Culture Shock

As of today i have been in japan for 12 days and everyone has been truly amazing and impressive。Everything about japan is both new and high technology as well as preserving the culture and traditions。Normally technology spells the end of any culture but somehow it exists here in harmony.

My last day in vladivostok summed up everything i like about travelling. I met Ben a fellow english traveller who i looked around vladivostok with before going to the funniest football match of my life before missing the last bus walking forty minutes back in the dark and poring rain before being invited to a random russian 25th birthday by some people on the street. We were essentially guests of honour and were plied with vodka and food for several hours. The only trouble is these nights always occur when i have to get up early for a very important bus or train. This time after retiring at 3am i struggled manfully to pack　my things and get to the bus which left at 9am and then make my flight to japan. Utter madness, when your travelling thecommon sense with regards to nights out merging with early mornings is forgotten.

I arrived in narita that night, managed to negotiate the mass of signs and information and get on the correct train to tokyo. It really isnt that bad but i had got into a comfort zone in russia being able to read signs etc and it was certainly a jolt. July is japans rainy season and this has pretty much shaped my time here. Go out in the baking hot sunshine try and get undercover for the crazy hours of rain that are about to arrive. I had three days in Tokyo seeing the sights most of which were traditional gardens, islands of of peace set among the craziness and sky scrapers all around. I also had one 4am start to get to Tsujiki the largest market in the world to see the tuna auction. As instructed i arrived at 5am to be told that i was late and it had finnished. Instead i had very fresh early morning sushi. I know sushi is pretty popular but this has completely passed me by. I had tried it once before and not enjoyed it and this was no better. Sitting in a very intimate restaurant surrounded by people saying this is the best thing they have ever eaten while i am sat there trying not to throw up. Oh well a good thing the rest of japanese quisine is immense.

In tokyo i had inishaly planned to spend four days but i managed to tick off two areas of tokyo a day as well as go to shinjuku at night. Honestly you dont know what a crowd is until you have been here, and it seems everybody is going the opposite way to you. I had heard that there was a major festival on in kyoto in three days so i rearranged my plans and somehow got the last bed in the city. With three days to kill i decided to try to climb mount fuji which is japans highest mountain and only 2 hours away. The climbing season is only for two months and in this time hundreds of thousands of people climb. The first two days the weather was so bad i couldnt even see the mountain but on the third it was my final chance so i got ready and started climbing. Most go from the 5th station about halfway but i decided to go traditional and start from the segen shrine right at the bottom. Being pretty good at walking by now i made good progress and managed to pick up two americans on the way. By the time i got to the top at 3776m (nearly three times Ben Nevis) 10 hours later i was glad i had. The weather was so bad that you couldnt see the person standing next to you and with the high winds and rain it was pretty dicy not ideal on your own. The final section was like slow motion, fuji is high enough for altitude sickness and by the end it was take ten steps and take a break just to slow your heart rate to an acceptable level. By this time it was also dark so we spent the night in a mountain hut at the 8th station (3200m) before stupidly running down in 1 hour (supposed to be 4 hours) to the 5th station. At that point i just wanted to get off the mountain as i had a splitting headache from the altitude and just wanted to be in the warm. The run down screwed my legs for days.

After Fuji i headed to Kyoto which is the culture capital of Japan. There is a shrine or temple or zen garden everywhere you look. I had two days of wandering through these before going to the Gion Matsuri festival. Kyoto was packed and so were all the places to see which kind of ruined it a bit. Having to jostle through crowds to take a photo isnt great. The festival though was great, the night before the whole city was on the streets in traditional kimonos as they decorated giant wooden floats and sold amazing street food. The day of the festival the streets were lined with decorations and for three hours the huge procession of floats were pulled through the streets. Any festival in japan would be great and Gion Matsuri is one of the biggest.

That night as i hadnt got a bed i had planned to take the night train to Hokkaido. Unfortunately this meant a 7 hour layover between trains and my plans to sleep in the station ended at 2am when they kicked me out. So i had three hours wandering the streets with all my stuff in some dodgy area by the station before i could get in and go back to sleep. Fortunately Japan is pretty much the safest place on earth, but i wouldn't have liked to have tried that in many places i have been. But happily 7 hours later after passing through the longest under sea train tunnel i was in Hokkaido and last night i was treated to the Keirin cycling and an unexpected spectacular view of the city and a huge fireworks display from my guesthouse halfway up the mountain overlooking Hakodate.

Sorry this has been a long one but its the first time i have had internet that isnt an absurd price. One thing with Japan is you have to watch the pennies as the pounds just disappear.