagoya from the extremely short walk to the JR station at Beppu, we may have simply been spoiled by our recent experience. We arrived at Meiryu too late in the evening to be seated for dinner, but the aromas wafting out of the dining room just off the foyer smelled really good. We did, however, get a very tasty Japanese style breakfast there the following morning for a nominal fee.

Shinya Yamada was tending the reservation counter while we were staying at the Ryokan Meiryu. Shinya spoke some of the best English I heard while in Japan, was super-friendly and proved helpful about getting us info on what to see around Nagoya and how to get there. He not only had a copy of the Japanese Rail (JR) train schedule book, he knew rock-solid how to get accurate train scheduling information from it, better than even some of the JR personnel. I also believe he was the person providing excellent email coordination of reservations before our trip started. Shinya was really a top-notch young man to deal with all around. If you are staying in Nagoya, he goes a long way in making the Ryokan Meiryu your lodging of choice.

As a word of warning, the people in Nagoya train station walk VERY quick and briskly. These are people in a hurry and, if you try to stroll along too leisurely, the flood of scurrying Nagoyans will sweep you up and along with them at their pace.

Besides seeing the Nagoya Castle of the shogun, we followed a recommendation to see the Tokugawa Museum which houses an astonishly beautiful collection of artifacts from the local branch of the Tokugawa family that held the shogunate for several centuries. The level of artistry shown in the museum's collection is beyond belief until you see it.

Tokyo

We stayed longer at the Ryokan Katsutaro than anywhere else. It is about a ten to fifteen minute walk to either the Ueno or Nippori train stations in northern Tokyo. From Ueno it is a very brief train ride to the shopping mecca of Asakusa. Since Katsutaro is close to Ueno Park, it is close to the Tokyo National Museum, which houses a very high-quality collection of artifacts and world-class examples of Japanese craftsmanship in many arts.

The proprietoress of Katsutaro and her son provided a welcoming atmosphere at this cozy little inn. While meals weren't offered at this ryokan, there was internet access available to the guests which was something not all ryokan provided. There was a convenience store across the street which was handy for grabbing a quick bite on our way home at night. It was only open from 7am-11pm, instead of 24-hour like many other such convenience stores. However, those hours proved sufficient to meet most of our needs. There are a fair selection of shops, including eateries, a few blocks away from Katsutaro on Kototoi-dori street. But many of them keep to the Japanese schedule of opening about mid-morning and closing down around 5pm.

There is a branch Post Office from which you can ship packages & boxes back stateside within about a mile of Ryokan Katsutaro. Be forewarned, shipping from Japan to the USA is a relatively expensive proposition. Be sure to check rates and amounts before shipping. That said, we had nothing get broken in any of the packages that we had personnel at Japanese businesses or museums pack up for us (nor in our self-packed boxes either) during shipment back to the USA.

Fuji Lakes, Kawaguchi-ko

We had just one night in the Mount Fuji lakes area and stayed at the Petit Hotel Ebisuya. The Ebisuya is located across the parking lot from the Kawaguchi-ko JR train station and local bus station. It was super handy in the morning to walk less than a minute to catch the bus to Mt Fuji 5th Station, which is a bus turn-around about one-third of the way up Mt Fuji. Ebisuya gets bonus points for having breakfast available on premises.

We stayed here during Golden Week, so there were tons of people everywhere. Golden Week is a Japanese holiday held during the first week of May that is like the USA's Memorial Day, Labor Day, and Thanksgiving all rolled into one. During that week, many businesses simply shut down and most everybody tries to travel to somewhere else in the country during their time off. Consequently, transportation systems are jam-packed full.

Hakone

This ryokan was the hardest one for us to reach, but proved worth the effort in the end. It took us a full day's travel to get there, switching buses several times as we circumnavigated Mt Fuji from Kawaguchi-ko on the north side of the mountain to Hakone on the south side. In the Hakone region there are several tourist attractions, besides the spectacle of Mt Fuji itself.

There were two young ladies, perhaps in their early twenties, who spoke excellent English staffing the reservation desk when we arrived. After a couple days we found ourselves in the care of a lady who spoke less English and I was grateful to be travelling with a native speaker of Japanese. However, the service was always top-notch; courteous, helpful, and sincere. Likewise, the traditional-style breakfasts served were always a welcome start to our day. The staff's recommendations for museums, gardens, and other attractions helped make our three-day stay in this area fun and interesting.

The Fuji-Hakone Guest House is located relatively far away from major population centers. When we left this ryokan, it took about an hour to reach Odawara on a bus that was otherwise full of schoolkids in uniforms, happily chattering away. The bus ride was down a sheer-sided mountain road, so boredom wasn't a problem, although the kids blithely ignored the steep terrain we were riding through. Since they probably rode this route to school every day, it was no doubt passé to them. In Odawara we caught a Shinkansen back to Tokyo.

Fuji-Hakone Guest House gets bonus points for having a rotemburo (outside hot soaking bath) at their location. One of the magic moments of our trip was sitting in their rotemburo up to my neck in hot steaming water, watching and feeling cold spring rain landing on my head and bouncing & dancing among the ghostly steamy vapors rising off the surface of the water.

