6.30pm Sun Nov 4: I type this having just polished off two mountainous ham, cheese, lettuce and tomato toasted sandwiches, giving me the energy to kickstart my brain after an epic and absolutely thumping night of Tokyo techno ending at 8.30am this morning.
Nati, our Japanese pal Mariko (a girl we met on the train) and I hit Japan's best AND second-best nightclubs in one fantastic night, combining a gorgeous Japanese meal (shoeless, naturally), a stream of beers bizarrely served in mini-glasses, jam-packed Club Air and Club Yellow (both completely hidden in basements; Yellow is so underground it doesn`t even have a sign...and only the club only opens at 5am due to a police-imposed midnight-5am dancing ban due to no licence!), and booming basslines in two phenomenal 360-degree soundsystems from DJs including Detroit techno godfather-figure Derrick May.
As you might gather from the paragraphs above, it went off with spectacular aplomb.
What a way to end two weeks in a country where everything feels familiar due to the comfort and developed-country-ness...but is actually very different. Same same but different, as you would say if you`ve visited Thailand.
Take cycling. In London, you have to be a nutter to pedal into the centre - but EVERYONE In Japan cycles (on granny-style bikes with shopping baskets), bikes get priority on pavements and they`ve even got bike racks outside nightclub. This must give rise to obvious problems, while we also witnessed the amusing but suprisingly-common offence of sending-a-text-while-cycling.
Everyone here is soooooo polite. Ask for directions in London and some chav would probably mug you. Ask for directions in Osaka, as we did, and a guy on his way home from the office spent 40mins helping us find an obscure bus stop. And the lady who ran our Japanese guest house (called mishuku, no beds but sprung tatami mat floor and men`s kimono dressing gowns...sexy) said "you`re welcome" and bowed her head so many times I thought it was gonna fall off.
Taxi drivers? Not some rude cockney bloke with a beer belly and beeping at girls...but an elderly gentleman with suit and flat hat, casually flicking a button to open his back passenger door and beckon you in.
And road/building work. Every Japanese house/pavement/roadworks has a guy with a luminous yellow strap-jacket wafting a red glow stick so long Luke Skywalker could fight Darth Vader with it, all in case someone
might inexplicably not see the enormous double barrier round that work colleague repairing a small paving slab.
Since our last update a fortnight ago, we had three days in a superb hostel near Mount Fuji`s lakes, where we got lucky and saw the snow-capped colossus before a typoon blew in. We were whisked to Kyoto by the shinkansen bullet train (exhillarating 188mph ride; the random factor was the woman next to us singing) and then the day after the typoon I got sunburnt in a heatwave at Kyoto`s very fun wild monkey park.
Chugged round Shikoku`s mountain gorges and Thai-esque surf beaches on trains tinier than the Metheringham to Sleaford school train (that will mean something to some people reading this), passing through even tinier stations. Walked over a vine bridge spanning a river just after dawn and stayed at a surfers` hostel sounding like an extra from The Usual Suspects, the brilliantly-named Minami Kaze.
Endured a night in a bizarre control-freak hostel (somehow Lonely Planet`s top recommendation for Kyoto) with 1,000yen late check-out fines, a kitchen/lounge closed for most of the day and even notes on a tiny sugar pot about not dirtying the spoon with coffee...hello, I left nursery 27 years ago! Upped sticks to the awesome K`s House hostel chain...no notes on the sugar, a beer machine cheaper than the supermarket, free lifestyle/clubbing mags and an International Herald Tribune/Asahi Shimbun (Japan`s biggest English paper) to read listening to funky music in the lounge (yes, I was happy).
Also...realised the government must be oblivious to the mass of tourists here as hardly any signs in English; saw a few geishas; ate various strange combinations of raw egg, chicken cartilage, crazy veg and enough noodles to stretch from London to Tokyo. Tried at least 14 different types of beer (honestly not a bad egg among them...Asahi Extra Dry is my fave), and; Nati almost had a heart attack when she tried on a top with a four-inch yellow spider in it.
