Photo Link:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/2bCq6AnPZs2wYuMz9
So after Kanazawa, I headed over to Kyoto. Honestly, kind of a hot take, but I found Kyoto a tad overrated. Still enjoyable, but 100% one of those places that looks way better in the photos than it does in person. To be fair, a large reason for this was the tourist crush…the Kyoto sights are not quite that big enough to accommodate the hordes of tourists here. Honestly I would have HATED coming to Japan during cherry blossom season in a month+. The vast majority of tourists are domestic, with a healthy dose of Chinese (can tell by the tonal nature of Mandarin and Cantonese) and Korean (which sounds distinct from Japanese) tourists also here from what I overheard. Also, like Tokyo, a ton of African-American tourists, which is really cool to see since that is a population that typically does not do international travel. I honestly think a big reason for this is because anime is absolutely massive in African-American culture. And while Tokyo was obviously jam-packed, it is a city, while Kyoto is all about seeing ancient temples. To be frank, I think that a day trip from Tokyo to Kamakura and a few days in Kanazawa/Takayama is a much better way to get a taste of “old” Japan than Kyoto.
That said, Kyoto was still OK! Especially when I was able to get away from the crowds. My favorite part of Kyoto for this was ironically the Fushimi Inara Taisha shrine…this is that endless path of red Torii gates that are ALL over Instagram. But luckily, the insta folks don’t like to hike unless a scenic viewpoint is involved (and even then they must keep physical exertion to a minimum), so if you do the 30 minute hike up this hill you are more or less totally on your own. And this is objectively an easy walk…only like 160 meters in elevation gain and it is a sloooow and steady gradient. It was honestly so cool to just walk up this hill under all these red gates. Felt a ton like Victory Road in Pokemon, and I found myself whistling the game’s soundtrack while doing the walk up and down. The top itself is whatever…there’s no view because of trees and some buildings, and the shrine is generic by Shinto standards. But one thing that hit me since I was in a Pokemon mood…a lot of these Shinto Inari temples have these two statues of foxes (aka inari) on pedestals on either side of a path. This is JUST like in Pokemon when you see the two pedestal-statues on either side of a path all the time, or when entering a gym. Pretty cool I thought.
Another cool isolated area was the Kifune-Jinja shrine. Another Shinto temple, this one to the water god(s) (which I think were horse related? based off the statues there), this was about an hour from Kyoto…a 30 minute train about 15km north of the city and then a 30 minute walk up a quiet hill/mountain road. My roundabout journey here weirdly reminded me of my time in both Armenia and Georgia, where I would go on hours-long half day trips to see various obscure churches and monuments. Like in that case, this was worth it though. The walk itself was quite peaceful, and the temple was nifty – there was this cool stairway entrance that was lined with picturesque red lamps on either side.
One last cool isolated area I went to was weirdly enough right by the overcrowded and overhyped Arashiyama bamboo grove. It was about a 30 minute walk from here where I was basically cutting through the Kyoto suburbs, which was kind of cool just to see a different architectural style for suburban houses – distinctly Japanese yet all the houses looked new-ish. The temple I went to, the Otagi Nenbutsu-ji temple, was a Buddhist one that is famous for a more recent phenomenon of the past century, where locals would have personalized Buddha heads sculpted by a local stonemason and then placed in the temple as an offering for good luck. It was cool to see how moss had quickly overtaken and given the temple a more ruined look, and this played well nicely with the total lack of crowds here.
The layout of the city makes sense, but is interesting as a tourist…pretty much most of the temples are in a ring around the (relatively small and walkable) city center. This means that you have to take busses and schlepp around to see everything, which is quite time consuming…I spent 2.5 days and these were long, full days with no stops or breaks. The city center itself was eh…like a much smaller Tokyo (night lights negligible compared to Tokyo, far fewer vending machines than Tokyo) but obviously much more popping than Kanazawa was, as that was way more provincial. There were also a handful of old-town areas in Kyoto, like the district of Gion, with traditional architecture and buildings. But again, I think the hordes of tourist crowds just made this less enjoyable for me, especially when compared to the tranquility of Kanazawa. And Kyoto, moreso than anywhere else in Japan, is filled with tons and tons of Japanese girls who rent out kimonos and other traditional outfits for photo-shoots by the temples and old streets.
