Out after 10 Years (13): Japanese are Horrible in English!

It's hard and time-consuming to find the source which accurately says how much Japan made from visitors in the past year, but I can say for sure that is bouncing back from the Covid-19 area. I remember reading the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan website regarding tourists just a couple of years back and it was way after Covid had been considered under control. Visiting was still not allowed. Now I think they can benefit from tourism although over-tourism is what they call it and complain about. One of my plans was to climb Mt. Fuji but I acted late and lost the opportunity to register. I guess I will have to go the next time, if there will be a next time!

With that said, what I still don't understand the inability of speaking English within the Japanese society. I always had a problem communicating with people, even the one who spoke English! They never understood what my intention was and that was really frustrating! 

An old taxi driver in Hiroshima took me to the wrong hotel first despite the fact that I bought pronounce the name and showed him the map on the phone. A hotel receptionist who spoke English barely understood what I meant! So, if you're planning to travel to Japan try to plan in a way that requires minimum human contact or you would be lost, tired and upset! 

(Photo: I got screwed by this old foolish taxi driver in Hiroshima! What I did on my way back to the station to continue my trip? I walked!)

Out after 10 Years (12): Food in Japan

I was at the brink of starvation during my trip to Japan, a few times! As silly as it sounds, it's true. I'm a very picky eater. Japanese cuisine contains lots of seafood, noodles, Tufu (Soy), high-fat Beef and some other things that I rarely eat! I didn't step in even one Japanese restaurant during my trip and it's just not because of the food. The restaurants and bistros are so tiny that people are divided by partitions! Besides the lack of communication always can be a problem like everywhere else in the country.

I bought one of this small slice Pizzas in a very nice and fancy supermarket next to Tokyo Tower one night that I was very hungry with some other stuff, but it was really bad. The bread was like a piece of plastic and no matter how you sank your teeth into it, it would not come off! 

I went to a breakfast place only once and that was the time you could say I tried a Japanese food. The result was not good! There're lots of different types of prepared meals available in convenience stores and supermarkets (which are not everywhere, by the way) but they are very expensive, and portions are very small. One thing I can say for sure is variety. Lots and lots of variety. But I think food is generally expensive in Japan, regardless of what type we are talking about because land to cultivate food is very limited. I eat salad, nuts and Whole Wheat Bread, the food which are expensive and scarce in Japan!

The only place I decided to go and sit for a meal was a few minutes from my hotel on the outskirts of Kyoto, mainly because I was very hungry(!), it was very close, it was very quiet and uncrowded place and it was reasonably priced, only ¥ 1,000, almost CAN $9.5 but it was closed!

Bread is not part of Japanese eating culture, and I don't know if Wheat and other grains to make bread are cultivated in Japan or not but if they are, they shall be very limited and for that, baked products are ridiculously expensive and mostly not delicious! 

(Photo, top: The only time I ate in a Japanese bistro. This breakfast cost nearly CAN $9 and was not so bad. I think it was somewhere in the Hiroshima main train station. The coffee was as usual: Not so good! The bread tasted good, but I hate White Bread and had to eat it! The salad was why even bother! The yellow liquid tasted really good and a right amount of salty and fatty but probably not very good for your health. I think it was a kind of soup or broth, but I couldn't taste any meat. The sausages were tasty but probably not so good for you either. I was served good milk for the first time, but I had to ask the waiter to refill it for me and still didn't help with the strong and unpleasant taste of the coffee!)

Out after 10 Years (11): Coffee in Japan

I didn't know I could find coffee in Japan to that extent. Tea has always been the popular drink in eastern culture: From western Asia, all the way to eastern part of the continent. Now the disgusting Starbucks and McDonald's, both, have branches all over Japan! The prices are ridicules, and the taste is awful, but people go there! 

Coffee has been part of my life for nearly 20 years now. I actually drink too much, at times, but I've recently reduced it to two cups a day and only add 3.25% Milk and most of the time, organic. So, wanting good coffee is natural for me. I buy roasted coffee bean, grind them with a burr mill and brew that. I also bought a good Espresso Maker, but that machine requires patient and precision to produce a good result! So, it's not used very often! 

A coffee at the first hotel that I stay, in Tokyo. I didn't see any difference between the two coffees they offer here and the espresso! Didn't even bother trying the tea! The amount of coffee is seen in the cup and usually is not much more than this anywhere else! 

