Japan – a country where everything goes smoothly

Japan – a country where everything goes smoothly

It took us some time to choose the right title for our Japanese experience. It could also be: 'Japan - if you like to complain don't go!'; 'Japan – the country for those who like to be spoiled'; 'Japan – tastes good, smells good, feels good'!

It is not easy to say what is Japan's greatest highlight. There are iconic natural sites, such as Mount Fuji; 

there are Imperial capitals Kyoto and Nara, with all their temples ... 

... Zen gardens ...

... bamboo forests ...

... charming streets ...

... 'geishas' walking around.

 there are super modern, vibrant and yet amazingly tidy megalopolises - Tokyo and Osaka. 

It's rather the whole package that makes this country so unique and so enjoyable. The key components of the 'Japanese package' are: excellent food; ease of traveling (that is to say super modern, fast and punctual trains); politeness of its people, tidiness and cleanliness everywhere, modernity of its cities, relaxing ambience of Ryokans (traditional guesthouses) ...

and Onsens (hot baths); subtle beauty of Buddhist temples, Shinto shrines and Zen gardens. On top of that comes the cherry blossom - an amazing spectacle of natural, man-made beauty (it seems that in Japan there is not so much contradiction between the natural and man-made, as many other places of natural beauty are designed by men, like Zen gardens, bamboo forests, Tateyama snow corridor).

When we walk the streets or take the public transport, most of Japanese cities may feel similar to the Netherlands, Switzerland or Germany. They are clean, tidy and very well organized. The architecture is modern and simplistic. Many people go around on their bicycles - so reminiscent of the Dutch cities. The shop-assistants and bartenders are extremely polite. The weather is very European, the climate in Tokyo or Osaka is similar to Northern Italy or Southern France; as mountains are all around, the setting of Japanese cities is much alike Milan or Grenoble. However, these similarities are superficial, in reality Japan is distinctly unique.

Let's start with food; eating places are omnipresent and the great news is that you don't need to worry for recommendations - whatever place you pick, the food tastes yummy. Without much exaggeration, the meals were so good that our appetite was literarily growing as we ate :). Many of the Japanese delicacies are already available in Europe, especially in Brussels, where sushi bars have become almost as wide-spread as pizzerias. Nonetheless, the Japanese cuisine is still full of surprises. The sushi bar where the fish is going around on a conveyor belt and you can pick the one that you like is not a big surprise in Europe anymore. However, in Japanese ones, also hot water is circulating around; each person has it's small tap and can get as much hot water as they like. At the beginning we thought that it's a custom here to take sushi with hot water; only after some time we realized that in front of each customer there is a small box with powdered green tea (matcha) and you can drink as much tea as you want. In the end, it's not hot water but hot green tea that goes best with the raw fish. In Japan it really pays off to look around to see how the locals do.

Few interesting remarks on the most popular Japanese food – sushi. Raw fish without rice is called sashimi, whereas raw fish with rice is called sushi. The one served on a small bed of rice is called nigiri-sushi and the one served in a seaweed roll is called maki-sushi. Interestingly, in Japan the chunks of fish in nigiri-sushi are always much longer than the rice bed, as you are supposed to dip only the tip of the fish in the soya sauce and not the rice (thanks to this you get much more fish as a bonus :). The Japanese favourite choice is tuna (maguro), which comes in many varieties: lean (the cheapest one); semi-fatty; fatty (the most precious one and very rare in Europe); lightly grilled and minced (kind of tuna tartar). Other common choices for fish are: squid (ika), eel (unagi) and yellowtail fish (hamachi), which is one of our favourites. Surprisingly, the raw salmon (sake) is not as popular as it is in the European sushi restaurants. Instead the Japanese are keen to have a grilled salmon for ... breakfast. Almost every meal is accompanied by a small bowl of miso soup (a soup thickened with fermented soya beans paste, often with added tofu, vegetables and clams). The other common dishes are: noodle soups (ramen, udon and soba); yakitori (skewers) usually consumed in Izaka-Ya (a Japanese pub); gyoza (a dumpling filled with minced meat); Okonomiyaki (really hard to explain – something like a cabbage omelet with meat or seafood on top, fried in front of you on a teppan (iron hot plate)); tempura (battered and deep fried seafood or vegetables) and much much more ...

