Tokyo - the busiest city on earth?

So, I would still consider myself to be agoraphobic to some extent, it's just that unlike in my housebound days I now have better coping strategies. However, I was totally weirder out by my lack of terror in the busy city of Tokyo.

Visiting scramble crossing (where 3000 people are said to cross the road every minute), Tokyo station (said to be the busiest in the world), and the tiny crowded streets of Golden Gai I expected to be in tatters and was well braced for impact... but it never came. To a large extent I think the ethereal bubble created by my burst eardrum has helped as noise and sound are greatly reduced, also that I am actually fairly tall here and can see where I am going helped. However, Tokyo itself must claim some credit. Everything is so well organised and on time that no one seems in a rush, which is a relief in 35 degree heat where rushing is not really possible. The people were also so friendly to us that rather than commuters being irritated by being asked for directions by hopeless tourists they actually went beyond directions each time and took us where we needed to go - an experience I had never before encountered outside of Sheffield. This put me off asking, despite being in the process of reading Amanda Palmer's 'The Art of Asking'.

Tokyo is a city primarily of shopping and shrines - sometimes at the same time, which made me rather uncomfortable. After all, Jesus was the original Socialist.

Shrine fever sets in after about 3 so I was glad we didn't go to Kyoto! Then unless you want to break the bank on tourist attractions and theme parks Tokyo becomes pretty much a shopping Mecca. I am the first person to groan at this. However, shops in Tokyo can be surprisingly fun. We went to stationery shops across 8 floors, 100 yen shops (well, 108 with tax), the Bic Camera technology shop where several attendants tuck you into thousands of pounds worth of massage chair that they know you are never going to buy for a 20 minute rest. In Akihabara the geek shops, arcades and Manga stores are filled with places for photo ops, the bright lights of Shinjuku are like an electric theatre, and the fashion mad area of Harajuku makes installation art of clothing.
In short - 'shopping' as a past time actually seemed to have some merit.

We also visited the Edo Tokyo museum, some beautiful Japanese gardens and parks and an example of the fabled cat cafes.

Unfortunately navigating Tokyo makes no sense due to subway stations have 8 exits each and maps having random orientations so we couldn't fit as much in as we'd have liked. I would go back if I could.

Otaru - music boxes and glass

We had to put back our trip to Otaru by a day in Hokkaido as I wasn't well on top of still having no hearing in my left ear. It then chucked it down the whole day.  I have had to bin my shoes but kept s little dry thanks to the communal umbrellas that they seem to have everywhere.

Before we reached the tourist area we popped into the greatest sewing shop in the world.  I got giddy plus there was an anime shop on the same street for Andy.  He treated me to some fabric and I rewarded him by letting us have lunch at the stinkiest fish shop ever while I had a single boiled potato.

Otaru is a port town and is known for glassware and music boxes. The 'museums' were really large shops near the canal but interesting none the less, and very beautiful.  At least they were out of the rain!

We polished off the visit with a cheese ice cream at the chocolate shop and made our way back to Sapporo to the pancake shop in Asabu for tea. Happy faces and full tummies!

Nikko

Today we made it to Nikko a few hours outside of Tokyo.  Once again owing to distance, waiting for trains, Japanese maps changing orientation every time you see one and Andrew's need to eat every hour we arrived at 3.

Nikko is a palace/shrine complex which I think is where we get our images of traditional Japan. Moss covered statues and red pagoda with dragons and peacocks were everwhere. As nothing wad in English we are still fairly unclear on Shinto as a religion. It involves sticks, bells and many many gods.

Back at the hostel (with paper walls!) We ate a tea of supermarket reductions in our order to try as many different types of food as possible.  Some lads who had cycled here from the next county mimed and mixed discussion to us about Japanese culture.

We have been shocked by seeing small children take the subway alone in central Tokyo - perhaps as we get so easily lost.