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The Language Barrier

Speaking any language other than their native tongue seems to be a relative rarity among the Japanese, especially the older generations. I have heard that studying English is now a standard subject in Japanese schools, so many of the younger people should have a rudimentary handle on the English language. Anecdotal reports are that the English studied is written, not spoken, so conversation may still be an uncomfortable situation for these students. Nonetheless, you can spot some delightfully fractured usage of English words in the naming and marketing of Japanese businesses and products.

If you don't speak Japanese, getting around and getting by will require some extra perserverance and patience on your part. In your daily dealings with vendors and people on the street, the lack of a common language will have to be compensated for with an extra dose of flexibility and willingness to adapt. This is no different than travelling in any country where you don't speak the local language.

In larger cities the signs at train stations are written in both Japanese and English. So finding the correct platform is usually not too difficult. Rural train stations often do not have the English lettering on their interior or platform signs. So travelling outside the cities, it may be necessary to listen carefully to the train conductor's announcements of the upcoming stop to see if you can decipher the stop's name and, if not, to start querying your fellow passengers if the next stop is the one you want. I found that simply saying the name of my desired stop as a question (with rising infection at the end) was usually enough to either get a "Hai!" (yes) or not. If it wasn't a "Hai", I assumed it wasn't my stop.

One of the most consistently English-speaking groups I found in Japan were the personnel manning the Japan Railways (JR) ticket turnstiles in urban train stations. If I showed them my ticket they would quickly state the time and track from which the train would leave, sometimes pointing in the direction of the platform or at the stairway leading to that track. I think their rather perfunctory manner is understandable. With many thousands of commuters streaming through their station each day, there is very little time to give each traveller who might need help or directions.

However, whenever we saw someone having confusion or trouble with their ticket or with the gates to the platform areas, it was typical to have two or three JR staffers converge on the problem area immediately and start scrambling to clear up the trouble as quickly as possible. Keeping the flow of commuters smooth is obviously high priority in a system that handles such a mass of humanity every day.

While some of the JR personnel selling tickets at the ticket office counters spoke English, they didn't speak it as consistently as the guys manning the ticket turnstiles. I suspect this is because it takes more information exchange to buy a ticket from them than simply getting the time & track information at the turnstile. Some of the automated ticket-vending machines for trains and subways had an English language option available on their touch-screen displays, but others did not.

As for prices and money, given the magnitude of the language barrier I discovered, I agree with Evelyn Leeper's suggestion to at least learn to read numbers in Japanese kanji. In larger cities, most stores, shops, and vendor stalls have prices marked in roman numerals as used in the USA and Europe, as well as in kanji. In more remote locales, many vendors had their prices marked only in kanji. The way shopkeepers I dealt with get around the language barrier is that they tally up your sale on a calculator that displays large roman numerals, then hold the calculator up so you can read the total amount of the sale.

I also recommend getting a basic Japanese language phrase book and studying it. Even better would be taking some Conversational Japanese language lessons with a teacher. Being able to say more than "Good morning" and "Thank you" would have helped my navigation a great deal. Japan is a country where you cannot count on the people to speak any but their native language. Be deeply grateful to those Japanese you meet who do speak English or other European languages. Those people have gone through the difficult process of learning the aspects of a language (alphabet, words, phrases, & grammar) that is vastly different from their own.

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Of Drivers, Streets, & Houses

From what I have read and can surmise, even the Japanese themselves have troubles navigating their cities and neighborhoods. So don't feel bad as a visitor if you get lost on your way to your destination. One of the anecdotal stories I heard on Japanese house numbering was that the first house built on a street would be numbered "1", the second "2", the third "3", and so on, regardless of their proximity to each other. Consequently, the street's house numbers would not be sequential along the physical layout of the street. This would obviously make it very difficult to locate a given house location, even if you knew the house number.

Consequently, a Japanese host will often meet his guest in person at the nearest train station, rather than give directions to his house. Also note that being invited into a Japanese home is a relative rarity. Available physical space per person in Japan is incredibly small compared to most other developed countries. Thus, the privacy provided by their apartment or house is sacrosanct to a Japanese family. Inviting a guest into that personal space temporarily destroys the essential privacy it affords them and so is not done lightly. Thus, if you are invited into a Japanese home, treat the occasion with due respect and regard. The family has given you access to a rare and treasured commodity, their private space. This explains why entertaining of guests visiting Japan takes place at restaurants, eateries, or hotel facilities.

Another navigation confusion arises from the fact that many Japanese cities and neighborhoods seem to have been laid out when traffic consisted of pedestrians and horse carts following the paths of least resistance. Evidence indicates that this hap-hazard layout is preferred by the populace, because even sections of cities that were completely destroyed by bombing in the 1940's, and were thereby prime candidates to be rebuilt on a grid layout, were nonetheless rebuilt in an amazingly tangled hodge-podge of miniscule streets and alleyways. These mazes of tiny byways easily confound a casual visitor, but simultaneously provide that visitor with some of the most quaint vignettes you will come upon while travelling in Japan. Keep your eyes open for the unexpected beauty you will stumble across, your lookout sharp for often obscure orientational landmarks, and your sense of humor, plus lots of patience, handy when travelling in Japan.

The good news is that are aids that can benefit your navigation attempts:

• The courteous desire of just about anyone you meet on the street to assist you on your way in whatever manner they can provide.
  