There are a handful of famous Zen temples in Kyoto that I visited that were all great as well. I definitely enjoyed the Zen ones in Kamakura more, but these were still nice. Kind of reinforced my earlier opinion that Zen temples are great to wander around in because they are built like a traditional Japanese/Chinese garden, with an idealistic interplay between man-made and nature (which is heavily man-made nature, but still). Ironically enough, I just don’t get Zen gardens themselves. Zen gardens are just a giant patch of sand and rocks with patterns on the sand. I don’t know, I guess it isn’t for me, much like how modern art wasn’t a thing for me until fairly recently (and even then, I still don’t get large parts of modern art). I’m a sucker for the traditional indoor Japanese layout of folding screen doors and tatami mats, and the artwork in some of these Zen temples on these doors was up my alley.
Food-wise, I would say Kyoto was more of the same – very good but nothing standout worthy. I did have udon noodles for the first time and really liked it, especially the texture. Reminded me a ton of the hand-pulled noodles I had in China. One interesting thing I have found through all of Japan, and especially in Kyoto, is that street food is actually not an economical way to eat out. I wind up spending 20+ USD per meal on street food if I just get small things here and there, whereas in most countries street food is the cheapest option. For economical high quality meals, it is still hard to beat sashimi and ramen in Japan…again, it blows my mind how expensive good sashimi and good ramen is in the US compared to here where you can get it for well under 10 USD. One cool trend I started in Kanazawa (technically did a one-off in Nikko as well) and continued here was seeking out these grandma cafes. They’re basically like extensions of a house and kitchen and run by a grandma (and sometimes grandpa as well), with the grandkids helping out at night time for the dinner crowd. It’s a nice hearty and filling meal. And speaking of filling, outside of those all-you-can-eat/drink bbq/hotspot places, ramen joints (I actually love how it is totally acceptable to slurp in public when eating ramen), and grandma cafes, it is so hard to get stuffed in Japan…serving sizes here are not big at all. But in general, it *is* doable to eat fairly cheaply in Japan, like well under 20 USD a day. Which I suppose is good for a “first-world” country.
After Kyoto I went to Osaka for a few nights, as it was also my base for a couple of daytrips. I really liked the city…it was like a poor man’s Tokyo (so obviously still great), yet much grittier. Not quite as photogenic at nighttime, but still definitely had character. The walk from my hostel to the famous Dotonbori district was about 90 minutes…cut through the heart of the business district/downtown which felt just like the business parts of Tokyo or really downtown NYC or the Loop in Chicago in terms of the scale of the buildings…so basically, still waaaay smaller than Shanghai. Dotonbori itself was like a poor man’s Akihabara (the geek district in Tokyo) in terms of the light up displays (really just one section, unlike the entire wall of Akihabara’s blocks), and like a poor man’s Shinjuku (the neon lights part of Tokyo) in terms of the night lights in your face. There wasn’t any audio component to the cyberpunk feel here like there was in Akihabara with all the arcade noises and random ads blasting of women talking in Japanese, but the alleys here felt more real and less glossy, which I appreciated. One particular highlight here was walking into a bar where they only served 1 type of Japanese whisky for ~8 USD a glass, neat only. The bar was quite literally a corner booth between two other restaurants, and could generously fit 5 people shoulder to shoulder around the curve of the bar, if that. The bartender was just this dude reading a book until I walked in and had a glass. Honestly, just SUCH a Burning Man vibe at this bar, I loved it.
Much like Tokyo, Osaka was better at nighttime than at daytime. One thing that I think is quite distinct about Japan, and I am going to struggle to articulate it here, is the *distinct* look at all the urban areas have. It’s all short skyscrapers that are blocky and monochromatic, usually in a white or creamy color, set aside a bright blue sky…not sure how to phrase it, but it almost looks like it’s out of a video game or movie the way the buildings just “pop” with their color and design scheme and the blue sky behind it. Even if you take away the billboards and any Japanese signs, I think it is quite easy to spot a Japanese city when looking at photos of random global city skylines.
