Kyushu

So, before I get started on my recent little ‘adventure’ I want to just mention one thing: travelling cheaply in Japan is possible. I tried on a budget of 2000 yen, so around 14 euros, but that was on the bottom end of the scale and my destination wasn’t exactly cheap.

Anyway, here’s how:
- Accommodation – this one, if you want to do it totally cheap, and safe, you can couchsurf. I did it in Fukuoka, and the people are very friendly. However, this requires your schedule to be a lot more prepared and rigid in advance. Another way is bumming it on the streets, which a few people do do at night when they’ve missed the last train home. There’s also camping, which, to be in an accessible place, isn’t easy around a city, but when you go to islands like Shikoku or Yakushima, then it’s a very good option. Mind the humid weather though!
Now, if none of those options sound feasible to you, then the final option is sleeping in an internet café. Yes, people do it a lot here! Especially after a night out or something. I guess it’s a way to get away from the enclosed family homes. So they have special night rates, and it’s not all that expensive (you may need to do some shopping around) – I stayed in a really decent one in fukuoka for 1700 yen for 9 hours. And in another one in Kagoshima 1000 yen for 6 hours. You may be thinking : “do you sleep in a chair??” but that’s the beautiful thing – you pay the same price for a flat booth! So it’s like a mattress in an isolated area! Look at my photos to get an idea… and there’s free drinks and even a shower! Why not eh?

- Food – the best way to eat cheaply in Japan is to eat local food. You can get some decent portions for 6-700 yen. Also, there’s chains like fujiichiban, hotto motto or yoshinoya where you get a big meal for 500 yen. And there’s also the convenience stores, that are open 24/7 and what I’ve been loving is onigiri, rice ‘balls’ or triangles, with a filling in it, and it’s cold so it’s great for summer. They’re 120 yen a piece and after 3 you’re full. It’s a great healthy snack too. If you want to cook your own, then the accodomation options above aren’t very accommodating to hot homecooked food…

- Transport – this is the one that will get you down. Walk a lot, you have feet don’t you?? Buses are usually pretty cheap, but here’s Japan’s best kept secret – seichun juuhachikippu. (seichun 18). It’s a pass that’s only available in the school holiday periods – march-april, july-august and December. You buy a ticket for 11,500 yen, and you get 5 bits. 1 bit = 1 day’s travel. Anywhere in Japan. The only downfall is: you can only take local JR trains. Which means that this pass is only good when you’ve got a lot of time on your hands. But if you do – you can go ANYWHERE for SUPER cheap. I came back from way fuck down south to Nagoya, it took me 30 hours (an overnight stop) but it only cost me 4800 yen… But then again, if you’re on a tourist visa, it’s probably nicer to just get a rail pass… sadly that’s not an option for me.

Got it? Now get a-coming to Japan!

So, I just spent the last 10 days in Fukuoka, Nagasaki and Yakushima.
I started in Fukuoka, and did some couchsurfing. Honestly, I wasn’t enjoying it, it’s another big city and I was travelling by myself bla bla. But still good to see. The next day I met another couchsurfer who told me about Seichun 18 and she helped me cancel my return bus ticket, and offered me a ride to Beppu, on the other side of the island (all of these places are in Kyushu, which is the 3rd largest island of Japan, just to the south of the main island – under Hiroshima etc). I decided against it and was on my way to Nagasaki. It’s a really nice place!! It’s a very pretty city and the people are so friendly. They also some old ass tram system down there, and the conductors drive you crazy. They’re constantly talking like this in Japanese: turning left, turning left, turning left. Right, going right, going right. Stopping at a traffic light. It’s a traffic light. ETC ETC! Drive. You. Insane. Anyway, the a-bomb museum is interesting, I’ve heard it’s not as shocking as the one in Hiroshima. I then met up with this Dutch guy from couchsurfing who was weird, and we were shown to a bar by a principal of a high school! It was all pretty random. I stayed in an internet café booth there… I got a lot of sleep actually! It’s a new experience. The next day I went walking around some of the older parts of town – the Dutch and Chinese were some of the only people allowed to do some trade down there for a long time, so there’s some very western-influenced architecture etc.