• The neighborhood police sub-stations called koban. The koban are marked with a blue sign outside each one and are often small hut-like structures. There is almost always a koban within close proximity of the neighborhood train or subway station. If you can't spot one, simply ask a passerby on the street, "Koban?" and they will usually point you in the direction of the nearest koban that they know of. Each koban has maps of the surrounding neighborhood. The police staffing it have, as their primary purpose in life it seems at times, the responsibility to provide directions to people who are confused about how to reach a destination in that koban's area. I found the police on duty in most residential koban, like many other Japanese, didn't speak any language but Japanese. Near some of the major tourist destinations, I found a few of the police who spoke a bit of English. But don't count on it.
• The easy availability at ryokan and tourist information offices of English language maps with tourist attractions prominently marked. While these maps make it easy to guess in which part of town your goal is located, it doesn't necessarily make it easy to get there, since street signs in English are rare.
• Most guidebooks try to be accurate describing how to reach the sites they discuss. We had good luck with the guidebooks that we brought from the United States and with those we picked up while in Japan.

Perhaps because driving is a relatively new activity to the Japanese, as it is to the rest of the world, driving is an activity where the usual cultural imperatives of restraint don't apply. Without a few centuries in which to develop and codify rules for how Japanese drivers are supposed to conduct themselves, this activity appears to provide a rather rare opportunity for personal expression in a country noted for its lack thereof. It is apparently the norm for a Japanese driver to have his or her foot on the floor, either stomping on the accelerator or the tromping the brake to its maximum limit. These bursts of wild acceleration along extremely narrow byways, punctuated with interspersed decelerations that approximate the G-forces of reentry from outer space, make for quite an interesting ride.

Some of the taxi drivers in cities seem to be the ultimate practitioners of this kamikaze driving style. Which is strange because of the disparities between his appearance and behavior. As your taxi driver is barreling along some barely-one-lane-wide backstreet cluttered and crowded with motor scooters, pedestrians with shopping bags, bicycles, trucks (lorries), curbsigns of streetside businesses, motorcycles weaving through it all, and oncoming automobile traffic approaching with equal abandon in a space wherein there are seemingly no spots wide enough to accomodate everyone, your brain as a passenger is trying to simultaneously reconcile your driver's impeccably uniformed professionalism, right down to his spotless white gloves and immaculately polished car, and calm unruffled chatter with his apparent flippant disregard for both his own life and yours in the midst of a maelstrom of careening traffic. The instantaneous impression is that no one will survive what is happening. Then, just as it seems everyone within a half-mile radius will be involved in a collision of truly epic proportions, an imperceptibly small passage through this melee of impending doom magically appears through which each car, truck, two-wheeler, and pedestrian individually and safely slips to proceed on their way as if no danger ever existed. Viewing the scenario from only its initiating and terminating conditions, no danger is apparent. It is as if the impending danger has somehow been averaged out over time into insignificance. However, don't tell that to the taxi passenger in the midst of it all.

By initial appearance, Japan should be a continuous automotive collision scene from one end of the country to the other. How this is so consistently avoided I attribute to magic as the only logical explanation.

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The Loadout - Clothing & Gear

The War-Horses

#1 -- Camelbak Blowfish pack

This sturdy pack saw all-day every-day use for the five weeks we were in Japan. The Blowfish is an older model from Camelbak that has 520 cubic inches of storage in its main compartment and two outer pockets, plus a sleeve compartment for a hydration bladder inside the padding that fits against your back. I removed the hydration bladder and left it at home during our Japan trip. The size of the pack proved to be big enough (barely) for my daily load-out of equipment and gear, but still had a small enough footprint to not be too terribly obtrusive when I rode with it on my lap in taxis or when standing with it on my back amidst the riders on crowded trains or subways.

I found the Blowfish main compartment to be a good size to stash the equipment I deemed necessary for each day. That usually included a lightweight coated-nylon rain jacket with hood wadded into its pocket self-forming stuff bag, Fodor's Japan guidebook (bulky but very handy....in retrospect, photocopies of just the pages needed for each day would be the way to go), my camera (#2 below), a half-liter bottle or two of cold tea from a vending machine, my polarfleece vest if I shucked it off as the day warmed up, and a bit of lunch or munchies I could eat on-the-go to stave off energy drain if we didn't take the time to eat a sit-down meal.

I also stashed in the main compartment any purchased souvenirs that were small enough to fit in the pack. I used the hydration bladder sleeve to carry books or magazines that were narrow and short enough to fit there. The outside pockets on the pack were good for stowing tinier items like a Swiss army knife, a bandanna or tenugui, a small LED flashlight, bandaids, spare batteries for the camera, sunglasses, candies or other hard munchies, and a travel package or two of Kleenex style tissues.

The only downside I found to the Blowfish model was that it was too narrow for some of the books and magazines I wanted to stash in the bladder sleeve. This relegated me to carrying those bigger publications in a hand-carried shopping bag which seemed to always awkwardly bang & bounce against the calves of my legs as I walked. I will probably opt for a bookbag type pack which will be wider, with consequently a bit more total storage space as well, for my next trip to Japan. Given the high publishing standards I found on this trip, I anticipate getting more books when I get back to Japan. For those travelling on a tight budget, be forewarned that printed material in Japan is quite expensive compared to the United States. That was my impression from browsing shops at several locales in Kyoto, the book shops in the Jimbocho area of Tokyo that is renowned for books, and prices I noted in shop windows while strolling along streets and alleyways.