Tokyo

I am now writing from the best youth hostel ever after a tiring and sometimes even tearful day getting to Tokyo.
Khaosam World Hostel has lifts, chandeliers, a spits staircase, more info than the tourist information office and is just 100% awesome. We couldn't find the place and asked at a restaurant - the chef gave us directions, explained how the street names work and caught us up a few minutes later on his bicycle as he correctly thought we might be lost at that point. This has been typical of the kindness shown to us in this high rise city of 12 million.

We got very lost in the station, went to the emporer's garden and stumbled upon Oktoberfest in July at Hibiya park. Also had hot vending machine food. Then hung out in the Manga library at the hostel. Unfortunately due to 33000 scouts descending on the city we can only stay one night and then have 3 more hoste

Flora in Furano

"It's not a proper holiday until you've been drenched by the rain" said Andrew as we hid under the corner of a kind beer seller's tent watching a parade of school children in mini yukata bravely carry on with their part in the lavender festival.

It had been another crazily hot day, which we had spent at the lavender and melon fields of Biei-Furano. Neither of us even had a jumper. Lavender is a big export of Hokkaido and most is grown here. We had fun on the hillside and Andrew got to try lavender ice cream (weird but not terrible). We also found a lost child but as white people are very rare here he was not prepared to be helped by us - or the purple clad ice cream seller we sent to watch him until someone came to claim him.

We were lucky enough to be there for the lavender festival and tried a few festival foods before feeling ill and seeking some plain crisps. The whole village turned up in yukata to sit on the car park and wait for the fireworks.  Unfortunately the rain started first.  And didn't stop.  It was still worth getting soaked for.  There were handheld firework cannons and the most impressive display of fireworks I have ever seen,  lighting up the flowers below.

A very kind man chased us when he saw we took a wrong turn and were about to miss the last train and gave us his umbrella.

It took

Chocolate wonderland

The chocolate factory we visited this afternoon was possibly the strangest I have ever visited. The factory is about 50 years old - old enough to be considered an antique on this modern island,  which has only really been part of Japan for 200 years.

The visit started out with Victoriana rooms of hot chocolate mugs and pots plus a Royal Doulton fountain and some seriously ugly cherubs.

There were rooms of displays of chocolate boxes (and a few anomalies), a history chocolate and the process.

Then after a small viewing deck for the factory itself the museum got a bit confused with toys and wedding cakes and Beatles memorabilia.  David Beckham and Princess Diana sat together and the whole thing just lost it's way.

We had a lovely ice cream in an equally crazy rose garden with giant plastic tree houses and that was that.

An unexpected day in Sapporo

The day after the onsen we were supposed to be going to Lake Toya but as much of my careful planning was thrown off by not being able to read the websites it turned out Lake Toya was much further away than we first thought.  After nearly a week away from home exhaustion was beginning to hit me so we got on a bus back to Sapporo and explored with transport to Asabu readily available.

The government building is surrounded by lily ponds and had an exhibition on of things from the settling of Hokkaido and artifacts from the war.  Unfortunately they assumed knowledge of Japan's role in the war, of which I have very little.

I was able to pick up a wifi password for city hot spots and we then watched the police jazz band along with terrible mime, majorettes and cheerleaders.

We went up posh plaza buildings to viewing points and walked miles exploring the underground shops and markets below the city.  In winter Sapporo is so deep in snow that businesses go underground.  We particularly enjoyed a rock making demonstration with lots of tasters!

Onsen

Surprisingly Hell Valley is not the main attraction of Noboribetsu. What people come here for is the onsen - great big public baths filled with water from the different mineral springs. People walk around town in Summer kimono called yukata looking dreamily relaxed after bathing in the waters that each boast dozens of health benefits. And we had free access to some of the most impressive baths of all.