Unlike in Tokyo and Kyoto, the old streetfood market in Osaka was actually marginally affordable – still more expensive than a cheap sitdown meal, but I was at least able to spend under 20 USD and actually be somewhat full. The market was much emptier than the Tokyo and Kyoto streetfood streets, much cheaper, and honestly a bit better (in both Tokyo and Kyoto the best streetfood was outside these streetfood markets). Honestly up there with the Kanazawa seafood street stall market that I went to in terms of food quality. That said, I thought Osaka was merely in-line with the rest of Japan and I guess I had higher food expectations as it is considered one of the best spots for food in the entire country (arguably even more than Tokyo). Drinks were cheaper here than in Tokyo or Kyoto though…in izakayas, a highball was maybe 250 yen vs. being closer to 400 in the other two cities (though my hostel was also away from the city center so this might have been due to the location). A highball is basically just whiskey and soda water/seltzer…have never seen it outside Japan but it’s great. It’s suuuper popular all over Japan, people basically drink that and beer (and occasionally sake). But yea, more of the same food-wise in Osaka, so still great (like I said earlier, I would say Iraq/Jordan/Yogyakarta/Kuala Lumpur/Mexico>Japan>Italy in my tier 2 of food), but it is still weirdly disappointing because Chinese food for me is amazing and this falls short of that. And obviously when I say Chinese food, the food I had in the sliver of China I went to, or in Singapore or in KL is vastly different than American Chinese food…not even at all similar minus a few notable exceptions, like if you go to a great dim sum spot or Sun Wah BBQ in Chicago.
The highlight of Osaka was honestly this retro video game store that I walked into that was downtown. Great, great ambiance, with 90s video game soundtracks (like Pokemon Stadium and Final Fantasy) playing, tons of cool decorations up, and just an insaaaane collection of old stuff, from Dreamcast (Sonic Adventure and Crazy Taxi were two of my childhood favorites and they were here!) and PS1 games (like Crash Bandicoot…crazy how far Naughty Dog has come, from Crash Bandicoot to Uncharted and The Last of Us) to Gameboy Colors (!!!!) to N64 games like Pokemon Stadium and MarioKart. This sounds dumb, but I was shocked at how small the Gameboy Color cartridges were…I remember them being much bigger, which makes sense given that I was 5 or 6 when I first got Pokemon Red. Sort of like how when I went to my sister’s elementary school graduation in 6th grade, I was shocked to find how small the urinals were in the bathroom when I went to take a leak. Kind of obvious in hindsight but the type of thing you don’t think about. But yea, just an awesome store that I spent over an hour wandering through and digging into all the games they had for sale.
The next day, I went about 90 minutes west (still in the Kansai province) for a half-day trip to see Himeji Castle, which is the most famous medieval castle in Japan. On the way there, I stopped about halfway in the city of Kobe to try some Kobe beef for lunch, as that is the most famous and allegedly best beef in the world. And I have to say, the steak was absolutely phenomenal. There are apparently only ~3000 cows a year that qualify for Kobe beef. It was quite literally melt-in-your-mouth fatty, and honestly it was one of those meals where I was just thinking about it afterwards. Not quite to the level of the Pancha Kattu dosa that I had in Hyderabad, but definitely in that same tier. THAT said, I still maintain that Argentina is faaaar better value…you can get an out-of-this-world steak (not quite Kobe good) for like 10 USD, while this cost me closer to 55+ USD (and that was with a discount as it was lunch and not dinner).
From Kobe, I continued another 40 minutes west to get to the town/city of Himeji, to see what is Japan’s most famous castle, Himeji Castle. I thought it was a bit more impressive on the outside than the castle I saw in Osaka, as the pure white color here really stood out especially against the bright blue sky. It was very striking architecture and certainly worth a few hours to check out. Near the castle there was a royal garden that I stopped by afterwards…not quite as good as Kanazawa, but again, I wonder how it would have stacked up had it not snowed in Kanazawa because that was most of the magic I feel.