#2 -- Nikon Coolpix 4300 digital camera

After reading through numerous digital camera (digicam) reviews on the internet, I settled on the Nikon Coolpix 4300 as striking a decent balance between image resolution, ease-of-use, compact carry, capabilities, and price. I was particularly interested in its optical zoom and a relatively close 1.6-inch minimum focus distance for macro-photography.

Besides the camera itself, I got a couple 512-megabyte Compact Flash memory cards, three spare batteries of greater capacity than the provided 680 maH battery, and a quicker-than-standard battery charger. The after-market charger would recharge a totally drained battery in under an hour. Nonetheless, I also took along as a back-up in my travel bags the original charger provided by Nikon. I simultaneously used both of them in our ryokan rooms to charge up batteries for the next day's shooting.

While I always carried with me all four of the batteries I had for the Coolpix 4300, I never drained more than two of the 750 maH batteries in a day. Note that most of my shooting was without using the on-camera flash. Using the flash will eat up battery capacity in no time. That power consumption, along with the rather glaring contrast it renders and unnaturally flat resulting images, are why I generally disapprove so strongly of on-camera flash photography.

The extra memory cards were required because the camera comes from the factory with a single incredibly miserly 16-Mb card. With camera settings of 1024 x 768 pixel picture size and Normal quality of resolution, each 512-megabyte Compact Flash memory card will hold about 2,250 pictures. The reason I opted for two 512-Mb cards, instead of a single 1-gigabyte card which would yield the same storage capacity, was twofold:
1. In case of a memory card failure (and such things do happen) having all my research photos on a single card would put me entirely out of business. But using a pair of 512-Mb cards allowed me to continue working in case of a card failure. I could then take the failed card to a data recovery company when I returned to the States to see if the data on the card could be resurrected. Fortunately, both of the SanDisk brand Compact Flash memory cards I bought for the camera have performed flawlessly since I got them.
2. The cost of buying a single 1-Gb card was higher than the price of two 512-Mb cards.

One addition I made immediately to the Coolpix 4300 when I got it was to put a spring-loaded slide-lock on the wrist strap. It's one of those little push-button sliders found in backpacking or sporting goods stores. They are used on backpack cinch closures or the stuff sacks you store your backpacking gear in. The wrist loop on the Coolpix 4300 as it came from the factory was big enough that it could easily slide over my hand and let the camera fall. When I was hand-carrying the camera in Japan I would snug the slide-lock against my wrist. That insured that if the camera slipped or was bumped from my grasp it would not fall to the ground. Or if I needed to do something with my hand, like dig a fresh camera battery out of my pocket, I could safely leave the camera dangling from my wrist by the snugged-up loop.

Learning to operate the Coolpix 4300 proved quite easy for me in the two weeks I had the camera before leaving on this Japan trip. I had moderate experience with photography a number of years ago using 35mm SLR cameras, so learning to drive the auto-focus Coolpix 4300 proved to be a short learning curve. I read through the rather thorough and profusely illustrated manual that came with the camera, fiddling with the controls covered in the manual as I read along. It didn't take terribly long to determine the basic effects the various switches and knobs had on performance. This run-through of the manual, coupled with shooting maybe a hundred or so test shots around the house and neighborhood, gave me a basic understanding of the camera quite painlessly.

I didn't bother trying to nail down the intricacies of operating the Coolpix 4300 in totally manual mode (i.e. over-riding the camera's auto-calculations for focal length, shutter speed, and f-stop). Nonetheless, I feel I got decent shots from the camera, given its limits and small size, by allowing it to determine those settings automatically. The control for bracketing exposure +/- on the Coolpix 4300 is super easy, so I did do some bracketing when I suspected the contrast range of a frame was going to either wash out the highlights or bury the darker areas of the shot in black shadows. My research required only snapshot level photos, so the Coolpix 4300 provided acceptable shots with little effort. If I had required higher resolution photos, I would have simply upgraded to an SLR body type digicam that had the extra capability.

Basic Features of the Nikon Coolpix 4300

• 4.0-megapixel CCD delivering image resolutions as high as 2,272 x 1,704 pixels.
• 1.5-inch color LCD display.
• Real-image optical viewfinder.
• 3x, 8-24mm zoom lens (equivalent to a 38-114mm lens on a 35mm camera).
• Two available lens apertures: f/2.8-4.9 or f/7.6-13.4 (depending on zoom position).
• 4x Digital zoom.
• Full Auto, Program AE, and Manual exposure modes, with 12 preset Scene modes available as well.
• Shutter speeds from 1/1,000 to eight seconds, with Bulb setting (maximum of 60 seconds).
• Built-in flash with five operating modes.
• CompactFlash memory storage.
• Power supplied by lithium-ion battery pack (included with charger) or optional AC adapter.
• Nikon View 5 software for both Macintosh and Windows platforms.

