This is the Japan trip post-mortem.

But first… shout out for my love’s 48th birthday. He’s my favorite person.

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Near the beginning of our visit to Japan I was messaging with a friend and I said, “I knew they were better than us, but now I know it know it.” There’s no question in the debate of which country is better – US vs. Japan – they win. By a landslide. They won even before The Moral Failure of November 5, 2024.

But after our 16-day visit I will definitely say that Japan is hyper idealized. Here are some things that were amazing, and some things that weren’t THE MOST PERFECT THING IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD. And some things that honestly gave me the ick.

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Our Free Walking Tour guide in Kyoto (who was from Switzerland) said that people frequently say that Japan is “futuristic”, but it isn’t really. And he’s right. I didn’t see any technology or solutions that seemed particularly space-aged. Bullet trains? Robots serving you coffee? The former is not new technology. The reason we don’t have it in the US is because… well, all of the other reasons we can’t have nice things. The latter I don’t personally want to see until we have universal basic income. Also, I’m not sure the future has as many things wrapped in single-use plastic as Japan does.

But what Japan really seems to excel at is implementing obviously positive solutions for community benefit. The biggest and most obvious example of this during our trip was using their transportation system. It is AMAZING, but it’s not futuristic. It’s prolific, it’s reasonably priced, and it’s efficient. For the purposes of our itinerary, it was never a question if we would need a car. We even doubted we would use cabs (but we did a couple of times). The public/shared transportation options we used were shinkansen/bullet trains, the subway system in Tokyo, above-ground local/commuter trains, and city buses. For airport transfers we utilized a coach bus option and a train specifically designed for that purpose.

Google Maps was on point every time for transit directions, even giving us which platform number to be on to catch a train and which exit number to follow when leaving a station. Signage at stations and onboard was almost always in both Japanese and English. Tickets and navigating stations were generally easy to figure out, and there were always humans available for help when needed (who all seemed to speak the amount of English needed to help us).

In some cases there were barriers between platforms and tracks to keep people safe. Did you know that in 2022, 234 people were hit by NYC subway trains?

In addition to the infrastructure making sense, cultural norms should be equally credited for the success of transportation in Japan.

People stand in lines and patiently wait their turns. People exit and then people get on. Weird, right?

People don’t typically vandalize or litter at waiting areas or onboard. People are quiet and don’t make others uncomfortable (WELL EXCEPT FOR THE PERVERTS, but more on that later). The seats in many (all?) methods of transportation we took were cloth. CLOTH! Can you imagine how nasty those seats would be in your closest US city? Nope – they’re pristine in Japan.

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So we will put Japanese transportation in the PLUS column. Brace yourself… I’m about to balance the sheet.

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We saw a couple of local men wearing 45/47 aka The Moral Failure paraphernalia. I couldn’t buy a replacement iPhone there because they have the camera shutter sound hardwired as mandatory because of all of the up-skirt photos that perverts take there. Although the arts performed by geisha are gorgeous, it doesn’t take much imagination or follow-up research to hear about how men at the upper echelons of society abuse maiko. And then there was this sign that was directly outside of a public bathroom I used… the top line says, “I’m watching! Voyeurism is a crime.” (The second line is the name of the local police station.)

Regina King has this amazing line in Watchmen: “I’ve got a nose for white supremacy and he smells like bleach.” I’m sorry Japan, but there was definitely an odor of penis. The misogyny is real. Is it worse than than the US? Absolutely not. Is that a low bar? Absolutely yes. So when I say that Japan is better than us I mean it, but when I also say that they are hyper idealized, this is one of my points.

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OK… now some positives. (See how I’m doing that shit sandwich thing?)

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The kids. Oh my gawd. I work in a public school system and I think this job has made me more observant of kids overall and seeing how kids in Japan function and behave was super interesting. A few months ago a friend had told us about this Japan-based TV program called Old Enough! that Americans can watch on Netflix. Parents send their very young children, typically ages 3-6, on an errand in the neighborhood, then a film crew follows. It’s adorable and funny, but also as a US person it’s really sad thinking about the very good reasons we would never do that here. But from the perspective of an occupational therapist, I feel sad watching it because of all of the bad reasons our kids don’t/can’t/won’t benefit from this level of independence and responsibility until a much later age.

I had heard that 5-year olds in Japan are expected to get to school on their own, and I visualized that as walking a short distance in a small town to their neighborhood school, perhaps with a friend. What I didn’t expect was to see two (perhaps) 5-year old little girls get on the train a bit outside of Kyoto, one of them exit the train and go up the escalator of a platform several miles later, and then the other one continue the ride on their own for several stops and repeat the independent exit themselves. I tried not to stare but holy crap it was crazy to see. They are better than us. I started to rant out a list of people and systems that are failing our children (and future adults), but I stopped.

