Japan 2024 Travel Blog
Thursday 28 March
We arrived at 8:20pm met by driver Alex at Haneda Airport
and taken to Grand Prince Shin Takanawa hotel.
First impressions were that Tokyo had an amazing road system and
Brutalist architecture office and apartment blocks. It was raining. cold & bleak.
Great excitement as
the first cherry blossoms have appeared and the season is officially declared
to be open. Perfect timing.
We met our tour
guide Alex at 10am and started with a visit to the Tokyo Tower. This is a pseudo-copy of the Eiffel
Tower. The French connection was
exploited to the degree that you could buy s Tokyo Tower Camembert and Brie
package.
Next stop was Emperor
Palace and park but you need tickets to get in which you need to book in
advance. As it was pouring with rain, we
told Alex we had not desire to go for a walk in the park.
So off we went to
the Asakusa Shinto Shrine located at the end of a long street containing masses
of shops and restaurants and masses of people.
On the other hand, the weather had cleared and walking down the street
had a real buzz. Over 37 million people
live in Greater Tokyo and people are everywhere. We had a good lunch where the staff were very
helpful in choosing gluten free food for Vivienne. Here Vivienne met her favourite dog in Japan and
we found the biggest Hello Kitty shop in Japan.
The next stop was
the Shibuya Sky Tower which has great views on the 40th Floor but
you need pre-reserved tickets to get there which we did not have. But we did get to the 14th and we
went to an NHK exhibition. (NHK is the
BBC of Japan.) The exhibition was
incomprehensible but we got fantastic views of the Shibuya Scramble Crossing.
I have been on many
tours but no question Alex was the most laconic I had ever met. He was very courteous and had a good sense of
humour. On the way back to the hotel I asked
Alex if he was doing 2-day tours every week and he replied not really. I then asked if it was his 1st
time ever as a guide and replied in the affirmative. All was now explained.
Saturday 30 March
A beautiful sunny day and the temperature reached 28°C. Alex dropped us off at the Emperor Meiji Park
for an hour’s walk. Across from the
entrance there was a large Uniglo shop.
Our consumption needs won and we went shopping. I bought a pair of shorts and Vivienne found
some T-Shirts for the grandchildren.
Next we
went to the Ginza which is the high fashion shopping street in Tokyo. We were walking along and when we saw a Grand
Seiko store. I have a Seiko Kinetic that
I purchased some 50 years ago and it has been a terrific watch. Unfortunately, like me it is reaching the end
of days and Seiko no longer carries spare parts for this discontinued
model. So I went in and explained this
to the Grand Seiko staff that I needed to buy a new watch. They took one look at me in an old T-shirt
& aging ill-fitting jeans and directed us to the Seiko shop down the street
(shades of Pretty Women). Anyway, the
staff there could not have more helpful.
I wanted a kinetic watch as you do not need to wind it. But they are no longer made by Seiko. However the assistant explained that they had
placed solar powered panels in the clock face that charged the watch. Secondly the watch has a GPS chip and
automatically resets the watch when you go to a different time zone. Finally, the watch was duty free 10% off so
I bought it.
After
Ginza we went to the Tsukiji Nippon Fish Market for lunch. Again it was packed and buzzing. At the end of the long street is the Sensoji-temple,
the oldest Buddhist temple in Tokyo.
Finally
we went to the harbour where that was another park/shopping mall which had an
exact copy of the Stature of Liberty. We
started Tokyo with a copy and we finished with a copy.
Sunday
31 March
We boarded our cruise ship the Norwegian Jewel. The great news was that we managed to get an
upgrade to a balcony room that was 2x the size of our previous room and we
moved up from Deck 5 to Deck 8. Every
stateroom was taken. There were 2,400 passengers
on board: 1000 from the USA, 600 from Oz and the rest from some 30 countries.
Monday 1 April
Nagoya Castle, Hommaru Palace and Atsuta Shrine.
Beautiful Cherry blossoms on the trees.
The castle has two gold Kinshashi (imaginary dolphin) weighing
44kg each on the roof.
The palace is made of a special type of cypress the hardest
wood in Japan. It has spectular rooms and the floorboards creak to the sound of nightingales.