• QuickTime movies (without sound).
• Continuous Shooting, VGA Sequence, Ultra High Speed, and Multi-Shot 16 capture modes.
• Self-timer for delayed shutter release.
• Best Shot Selector, Auto Exposure Bracketing, and White Balance Bracketing modes.
• Noise Reduction mode for long exposures.
• Sharpness, Contrast, Image Brightness, and Black and White adjustments.
• Macro (close-up) lens adjustment.
• White balance (color) adjustment with seven modes, including a manual setting.
• Four metering modes.
• Manual and automatic focus control, with adjustable AF area.
• Automatic ISO or 100, 200, or 400 equivalent settings.
• DPOF (Digital Print Order Format) compatibility.
• Transfer button for quick image downloading.
• USB cable for quick connection to a computer.
• NTSC video cable for connection to a television set.

Another addition I might consider would be epoxying a tiny bulls-eye or cylindrical bubble level to the top of the camera body. This would help insure that the top and bottom edges of the frame would be level, as compensation for my tendency to hold the camera not-quite-level when shooting.

#3 -- Lands' End All-Weather Mocs

I got these shoes looking for a decently sturdy pair of shoes that didn't weigh much. Their weatherproof nature proved to be a good feature. They easily withstood a couple drenching rains during our time in Japan.

They are quite easy to slip on and off of my feet. In Japan it is the norm to remove your shoes frequently and put them back on when you leave the premises. Doffing and donning your shoes often was especially the case at temples, where you might take your shoes off at the entrance to each building, but put them back on to traverse the courtyard between buildings.

This pair of All-Weather Mocs fit quite well right out of the box. Virtually no break-in period was needed. With the lightly padded running and merino wool socks that I wore on the trip, there was enough stretch in the elastic gussets beside the tongue of the shoe to always allow comfortable wear. That elasticity also accomodated any foot swelling that occured during the day.

Their construction and materials looked sturdy enough to withstand five weeks of day-in, day-out wear and tear. I especially liked the implicit longevity of their lugged soles. I was a bit worried initially about the durability of the suede uppers, but they proved more than sufficient to knocking around the urban jungles of Japanese cities and on the occasional unexpectedly long hike along rural roads further afield. I believe this pair of All-Weather Mocs would easily withstand another dozen such trips without durability worries.

I got them in the cognac color because the neutral color didn't clash visually with any of the clothes that I was taking along on the trip. Japan is a country where most of the clothing is typically more conservative and formal in cut and color than its counterpart in the USA. Clothes that would be considered pretty inocuous in the US would stand out as brash in Japan. Neutral colors like these shoes will blend in more readily.

The rest of the clothes

• 3 polo shirts from Eddie Bauer, 100% cotton. One of these worn under the polar fleece vest was standard layering for my upper body. I would add the rain jacket when a weather layer was needed for wet or windy conditions.
• 3 solid color tee-shirts, 100% cotton
• 1 long sleeve microfiber shirt (much like synthetic chamois cloth) in sort of an OD green from GI Joes. Very handy for early morning strolls when the air was cool, especially when worn under the rain/wind parka.
• 2 pair Lands' End Sport Pants in khaki and grayish green colors. Their elasticised waist with drawstring to cinch it tight when needed proved plenty comfortable, whether tromping our way up & down the interminable steps of some Japanese subway stations, jammed into a taxi, or riding for hours on the buses & trains.
• 1 polar fleece mid-weight vest for cool days. It was black so it would color coordinate with everything. A vest pocket was useful for keeping the camera handy, but still out of the way.
• 1 pair light nylon water shorts, black. These were a bit casual for Japan where clothing is usually much more formal, at least in public. They can be convenient for wear around the ryokan or when washing the rest of your clothes. If we had stayed into the hot season of mid-May through June, I would have probably ignored the social proprieties and worn such sport shorts, even in public, to compensate for the high temperatures and especially the humidity.
• 5 pair Thorlo anklet running socks
• 2 pair Columbia lightweight merino wool trekking socks
• 2 pair polypropylene liner socks, typically worn under the merino hiking socks to keep my feet dry
• 1 pair formal crew-length dress socks to wear with suit
• 1 Bivvy Wear jacket from Brigade Quartermaster, insulated with Thermolite. I brought it along for colder days when the GI Joes long-sleeve chamois-style shirt under a rain parka might not be enough insulation. I only wore it once or twice, so might be inclined to leave it off the packlist for future trips. It's a bit of a tough call, since the jacket is extremely windproof and gives excellent insulation for its relatively light weight of about a pound.
• 1 Pacific Trails coated-nylon hooded rain parka. This parka is extremely lightweight and like the rain pants listed, it packs down very compactly. It wads up into one of its own pockets, so there is not a seperate stuff sack to keep track of or lose. This jacket was packed at the bottom of the Blowfish pack every day. It was always with me as insurance against inclement weather.
• 1 pair Red Ledge Thunderlight breathable waterproof rain pants. These pack down very compactly into their stuff bag. This made them easy to stash in the bottom of the Blowfish pack when heavy weather was anticipated, which wasn't all that often while we were in Japan. Ironically, one of the two days we had of extremely inclement weather when the pants would have been appropriate to use, they were left behind with other gear and were not in my carry-around pack.
• 1 tennis visor to keep the sun out of my eyes and to keep rain off my face when worn under the hood of the rain parka
• 1 polar fleece watch cap. I like this to keep my head warm when we would sleep with a window cracked open a bit, which was soothing to do when the ryokan was next to a river.
• 1 pair very lightweight knit polypro liner gloves. These were a nice addition to those cool morning walks. They were thin enough I could operate the camera controls while wearing the gloves. However, the extreme slipperiness between this fabric and the smooth finish on the camera body made it absolutely essential to cinch down the camera wrist strap to prevent the camera falling if it happened to slide out of my grasp.
• 1 all-season wool suit with white shirt, tie, and dress shoes for formal occasions.

