My trip to Japan (Part 1)

Join our reporter, Yingyi, as she cruises the land of the rising sun…

I woke up at 11am on the 26th of December, racked with jetlag but feeling exactly like Tracy Turnblad of the Hairspray movie did when she sang ‘Good Morning Baltimore’: extremely happy. I was happy that I was back in good ‘ol Singapore, and happy that my family’s trip to Japan had been a marvellous one. I’ve always liked Japan, and this crazy but enriching trip has made me like the Land of the Rising Sun even more. If time were like a video clip, I’d hit the ‘restart ‘button.

This trip shall be recounted in 2 parts – Part 1 will be dedicated to the 6 most memorable cities and towns I’ve visited and Part 2 will be for miscellaneous but equally memorable stuff.

The big cities – Sapporo, Tokyo and Kyoto

These are a few of Japan’s biggest and busiest cities. Like any other mega city, they are concrete jungles with crowds of commuters on the go. However, one can still find little sites that retain an old world charm, such as shrines, traditional neighbourhoods etc. But I feel that these cities’ trump card would be the offer of great shopping. The good news for shopaholics is that there is a great variety of lovely, good quality stuff. The bad news is that to get your hands on them, you need a considerably fat wallet.

Kyoto: Kyoto was a bit of a disappointment. I thought it’d be a charming and idyllic city as portrayed in Memoirs of a Geisha but it turned out to be a rather cluttered sprawl of buildings. Speaking of geishas, the geisha district still exists but it’s tucked away somewhere in central Kyoto. My family mainly explored the Kyoto vicinity so I can’t say much on this city. (Except that Kyoto station is a good place to get souvenirs and lovely, mouth-watering tarts laden with fresh fruit).

A Nozomi Shinkansen train at Kyoto station. These trains exceeded the speed of sound!

Sapporo

As compared to Kyoto and Tokyo, I think the city of Sapporo is less claustrophobic. Sapporo is the fifth largest city in Japan (capital of the Hokkaido Prefecture) and one of the coldest too. Winter nights can be as cold as -2.8 degree Celsius so we had to wear about 4 layers of clothes or risk turning into human popsicles.

Nice, fluffy snow outside Sapporo train station

Tokyo

Tokyo has two extremes: the traditional, cultural-rich side and the ultra-modern, hip and funky side. The former is embodied by places such as the beautiful Meiji Shrine and the Thunder Gate at rustic Asakusa. If you want to immerse yourself in the latter, hit Ginza and Roppongi districts, the meccas for shopping and clubbing.

Dec 23 is the Emperor's birthday. Like many others, we visited the Imperial Palace where we got a glimpse of the Emperor!

Inari

The main attraction of this small town near Kyoto is the great many toriis, traditional gates usually found outside Shinto shrines. Inari has rows and rows of toriis snaking their way through forests and up the mountains. According to the guidebook, there’re altogether more than 10 000 toriis there! My Mum and I knew we just had to visit Inari. I’m very glad we did, because what started out as a quick look around the torii site turned out to be a memorable 4 mile hike via the passage of toriis. The mountain air was fresh and cool, the hike was a good exercise and the forest had a Zen feel to it. It was the perfect bonding session for my family too. In the end, we did not reach the mountain summit but that’s okay. After all, it’s the journey, not the destination that matters.

My brother standing in front of a row of toriis.

Noboribetsu

What an experience! For one thing, we tried a natural hot spring for the very first time in our lives. There’s something rejuvenating about soaking oneself in hot, mineral rich water. At Noboribetsu, which is located in Hokkaido, we also vised a crater lake near the famous Jigoku Dani (Hell Valley). It’s one thing to read about craters, calderas and volcanoes, it’s another to actually see them for yourself. The crater lake is a large pool filled with hot turquoise-coloured water with patches of black here and there. It’s steaming and bubbling in some places, and reeks of sulphur dioxide. It does not possess the beauty of Lake O’Hara or Lake Atitlan, but it’s intriguing enough.

Nagasaki

I had assumed Nagasaki was a big city like Sapporo so when I finally got there I was surprised to see a relatively peaceful seaside town with steep hills in the horizon. The buildings, often a few stories tall, are an eclectic mix of Japanese and European style structures.

It was hard to believe that this pleasant city was once devastated by an atomic bomb during World War Two. Remnants of that terrible past can be seen at the Peace Park, such as the monolith that mark the spot where the bomb fell and the radiation-scarred remains of a church. At the Atomic Bomb Museum, there were many works of art made up of colourful paper cranes. These were created mainly by schools or visiting groups. Hope for world peace is strong, though whether we will ever achieve it, what with terrorism and all remains to be seen.

The paper cranes were a riot of colour!

By Wan Ying Yi