The shrine is a sacred site for the Shinto Religion. There is a 1000 year old camphor tree with
sacred snakes for whom the pious leave eggs.
Most Japanese practise both religions: Shinto is the happy religion celebrating
births and marriages; , Buddhists the sad part e.g. Funerals.
Our guide Kay was the complete opposite to Alex. Totally manic and could not stop giving us
information. On the way back to boat she
stated explaining the 3 different alphabets used by the Japanese and teaching
us various phrases. On the wedding day the
bride wears a white kimono and a Tsunokakushi which is a Traditional Japanese
wedding headdress made of white silk shaped as a big hood and whose job is is
to hide and contain the wives horns.
According to our guide for her the horns kept growing and she got a
divorce.
Tuesday 2 April
8 hours in Kochi replaced with 5 hours in Wakayama. We stayed on board and had a rest day. A sunny morning followed by a bleak rest of day.
Wednesday 3 April
Kagoshima
As recommended, we skipped the cruise tour and caught the
shuttle into town. Then we caught the
ferry to Sakurajim Island which is an active volcano and the main tourist
attraction. We caught the Island View
Bus and because of the low-lying cloud and height of the observatory saw
nothing but thick fog. The trip to an
hour and we caught the ferry back to the town.
Did some essential shopping and back we went on board as the rain began
to pelt down.
Thursday 4 April
Busan
“The well-laid
plans of mice and men often go astray”; Tell me about it.
Disembarkation of
2400 passengers through a single choke point took about an hour. It started at 12 noon and we finally got off
the boat at 1pm. We then discovered the following.
Jung, our tour
guide, spoke poor English and demonstrated he had limited experience as a guide
during the tour.
Our driver, Wendy,
did not drive and also had limited English.
We did not have a
Mini Van booked for whole tour. Instead,
we were to catch taxis which at least 500 or so of our fellow passengers wanted
to do. We finally got taxis after 45
minutes and departed on our tour at 2pm.
The first part of
the tour was a visit to the tallest building in Busan (100 floors) located at
Hyundae Beach known as X in the Sky.
Living in a city that has some 50 beaches this was ironic but the good
news was for the first time on tour we got tickets to actually get to the
top. In Tokyo we failed on 4 occasions
to get tickets. The contrast with Nagoya
could not have been starker where twice when we needed tickets, they had been
be pre-booked by the guide.
The tower was good
and you could see why Busan was becoming a tourist “hot spot” according to Trip
Advisor. Inside the tower was the "Schocking Bridge" which was transparent glass that looked down 100 floors and scared everyone who did.
Around 3pm we then
went to the Blue Line Train Station to catch the train to the Haedong Yonggung Temple
that claims to be the most beautiful in Korea.
After waiting for 15 minutes, we were then informed by Jung that the
only tickets available were at 5pm. At
that moment a rebellion started among the four tourists and we ended up
catching taxis to the temple, The drive was spectacular winding around the
various coves through masses of cherry trees that lined the roads and all were
in full bloom. The area we drove through,
Song Jeong-Dong, would have to be the most expensive suburb in Korea,
The temple was good
and the setting spectacular. Of course,
there were other travel groups but this was a blessing because we could
overhear the travel guides, all speaking excellent English, providing
commentary.
It was now around
4:45pm and the decision was made that we should return to the boat. Our taxi driver back to the boat was very
amusing and told some brilliant jokes off his phone. He had a brother in Melbourne so we had a
bond. He told us that traffic in Busan
during rush hour is so bad that our return trip to the boat of around 45
minutes would have taken at least 2 hours.
I cannot tell you
the relief Vivienne and I felt as we drank our first G&Ts.
Friday 5 April
Nagasaki
The first port to be open to Westerners, the setting for
“Madame Butterfly” and oh yes, the site where “Fat Boy”, the second atomic
bomb, was dropped at 11:02 on 9 April 1945.
Today’s tour comprised two parts: a visit to the museum and
then a walk around the Peace Park. The
museum mainly showed the devastation caused by the bomb which was 30% more
powerful than ‘Little Boy’ the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The bomb was exploded 500m above ground
zero. The devastation was from three
sources: the blast, the heat, and the radiation. There is an actual size replica of the bomb
which also explained how it worked.