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Vending machines and konbini. You hear about these all the time when you’re planning a trip, but the sheer volume and awesomeness of both is fucking fantastic. Vending machines are everywhere and have so many options – some the same as we see at home, some adjacent to things we see at home, and some completely new treasures. Because it was HOT AS BALLS while we were there (more on that in a minute), it seemed like we were constantly in need of a cold beverage and dropping coins into those slots (before we understood the power of the Suica). And even though it is true that Japan does not really do public trash cans, there are recycle bins next to pretty much every vending machine so that rubbish is easy to dispose of on the go. The only awkward thing about vending machines is that it’s against cultural norms to walk and drink, but honestly there were times that I was just so damn hot I went ahead and broke that norm. #uglyamerican

The konbini killed me. We were totally those people that stopped into 7-11/Family Mart/Lawson every night on the way back to the hotel to grab those cheap single-use plastic-wrapped goodies. And I am that basic bitch that couldn’t get enough of those crack egg salad sammiches. I had a lot of conversations in my head about finding an experienced business partner to open a store on the ground level of an apartment complex in my neighborhood and call it “Konbini”. Seriously, who’s in?

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People always talk about the food in Japan, and they’re right, it’s fantastic. Eating in the markets and various restaurants was lovely and tasty. Not to mention it was all so reasonably priced! But I think we are spoiled in Seattle with so many authentic Japanese options. Many of the things we ate on this trip – sushi, tempura, wagyu, gyoza, takoyaki, okonomiyaki, yakitori, unagi, curry, karaage, udon, ramen, etc. – are available and equally authentic in our hometown THANKS TO IMMIGRANTS YOU BIGOTED REPUBLICANS. We were happy to eat all of the goodies in Japan, but it wouldn’t be the number one reason for us to go back.

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While we were there I became enamoured with the whole stationery store scene. Who knew rows of pens, notebooks, and sticky notes could be so enchanting? For some reason I demonstrated a mild amount of restraint and only brought home a couple of stationery finds – like these Fuji sticky flags and a bunch of these pens. But since coming home I’ve discovered we have a few Japanese stationery stores right here in Seattle so I can buy these exact same things at any time. The main appeal of the stores in Japan though? Severely less expensive for the exact same products.

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OK now a bad thing that isn’t Japan’s fault at all. Japan in July was so, so gross. High 90’s fahrenheit, really high humidity… so much sweat. It was truly disgusting. We sometimes did that NYC thing where you slow your stride walking past big stores with air conditioning spilling out their front door. I will never return to Japan in the summer ever again. I made fun of Scott when he bought the dorky handheld fan, but then proceeded to hog it for most of the trip. And that’s a sweating torii gate from our Fushimi Inari day.

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Some tips for someone planning their first trip:

…Here’s a cute little Hello Kitty sign that gives some etiquette tips. Expect to see a lot of cutesy stuff during your time there. But also expect to see a lot of unhinged stuff, too. It’s an interesting place.

…Based on our itinerary (Tokyo, Kyoto, short day trips), ignore travel content creators that talk about how it’s difficult for English speakers there. There was so much signage in English and most locals we interacted with had pretty good English. Besides, Google Translate has really made language barriers a non-issue. You should still learn how to say “thank you” in Japanese, though. At the very least.

…On the topic of language, my food tour guide gave the tip to learn how to say “yummy” in Japanese – it’s “oishi” (oh-ee-shee) – and say it to people that serve you food on your trip. Every time I said it I always got a big smile in response. It’s a simple and awesome way to connect with locals on your trip.

…Travel content creators during our research phase harped about needing cash everywhere you go. That was definitely not the case, especially if you get yourself a Suica for vending machines. There were a few places we went that were cash only, but really not that many. Maybe this is more of an issue in smaller and/or less touristy places.

…The other “tip” I heard about all the time was how there are no towels in the public bathrooms so bring your own. Most of the ones I went into had hand dryers so I’m not sure where this anxiety is coming from. Maybe this is a smaller town issue?

…If you’re traveling between Narita Airport and Tokyo Station, just use the coach bus service you’ll see as soon as you exit customs and skip the Narita Express train. The bus is cheaper, takes the same amount of time, and you might be the only gringos on it like we were.

…If you wear eyeglasses, make a point to get some while you’re there. Just stop into JINS or Zoff or whatever. So cheap and the service speed might blow your mind. American healthcare seriously sucks.

…Tune Stay in Kyoto is highly recommended by us! Our Tokyo hotel was OK, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to recommend it. You can do better.