That's it, thanks for emails we've received and hope all is well with you. We're going to Bali, Indonesia, tomorrow so will blog about that in a week or two.
All the best
Ali
Nati, our Japanese pal Mariko (a girl we met on the train) and I hit Japan's best AND second-best nightclubs in one fantastic night, combining a gorgeous Japanese meal (shoeless, naturally), a stream of beers bizarrely served in mini-glasses, jam-packed Club Air and Club Yellow (both completely hidden in basements; Yellow is so underground it doesn`t even have a sign...and only the club only opens at 5am due to a police-imposed midnight-5am dancing ban due to no licence!), and booming basslines in two phenomenal 360-degree soundsystems from DJs including Detroit techno godfather-figure Derrick May.
As you might gather from the paragraphs above, it went off with spectacular aplomb.
What a way to end two weeks in a country where everything feels familiar due to the comfort and developed-country-ness...but is actually very different. Same same but different, as you would say if you`ve visited Thailand.
Take cycling. In London, you have to be a nutter to pedal into the centre - but EVERYONE In Japan cycles (on granny-style bikes with shopping baskets), bikes get priority on pavements and they`ve even got bike racks outside nightclub. This must give rise to obvious problems, while we also witnessed the amusing but suprisingly-common offence of sending-a-text-while-cycling.
Everyone here is soooooo polite. Ask for directions in London and some chav would probably mug you. Ask for directions in Osaka, as we did, and a guy on his way home from the office spent 40mins helping us find an obscure bus stop. And the lady who ran our Japanese guest house (called mishuku, no beds but sprung tatami mat floor and men`s kimono dressing gowns...sexy) said "you`re welcome" and bowed her head so many times I thought it was gonna fall off.
Taxi drivers? Not some rude cockney bloke with a beer belly and beeping at girls...but an elderly gentleman with suit and flat hat, casually flicking a button to open his back passenger door and beckon you in.
And road/building work. Every Japanese house/pavement/roadworks has a guy with a luminous yellow strap-jacket wafting a red glow stick so long Luke Skywalker could fight Darth Vader with it, all in case someone
might inexplicably not see the enormous double barrier round that work colleague repairing a small paving slab.
Since our last update a fortnight ago, we had three days in a superb hostel near Mount Fuji`s lakes, where we got lucky and saw the snow-capped colossus before a typoon blew in. We were whisked to Kyoto by the shinkansen bullet train (exhillarating 188mph ride; the random factor was the woman next to us singing) and then the day after the typoon I got sunburnt in a heatwave at Kyoto`s very fun wild monkey park.
Chugged round Shikoku`s mountain gorges and Thai-esque surf beaches on trains tinier than the Metheringham to Sleaford school train (that will mean something to some people reading this), passing through even tinier stations. Walked over a vine bridge spanning a river just after dawn and stayed at a surfers` hostel sounding like an extra from The Usual Suspects, the brilliantly-named Minami Kaze.
Endured a night in a bizarre control-freak hostel (somehow Lonely Planet`s top recommendation for Kyoto) with 1,000yen late check-out fines, a kitchen/lounge closed for most of the day and even notes on a tiny sugar pot about not dirtying the spoon with coffee...hello, I left nursery 27 years ago! Upped sticks to the awesome K`s House hostel chain...no notes on the sugar, a beer machine cheaper than the supermarket, free lifestyle/clubbing mags and an International Herald Tribune/Asahi Shimbun (Japan`s biggest English paper) to read listening to funky music in the lounge (yes, I was happy).
Also...realised the government must be oblivious to the mass of tourists here as hardly any signs in English; saw a few geishas; ate various strange combinations of raw egg, chicken cartilage, crazy veg and enough noodles to stretch from London to Tokyo. Tried at least 14 different types of beer (honestly not a bad egg among them...Asahi Extra Dry is my fave), and; Nati almost had a heart attack when she tried on a top with a four-inch yellow spider in it.
That's it, thanks for emails we've received and hope all is well with you. We're going to Bali, Indonesia, tomorrow so will blog about that in a week or two.
All the best
Ali
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