In my final full day in Osaka, I did a daytrip out to Nara, which was about an hour directly east (Kyoto is directly north of Nara, so Osaka-Nara-Kyoto forms a right triangle). Nara was decent enough – the most famous thing for most people is all the semi-wild deer that roam about that you can pet and feed, but I abstained as it didn’t look like the most ethical thing in the world to me, to have wild animals habituate to massive tourist crowds like this via feeding shitty rice crackers. And a lot of the males had sawed off antlers. I don’t know, it left a bad taste in my mouth. There were a bunch of temples here, though I still maintain that Kamakura was the best so far (probably because it was the emptiest to be honest). That said, the highlight here was this absolute unit of a Buddha statue that was housed in some impressive wooden building. Probably the most impressive Buddhist statue I have ever seen, just towering over. Honestly (and I’ve brought this up before) I got more of a TIbetan vibe than an SE Asian vibe here, which kind of goes with my pet theory that Japanese Buddhism is like an inbetween of Tibet and SE Asia for aesthetics. And speaking of wooden…literally like 99% of historic buildings in Japan are wooden which is why so many of them are reconstructions. Not exactly the most durable material to stand for centuries upon centuries. Another highlight of Nara (and really, all of Japan) are the mochi desserts, especially the ones stuffed with strawberries. It’s basically like a super chewy ricecake, and I just love the texture more than anything else. In general, I think that Japanese desserts have grown on me over my time in the country – very subtle in general and not too sweet and a heavy, heavy use of beans, but pretty tasty stuff.
My final couple of days in the Kansai region were staying overnight in a Buddhist monastery in Koyasan, a few hours south of Osaka. It was a looong train ride there, about 4 hours and 4 connections. It was also very melancholic, with a constant fog and heavy rain smashing into the various train windows I was sitting by. Made it the perfect backdrop to read Murakami’s Norwegian Wood, which wikipedia says is about loss and burgeoning sexuality but to me was really mostly about nothing. It’s incredibly well written (for the most part, except when the characters rant about some failed student revolution) and *incredibly* melancholic, but it really is a book about nothing, in I guess a good way. I wouldn’t say I loved it, but I definitely want to read more of his books. Koyosan is the head of the sect of Shingon Buddhism (related to Tibetan Buddhism). Keeping up with the theme of all the other temples I saw, the temples of Koyasan do a great job done in mixing architecture with nature (again, nature that is man-made, but still). Japan really melds nature and architecture better than any culture I have ever seen – reminiscent of Hangzhou in China in particular, and I am curious what the rest of China and even places like South Korea are like now, to see if that is true there as well. I wonder if the Zen philosophy is a part of that…more than any culture I have ever seen, Japan really celebrates the “mundane”, from moonlight to fall leaves to cherry blossoms. I know this is actually something I need to personally get better at, since I am not at all easy to be in awe at natural beauty after all of my travels, so maybe there is something in here for me, I don’t know. The temple/monastery I stayed in was cool enough, if a tad overpriced at 90 USD for a night, dinner, and breakfast, along with witnessing the monks chanting in the morning. Because it is Buddhist, the food was vegetarian (fun fact: Hinduism “stole” vegetarianism from Buddhism in order to win more converts). The varieties of tofu served were excellent, and all in all it was a very filling and tasty meal – I was expecting something bland and small because it was monk food. And it was cool to wear those traditional Japanese robes and eat while seated on my tatami matted floor. Pretty unique experience. The breakfast was more of the same – surprisingly filling and good. I also got to witness the monks’ morning prayers at 7am while here…not really a surprise in hindsight, but to me this was basically indistinguishable from Hindu chanting. Like Hindu chanting, this was done in Sanskrit, was in a monotone drone that grows on you with time, and a weirdly catchy beat. I do think that Hindu chanting is more aesthetically pleasing (this was done in like a minor key so it took a while for my ears to adjust), but the similarities between Hinduism and Buddhism in general are obviously quite pronounced given their similar evolutionary history within India. My favorite example of this is the demons that you get in Buddhist (especially in Tibetan and Japanese) paintings and sculptures, to the demons you always see guarding Hindu temple entrances.