Sometimes is not so easy to understand the menu.

The Japanese are not the most flexible nation. We knew that from the stories of other people, though the instances when that inflexibility came out were quite unexpected. For example, we are consuming sashimi in a sushi eatery, the chef cuts it with all Japanese diligence and precision in front of us. Needless to say, it tastes mouth-watering. Though as we are used to chew it with a pinch of rice, we are asking for a bowl of steamed rice. No way, in this eatery you don't eat sashimi with rice and even if the service is super kind and big stacks of steamed rice are at our arm's length, there is no way to convince the chef to give us a bowl of it. The only solution that he can think of to get us rice, is to make us order nigiri sushi or maki sushi (fine, they are excellent too). You almost always end up over-eating sushi, though contrary to Europe it's not bad for your pocket as it's relatively cheap in Japan.

The Japanese are super polite – Japan is the country with the highest quality of service we experienced, even if most of them do not speak English very well. To break the language barrier they will either use the smartphone translators or look for someone who speaks it a bit. Several times while we got lost we asked some passers-by for help; to our surprise, if they were unable to explain us directions, they just escorted us to the right place for a few minutes, even if it was not on their way. Still, there were also cultural shocks. Imagine our astonishment to hear that in the noodle soup restaurant everyone is slurping noisily, while sucking in their udon, ramen or soba. The Japanese make these sucking noises so loud that we were wondering if there was a competition going for the one who can make it the loudest. Something that is considered very rude in Europe, is totally fine in over-polite Japan.

Another amazement in Japan is a visit to the toilet. My first encounter with it was a bit dramatic and happened even before I reached the country - in a Japanese restaurant in Bangkok. Toilet is electrified and it has a sort of control panel. 

I was curious what happens if I press one of these buttons. So, while standing over the bowl I leaned forward to press one of the keys and ... the jet of high pressure water shot up straight into my face. I jumped back to escape, but the water kept on splashing up on the ceiling and from the ceiling down on me. The water kept on running and I was trying to figure out how to stop this monster (while of course getting wetter and wetter). Finally, I pressed the red button and the 'shower' stopped. Wet and embarrassed, I quickly came over to our table and said: 'Ieva, let's get out of here'. Fortunately, it was a warm Bangkok night, so I got dry quickly. The conclusion – if you start playing with a Japanese toilet (or rather washlet, as it's a toilet and a bidet in one), sit on it :). And sitting on it is quite pleasant as the toilet seat is nicely warm (because it is electrically heated).

Public transport – trains are just great, fast, tidy, comfortable and super interconnected – in short - all you can wish to have on the train. The punctuality is so good that you can set your clock according to the departure time :). This transport paradise has one hellish side though – it's very expensive. However, for the foreign tourists like us, there is an easy way to make it cheaper by getting the JR Rail Pass. This Pass is the best 'investment' you can make in Japan, it allows you to take almost every train in the country, including most of the Shinkansen – SuperExpress trains, moving at over 300 km/h. We've hardly ever had such a freedom of travel :). The connections are so good that it is not a problem to visit Kyoto while staying in Osaka (50 km away). While in most of the countries taking public transport is a hassle, in Japan it is a pleasure. As we mentioned previously, flexibility is not a Japanese strength, though there is at least one example of things that are rigid in Europe but flexible in Japan - on Japanese trains you can choose if you want to sit face or back to the front of the train as seats can easily switch the direction :).

Here we arrive to the end of the first Japanese episode, though watch this space as amazing stuff is still to come.