The rest of the gear

• toiletries like a toothbrush, toothpaste, dental floss, deodorant, tenugui (buy it there to use while visiting, then bring it home as a souvenir at the end of the trip, they cost a couple dollars typically), can of shave cream, disposable razors, mini-bottle of shampoo (I didn't use it since ryokan typically provide shampoo in their showers), Q-tips, bandaids, and other basic first aid items.
• 1 bandana. At a street stall I bought one that had a rabbit (usagi) pattern on it. From what I can gather, rabbits are considered good luck among the Japanese. I used it as a napkin to clear crumbs from my face, for mopping up minor spills, as a sunshade by layering it under the tennis visor (geek factor on doing this is very high, in spite of it being an effective way to keep from sunburning your neck and the top of your head), to mop sweat off my forehead, as a neck-warming scarf tucked inside the collar of my shirt on cool morning jaunts, as a towelette to dry my hands when no other alternative was available, and as a mini-furoshiki (wrapping cloth) to help organize gear or lunch inside the pack. Obviously, if you use your bandana often, as I did, launder or at least rinse it out as often as possible.
• 2 or 3 single-LED flashlights. I carried an Inova Mini-LED flashlight with me at all times. It is very compact (about the size of an American quarter-dollar coin), pretty much waterproof, runs a long time (72 hours) on a pair of 2016 lithium coin batteries, and has both a constant-on slide switch & a momentary-on press-pad switch. It comes in handy when you want to head out to the toilet in the middle of the night without waking your roomies by turning on the room lights. Definitely buy a pair of spare batteries stateside to take along, because replacement 2016 batteries in Japan were about twice as expensive as in the USA.
• 1 multi-LED flashlight. I kept a 5-LED Inova X5-MT flashlight in the daypack. It came in handy when we needed to make our way home after dark. It throws enough light to clearly illuminate a dark sidewalk for a couple yards in front of you. It is also pretty much bomb-proof indestructible and is waterproof.
• first aid stuff like band-aids for small nicks & scrapes, sunscreen, aspirin, anti-histamine if you are allergic to insect stings, eyewash.
• 1 or 2 travel packets of Kleenex-type tissues in a pocket or stashed in the daypack. The travel packs of tissue proved indispensible in public toilets that don't stock toilet paper, which turned out to be a fair percentage of them. You can get the tissue packs as freebie advertising hand-outs from promotional people passing them out near shopping areas or train stations. Keep an eye out for these folks and always accept the proffered packet, then keep it handy in a pocket because you don't know when you may need it.
• 1 pocket kerchief in a back pocket. Some of the public toilets also don't stock paper towels or even air-blowers for drying your hands after washing them. In such facilities, I found it handy before washing my hands to take the kerchief from my back pocket, tuck it under an arm, wash my hands, then reach up & grab the kerchief to use it as a mini-towel for drying my hands.
• 1 pair sunglasses
• 1 spare pair prescription glasses
• 1 neck pouch for carrying passport and traveler's checks. Some folks prefer to use instead a belt-pouch that can be worn under their shirt for this purpose.
• 1 Victorinox Swiss Army Knife (SAK). I took along an Outrider model. The ubiquitous SAK is the one tool you should never be without. I used mine mostly for dividing up food portions, trimming errant threads on clothing, opening food & other packages, and cutting cloth tape when we made up boxes to be shipped home. Due to tighter airline restrictions after the World Trade Center attack of 9/11/2001, remember to put your SAK in check-baggage when flying.
• 1 small ceramic sharpening rod to keep the edges keen on the SAK if it got dull
• 1 compass. I carried a basic Silva model. I think I paid about $7 for it at an REI store years ago. A compass is handy for orientating yourself when you emerge from the labyrinth of a subway or train station. It also comes in handy when you need to relate locations on a map or descriptions in a guidebook to the buildings you see on the street corner where you are. The compass lived in my pocket constantly and got used pretty regularly. (thanks to Evelyn Leeper for the tip)
• 1 small whistle. Japan is a country beset by frequent earthquakes. If you get stuck in a building that has collapsed, your voice will only last a few minutes shouting or screaming before it wears out (especially in dust-choked air) and becomes inaudible to Search & Rescue personnel who may be combing the rubble looking for survivors. However, you can blow a whistle intermittently for hours or even days. While in Japan I carried a flat dual-chambered pea-less whistle because its shape made it easy to carry in a pocket. Many folks prefer a Fox 40 or Fox Mini-40 model whistle because of their small size. If you simply want maximum sound and don't mind the larger size, the loudest whistles currently on the market are the Storm Whistle and the slightly smaller WindStorm Whistle. You should be able to easily get a whistle in sporting goods stores or online.
• 1 mini-cassette recorder, spare mini-cassette tapes, & spare AA batteries (buy them stateside before you leave, because batteries are more expensive in Japan). Since a person can talk faster than they can write, keeping a speaking journal of your trip via mini-cassette (or digital) recorder is much more efficient than writing in a paper journal. This is especially true when you don't have much time or energy for the task at the end of a long day of sight-seeing and are already tired, but still have to chronicle the day's activities before sleep overtakes you. You can transcribe the tapes to written form when you get home.