The highlight of Koyasan was this ancient Buddhist cemetery set in the woods. There was heavy snow that day which only added to the picturesque nature of the stroll, and all the stone lanterns and tombs and torii gates and buddhas etc. etc. all while secluded in a quiet forest (basically no tourists because of how convoluted it is to get here) really was great. Obviously saw a handful of other temples here as well, the highlights of which were the Danjo Garan temple (a beautiful red and white pagoda which housed some impressive golden Buddha statues) and the Kongubu-Ji temple, which had some gorgeous sliding door illustrations…in general I love the whole sliding door aesthetic of traditional Japanese architecture, whether it be sliding doors with illustrations, or those paper paneled windows instead. One thing that struck me here that has been true everywhere in Japan so far is the distinct lack of stupas in any of the Buddhist temples. I saw a singular one in the graveyard in Koyasan, but otherwise this is a somewhat distinct part of Japanese Buddhism that seems to separate it from Sri Lanka, SE Asia, Tibet, and historic stuff in India and Afghanistan. Again, I am curious how it is in China. One other Buddhist thing that I never saw anywhere in Japan were prayer wheels – granted, outside of like one example in Myanmar I don’t think I have seen these outside of a Tibetan and Nepalese setting either. Another cool thing…a lot of Shinto temples in particular (not sure about Buddhist ones) have this little box in the front to drop coins in as an offering, which is very reminiscent of the money boxes you see in Hindu temples.
Overall, I think the Kansai region was certainly good but not great – it’s one of those places that are more picturesque than nice, if that makes sense. Like the OG made for instagram. Still an enjoyable region, and to be fair, it might be the 2nd most photogenic place I have ever been to after Uzbekistan. It is objectively beautiful when you get away from the crowds, but the problem is that crowds are often there. Anyways, after Koyasan, I took another four hour journey to Osaka and then connected via bullet train to Hiroshima. Would be spending the next few days in Hiroshima and Miyajima in the Chugoku region. One depressing thing about bullet trains…Japan built these almost 60 (!!!!) years ago, and just look at the amazing state of US public transport.
Hiroshima to me was reminiscent of places like Amritsar in India or Sarajevo in Bosnia. A very recent dark history that the city does a great, great job of presenting. The visual highlight of the city was probably the “A bomb dome”, which was the dome of a building that survived the blast and is now just a shell that looks like, well, a bomb ruin. The museum here is also incredibly well done (like the museums in Amritsar about Partition and Sarajevo about the Balkan wars of the 90s), and to me it really drives home that Harry Truman might have lowkey been the worst president in modern US history, even moreso than George W Bush himself (get out of here if you think Trump is…that’s just typical neoliberal BS for those who are more obsessed with decorum than actual policy). Obviously all war and conflict is bad, but just the scale of the nuke, and how it led to long lasting pain and death and even the immediate aftermath where survivors had skin peeling off and ridiculous burns…just a really powerfully done museum that probably won’t change much because human beings when they have power suck (which is ironic for me to think since I want to eventually do refugee/conflict zone work, but I guess a healthy dose of cynicism helps with that).
Another random highlight of Hiroshima was going to this high-end confectionery store (but it not being Tokyo or Kyoto, prices were cheap – I got 3 delicious goodies for like just over 1 USD each). Very reminiscent of French stuff. One of my closest friends growing up is half-Japanese, and his mom would always bring us random Japanese treats after her frequent Japan trips, and the stuff in this shop was the first time I actually had something of that quality in Japan itself.
