Japan – Some of the people we ‘met’ – 10th November – 1st December 2019

I know this blog should have been written when we left Japan, rather than now, a month (and two countries) later but I just didn’t have time. Hanging out in Chiang Mai for 3 weeks has given me a chance to waffle on (apologies!)

We saw this lovely shy girl (Suzi) and, who we assumed was her Mum (Amy), in Tokyo outside of the Emperors Palace. We could see them doing a “you ask them, no you ask them” kind of shuffle out of the corner of our eye. So we turned and said hello. Suzi spoke good English and when we told her where we were from she told us that she knew Bristol as she had studied in Cardiff University. What are the chances!

A ‘pair’ of lovely ladies in Osaka, who I mentioned in the blog. They were modelling the type of hats that every women of a certain age seemed to be wearing! They couldn’t speak a word of English apart from pointing to Glen and asking “Dad?” Smug smile 😊

We met these girls in a temple in Asakusa. They were from Jakarta, Java in Indonesia and were pleased that our favourite place we had visited in their country was Yogyakarta, Java and not Bali!

In this particular ‘shoe free restaurant’ we were sat next to the merriest group of people we have ever ‘talked’ to! (Nothing to do with the fact they were drinking I’m sure – wink) No English was spoken whatsoever! But they were so good at showing us how to cook the food on their hotplate whilst we had to rely on the waitress to cook ours!

We’ve met a lot of friendly staff in hotels and restaurants but this lady was THE happiest and most friendly lady of them all. She was great at cooking too!

Once again Glen was in demand. This group of children wanted to practice their English on Glen by asking him questions. Their teacher stood back across the street until they finished talking to us. She then came over to join us to explain they were from a private school!

One of our favourite non-English speaking ladies was this little lady who we sat next to in a cafe in Yanaka, Tokyo. She didn’t stop talking to us (in Japanese) and giggling, even though we were indicating that we did not know what she was talking about! but she became very shy when we took her photo.

This local lady was in a park in Hiroshima with her young daughter who was also wearing a kimono. I asked her if she wanted me to take a photo of them both together with her camera as they both looked so beautiful. It took a while for her to understand but she did eventually and seemed to appreciate me asking. We managed to find out, with her small amount of English, that she wears the kimono occasionally just because she likes wearing it and not because it was a special occasion that day.

We didn’t actually speak to this ‘Samurai Warrior’ but I sooooo wish we did! Lol!

As usual Glen made a couple of techi friends. 😉 This robot was in the Nippombashi market.

At the top of the Tokyo Tower we met Pepper the robot who talks to you and dances for you while you wait for the lift to take you back down. I think I mentioned in the Tokyo blog that he listens to conversations. There was a group of young guys talking about where they were going to go that night! They weren’t listening to the robot so they didn’t realise that Pepper was referring to things they said and effectively making fun of them. Lol!

We ‘chatted’ to lots of people with dogs! This lady was proud for us to take a photo of her prize possessions (oops didn’t mean to cut her out of the photo!)

There were many people I wish we had taken a photo of, one of them was a tiny, immaculately dressed old lady who had gorgeous aubergine colour hair, I do mean aubergine (deep purple) not auburn!  She couldn’t speak English but smiled and said something to us as she came in to a cafe we were having lunch in. She was waving her hands about as she talked (reminded me of you Mum!) and she dithered a bit, looking at one chair then another then finally sat on the one nearest to us. The little family run cafe only had a few chairs along a bar facing where they cooked and prepared the food. Suddenly she fell off her chair taking her place mat and chopsticks with her! She was lucky not to have banged her head on the wall behind us. The owner and I helped her up, she was smiling and didn’t seem bothered in the slightest! I wondered if she had fallen on the floor before and that is why she was ‘dithering’ when she came in, trying to avoid the wobbly unstable chair! Bless her. 

I think that’s about it for photos of people we met in Japan. The rest of this blog is about things we noticed and things we learnt but didn’t write about in the previous blogs.

As I sit here, outside in the open air reception area of our hotel in Chiang Mai, head down looking at my ipad writing this blog from my notes on Japan, I not only find myself thinking of our time in Japan but of the time I went to Paris (with you Mum and Dad), dancing Elephants (in the Fantasia Disney film girls) and….well how can I put this? …..ill fitting tops! Lol! What these random knick knacks were about I don’t know!

Back to Japan……..This was just one type of umbrella dryer hotels had just inside of the main doors for you to dry your umbrella when you entered their lobby. This one was like those overpriced magic dusters in the UK. You had to swipe your umbrella through it to dry it off. There were many different designs and ways to stop them dripping everywhere. Some were just long thin plastic umbrella bags to put wet umbrellas in. (Glen said they also had hooks on the side of the urinals to hang your brolly on too.)