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Books

1. "Fodor's Japan, third edition" This guidebook is a bit bulky to carry every day, since it covers the entire country of Japan. Simply photocopying the pages you need for each day's scheduled outings would eliminate carrying around the extra weight. The travel tips found in the "Smart Traveling A-to-Z" section give quick instruction for handling day-to-day details. Besides the Fodor's guide that we carried with us, there are guidebooks to Japan from Michelin and Lonely Planet.
   
   
2. "Old Kyoto: A Guide To Traditional Shops, Restaurants, And Inns" by Diane Durston, paperback edition. An excellent guide to workshops and vendors practicing traditional crafts and cuisine in the Kyoto area.
   
   
3. "Tokyo For Free" is a guide to activities and locales in the Tokyo area that have either free or very inexpensive admission
   
   
4. Japanese Inn Group guidebook (see the Housing section for more info on JIG) We carried this small book for contact info to inns where we stayed. This guidebook provides directions to the member ryokans in kanji, so you can show a taxi driver those instructions if you don't speak Japanese and he speaks no English.
   

• Tourist Information Center (TIC) counters in Japan run by the Japanese National Tourist Organization (JNTO). At the TIC counters you can get free maps and pamphlets of activities in various cities and locales around Japan. We picked up guidebooks, maps, and pamphlets at the TIC center located in the Narita airport upon landing in Japan. We likewise stopped by the TIC located at Tokyo's main train station when we arrived there about half-way through our stay.
  
  

• One of the handier guidebooks I picked up was a pocket guide to the Ueno-Asakusa-Taito area of Tokyo. I got it from the proprietors of Katsutaro Ryokan where we stayed in Tokyo. That little guidebook was handy because it had a couple pages listing some common phrases in Japanese (with English pronounciation) as well as in-depth information on the neighborhoods it covered.
  
  

• Some excellent books to use as an introduction to Japanese crafts are those written by Amy Katoh. She is an American ex-patriot living in Japan and is the proprietoress of an antiques and craft shop in Tokyo. She has done a very fine job researching and preserving what she perceives to be disappearing traditional, often rural, crafts in Japan. Her writing and the photos by Shin Kimura in the books are an easily understood way to learn some basics of the Japanese craft aesthetic.
  
  

• To gain an understanding of traditional Japanese interior architecture, "Japanese Homes And Their Surroundings" written by Edward S. Morse in the late 1800's is a perennial favorite of mine. Its descriptions and many etchings cover both the larger overview of Japanese rooms and many of the individual elements of Japanese interior design used to construct and decorate them. This book makes an excellent introduction to some of the ways in which Japanese interior elements come together aesthetically and how they are constructed physically. In paperback form, I prefer the Dover Press edition over the Tuttle Publishing edition simply because the Dover version is larger and I find the pictures are easier to decipher. You can get the Dover paperback version quite cheaply at http://www.amazon.com.
  
  

• Like the Morse book above, "A Japanese Touch For Your Home" by Koji Yagi is an inexpensive introduction to some of the philosophies and practices used to create Japanese homes. The photos and illustrations make the concepts discussed easy to grasp. I commend it both as a research source and as a coffee-table picture book. This is another book that can be found quite inexpensively online.
  
  

• For historical perspective on Japanese culture, the writings of Lafcadio Hearn are recommended. He was an Irish ex-pat who lived in Japan in the early 1900's and taught at one of the universities. From what I can deduce, his insights on the culture are still largely applicable today.
  
  

• For books in the English language on Japanese subjects, Kodansha Press is probably the pre-emminent printing house. Keep an eye out for books from this company when you are researching your trip to Japan.

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Acknowledgements & Links

Of course, my highest thanks go to my wife for serving as my translator and putting up with me badgering her incessantly with the question "What does this sign (or menu or train ticket or pamphlet or ....) say IN ENGLISH???"

I likewise extend my deep and profound thanks to my wife's father, brothers, sisters, and other family members in Japan. They showed great courtesy, patience, generosity, and overall helpfulness to me and my wife. Their courtesy is especially impressive due to my not speaking their language and no doubt committing many unintended social transgressions.

I thank Evelyn C. Leeper for her tips on travel in Japan. Her excellent webpage travelogue on Japan is at http://www.travel-library.com/asia/japan/leeper.html

While in Kyoto, I bumped into Michael Hart of Esprit Travel. I was impressed with Esprit's approach to guided tours and recommend that you check them out if you want to travel in Japan under the care of someone conversant in both the language and the culture. This is no small issue if you don't speak the Japanese language. The level of Esprit's experience and contacts recommend them to providing you an unusually intimate view of the culture, especially if your time in Japan is limited. Check out the bibliography on their Travel Tips webpage to find books covering the history of the country and the often confusing aspects of Japanese culture. It's good reading to do before you start your trip. The Esprit Travel website is at http://www.esprittravel.com.

Again, the Japanese Inn Group website is at http://www.jpinn.com/list/japan.html. From their website you can get each ryokan's prices, location, phone & email contact info, what amenities they offer, etc.