Overall, Hiroshima was very cheap. In fact, it was so cheap that going to small little eateries for a sit down meal was cheaper than getting convenience store food, because konbini (as it is known in Japan) seems to have set prices, while the actual sit down places scale with location. I could get delicious bowls of rice, fried meat and curry (basically like British Indian curry) or of ramen for like 7 USD, and these would really fill me up. Honestly, these curry and ramen joints are everywhere in Hiroshima and really gave off a cyberpunk vibe. It’s like an even sleazier Osaka, with sparse neon lights at night and empty-ish streets (even in the “downtown” nightlife area), and you have all these small diners where you put in cash into a vending machine, get a ticket, give the ticket behind the counter to a dude who grunts, and then get your bowl full of food that you slop down while sitting next to a bunch of strangers. It doesn’t sound too enticing when I write it out like that but I love it. It’s like when Harrison Ford is eating cheap noodles under the night lights in Blade Runner. I wonder how Hong Kong in particular will stack up to this feeling. And during the day, Hiroshima is much like any other Japanese city – bright chromatic blocky buildings that just look Japanese.
While in Hiroshima, I also took a daytrip out to the island of Miyajima. Miyajima was cool enough – lots of Edo era wooden architecture (that survived the nuke from nearby Hiroshima as it was far enough away) and it actually reminded me a bit of Takayama. The main thing to see here was the floating Torii gate, which was pretty nifty – it’s basically built far enough from shore such that when it is high tide, it looks like it’s floating. Pretty scenic, and there was a long ass line to take photos in front of it so I just stood next to the back of the line and used my big zoom lens on my Fuji camera to snap some pics of the gate without wasting an hour in line. Apparently the Shinto temple that this gate is a part of is dedicated to the Japanese equivalent of the Hindu goddess Saraswati, which I thought was cool…so basically, much like how Buddhism influenced Hinduism in India, the reverse was also true, and then this Buddhist goddess eventually made her way to Japan where she got adopted by Shintoism. The other cool part was this one Buddhist temple that I did a small hike up a hill to see. Like I mentioned before, the demon-like figures in these Buddhist temples are just so cool to me and this one was chock full of them. Another cool thing I like about Japanese Buddhism is how there are tons and tons of these small Bodhisattva statues that people dress up with woolen hats and face masks etc. for the winter. Both Hiroshima and Miyajima were enjoyable enough places, but definitely the sort of place you only see once in Japan, as opposed to flying specifically to see it. Definitely glad I saw both though.
After Hiroshima, I took a bullet train – local train transfer – bullet train (like 2.5 hours in total) to Nagasaki, all the way on the western tip of mainland Japan and a part of the Kyushu region. Nagasaki immediately struck me as being very different from any other Japanese city. It looked, well, less Japanese with the architecture – a ton of brick buildings and more varied architecture and very little of the cream colored monochromatic block-ish buildings that seemingly every other Japanese city has. Obviously Tokyo specifically had skyscrapers but even Tokyo’s shorter buildings were very similar to the buildings in every other Japanese city so far. So when the US nuked Nagasaki, the damage was somewhat limited due to a range of hills/small mountains shielding the rest of the city, so a decent portion of the city survived. In addition, Nagasaki was the only point of entry for Europe for ~200+ years when the rest of the country was closed off from the world, so you have a much bigger influence of European architecture here, especially for the older buildings. All of that made the city quite unique. There are pockets of old wooden European style houses (in a fusion architecture…the roofs are all distinctly Japanese) that are a few hundred years old, that are kind of funky to see in Japan given how non-European the rest of the country is. Speaking of Japanese roofs…I was walking in the Chinatown area here and I think that I can actually 100% distinguish Chinese rooftops and arches and architectural styles from Japanese. It’s somewhat subtle, but I guess the best way to verbalize it is that Chinese architecture (which is a super broad term to begin with, but at least Ming-era stuff) is a bit more grandiose than Japanese, when it comes to rooftops and embellishments.