The snag? You have to be completely naked. This is the first rule of the onsen and probably the reason we were the only English people here. I was also nervous as this would be the first time since the airport that I had had to manage on my own.  Having no clue about the language has made me feel extremely vulnerable. What if I did it wrong and got naked at entirely the wrong moment. Onsening has many rules.
But after an exhausting day of walking that had made my pains go crazy I was psyched up for it.

We put on our hotel yukata (one of us more neatly than the other) and flip flops and walked to the posh hotel, giggling slightly about being naked underneath - especially when Andy's poorly wrapped yukata came loose. At the bath entrance a man and woman stood like human signs to point(and bow) us to the right changing rooms.  We wished each other luck and went in.

The room was full of baskets for clothes and an attendant was at a desk. I asked her in crude sign language if this is where I get naked and she nodded. I unwrapped myself and headed into the baths I felt ridiculous. I sat down at one of the washing stations and began to wash my hair and body.  By the time I stood up and saw the other women looking so relaxed I had begun to relax too. I strolled over to some taps 15ft high coming out of the wall and had a water massage. By the time I stood up again I was fine with the whole situation.

The women at the washing station looked like mermaids. I felt like Cleopatra at the Roman baths. I went in radium baths and aluminium baths. Cool Jacuzzis with wrinkled old ladies,  hot pools and warm pools, and gave myself a surprise after leaving the sauna and getting in a pool of freezing cold water,  the sign for which was helpfully only in Kanji and Korean. My favourite was the milky outdoor pool, which looked out at a Japanese garden of red maple trees, stone statues and flowering trees that dropped their blossoms into the pool. A toddler was showing them to it's mother with wonder.

Other outdoor pools had a water wheel, a bar, and views back over Hell Valley. I spent a lot of time wondering at my sudden acceptance of being starkers - why did I feel less exposed than in a swimsuit?  How on earth was making eye contact and wordless interaction with the other women easier than if I were fully clothed?!

2 hours flew by and I was getting as wrinkly as I was relaxed.  I chose a washing station and soaped and rinsed myself again, we had a carpeted room with sinks to dry off excess water before going through to the main dressing area. I dried and re-yukated with a cup of cold tea (still disgusting no matter how zen and Japanese I now felt) before taking a proper look at the room. There was a sitting area for relaxing and many sinks for and stations for drying your hair.  I went to the most communal and tried all the creams and brushes. I don't normally bother drying my hair but it felt like part of the experience and besides my wet hair was making my yukata a bit translucent.

A fat little baby waddled in as her mother wad in the drying room. No one minded and the attendant pulled faces at her and followed her to make sure she was ok until her mother came and put her in the cot - children weren't just accepted but welcomed. You could even buy ice cream in the dressing room.

I left feeling radiant but with rather a lot of water in my ear. I don't think I have ever felt that relaxed.

Jigoku-Dani (Hell Valley)

It seems Dante's inferno is quite an international concept of Hell. Jigoku-Dani is a place of geysers, steaming lakes, colourful mineral streams leaving deposits, and sulphurous smells. It is the source of the hot mineral waters that fill the onsen with springs of: sulphur; aluminium; salt; iron; and radium.

The demon of the valley,  called Yukijin, is actually more of a Lincoln imp and takes away bad luck. Although the demons here all look like monsters they are more like small gods. At one shrine we saw gifts of sake left out.

The whole place was at once fascinating,  beautiful and smelly! We walked a long way (partiality due to a slightly off piste accidental adventure) and visited Tessen-ike (bubbly geyser), Oyunuma (a huge boiling lake) and Oyunuma brook, where we had the best paddle ever in hot milky water.

Later,  we would brave the onsen!

Noboribetsu

Noboribetsu onsen is a spa town. Onsen are bath houses that use the natural springs in the Shikotsu-Toya national park. At the moment you probably have images of a mountainous Bath in mind but (and I realise my saying this is more than a little ironic) Japan could really do with the National Trust.  Noboribetsu onsen is a concrete jungle of hotels.  Ours was by far the cheapest (though still above my target budget) and with its plastic airplane style  bathroom and actual matresses was probably the height of sophistication in its hey day. Unfortunately, it has become a bit dilapidated now and the policy of only having smoking rooms at the Takimoto Inn meant we opened the windows to let the smell of spa sulphur overpower that of ashtray.

