It’s not really a good idea to go on vacation right before a book launch, but circumstances worked out that way so I spent the last week in Japan with Ron, my daughter Dallas, her husband Ed, and a new camera which I don’t know how to use. For most of the trip I had the camera inadvertently set on some kind of burst mode and I haven’t had time to figure out how to pull individual shots, so all but the first of the photos below are from the second to last day of our trip.

We started in Tokyo — my first visit to that city — then headed out to Nagano for a few days. From there we were able to visit Matsumoto Castle and attend a firefly festival in Tatsuno. This was the first time I ever saw fireflies! They are amazing and wondrous little creatures. I did not realize they are so bright.

We also took a long day trip, starting with the Shinkansen to Itoigawa. From there we transferred to a one-car train that headed into the mountains — the “Japanese Alps” — following a spectacular narrow gorge with a white-water river. We were heading for a nature preserve, so we left the train and took a bus up to a ski town, nearly empty in June. From there, a twenty minute gondola ride with more spectacular views, and then a five-minute tram. By this time it was late afternoon and we had only twenty minutes at the top where the nature preserve was located. We didn’t see the green meadow in the brochure though because there was still several feet of snow on the ground! The scenery was gorgeous all the same and well worth the adventure.

We returned to Tokyo and visited some sites around the city. Our first day was rainy, but a sunny day followed and we were able to visit the Meiji Shrine Inner Garden and the Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden. Photos below.

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I thought I’d post a few “travelers tips” in no particular order – just some thoughts and perspectives gleaned from the short time I’ve spent in Japan.

* Getting there and getting back
From Honolulu, the flight to Japan—on this most recent trip, our destination was Osaka—is around nine hours. The flight back is significantly shorter, maybe seven hours, a difference I blithely attribute to tailwinds and the direction of the Earth’s rotation.

* No one speaks English
Yes, that’s an exaggeration, but even at major hotels or at information desks that advertise English-speaking personnel, the amount of English-language help you can get is minimal. I find this very interesting because here in Hawaii, where we get many tourists from Japan, there are many guides and hotel staff who speak fluent Japanese.

Ron and I are lucky. While neither of us speaks Japanese, we always take along our daughter Dallas, who speaks a little and can read a lot more. We’d be lost without her.

* Some signs are in English
And that English is often very creative! The rail stations and trains post destinations in both kanji and in Roman characters, which is extremely helpful, and the Shinkansen has English-language announcements about upcoming destinations. Many restaurants have an English-language menu. If you’re not offered one, ask. People everywhere are very friendly and patient, and no one gets offended if you need to point and use gestures to get your meaning across.

* The JR Rail Pass
Foreigners can purchase a pass that will let them ride the Japan Rail trains without the hassle of purchasing tickets for every ride. We bought seven-day passes that allowed us to ride any train in a large area around Osaka, including certain routes of the Shinkansen. Take only one smallish suitcase and pack light so you can easily lift your suitcase onto the luggage rack. (more…)

Japan is an amazing, fascinating place to visit. My husband has been reconnecting with his relatives there, which has led to several visits over the past three years. Usually we go to Kumamoto, where his family lives. On this most recent trip we didn’t — and that turned out to be a very good thing as Kumamoto was struck by two serious earthquakes on the second and third nights that we were in the country.

Fortunately for us, we were far north and didn’t even feel the quakes. There was, of course, extensive coverage of the damage on the evening news—and we were very relieved when Ron’s family checked in on Facebook, reporting that they were well.

Many others, of course, lost homes and loved ones. There is little that is helpful to say in the face of such a tragedy, beyond that our best wishes go out to all those affected. May the recovery be swift.

Most large tourist sites in the USA offer at least some information in multiple languages. The same is true in Japan. English is the most common option there, with Korean and Chinese offered where there are a lot of tourists. It’s very reassuring to hear an English announcement of an upcoming destination when riding a train or a bus! And many signs are written in both Roman and Kanji, making life far easier for an American traveler like me who does not speak or read Japanese.

But not everything is available in English — not by a long way. So for me, traveling in Japan is an experience of effective illiteracy. Often, I cannot read even basic information. This makes it very difficult to know what’s up, what is possible, what is available, or where to go — and really drives home the importance of literacy for everyone in the modern world.

On the other hand, many businesses in Japan do have English names — although these names often don’t make sense to an English speaker. I take this as a warning to writers (like me!) who occasionally employ foreign words and phrases from languages we don’t speak. Caution is called for! But on the positive side, the results can be quite humorous. At the end of a long day, we ran across this sign, randomly placed beside a garden on the grounds of a castle in Kyoto:

But if we cannot scribble here, than where shall we scribble?

After a bit of laughter and debate, we decided this probably meant “No graffiti,” though even that left us puzzled, because there was nowhere to write except on the sign itself. And of course, in our perverse American way, being told not to do something that it had never occurred to us to do, made us wonder if maybe we ought to…

But no! Of course we didn’t scribble. But it made for a good photo op.

Later we were told that graffiti is considered a real problem. I saw a few “tags” while we were there, but if graffiti is a problem, to this casual observer it seems to be a problem under control.

Last spring we made our first visit to Japan, arriving in Fukuoka at the height of cherry blossom season. It was a terrific trip, and my husband and daughter were soon plotting a return that would let us view the fall foliage. We’ve just returned from that adventure, and it too was a success.

The Internet decreed that early December would be the peak of the fall foliage season in southern Japan, so we set our trip for that time — though December seemed very late in the year to me. As it turned out, we were probably two weeks past the peak of the maple foliage season. Nevertheless, there was still a lot of color and many spectacular sights. The advantage of our late arrival? Far smaller crowds than we would have faced only a week or two earlier.

We did most of our in-country traveling on the Shinkansen, taking the train from Fukuoka to Kyoto, and then Kyoto to Kumamoto via Himeji. The Shinkansen is awesome, and a joy to ride, although views are limited because much of the track in southern Japan passes through tunnels, or between walls that I presume are noise buffers.

Kyoto has a historic district with traditional streets and buildings, that house many small shops and restaurants. Shrines and gardens are everywhere. This is one of the brightest Japanese maples we saw, thriving in a Kyoto park:

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I had the good fortune this spring to visit Japan. My husband’s grandparents emigrated from Kumamoto prefecture in southern Japan. Ron and I had long intended to visit the region, but we kept putting off the trip year after year for the usual reasons of time and money and language issues. Neither of us speaks any Japanese. But last fall it occurred to us “If not now, when?” So we sat down with our daughter (who does speak a little Japanese) and son-in-law and booked our flight to Fukuoka, which is a large city just a short train-ride away from Kumamoto. We chose to go the week that the University of Hawaii takes spring break in the hope that our son could come along too. As it turned out, my son couldn’t make it, but our timing was exquisite, because we stepped off the plane to find ourselves at the peak of cherry blossom season. We couldn’t have planned it better if we’d tried. Actually, if we’d tried, I’m sure we wouldn’t have done nearly so well, because the season was predicted to peak a week later.
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