One interesting section was a series of some 50 podcast
interviews with survivors. The final
interview with Frank Chick who was an Australian POW working at the Mitsubishi
munitions factory. In contrast to the
other interviewees he maintained dropping the bomb was a good thing. He said his treatment by the Japanese
Military was terrible and that it was the second bomb that ended the war six
days later. The then Japanese culture
was based on Samuri culture summarised by the phrase “The true samurai has no
scars on his back.” To become a prisoner
was the ultimate disgrace and the true warrior fights till he is killed.
This was particularly demonstrated at the Battles of Iwo
Jima and Okinawa where Allied forces suffered significant greater losses than
the Japanese. This led to estimates that
the invasion of Japan would result in at least 2 million Allied deaths plus
even more Japanese deaths.
At the time the Japanese Military controlled the government
led by a dictator, General Tojo. Emperor
Hirohito while the spiritual leader was a weak puppet. After the first bomb the Military claimed it
was a one-off event. But then after the
second, Hirohito said enough was enough, commanded the military to surrender
and then to make sure they did went on the radio and said the country was surrendering
to the Allied forces and the was over.
This occurred 6 days after the Nagasaki bomb.
The Peace Park is located next to Ground Zero, there are a
number of “Peace” statues, coming from the usual suspects such as the Soviet
Union and the GDR. Perhaps the most
interesting was a stature originally from the people of Freemantle but the
widened to various other communities including the Aboriginal Community based
at Maralinga where the UK government did A-bomb testing in South
Australia. There is a plaque written in
what looks like Aboriginal language which is ironic because the Aborigines did
not invent any written forms of the some 600 languages spoken by the
Aborigines.
Saturday 6 April
Day at Sea. The
weather was bleak all day.
Sunday 7 April
Kobe & Kyoto
We docked at Kobe and then got on the coach for another tour
“Highlights of Kyoto.”
Kyoto is the 2nd largest city in Japan. We saw another temple and another castle.
The temple was Kinkaku-Ji founded in 1397 by a Buddhist Monk
and known as the Golden emple, The
grounds are regarded as the most beautiful in Japan and they are stunning.
After an interesting lunch we then went to NiJo-Jo Castle
famous for where the founder and First Shogun of Togugawa Shogunate started his
reign in 1603 after 100 years of civil war, Then followed 260 years of
peace. In 1867 the 15th
Shogunate transferred power to the Emperor Meiji also at the Castle. Lots of rooms at different levels with
drawings of tigers and leopards.
I asked the guide Hiro who was excellent how long she had
been a travel guide. She replied she got
her licence to be a Travel Guide in 2008 but really only started taking groups in
2015.
Monday 8 April.
Into Kobe and into more shopping at Uniglo. 2 pairs of trousers, 2 pairs of shorts, 3
pairs of socks for A$110.
Tuesday 9 April
Pouring with rain and several tours cancelled. However we finally started 1 hour late.
We started at the Momijiyama Japanese Garden in Sumpu Castle
Park. It had a replica representation of
the sea harbour and Mount Fuji. We then
went to the Temple of the First Shogun where he died. 7 separate temples represented gods of
health, business success, victory (for soldiers but now for sports), academic
success, etc.
Finally we went to the Shimizu harbour for the best view of
Mt Fuji. Unbelievably the rain had
stopped the clouds cleared and we had a great view of the snow- capped
summit. 70 years ago I climbed Mt. Fuji twice;
my father was in the USAF and he was transferred there for two years in 1954.
Out guide,Set, was again excellent and I continued my
inquiries about Licenced Travel Agents.
Turns out you have to pass 5 exams, General, Japanese History, Japanese
Geography, English Proficiency (regarded as the toughest). It generally takes two years to study and
qualify. Set said she had a head start
because she formerly was an English School Teacher for 30 years who had just retired.
Wednesday 10 April.
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Sort of summed up the whole trip. What is really impressive about Japan is the discipline of the people. We never saw any graffiti the whole trip. From the age of 4 the children spend the last 5 minutes of every lesson cleaning up the classroom.