…Pack an extra duffel bag or do that suitcase-in-a-suitcase thing. Maybe bring your holiday gift budget with you. The shopping is so good. We are not shoppers, we are even borderline minimalists, and even we couldn’t restrain ourselves. It’s kind of hard to explain. Here’s a small sample of my damage:

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Since coming home we both regularly miss Japan. Compared to other places I’ve visited it has this unique dichotomy of being a place that is so foreign in so many ways, but also a place that is so comforting and easy to navigate. It’s a place to go where you feel a million miles away from the familiar, surrounded by gorgeousness and grace and kindness and patience and simple pleasures. I suspect our next visit won’t be until after retirement in a couple of years, but we will also likely max out our 90-day tourist limit as US citizens on that trip.

“It is impossible to remain indifferent to Japanese culture. It is a different civilisation where all you have learnt must be forgotten. It is a great intellectual challenge and a gorgeous sensual experience.” ~Alain Ducasse

“For those with restless, curious minds, fascinated by layer upon layer of things, flavors, tastes and customs, which we will never fully be able to understand, Tokyo is deliciously unknowable. I’m sure I could spend the rest of my life there, learn the language, and still die happily ignorant.” ~Anthony Bourdain

I made a video compilation of all most of the clips we took during the Japan trip. These were taken using my iPhone, Scott’s Pixel, and the GoPro 12. This is pretty rough and ready as I mostly just threw the clips into Clipchamp. Video editing is not something I enjoy so I think YouTube will be spared another travel content creator. But this is an easy way for us to relive some of these moments so in the long term it’s worth the few minutes I spent on it.

We had a bit of a lie in and then caught a long 45-minute city bus to Arashiyama with a plan to catch several attractions in the popular area. I found this article with a recommended order for visiting sites, but did not expect us to get through all of it.

The first stop on the suggested itinerary was the Monkey Park. Most animal-themed travel activities are unethical, and wild monkeys are assholes based on my past experiences in places like Costa Rica and Gibraltar. But since this is Japan and they’re better than most people, I went ahead and did a little online research, liked what I read, and decided it was worth a shot.

One of the things I read online was that after you pay your admission (600 yen/$4 USD per person) there’s a bit of a hike up to the top of the mountain hill where the monkeys live. They were not lying. Well, if the weather had been more temperate it might not have seemed like a big deal. But, alas, it was Japan in July and I ALMOST DIED. Luckily there was a fair amount of shade and a couple of rest areas with big fans that saved my life.

Along the route up the mountain were intermittent signs educating people on the rules of the park. These were increasing my confidence that this was going to be a good experience.

Humans were contained within roped off areas, and most of the hilltop was monkey-only zones. The humans were told repeatedly and supervised to make sure they respected the monkeys and didn’t feed them unauthorized food. There was a small one-room building that humans went in to buy the authorized food and feed it out through windows to the interested monkeys. The monkeys did not act desperate for the food, and seemed to understand that the building was the only place to get food from humans as they did not intentionally approach humans outside of the building. This was easily the best wild-ish monkey experience I’ve ever had.

The Monkey Park also had the added bonus of a nice view with a mildly cooler temperature.

Togetsukyo Bridge was next on the suggested itinerary, which was a short walk from the Monkey Park exit. It apparently has a 400+ year history, but mostly we cared about the pretty walk.

The next agenda item on that suggested itinerary was Tenryuji Temple but we felt “templed out” at this point in the trip. But we did want to check out the famous local bamboo grove and when the itinerary said “Leave Tenryuji through the back entrance” as the route, it didn’t occur to us that you had to pay to get into the Temple area where that back entrance was. So we ended up walking a ways into the temple grounds before we discovered the payment barrier, and had to backtrack a bit and use Google Maps to find our way to the grove. The free parts of the temple grounds did have some lovely spots that we grabbed quite a few photos of… maybe we weren’t totally templed out after all.

We made it to the famous Arashiyama Bamboo Grove.

And after maybe 15 minutes we were done. Scott’s phone said it was 97 degrees F. And the tourists were obnoxious. And we could still remember our peaceful tourist-free walk through the bamboo during our atypical Fushimi Inari visit. Time to cut our losses and get back on a bus toward our hotel. There were several other stops on the Arashiyama itinerary that were of interest, but we know we will be back to Kyoto again in the future.

Once we got back to “our” neighborhood we stopped for dinner and G&Ts at HUB, a British-style pub that was populated almost entirely by Japanese locals. Food was pretty good. Yuzu gin was pretty great.

Today was our Fushimi Inari day. After a quick bakery snack and coffee at Cafe Veloce, we tried really hard to take transit from Kyoto Station but we had the hardest time figuring it out for some reason (I blame humidity fatigue and annoyance at other tourists). After wandering around the whole place twice we eventually determined that we were supposed to take the JR line. We tried our Suica cards but they weren’t working, and the line to buy tickets at the machine was ginormous. So we gave up and got a taxi that was about $14.

