Japan in a few words

At the request of Caitlin, through a steady stream of ever decreasingly polite texts for details on our Japan trip, here one is. I have always struggled with writing, to the point that I still consider high school English to be a form of legal modern torture, what follows is a brief insight into the delightful two week exploration of Japan Lucy and I have just returned to.

The trip was a circular one, starting at Tokyo (Ueno), then onto Hakuba, Kyoto and Nara before returning back to Tokyo (Shinjuku) for 2 nights and then flying home. The trip involved a lot of exploring by foot (
“a piedi” as we say) to get a proper feel for each place we visited. Everyone was incredibly friendly and helpful, almost too helpful to the point we sometimes felt a bit uncomfortable from all the bowing.

Japan is a wonderful, but perplexing place. It has amazing technology in some aspects (everyone knows about the toilets), but also a distinct lack of modern technology in other aspects (their public transport is cash only for single or day trips). The cities are incredibly dense, with endless high-rise buildings and concrete everywhere, but there are so many places of beauty both natural and man made. Their gardens are spectacular and the temples are so intricate and stunning but the absolute highlight for us both was hiking through the mountain rage surrounding Kyoto, up to Mt Hiei. From there we could see down to the city of Kyoto on one side, and over to an vast lake, Lake Otsu. If we are ever to go back for another visit, Kyoto is absolutely the place we would spend more time.

Our day trip to Hiroshima was one I was both very glad we did, but also don’t want to do again. It is incredibly confronting, with the piece museum showing endless relics and images of the damage and pain caused by the bombs. The scale of it really has to be seen to fully appreciate it, and yet the city is rebuilt and lives on.

Another highlight for me was Nara, a smaller city an hour from Kyoto famous for its deer, which roam the parks. Small dear biscuits can be purchased from all around the parks, so you can then feed them! Aside from the deers though, Nara had the most incredible temples. The Todai-Ji temple is the largest all wooden structure in the world (or so we told), and contains the second largest Buddha statue on the world. While they were both incredible, I couldn’t help but think mostly about how on earth they constructed them both and moved a Buddha of that size into position so long ago. Finally, was the world heritage primeval forest on the eastern side of Nara, which we able to walk through, surrounding by late falling autumn leaves.

Instead of trying to choose a few select favourite photos from the trip (which is proving too difficult), I’ve instead made a link to all of the photos to browse (or not) at your own leisure.

Japan 2023