Information on obtaining a Japan Rail (JR) Pass: http://www.japanrailpass.net/eng/en01.html

We got our copy of the Japanese Inn Group member ryokan guidebook at the Japanese Consulate office in Seattle. The consulate turned out to be a good source of information for us. The personnel were friendly and offered travel alternatives for commuting around the cities and countryside. They likewise pointed out some of their favorite guidebooks to us. Besides the pamphlets and booklets available for take-away, they had a diverse library of books on Japanese culture, crafts, and cities or areas to visit. These books could be read on the premises, but not checked out. The website for the Seattle office of the Japanese Consulate is at http://www.seattle.us.emb-japan.go.jp/.

I'd also like to thank Dave Kristula profusely for the HTML interactive tutorial at his website http://www.davesite.com/webstation/html/. His info was instrumental in coding this webpage. If you're starting to investigate HTML programming, definitely give his page a good look. He makes easy sense out of what can look like a staggeringly confusing mass of gibberish characters on a page of source code. Thanks a ton, Dave!

A website on which I found a decently comprehensive review of the Nikon Coolpix 4300 digital camera before I bought mine: http://www.imaging-resource.com/. Note that the camera review pages may contain a lot of pictures, which makes for slow loading of the page over dialup connections. Here is a link directly to their review of the Coolpix 4300 camera: http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/CP4300/C43A.HTM

As a post-trip recommendation, I found a travelogue webpage with many, many photos posted by Shih Chung from his trip to Japan. He does a good job of showing off the combination of outrageous and mundane sights that makes Japan such an interesting place to visit.
http://lsctravel.blogspot.com/2004_12_01_lsctravel_archive.html

Another website with some stunningly beautiful photos of Japan is that of Ron Reznick. It is well worth visiting.
http://www.digital-images.net/Gallery/Japan/japan.html

Galen Frysinger has a rather large and diverse collection of photos from Japan on his website. I recommend it.
http://www.galenfrysinger.com/japan.htm

Manolis Kamvysselis at MIT has some nice photos of his trip to Japan on his gallery page.
http://web.mit.edu/manoli/www/gallery/kyoto/kyoto.html

A website with vintage post-WWII photos and cultural commentary by John W. Bennett during his residence in Japan circa 1948-1951 is located at http://library.osu.edu/sites/rarebooks/japan/about.html

The source stating Tokyo's #1 ranking as the world's most expensive city in which to live at the time of this writing is http://www.mercerhr.com/pressrelease/details.jhtml?idContent=1142150

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A Last Word In Conclusion

Perhaps one of the most striking impressions that I brought out of this trip is that of viewing smaller, not larger. This is especially so in the big cities like Tokyo. Looking at the large scale in Japan gets you the same impression as inspecting the large scale in other countries -- lots of tall buildings, industrial parks, factories, railyards, freeways, concrete & steel & glass, noisy traffic, bustling masses of people, houses & buildings packed and jumbled together so tightly that they cover the land, obscure the horizon, confound the eye, and stupify the brain.

I found the beauty that struck me as particularly Japanese when I looked smaller, sought after details, pursued pockets of visual tranquility amidst the scrambling mayhem of the larger view. I found it when I looked not at imposing scales or daunting multitudes, and there are plenty of both in Japan, but rather at the scale of a single human face, a person's hands or eyes, the way a kimono-clad woman shuffles down a deserted street, the silhouetted tracery of branches against a slice of blowing sky glimpsed between temple buildings, the faint echo of your body caught in the shape of a yukata left laying on the futon when you leave a ryokan room for the last time, the visual tension found in the tightly bound but still flowing shape of a single particular temple window or beam carving, the quiet shining of tea waiting in its cup. It is perhaps a conditioned response, a training of the eye and mind to ignore what is so garishly obvious, to look beyond it as you learn to see what speaks more quietly. To see past the large amounts of what can be drab, gaudy, outlandish, bleak, extravagant, dull, or tediously mundane by turns. To find in corners and shadows a sometimes small, sometimes subtle, sometimes nearly-invisible shimmering of beauty flickering for just the briefest moment that will linger with you for hours or days or months.

This looking smaller is learning to see how huge each instant can become. It is to sense the breathing of wind you cannot feel where you stand on the train station platform by watching it pushing a lone bird's breast on the overhead wire, causing it to execute a slow swaying arc above you as it sits warming itself in the just-risen sun. It is feeling the cold in the ground by the sharp ticking of the railyard wheels over the joints of steel rails and how crisply the echoes snap back from the glass and steel surfaces surrounding you. It is hearing the silent laughter of passengers on the inside of closed railway car windows by the reflections and shadows cast on their moving faces from the station signs behind you. It is the joyful ache of waiting in the chill air, knowing your train will soon come for you.

When you scramble aboard the railcar it is the sudden feeling of your face loosening at the onslaught of heat. It is to feel the roll and heave of your shoulders as you toss your bags onto the overhead rack, then sink & huddle down into your seat. It is spotting moments later, just before you are rocked to sleep in the soft warmth of the car, the scrawny and gnarled flowering branch that has bravely and perhaps foolishly wound its way across a rusting steel pipe to offer its tiny faces to your train rushing so closely past it, causing its leaves to waver and wobble like so many tiny hands waving you on your way....waving you deeper into Japan....waving you goodbye....waving you deeper into the Japan way of looking at things, so that you may eventually wake to some small distant understanding of the Japan way of seeing.

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