Dan asked me to update the website with some shit now that I’ve returned to the USA from my Watson year abroad.  I’m too lazy to write anything new, but here’s a travel article I wrote giving advice to backpackers in Japan.  If anyone particularly likes it I’ve also got one on food in Japan and one on traveling in Peru.  Enjoy.  And, ps, Dan – nobody cares about your shit life.  Stop whining about your disappointing frisbee abilities.

JAPAN: LAND OF THE RISING SUN AND SIDEWAYS VAGINA

            Some people say I’m bitter, judgmental, and overly critical.  I call these people communists.  And when they try to protest I accuse them of killing Jon Benet Ramsey.  Yes, I make fun of just about everything, but why do some see this as incompatible with my love of traveling to new places and exploring new cultures?  I ask you, how am I supposed to make fun of people just because they are different if I don’t get a personal glimpse of these differences?  What kind of bigot do you think I am?  And few places offer the barrage of differences and dissimilarities that Japan does.  But before one can discover these, he or she must come to grips with a few basics of traveling in Japan.  Thus I, the Santa Claus (or Hanukkah Harry) of backpacking, seek to offer a patchy overview and maybe even a handful of tips for wandering the home of our karaoke-loving brothers and sisters.

 

Often the most daunting thing for a traveler in Japan is the language barrier, especially regarding written language.  It can be quite disconcerting to travel in a country with an entirely different lettering system.  Oh, you’ll see plenty of English, but the Japanese are just like your high school prom date – a tease.  They love to throw up a single street sign or storefront label in English, just enough to lull you into a false sense of security.  Next thing you know you’re naked in an alley eating banana peels.  For some strange reason, just because a restaurant has its name out front in English, or a pamphlet says “Visitors Guide to Tokyo!” there is no reason to think once you step inside or crack the first page any subsequent information will be in English.  My favorite are the magazines whose cover page is entirely in English – title, top stories, synopsis, not a lick of Japanese – with interiors devoid of English.  Who is that helping?  How can that be good for business?

            And confusing becomes the word of the day if you try to venture into the realm of the Japanese language itself.  The Japanese have three alphabets, two with forty-six letters apiece and one taken from the Chinese with tens of thousands of characters.  Why do the Japanese have three alphabets?  To fuck with you, that’s why.  They do it to see you squirm.  In fact, the Japanese themselves have no idea what any of their letters mean.  It’s a sad thing to realize, a whole nation of illiterates, but it just goes to show how far the Japanese will go for a good practical joke.  My advice is to rely upon other sources of information – use train times instead of destination as a reference to find your train, count intersections and landmarks instead of street names to navigate a city, etc.

 

But first you have to get to the city.  Most of your traveling in Japan will be done via its extensive rail network.  Japan has one of the most organized, consistent, and widespread train systems in the world.  They are also very costly.  But there are ways to downplay a portion of this cost, such as traveling mostly via local trains (better sightseeing anyway), taking jiyu-seki (non-reserved) seats on the larger trains, and using the old-fashioned “Look over there!  Isn’t that Ang Lee?” strategy.  On the plus side, you get what you pay for.  Japanese trains are relatively comfortable, very clean, and never late.  Never, ever late.  11:37 AM means 11:37 AM.  They would probably tell you the second too if it would fit on the electronic display board.  If a Japanese train is ever late, even by a few minutes, the conductor enters the main car, bows ceremonially, and then disembowels himself with a samurai sword.  If there is gum on the bottom of your seat he just cuts off one of his fingers.

 

Once you have arrived, Japanese accommodations can be more difficult to secure for backpackers than in most Western countries.  Except for Tokyo and Kyoto, most Japanese cities and towns possess just a handful of cheap accommodations, and sometimes you are lucky to find a single youth hostel.  These hostels are often in full Japanese style, offering an inexpensive version of the traditional ryokan hotels: paper walls, sliding doors, and potentially disastrous squat toilets (due to my own inaccuracy I can never again return to Aizu-Wakamatsu).  You sleep on tatami mats (Japanese for “the floor”), sprawled out on a futon (Japanese for “still the floor”).  It’s endearing for a while, but after a few nights being packed in Middle-Passage-style on the floor, you might consider pulling an Amistad.  For authenticity hounds, however, the commonly offered hostel dinner can be a windfall.  The meals are usually dirt cheap, relatively large, and very genuine.  Since many hostels are family-owned, or at least operated, you share the same food as they do, which can be unapologetically alien.  When served dinner, don’t ask questions, and if it wiggles stab it until it stops.  That’s also my advice for dating.