With that said, I barely found a good coffee in Japan. Their coffee is very strong and there's no milk available and cream is fake, tasteless! A small (which they call it large!) cup of coffee goes for CAN $ 4 and tastes bad, most of the time. I tried one of the major Japanese coffee chains, Dotour and it was not good. A very small piece of pie for CAN $4 and small (large in their view!) same price! So, your coffee and pie will cost you nearly CAN $9 and is mediocre! The cafe is nice, and the people are very nice and helpful as well. They have tried to make really hard to make a nice environment similar to Western cafes, but space is limited in Japan and probably very expensive too! There's no doubt that the Japanese eating culture is way different from the Western's and even mine. That's probably why I didn't enjoy eating and drinking out. In fact, rather than a few times that I went for coffee and breakfast, and I almost got disappointed(!), I never ate out.

(Photo, top: Pies for Japanese people's size! You see the prices. Every Canadian dollar at the time was nearly ¥ 106, at the time)

Out after 10 Years (10): The Annoying Japanese!

Majority of the Japanese people are very disciplined and respectful people. They rarely speak loudly, and repeated messages asks passengers to put their phones on silent mode and refrain from speaking while on a train. Just an example of how they behave in the public. On the other hand, there're times that you see Japanese people load and even somehow irritating! I was quite surprised myself:

1) In the markets, salespeople continually advertise the merchandise by chanting and holding banners and signs, loudly and at the same time!

2) Local elections. People at public places such as train stations with loudspeaker, banners and pictures have election campaign!

3) Charity and non-government organization with donation boxes at public places. In cases of such assistance is sought from students. So when you're approaching a train station, for example, as many as ten students, who are standing with donation boxes, yell at you! 

(Photo: I saw this group of young fellas, probably students of a school, on my way back from Kamakura with, probably, their teacher. They were collecting donations, I would assume, for Red Feather Organization which is a Japanese non-profit organization for resolving social issues. I took it from far away as you can see from the top of the stairs and still could hear them clearly! I think their approach would mostly scares and throws away people but maybe that's how I feel as an outsider. I even wanted to donate some money but didn't know what their reaction would be and didn't although I think they would have appreciated it. I also saw their PM on TV wearing a red feather.)

Out after 10 Years (9): Garbage and Recycling in Tokyo

Tokyo is a city of 37,000,000 inhabitant and this number of people create a tremendous amount of garbage every day, to the extent that is beyond everyone's imagination. Why? Because everything is wrapped in plastic! It's worse than the US and Canada! 

Garbage and recyclable items are separated and neatly put at the side of a sidewalk, waiting for the collector. Some bags have labels, probably to inform the facility what they are. Japan is just amazing

If you go out early in the morning, bags of garbage are everywhere and shortly trucks show up to collect them and they truly do a good job because most of the places are clean after that. The interesting thing is you cannot find any trash can in the entire city of Tokyo except for hotels or perhaps some other places. I think the idea behind that is to discourage people to carry something with them which needs to go to a public garbage bin and ultimately reducing the collection cost, which is great. 

7-11 convenience stores are part of daily life in Japan. I don't eat the regular meal that is consumed three times a day in Japan! I don't eat noodles, boiled cabbage, raw fish and stuff like that. So, I had to resort to nuts and fruits which are not easy to come by. Here you see a small bag of nuts I bought, and the amount of plastic garbage is overwhelming!

I never saw anyone littering but people leave the recyclable containers at the side of roads or sidewalks. There are small boxes for throwing recycling bottles and cans in them but there are very limited compared with the number of vending machines! 

(Photo, top: Garbage truck in early morning in Tokyo. It's probably shortly before 06:00. This although not a dangerous neighbourhood but is relatively poor, I'd say. Lots of Nepalese and other people from Indian sub-continent live here but, again, is safe and clean. You just get irritated by the annoying and squeaking voice of them! Garbage and recycling is not as bad as Tokyo in smaller cities)

Out after 10 Years (8): Meiji Jingu

Emperor Meiji is credited for modernizing Japan. He imported western culture and technology and kept Japanese culture, preserved and valued. He is admired a lot in Japan and although he died in the old Japanese capital, Kyoto, there's a big shrine in Tokyo for him: It's called Meiji Jingu and is located in the western part of Tokyo in Shibuya. Tokyo is divided into 33 boroughs. This place is a big forest in the heart of the city, so dense that if someone took you there blindfolded and then took it off, you wouldn't believe you still were in a very populated city. 