• 

• 

I must admit that I am beginning to think that you are probably all screaming at your iPads and mobile phones telling me that all these things are in hotels in England too. The thing is I don’t get out much in the UK, as those of you who know me are well aware. When we first went travelling I remember thinking how dirty places were but now I realise Bristol has dirty grubby places too but we just don’t go wandering around those areas of town or eat in those cafes!

Pillow update…… They have different pillows in Japan. They are not filled with the crunchy ‘cousin’ of the rhubarb plant like in Pingyao. They are relatively flat, with a mesh covering and shaped for your head to rest inside the indented middle. Or they have a thick soft coating that keeps your head warm which is not something a menopausal women looks for in a pillow!! They all had a very firm raised edge all the way around. Glen said it’s because they are petite and therefore have small shoulders! 🙄

Staff in one hotel were surprised when we asked for another one as they were too flat…. they said “oh you want fluffy pillow?” I thought….. Well yes *#£&*#& please as Lee Evans would say. Lol!

• 

• 

• 

One pillow had small tubes like rigid pieces of plastic staws that had been cut in to tiny pieces. 

• 

• 

I really shouldn’t complain though. The first recorded pillows dating back to 7,000 BC in Ancient Mesopotamia were used to keep insects out of peoples hair! In Ancient Egypt dating back to 2055-1985 BC pillows were made of wood or stone!! We can thank the good old Romans for introducing fluffy pillows apparently!

In Japan Geishas used these ceramic pillows to preserve their elaborate hair styles. Well it seems like a good idea because my hair is always flat as a pancake in the morning!

Origami paper cranes, like the one below were often left in our hotel rooms in Japan. They also used cranes as locker tags for when we went in to restaurants where you were not allowed to wear your shoes. You had to leave your shoes in a locker. After all the walking we had done and my naturally stinky feet I think the staff immediately regretted having asked me to remove my shoes! Lol!

• 

• 

Cranes have always been a symbol of success and good fortune in Japanese culture. According to Japanese tradition, folding 1,000 paper cranes will give you a chance to make a special wish come true. (As mentioned in our Hiroshima blog) When folded into origami it is believed that your hearts desire will come true. It has become popular to fold 1000 cranes (called ‘senbazuru’) the cranes are then strung together, usually on 25 strings of 40 cranes and given as gifts. I think this is what we were standing by in one of the temples (below)

We noticed the paper cranes everywhere, and even Nestlé had one on their KitKat packaging. I ‘googled it up’ and found that it is to do with the fact that Nestlé are doing away with the plastic packaging and instead wrapping the KitKats in “rain-proof” paper that can be “used for making notes or for making origami cranes” (in my day they were covered in a thin layer of foil with a paper band/wrapper)

I was surprised to see KitKats in Japan but even more surprised to learn about the amount of different flavours they have, 300 apparently! The most popular used to be Soy Sauce, the few that surprised me were Cherry blossom (how cute is that!), Baked Potato, Sweetcorn, Adzuki bean, Edamame, Hojich, Beni imo (purple sweet potato), European cheese (Not just cheese, as if that wasn’t weird enough for a chocolate bar flavour, but ‘European’ cheese lol!)

KitKats became popular in Japan because KitKat is similar to ‘Kitto Katsu’ which means to ‘win for sure’ People bought the chocolate bar for students taking entrance exams. The practice spread by word-of-mouth among students across the country and today one in three students buys one before an exam. KitKat has now become a must-have “Good Luck Charm” for exams. They now have pink KitKats developed from ‘ruby cocoa beans’. These botanical beans produce a naturally pink chocolate with a sweet-and-savoury, berry-like flavour. Unlike other forms of pink chocolate, the colour is purportedly a natural result of the beans’ qualities, rather than from the use of food colouring or dye. Apparently these were introduced in the UK a year or two ago as well. I don’t buy chocolate so have never heard of it. Anyway, I could bore you further but I will stop there, if you too have a need to learn about the phenomenon of the dear old KitKat in Japan (and recently in South Korea) you can google it up too.(smile)

We’ve already mentioned how lovely the people in Japan were, which included all of the MANY road-workers, men helping you cross the road or manoeuvre around parked work vehicles on the pavement etc. Well the barriers and cones etc were so cute. Yellow Rabbits and pink people with workman helmets on. Bless. The men directing you around any roadworks or generally helping you to cross the roads all held ‘glow sticks’….. that’s not the correct name….um…illuminated batons…. I think you know what I mean. They have the same yellow bumpy strips for the visually impaired that we have in the UK but what about this. If they are working on the pavement they put a temporary strip down around the roadwork for visually impaired people to follow – how considerate is that! They all seemed so proud to be helping everyone too.