I hopped on a long train journey to the south – to Kagoshima. The nice thing about these is that you meet a lot of people! I spoke to this Japanese guy and then this girl from Hong Kong. I couldn’t get into a hostel the time I arrived so it was another short night at an Internet café before heading to Yakushima – by slow/cheap ferry it’s 4 hours south of the southern coast… so pretty far! But it’s BEAUTIFUL! You can do some great hikes amongst 3000+ year old cedar trees. The iconic one is called yomon sugi (sugi = cedar) but that’s a 10 hour return trip, and the bus connections are fairly shit. So I didn’t do that one, but I did a short 2.5 hour one and a 6 hour one the next day. It’s amazing, all very mossy and ancient. It’s currently a UNESCO world heritage site. After the 1st hike I ws taken to a small minshuku (guesthouse) by the lady who was in the tourist info office, and that night I went to a natural hot spring at nice – it was amazing with the ocean there and the stars… Then I went for the long hike and met this cool Japanese ojiisan (grandpa) who wanted a photo with me, and I went camping after that. It wa right next to this amazingly stunning beach where I stayed for a whole day doing nothing! It’s also really interesting because most people that camp are the ones that are biking around the island, which is really tough, but it makes for great conversation. I was about to leave then when I decided to stay another night and go snorkelling which was pretty cool – it’s not amazingly pretty but you get porcupine fish, and some big parrothead fish and stuff, pretty cool.
Then I embarked on my long journey home, and that night I did the real bummy thing – I slept in my sleeping bag by the station! But it was safe, don’t worry.

And so now I’m back. And don’t want to see trains for a LONG time! But if you ge the chance, yakushima is awesome.

Family visits

So today I was just about to bike back home from the center of town when it suddenly turned from blue skies to blackness and tropical thunderstorm… and my laundry was still hanging out at home! They keep on saying that the rainy season is over (which it’s supposed to be), but I don’t really know…

The past few weeks have definitely been eventful! I’ve really gotten to know the heart of the Japanese Alps quite well. The main events, clearly, were my brother Cas (travelling with his friend Marek) coming over, shortly followed by my dad.
The weekend before they came, however, I ended going to some more festivals – every weekend there is at least one in the region – the first of which involved boats floating around the lake each with 365 lights on, which we watched from a local’s apartment (only after having made an attempt to fail successfully at trying to promote a drinks company for a commercial). The next night I went to see 15000 fireworks being let off, which luckily enough weren’t cancelled due to the pouring rain – beautiful! The nicest show I’ve ever seen.
Then Cas and Marek arrived and we took it easy in Nagoya, I took them out to an Izakaya (a local Japanese restaurant) with all you can drink, and the next night we had an experimental dinner followed by karaoke – very Japanese!
We then went on to Matsumoto, which is a little town about 3 hours northnorthwest of here. It’s really charming actually, despite the fact that when we arrived we were biking in the rain with our umbrellas Japanese style. The hostel we stayed at was proper nice, and it has a beautiful castle. When in Matsumoto definitely try the soba, as it’s a local-made type of noodle (buckwheat I think, whereas udon is very thick wheat noodles, or maybe the other way around). The next day we did a little stop in Nagano, which may ring a bell – the winter olympics were held here in 1998 – and we went further north to a tiny town (12000 inhabitants) of Obuse (pronounced obusay) – it’s so small that the school kids coming onto the train found us something to look at. But it’s beautiful up there – it’s known for its chestnuts and Hokusai museum. When we got back that evening to Matsumoto we went to the BEST local restaurant, where we each had a massive bowl of udon, tempura, free sake and a sake glass, all for the price of 3000 yen (i.e. 30 dollars). It was A-mazing. We finished it off by going to an onsen, which was relaxing as.
The next day Cas and Marek left for Tokyo, and I stayed the rest of the day to visit Kamikochi, which is more into the mountains, (many people climb mountains there) and it’s only open between april and November as during the other months there’s too much snow. Needless to say it was beautiful, despite the weather!

When my dad arrived we did the other part of the coast, we went to Kanazawa first, which is pretty big but very charming. It has a BEAUTIFUL garden, and we stayed at a homestay in the old district with this little lady who was so cool, and I practiced my Japanese slightly successfully on her! We stayed for 2 days, on the 2nd day seeing a dance festival which was cool, but it’s making me realize how much the Japanese really do like to belong in a group, and that they really hold on to traditions very strongly, so much more than any country I’ve seen! then took a drive around Noto Hanto, countryside, which wasn’t too thrilling. We stayed in Toyama because the next day, risking it with the rain, we did the Tateyama-Kurobe route into the mountains to see one of the largest dams in Japan. It turned out to be ok, especially on the way back as we managed to do a long 2hour painful hike, but stunning scenery. That night we were surprised by the earthquake – which I wasn’t too scared by clearly as I woke up, asked my dad if it was an earthquake, to which he replied I think so, and all I could say to the shaking of the beds was ok and fall back to sleep!