For dinner my first night, I stumbled upon this old school diner that is apparently Kyushu’s oldest cafe…the inside had this really cool old-school vibe and it was decidedly not a touristy place. Their star dish was this absurd Nagasaki dish called Turkish rice, which was…not Turkish. It is basically spaghetti, a port katsu (pork cutlet) covered in that British-Indian curry sauce that is now somehow a Japanese curry sauce, and an imitation of pilaf rice (like the rice you get in north India/Pakistan/Afghanistan/Central Asia). Not great, not bad, but certainly interesting. And dessert was a Nagasaki milkshake, which was just shaved ice that was doused in condensed milk, so it was obviously delicious. One other thing I noticed about Nagasaki desserts is that they were way more “European”, as in a lot more fluffy cake based…so basically, not as good as desserts in the rest of Japan. The next day, I also grabbed lunch at an izakaya which included some whale meat sashimi (delightfully fatty) for like 12 USD – the same course for dinner was close to 40 USD! A common thing for a lot of these izakayas is apparently to charge super cut rate prices for lunch, so my general go-to has been to get these for lunch and then do a cheap ramen/curry/etc dive for dinner.
There are certain parts of Nagasaki at night that are like those old school narrow alleyways from Tokyo (like Golden Gai and Omoide Yokocho), but these were 10000% not touristy and fully local, and I really really dug that vibe. Cool to just wander around here at night time. My lodge in Nagasaki was actually my first ever proper capsule hotel that Japan is famous for. Actually pretty nifty…there is an automated sliding screen door that closes, and you have a giant mattress on the ground (with enough space for my backpack and duffel bag), plenty of hooks to hang your towel/clothes/etc, a nice-sized ledge to put my stuff and water and chargers on, and a security locker for valuables. Pretty cool and to be honest not at all claustrophobic, but maybe I’m the wrong person to comment on that as I don’t get scared of tight spaces (I don’t think? I enjoyed that narrow passageway I crawled through while caving in Bolivia so I think I am good there).
The main reason I came to Nagasaki was to see Gunkajima island. This is an abandoned island from the 1970s (it survived the nuke) that was a coal mining town run by Mitsubishi. It was a 30 USD boat ride over, and unfortunately the sea was angry that day my friends, so we could not land (they only have like a 50% landing rate because the dock is not that big and quite tight). Kind of funny that of the 30 USD, roughly 3 USD is for the walking tour and 27 USD is for the boat ride, so I got a measly refund of 3 USD back at the end – pretty smart setup by them knowing the low landing rate. That said, it was still really cool as we got to circle around and see some impressive urban ruins. As it is, landing on the island is a highly controlled walking tour where you can’t enter the town itself but walk for a small portion of the outskirts, so I’m not sure just how much I missed anyways. But from a distance it honestly looked like it could have compared to Chernobyl, minus the nature overgrowth…here it was all pure concrete ruin with very little nature reclamation, probably because the island was rocky to begin with and large parts of it are artificial landfill. Definitely glad I did it but it was sort of a tease of what could have been, had the seas been calmer. But at the same time, the best way to see the island is probably illegally walking through it and not through the official curated tour. And especially after watching The Last of Us right now (great show, even greater game), it was very very cool to see big urban structures just crumbling and in a decayed state. I just really really love the whole aesthetic of man-made ruins like that. I actually met a Japanese-American girl and her white husband on this boat trip (we were the only 3 English speaking tourists), so I slipped back into my natural habitat of being a third-wheel and we got dinner together. We went to one of those yakitoris, which is basically like a Japanese kebab/grilled meat spot. I have to say…the atmosphere in these places is unbeatable, it’s just like quintessential Japan. Walk into a narrow bar, talk with the bartender (via the Japanese-American girl who was our translator), order snacks and drinks over the course of a few hours. The only catch is that every yakitori I have been to has been painfully mediocre food-wise and wildly overpriced. The saving grace of this yakitori, if you will, was that the couple refused to let me pay.
The next day I took my last high speed rail of the trip, going up to northern Kyushu to the city of Fukuoka. I also had my last bento box meal on this trip, which was a pretty sweet wagyu beef and rice lunchbox. Compared to Nagasaki, I thought that Fukuoka was more “typically” Japanese in terms of the modern buildings. A nice enough city to walk around…a low key highlight might have been this one bakery I stumbled upon called Jokiya, which was selling 90 yen (just under 75 cents) “donuts”, which were more like giant freshly baked madeleine or financier. Just mouthwateringly good, and it smelled so good on the streets too which was what drew me there in the first place.