• 

• 

Following on from our mention in the South Korean blog about car parks we saw in Japan, here are some photos of the tiny car parks that were around every corner. Also the ones that had one entrance and then they stacked the cars out of sight. We didn’t see any large normal car parks like in the UK.

• 

• 

• 

I’m not sure if we have mentioned clothing. In general all Japanese people were dressed very smart. The men wore suits and the women looked like they were going to a function or dressed for the office at worse, even when they were just shopping or walking around a tourist site. I felt a right scruff lol! Something else they did was wear furry/fluffy shoes. The pairs below just had a fluffy heel / edging but most we saw were fluffy all over. Surely they would get wet and grubby. Some were almost certainly meant to be house slippers. Maybe they wear them outside because they don’t wear shoes of any kind in the home.

I know I have written too much already on this ‘round up’ blog but I must mention the socks they sell here. They are for use with flipflops. They also wear them with Tabi boots which I hadn’t realised they still make. I thought it was just the Ricksaw men who had them as part of their traditional costume, but they still make them, even steal-cap versions for builders Mark!

This public toilet in a street near Yanaka was the most friendly and welcoming toilet block we’ve ever seen. Indicating it is a family friendly toilet by the looks of it, we can’t say that of a lot of our public toilets on the streets in the UK sadly!

I bought lots of clothes from charity shops to take on our travels, chosen for their ability to drip dry on a shower rail over night! I’ve been mix and matching them in a way I’m sure is illegal! Much in the same way as Mary, the lady from the Cotswolds married to Giles does on Goggle Box! Lol! It was embarrassing in Japan because everyone dressed immaculately Like i said. I say embarrassing, I was only embarrassed once when I approached a smartly dressed lady to ask for directions one night and she gave me a wide birth! It made me think that she thought I was some sort of beggar! Especially with my headscarf on which I feel, for some reason makes me look like a Eastern Europe farming community grandmother. 

The people are so gentle and polite when we speak to them or take photos together but not excitable like our lady friends in China. We do miss those excitable groups of women. 

I’m not sure if we have already mentioned the vast amount of food Vending machines everywhere? Mainly selling drinks but some selling pretty much everything.

We wanted to document this kettle which we had in one hotel room. It looked weird at first but pours much better than our stubby versions. Hec, we are getting boring in our old age! Excited by the design of a kettle. We had kettles in China which had a function/switch to enable you to keep water warm in the kettle once boiled, as I mentioned in one of the China blogs.

The Japanese supplied iced water and cold tea (without milk) in cafes whereas the Chinese always supplied warm water or hot tea (without milk)…. whether you wanted it or not! It wasn’t something we would have ordered but it was free so we always tried it.

It was good to see how they put signs in vertical writing for the Japanese and horizontal for the English translation. We saw this a lot on menus too. We also saw people reading books like this on the trains etc. All theses little differences are good to notice in a world world where places start to look very much like another until you look closer.

We often had to order and pay for meals in machines before sitting down in restaurants…. I used the term restaurant loosely! (Similar to those in MacDonalds) It gives you an idea of the type of places we ate in and our budget. However the food was very good, OK so it didn’t have a Noren across the doorway and they didn’t serve wine (or beer for that matter) but the food sets (various side dishes with your chosen meal, always Miso blinkin soup 🙄) they gave you were delicious. They served proper food not ‘Fast food’, although it doesn’t take long to cook their type of food!

• 

• 

• 

We saw a lot of people putting money in to boxes in front of shrines, clapping twice and bowing once. Although one shrine had a sign saying “don’t clap” none had a sign saying don’t put money in the box though, just saying!

We wondered what was with the knitted/crocheted red hats on the statues. (deities) I thought it was just in one particular shrine which we visited in Tokyo which had a dozen or so little statues, all with red knitted hats on, (annoyingly I can’t find the photo now) but we saw them in various other temples afterwards. I feel bad now because we have since read that the most common statue that wears a red bib is that of the Ojizo-sama. These statues are usually very small and have a child-like appearance. The Ojizo-sama statues are one of the most popular Japanese divinities and are seen as the guardian of children, particularly of children who died before their parents. The practice began when grieving parents put their child’s bib on the statue in hopes it would protect the child in the other world.

On a lighter note…. apparently there is a 700 year old bonsi tree in the Emperor’s Palace in Tokyo. I was impressed! I’ve always loved a bonsi tree but could never keep them alive for a year let alone 700! Respect!

OK I have sooo much more to write but I fear I have lost most of our readers six or seven paragraphs ago, so I will stop here. Glen is loosing the will to live for sure! 😬😉