Maybe one of the nicest days came next, when we drove down to see the villages with gassho-zukuri houses, which have these straw roofs shaped like praying hands. We had beautiful weather to see this UNESCO world heritage site (called gokayama and shirakawago), and the first little village we went to – Ainokura – was SO beautiful and peaceful! The last – Ogimachi – was a LOT more touristy, but interesting. We stayed overnight in Takayama, which I hadn’t realized was such a touristy spot! It reminded me a lot of Kyoto, but I don’t blame them, it has a lot of atmosphere and we had, what I would class as one of the best steaks EVER there – made from Hida beef cows. It was so flavoursome! I would go there again just to have another one of those steaks.
So now it’s back to slight normality before I try and head down to Kyushu depending on my finances… will keep you posted!

Japanese music

So I said I would give you a little update on Japanese music.
Well, I’m afraid it ain’t gonna be pretty.
Most Japanese music is J-Pop, short for Japanese pop (if you hadn’t already guessed). They love their boybands like crazy, and go through them like wildfire. All the girls at school have paraphernalia with their images on them (think, backstreet boys and spice girls still), but surprisingly enough, there aren’t any girlbands like we used to have the Spice Girls or now still – Girls aloud. They’re all pretty boys that spend hours on getting their hair right and their correct outfits that make them look ‘cool’ and ‘tough’. That pretty much describes most Japanese men (think boys) though.
I told one of my kids once that in the west we don’t really listen to Japanese music, and she was so surprised! Probably couldn’t imagine what else we’d listen to.

SO! One of the most famous bands is SMAP, so big that they’re even very well-known throughout most of Asia. They’ve been going since 1991 apparently (i.e. a lot of changes in members because they all look reasonably young!) and have about 5 members. All I know about these guys is that one of them was recently caught doing drugs and it caused a huge fuss! But my kids at school never really mention them.
Besides them I’ve heard a lot about a band called GReeeeN, one E for each member of the band. Original right? I’ve only really heard one of their songs, and it’s sickly sweet, and the videos have the clenched fist singing and white outfit dancing. Oh yes.
Arashi is also very big at the moment, the name stands for storm. I think there’s about 7 members to this band, with their recent new single being called ‘everything’. Again, at school ARASHI (they like to write in capital letters) paraphernalia galore. Other names to throw around is NEWS (one letter for each direction on a map and there’s 4 members to this one), KAT-TUN, though kat-tun are more bad-boy and make less accessible music to those corny-loving music fans. EXILE are pretty big, and I have to admit, I’ve listened to them a little bit over time. One of my teachers wears an EXILE tour t-shirt at school all the time. Check any of them out on youtube, but it’s all pretty much the same to the untrained ear (which includes me!). I think I will try to learn about them for my kids’ amusement sake, but try not to listen to them.

In general, Japanese people can’t sing. Which is probably why they stick to pop, as it lends most to people with shitty voices. That’s why most other types of music out there isn’t often made (successfully that is!) in Japanese. As far as the rap scene is concerned, the only one introduced to me was by an American friend here, and one of my Japanese friends didn’t know him. Ozrosaurus is the name, and he likes to go ‘lolling’ around a random Japanese neighbourhood, which, to be perfectly honest, looks more like something found in America than a typical Japanese ‘hood.

This doesn’t mean that there aren’t any female singers in Japan! Oh no, they stick more to the solo stuff, and the slow very high-pitched song which is associated with ‘cuteness’. They are also idolised, and some names that come to mind are Chara and Kumi Koda. For some reason though I never hear as much about these as I do about J-pop bands. Apparently a lot of Korean singers come and sing in Japanese here. One of the most successful ones is MINMI, who does some more reggae-influenced music than die-hard J-pop.

Also, one of my teachers who likes English punk music gave me some Japanese bands. The only one, which is pretty emo, is jeepta, that I think is decent. Hi-standard conforms to the idea that Japanese people can’t sing and Ken Yokohama I haven’t really listened to much.

And that’s about as much as I can divulge about the Japanese music scene. Check some of them out on youtube for your listening pleasure!