Ep 23 - Thoughts and observations from the Big Blog Adventure

 As promised here are the bits that merit mention from the Japan Adventure, but didn't get to be blog material...

• People tell you Japan is clean but it is really, really clean - lorries on motorways gleam and shine they are so clean. We even saw a JCB driver clean his tracks of mud at the end of the working day.
• The Japanses are taught at kindergaten to clean up any mess, even if it wasn't made by them
• There was no grafitti anywhere we went
• If you aren't provided with a chopstick rest you make one with the paper wrapper they came in
• Even cities as big as Tokyo are serene and almost peaceful
• When handing something to someone both parties look each other in the eyes and use both hands - to show respect
• Before they eat, the Japanese say "Itadakimasu" which translates as "Thank you to those who contributed to the food" (Including the chicken, fish etc)
• When alcohol is on the table at a meal you do not pour it for yourself. It is expected that others at the table will notice your empty glass and fill it for you.
• Strawberry and cream sandwiches are everywhere
• Prices are lower than you expect
• A bottle of water in a shop is the same price as one in a vending machine and one sold in a motorway service station or a remote mountain town. There doesn't seem to be any "taking advantage" of the consumers' lack of options
• Snobbery exists - mainly in Kyoto where people look down, slightly, on people from other cities
• There are thatched houses in the mountains in one small town
• You can but Japanese whiskey in a 7/11 for £3.50 a bottle
• Japanese gardens are unlike any you will see in the UK. There is no symmetry in them yet they are perfect. The sounds are deliberately gentle and soothing. You could spend hours inching round the smallest garden and see different views every metre or so.
• No-one drives aggressively
• Geisha opera is not as entertaining as the Japanese believe it to be
• The lift in our hotel in Kyoto warned us that when we got to the ground floor "The car is landing"
• Bamboo forests fifty feet high are regrown every year in two months - over a foot a day.
• Some meals are so messy the restaurant gives you a plastic bib. There is no way on earth to look cool in a plastic disposable bib!

Japan is the best country the Blogs have ever been to.

Ep 22 Big Blog Adventure

When you are 10,000 miles from home in a foreign country, the language of which you cannot speak, on the last day of your best-ever-holiday, the last thing you want to do is lose your phone. Readers will already have jumped to the correct conclusion...that is exactly what Mr Blog did.

Walkng the "Philosophers Walk" in Kyoto along the side of a canal among cherry trees and cooled by gentle breezes falling from the mountaints has been a lifelong dream for Mr Blog. So it was on the way there that he ruined the moment by leaving his Iphone 6S in a taxi. He could have taken the bus but as he discovered with Mrs Blog earlier that morning, getting one that goes where you think it's going is a bit of a challenge. (Besides which Mr Blog has form for losing things on buses).

Kyoto has a magic about it and that is amplified along the Philosopher's Walk. Almost chilled Mr (and Mrs) Blog enjoyed the experience and went on to a market in the city centre. One of the streets in the market is almost half a mile long.  All the walking gives you time to think. The Blogs decided to call Eric-the-guide-Blog who was on a well-earned day off. 

Not having Eric's number was a slight handicap. But after several international calls and "Yes, I am an idiot" conversations we tracked it down. 

The Japanese cannot do enough to make visitors feel welcome so it was no surprise that Eric leapt into action. He used his own Iphone to track down Mr Blog's. It turned out to be half a mile away! Eric-the -hero-Blog jumped in his car and began a Bondesque car chase after the taxi. Forty minutes later he called (clearly on Mrs Blog's phone because she isn't an idiot!) to say he had retrieved it after flashing his lights  at the taxi for several blocks.

Phew!

This the last post on the Big Adventure although a list of things that didnt make blog material will follow. 

Mr and Mrs Blog are off to Avignon so you never know...maybe a post of two on a "Slightly smaller adventure" will follow?

Ep 21 Big Blog Adventure

Mr Blog is a fan of forward planning - thinking ahead and looking to the future are dying arts in the West. Not in Japan.

Ten minutes on a ferry takes you from the south coast of Japan to a small tropical island which has been inhabited for over 10,000 years, called Miyajima.

Miyajima is famed for the large, vermillion-coloured Torii gate that stands in the sea a few hundred metres from the shore. There has been a Torii gate there since the sixth century and the current structure, the 7th rennovation, was put in place in 1875. It is 16.8 m high and weighs 60 tons. 

The trees that provided the wood are Camphor (because it resists insects and salt water erosion) and the particualr variety takes 500-600 years to grow big enough to use.

The Japanese decided in 1875 that, given it would need replacing in 500 years time they should do something about it in time. They planted replacement trees over 100 years ago so that they would be big enough, when the time came, to get the job done. 

And Mr Blog thought Scottish Distilleries were forward thinking when they made 35 yr old single malts!

Ep 20 Big Blog Adventure

Our Japanese friends take their religions seriously

At the Kiyomizu-Dera Temple in Kyoto the Blogs were guided around the temple gate and temple which nestle against the mountains. On one side there is a 100ft drop to the ground below. We were told that back in the 19th century a trend developed among the local devotees to prove that their gods were looking after them. This proof required two things,

1. the devotee had to jump off the temple walkway 100ft above the ground
2. the devotee had to survive

Amazingly more than 85% of those who tried it survived. It seems that there was sufficient foliage below to break their fall leaving them with just cuts, bruises and fractures. Rather sensibly the practice was outlawed.

Ep 19 A serious one - Big Blog Adventure

As the title says this is a serious post. Our visit to Japan occurred in the 80th year since the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a city which our visit included.

If you wish to know some of what we learned then please click on the link,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadako_Sasaki

If you did so the following will make sense...

...after our tour of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum we were each given a gift of an origami crane by our coach driver. He makes them himself for all the people he takes there.

Ep 18 Big Blog Adventure

The Geisha house visited by the Blogs was over 200 years old and now functions as a museum. Which is just as well. As a functioning Geisha house it drew its clients from only the highest ranks of society and admittance was based on trust with guests required to have a sponsor. Without its new status as a museum the Blogs might not have been let in.

These high-end customers expected high-end entertainment, which, if the Blogs had ever been let in, Mrs Blog was ready to provide.

She was invited by the owner of the musem to try out a Shamisen. The Shamisen is a type of Japanese banjo made up of a small wooden drum, a broomstick, three strings and some clothes pegs. Despite the obvious differences to western guitars, Mrs Blog knocked out a more then passable rendition of Clapton's "Lay down Sally". 

Ep 17 Big Blog Adventure

A trip to Japan would be incomplete without a visit to a Geisha house. 

The Blogs discovered that girls begin full-time training at the age of 15 for six years to qualify. They must be expert in the following to graduate,

• Conversation
• Singing
• Playing musical instruments
• Dance
• Acting
• Flower arranging

For many years Mr Blog has wondered why such an occupation developed in the first place. 

The answer lies in tea house competition. It seems tea houses back in the day decided to "up their game". One of them started it by employing a guy to stand outside and encourage customers to come in by telling them it was the best tea house. It worked. Soon the street was full of guys making the same claim about all the other tea houses. So they stepped it up again.

A guy outside and tea plus sake inside, then...

A guy outside, tea and sake inside and music...

Eventually, the idea of the Geisha was born and still exists today. 

(Meanwhile in the UK we developed TV adverts with chimpanzees to achive higher tea sales!)