Fukuoka is probably most well-known for these outdoor food carts which are basically like de-facto temporary outdoor izakayas, with full bar seating where the full setup gets taken down at the end of every night. There was a giant row of these and they all had massive lines so I picked the longest one – the Japanese love a good queue and usually the longer the queue the better quality the food. I have to say, probably my single biggest disappointment in all of Japan. The food was absurdly overpriced, portion size was outrageously small, and the taste was laughably mediocre – might have been my single worst meal in Japan, and I paid over 15 USD for the privilege of not getting filled up on grill-fried ramen (apparently a Fukuoka thing which I ordered because everyone else was getting either that or yakiniku which frankly is always mediocre) and a draft beer (you need to order drinks here). So of course, I filled up with some konbini food for a few bucks and at least was able to sleep with a full stomach. Funnily enough, the New York Times, in yet another example of why they are not doing so hot, listed Fukuoka as one of their 52/53 places (I forgot which # they use and refuse to Google it) to visit in 2023 *specifically* because of these outdoor food carts. It’s sort of like how they always list a stupid number of tier-8 US cities (like when they put in Columbus, OH a few years back), and always have an overfocus on North America and Europe with a token few entries from India, Japan, South America, and *all* of sub-Saharan Africa.
Besides that funny-in-hindsight dinner, Fukuoka was not bad. I would say probably the “worst” Japanese city I went to, but still enjoyable. Honestly might have been the 2nd best city in Japan after Tokyo for just mindlessly strolling around, but I think that’s because the weather was great so I only was wearing a sweater and no jacket. There was a decent enough Japanese garden that I got to see – my last one! – and a cool giant pond that you could walk around. It was like a much lesser version of the lake in Hangzhou in China, with pavilions and random bits built with a pond view to look photgenic. And people in the pond were riding these duck boats which I thought was cool – reminded me of the duck boats in Band-i-Amir in Afghanistan!
One random interesting thing about my hostel in Fukuoka…in last year’s Burning Man, one of my favorite art pieces was this weird installation of all these cats dressed up as astronauts landing and getting out of a cat spaceship. My hostel weirdly enough had a theme of astronaut cats…there were all these artworks inside of astronaut cats and cat spaceships. Just a totally weird coincidence given how niche cat astronauts are.
Overall, Japan was great. Definitely a country that was greater tham the sum of its’ parts, and probably the 2nd most photogenic place I’ve been to as a whole after Uzbekistan, at least with regards to architecture. Obviously some negatives here – the biggest one being the outrageous amount of plastic and disposable waste produced. Anytime you buy a singular item – a small snack, whatever – they give you multiple plastic bags for it. Japan is very big on formalities and presentation and this just leads to a stupid amount of waste created. Couple this with the lack of public garbages and you’re often walking around for 20+ minutes before you can throw out your pointless garbage. But for things I’ll miss – the freshly baked donuts in Fukuoka, the red spicy fried chicken of 7/11, all the cheap and delicious ramen and sashimi, cheap (and good!) conveyor belt sushi, highball drinks, the totally peaceful nature of Japanese temples, torii gates, jingles everywhere (ATMs, checkout counters, train stations, etc. etc.), the total sensory overload of Akihabara in Tokyo, and amazing public transport.
So I am off for a quick 10 day trip to Thailand and Malaysia to see some bits that I haven’t seen before, since I have only visited Bangkok and KL. Then India for a few days, then Madagascar for a month, then Israel for a few weeks, then another India pitstop before the Upper Mustang trek in Nepal, and then back to India for a bit to at least return my rental hiking backpack. That takes me to the end of May…basically have all of June open before heading to London in early July for a Bruce Springsteen concert. If I go to Hertie in Berlin the Bruce concert is my retirement swan song, but if I go to Columbia (I find out about financial aid in the next couple of weeks) I am thinking of Germany after London, and then back to NY before doing Chile (Atacama desert!) as a final trip.