Emperor Meiji in his younger age in Western attire. He also grew beard as was not and still is not customary in Japan.  

The reality is that this dense forest did not exist at the time the shrine was planned to be build. This is the volunteer work of many admirers of the emperor. This shrine, like many sacred places in Japan has its rules and guarded by people. It also gets tourists, so you need to be there early. Photography of the main shrine is forbidden. It is protected and served by men and women in traditional Japanese custom. Japanese people go there to pay their respect. The ritual is long but the short version of that, which is expected from tourists, if they are willing to do that, is:

1) Deposit money in the provided box

2) Bow twice.

3) Clap your hands twice

4) Bow once deeply, again.

5) Say your prayer. 

I'm not religious but I'm respectful of all the religions and I get along with everyone from every religion and faith as long as they don't force me to join them or start an awkward and useless argument about how good their religion is or topics like that. I almost followed the rituals at Meiji Jingu but accidentally and unknowingly dropped three Quarters in the provided box! So, I don't know what the monk's reaction would be, when he sees that. Photography of the main shrine is forbidden as usual, but tourists take selfies and pictures of almost everywhere that they can. 

(Photo, top: One of the gates in Meiji Jungi. These gates are called Torii and are seen as an entrance gates into shrines and temples. Japanese, stop, bow and enter the gate from the sides, not in the middle. This is surprisingly a rare photo as many are not seen!)

Out after 10 Years (7): Paying my Respect to Kurosawa and Mifune

Japanese movies, particularly Akira Kurosawa's, were amongst very few foreign movies were shown on TV when I was growing up in the old country. Films such Yujimbo, Red Beard and most notably Seven Samurai which was the inspiration to make The Magnificent Seven by John Sturges! Other foreign movies shown were WWII war movies where Slovak people of different former Eastern Bloc countries were fighting the Germans, at times some heavily altered and censored British and American movies. Going back to the subject, majority of Kurosawa movies which were shown are about old feudal Japan where people fought over territory, money and generally everything worth fighting for and hired Samurai warrior. Women do not have major roles in majority of the plots. There're some movies with women having role including Rashomon and Hidden Fortress but those movies were never shown because the authorities would have had to remove the majority of the scenes! Kurosawa had a long collaboration with Tashiro Mifune who had many first roles in his movies including all the above.

This week I decided to pay my respect to two of my all-time favorite artists Kurosawa and Mifune by visiting their graves. I visited their related cemeteries in two different days. Kurosawa is buried in a small cemetery in a very beautiful and small town called Kamakura in Kanagawa. 

It is quite surprising that the town has no mentioning of this great director! It's impossible to find someone's grave in Japan if you don't know Japanese and I only had a photo and as I said the cemetery is small, so I found it! It's probably only 15 minutes' walk from the train station and of course because no foreigner goes that way, people look at you strangely, although there was barely anyone on the street on that side of the town! The cemetery is surrounded by residential buildings and the background of the picture helped me to easily find the grave quickly. No picture, no flag, no banner, no nothing! Kurosawa is rested there 1998. He is buried like an ordinary man but he's no ordinary, this man, who is regarded as one of the greatest directors in the history of cinema!

Mifune's grave in another. He was born in China but of course he was a Japanese. This is the discussion I always have with people: Your birthplace does not tell you what you are. What you do and what you believe tell what you are.

I went to Kawasaki in another day, and this is surprisingly part of Kanagawa but all the way at the other side! getting there was not easy either. I mean going everywhere easy in Japan as long as you follow the train route but it's not always possible! To get there I went over Tama River and at the last station there is supposed to be a shuttle but to take you there but considering the trouble I had to go to make them understand where I was going, I scratched that and followed Google Maps in a rainy, humid and hot day! 

The cemetery that is known in Google Maps as 春秋苑(!) is less than 15 minutes from Ikuta station and is a huge cemetery and is built in multiple steps. There's also a funeral home adjacent to it but I didn't even think of asking anyone! The background again and the shape of the next grave, in this case, both help me to find the resting piece of Mifune but this time it took much longer, and it was raining. I almost was ready to leave as I always fear I might be late, even on a trip that you cannot be late for anything, but the next visit and I suddenly found it. I took a few pictures and headed back to the station. Thanks Kurosawa and Mifune for what you did nearly 60 years ago. You gave me lots of fun when I was a kid in a society that nothing else was available. I still have to watch every movie at least once again.

(Photo, top: Kurosawa's grave in Anyo-in Temple in Kamakura)