Matt had an annual conference in Tokyo, Japan just a few weeks after our wedding. So we took advantage and tied his work trip into our honeymoon! This same conference will be in Cleveland, OH this year--good move on our part to get married in the Tokyo conference year!
Matt headed to Tokyo for work and I followed a week after him. It's been about 9 months since our honeymoon so my memory is a bit fuzzy but I can write about a few things I took note of. We'll mostly let the pictures tell the story of our trip, but since Japan is such a unique place, here are our impressions of Japan:
-Japan in late August or early September can be very hot and very humid. We mostly visited cities with stops in Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto and Yokohama Bay and one mountain town called Koyosan. The urban environment provided little relief from sweltering days. While we easily made our way around Tokyo with Matt's sense for the city after being there for a few days and English signs here and there, we were challenged much more in Osaka with basically no English signage or English spoken. Compounded with the heat, I nearly lost our vision of honeymoon in Japan. But we quickly mastered it. We simply headed out early in the day to see the sights, then retreated back to the hotel/hostel for reading books and having a light lunch, then headed out again at dinner. It's not much different in Phoenix on a daily basis.
-Japan is nearly equal parts traditional and modern which makes for a very unique mix. Shinto and Buddhist shrines and ancient statues dot much of the landscape. Yet skyscrapers and bullet trains share the terrain. Sometimes this difference seems very stark in contrast with a shrine on one corner and a electronic store with every imaginable gadget (and yet to be introduced to the American public) on the other. And then there were times when the lines blurred--Actually seeing kimonos being worn by men and women in Tokyo and Kyoto shows how the old and new can blend. Kimonos for a Friday night out look gorgeous. Also, with the heat, everyone had beautiful fans, the kind that look like pieces of art to be places on walls. A small way to embrace what we, or I think of as a Japanese tradition. My favorite blend of old and new in Japan were the toilets. The Japanese are obsessed with the bidet. Not know what a bidet is? Well it's basically a toilet that streams water out from underneath the seat after you've used it. Their bidets are not the simple ones first used by the French, you have options to choose different temperatures and pressures of your stream, and you can also play some toilet flushing sounds. The Japanese bidet was oddly placed in a very traditional setting in the Buddhist temple we stayed in in Koya-san. There was as temple just a few yards away that was gold laden and draped in purple tapestry with Buddha wishing you well and watching over you, yet you could use the electronic bidet and play flushing noises as you did your own sort of meditation.
-Our next impression of Japan was of the movement of the country. There seems to be a sort of beauty and grace about the way the population moves and interacts, and the way parts of cities are designed. In Osaka, we felt a bit like fish swimming up stream as we passed business men and women commuting in the opposite direction by foot, train or bike--them in a sea of black and gray and us bright in blues, yellows and an Arizona tan. However, no one ever took a second to look to indicate just how awkward we looked among the tiny, impeccable, simply stated Japanese. The Japanese are too kind to do that.
-The cities are three dimensional with shops, restaurants, post offices at street level, underneath your feet and to the sky. The amazing transportation system of trains connects the whole country at speeds of up to 170 mph. The system is impeccable with conductors signaling trains to the second. Lines form methodically to let passengers enter and exit. There is even a specific way to flow on the stairs as everyone going up systematically stays to one side, no matter if no one is coming down. The trains stop in stations that are a bit like underground cities or malls. This is why, we suspect, plastic food is displayed in the window (like images you conjure up from Asian restaurants in the US). There are so many options on so many levels of the city that possibly somewhere along the way it was decided as a way to showcase their food--what better way than with a plastic replica? It goes something like this for someone who speaks no Japanese:
1. Find a suitable place to eat through on one of the dimensions of the 3 level city possibly by assessing said plastic food in window. 2. Find a piece of plastic that looks like it could be familiar (is that pork or chicken? seaweed or spinach?) 3. Memorize the characters next to that plastic piece. 4. Look for the place to order which happens to be a series of buttons, probably 50 with Japanese characters. 5. Try your hardest to pick the button with the same character as plastic food. 6. Go inside, as your order has been sent to the chef electronically. 7. Hope you've ordered something okay--and forget the vegetables, they're hard to find here. Repeat again tomorrow. It sounds awful but writing this makes me realize how silly, funny and, really, adventurous you had to be!
-Our last impression was how much Japan had to offer and what a wonderful honeymoon experience it was! Where else can you: feel like you stand out but somehow you blend in, sleep in the shadows of shrines and giant Buddha statues; eat amazing and adventurous food including sushi, udon and tofu 8 ways; meditate with Buddhist monks at 5 in the morning; navigate another transportation system using foreign kanji; be amazed at the beauty and simplicity of the prints and letters/characters; watch a successful and well used bike system at work complete with babies up front; and be moved by mountain landscape, engineering and architecture all on the same trip? A perfect trip to start off our marriage--we're both looking forward to many more adventures!