In case the ridiculous train ticket lines at Kyoto Station weren’t enough of an indication, Fushimi Inari is one of the most popular places to visit in Kyoto, known as the shrine with 10,000 torii gates. This is not an exaggeration. It really has “roughly” that many. But it also has roughly that many tourists visiting on any given day. Lucky for us, our Free Walking Tour guide had given us the inside scoop on an obscure route up the mountain that deviated from the throngs.

Like everyone else we started at the main shrine, and enjoyed the statues of Inari, the kami of rice, who is represented as a fox.

So here’s the secret route tip. Start with everyone else and their cousin up the main path.

But then divert and follow the green arrows indicated here:

For the most part just stick on that same trail indicated in Google maps with waypoints such as Kobogataki Falls, Aokigataki, and Shiragiku Waterfall (spoiler alert: not really what we would consider waterfalls). We ended our upward trek at the Summit of Mt. Inari? Definitely at Suehiroya, but more on that in a moment. Along the way we would occasionally see signs like this that helped us feel confident of our route.

The highlights of taking this trail up instead of the main pathway (I mean aside from there being almost no one on it) include:

*A bamboo forest with almost no one there. Warning: it’ll make the popular Arashiyama one kind of intolerable for you (stay tuned for the July 19th post).

(Side note: What kind of asshole do you have to be to vandalize bamboo?)

*Gorgeous, silent, peaceful shrines. With almost no one there.

*Just… nature, beautiful nature. And if you’re extra lucky, a sleeping kitty. With almost no one there.

A couple warnings about this route: First off, there are signs indicating wild boar inhabit the area. There is a fence designed to keep them away from the trail, but apparently they still warrant signage. We didn’t see any. I’m not sure how scared I would have been if I had seen them as I have zero experience with them.

Also, in July, in the nasty humidity of July in Japan (#neveragain), this trail is the muggiest of the muggy. I wish I had video of Scott wringing out his shirt. Even the torii were sweating.

As is typical of high humidity in nature, one might be eaten alive by mosquitos. Might. I wouldn’t know. Actually I would totally know.

Finally, one might make the mistake of taking a wrong turn and adding 10,000 steps up a VERY steep hillside covered in shrines when you are hitting the end of your endurance and hydration. Be careful as you approach Suehiro Okami. There’s a stump or maybe a large rock with what might be a misleading sign. My memory of this is not great – I think I was hitting some dehydration issues at this point – and we didn’t take a picture of it. Luckily some other tourists came along when we were up the hill who had made the same mistake and were working out how to backtrack and get back on the regular trail. We almost died but then we followed them and we lived.

We eventually ended our upward trek at maybe the Summit? We saw this (not our pic) and entered a smallish area behind it…

…but never saw this? (Again, not our pic.)

There was a pathway that was blocked with a sign so maybe the final summit/shrine/view was not accessible the day we were there? There were quite a few confused tourists here, so we weren’t alone (cognitively, emotionally, or physically).

We were no longer physically alone because this is where that main, heavily trafficked tourist trail also leads. The primary benefit of this was the existence of a small gift shop selling the best ice cream that ever existed ever. Or maybe it just seemed that way because we earned it.

I was done with mosquitos so we decided to take the main pathway back down the mountain. The majority of the tourists had subsided and along the way we got a great view over Kyoto. When you go down you can see the names of the torii donors etched on the backsides of the gates. And you can look backwards and be thankful you’re not going uphill anymore.

We sought out the main shopping street as we left the shrine grounds and indulged in a couple more treats. Don’t judge my hair – I almost died today.

Thanks to our nutritious snacks we found the cognitive capacity to take transit back to Kyoto Station. There we found our way to a place called Craft Beer Market (weird) that had a great selection. They sat us on the tallest stools ever facing a wall but also gave us little snacks so I forgave them.

I’ll finish out this post with an assortment of statuary from today. Enjoy!

I had a lie in so Scott took off for a long walk around Kyoto. Here is a sampling of what he saw and captured along the way…

When I finally emerged from the comfy bed I took some time to organize our purchases as the piles and bags were a bit overwhelming in our small hotel space.

It was a rainy day so when Scott returned we decided to enjoy our hotel’s common space for a couple of hours for one of our “coffee shop days” to enjoy our hobbies.

We emerged later in the day to have a tempura meal in a nearby mall, and then discovered Kyoto Tower Sando – a most excellent basement level food court. We settled into the barstools at The Roots Of All Evil, drawn by the lovely cocktail list and the jamon featured prominently on the bar.

We settled back into our hotel room early and tried to make sense of unhinged Japanese TV as we drifted off to sleep.