           

Each city and region you explore has its own rich history.  And by rich history I mean an endless procession of temples, shrines, and gardens.  Every town, every hillside, every few blocks has some.  They are to Japan what pimples were to my middle school complexion (how’s that for an SAT analogy?).  While they usually offer pleasant cloisters of peace and quiet within bustling cities, it is easy to become sick of this Japanese trifecta.  Hey look – there’s the big gate, there’s the screen painting, there’s the really old tree, and there are the nine gift shops.  Temples become the Starbucks of the East, selling salvation instead of frappes (note: they also sell frappes).  Remember to break any burgeoning monotony with trips to museums, galleries, hiking trails, onsens, or opium dens.  Mixing up plans also saves money, as the few bucks at each temple, shrine, and garden add up quickly.  By the end of my time in Kyoto, I was a hair away from telling the ticker vendors at a garden that after I pay to see their garden, they should pay to see mine.  Mine doesn’t have a rock garden, but it does have tomatoes.

               And as you wander these Japanese destinations, remember this – tourist maps are not your friends.  City maps, guidebook maps, and Huey Lewis may be, but tourist maps cannot be trusted.  Sure they point out all the major sights with cheerful colors and miniature drawings, but this comes at the expense of silly ideas like scale, thoroughness, and accuracy.  Spend a day navigating with a tourist map and you’ll find yourself saying things like, “Oh, I was supposed to turn left four miles ago, but the turn was obscured on my map by that smiling choo-choo train.  Still, he is rather cute.”  But don’t let this dishearten you into using nothing but public transportation.  Walking the cities of Japan is the only way to see the real neighborhoods, the places where the Japanese actually live.  Plus you can take part in the crosswalk revolution.  I have seen Japanese people wait for minutes at a completely deserted intersection just because the crosswalk sign is red.  But the second you break the rules and traverse that street they will surge behind you.  And each time you feel like a little Che.  I recommend that immediately afterward you throw a brick through a storefront, just to see if you can start a riot.

            Still, despite any confusion, high costs, or insecurities you may have in Japan, there is always one thing on your side: the Japanese are scared of you.  You are the gaijin, the foreigner, in one of the most classically isolationist and xenophobic countries in the world.  Remember when your mother told you that the bear was more afraid of you than you were of it?  Well now the Japanese are the bear, only with much less hair and better cell phones.  If you commit a horrendous social faux pas, the Japanese will rarely say a word.  If you walk home at three in the morning, with the fanny pack and money belt screaming tourist, still no one will bother you.  If you shout “Boo!” at an old lady, she’ll scream.  I guess that last one is pretty much true anywhere.  Sure, you may feel lonely or outcast, but you’re sure to love it when no one sits beside you on the train, no matter how packed it is, and you can sprawl out in total comfort.  I have found, time and again, that the only Japanese who approach me for conversation are doing so to practice their English after having studied abroad, taken classes, of something similar.  Which reminds me of a valuable piece of advice: if you need to ask someone for help, always ask a young person.  English is mandatory in Japanese schools, thus teenage and college-age kids have learned it most recently and will be the most eager or willing to use it.  But don’t let them get too comfortable around you – that fear is a boon to be cultivated.  Each time I arrive in a new Japanese city I treat it like prison: I beat up the first person I see just to show them who is in charge.

            With this grasp of the basics of traveling in Japan, you can finally immerse yourself in the always captivating cultural differences. Any student of horror or the gothic, in literature or film, will tell you that what fascinates us most is the only slightly abnormal.  Vampires, zombies, werewolves – they are all just enough like us to captivate us.  The same is true for travel.  Radically different cultures, such as third world nations or hugely isolated regions, are often not as intriguing as cultures like the Japanese, who share so much with us while still having so many divergences.  Now I’m not saying the Japanese are like vampires (but then again, I’m not saying they’re not), just that the more minor distinctions foster endless entertainment.  No Westerner can deny the spellbinding observation of ever-present Japanese efficiency.  Just visit a Japanese swimming pool – no slides, so free swim, absolutely no horseplay, just laps.  Go ahead and try to bring a Styrofoam noodle in there; I dare you.  Or examine their omnipresent sense of absolute courtesy.  The first time you are greeted upon entering a restaurant by every waiter and cook shouting “Irasshaimase” can be a heady experience (it is considered impolite for a scream of “AHHHH!” to be your reply).  And witnessing the lengthy string of bows and arigatos that follows the smallest purchase makes me wonder how long it takes the Japanese to kiss their kids goodbye on the first day of college.

            Because once you see a culture’s differences you can understand the similarities, the things that unite us under the banner of the human race, and from there it’s just a short leap to an eventual, powerful revelation.  Chopsticks suck.  Seriously, Japan, just admit that forks are better.  We’ve acknowledged the superiority of your cars and video games, and now it’s time for you to put those idiotic sticks down before you put someone’s eye out.