Still it was a great place to explore the toy town from and came with free access to the Grand Public Baths of its glamorous sister hotel.

On our first night we visited the bubbling geyser, which people believed to be the gate to hell, watched the giant diorama in the main street,  explored 8 gift shops selling identical but interesting wares, and settled down to eat at a backstreet kitchen.

In Japan welcome flags over the doors let you know where is open. Vegetarian is not a concept here so I had a small dish of rice while Andy aye something with testicles and tried a milky coloured fruit drink. The TV was on the whole time which wad odd as Japanese TV makes channel 5 look like the BBC at its finest.  And I think understanding what they were saying could possibly only make it worse.

People strolled about in yukata (cotton kimono) and wooden platform flip flops and the looped music sent us in for an early night.

Kawai - Kawaii or Kowai?

Urban dictionary defines the not-so-real word "kawai'' as a mispelling of either "kawaii" meaning cute (and the cutesy culture which has led to me choosing the most bizarre 'Hello Kitty' sighting of the day) or "kowai" meaning scary. We've actually had a fair bit of both over the past few days in Noboribetsu Onsen and the first two were both scary and sad.

On our first day venturing beyond Sapporo we took the train to Shiraoi, which looked much like a lot of American towns - a large road edged with plastic houses and rusty corrugated sheds. After about half an hour we got to the Ainu village. Unfortunately nothing was in English so we pretty much had to guess what was what. The Ainu people are the natives of Hokkaido and the island above, which Japan traded to Russia. The Japanese have only been in Hokkaido for the past 150 years. Before then the Ainu people, who like most indigenous peoples have been treated very badly, lived a very simple life in thatched huts with campfires. They smoked fish, made canoes from trees and hunted and grew vegetables. Now they don't seem to exist.
They had a pantheon of gods, all responsible for a diffeent aspect of nature. To worship they would catch a bear cub, raise it in a wooden cage, and slaughter it slowly, believing its cries of pain to be joy at returning to heaven.

The fake village had real bears. In cages.

Despite this we braved the bear park in the mountains the net day. Andrew had read that it was much better than the zoos here and the entry price was reassuringly high. We took a cable car up the mountain and spent a while cooing at the cubs. So far, so good. The squirrel village only had one squirrel and I am yet to figure out what this little chap is...

But after these and the inevitable gift shops we went to see the adult bears. In concrete enclosures with stinking, filthy pools, no toys and no fresh water around 8 bears competed for food thrown by tourists. They fought over tiny morsels. Around half of them had eye infections.  In the distance we could see the mountain lake surrounded by berry trees where they should be living.

We didn't stay much longer but caught the duck race before we left - the American influence on Japan can be seen in the breed; yellow picture book ducks.

Odori Park

11th July - Ni

After spending most of the day making it as far as the kitchen and then falling asleep again we finally made it into Sapporo in the evening. We went up the Sapporo TV tower at one end of Odori park to see the sun go down over the mountains.

Sapporo is huge (2 million people) and stretches off into the haze in every direction. The TV tower itself was pretty much 3 levels of insane gift shop, which often blocked the better views. It was nice to look down on Odori Park which is a mile long strip of gardens, festival stages, and play park ending with the Clock Building, which is the sort of first municipal building in this very young city and where all the postal areas are measured from. Like an American city everything is laid out in a grid, which can make walks frustrating as you can see where you are going forever but never seem to arrive. Odori Park is sort of a roof to the great underground network of shopping centre, which exists to help ordinary life continue in the harsh winter with enough snow for a festival.

We walked up and down the length of it and in that time I spotted one single piece of litter - and I was looking hard. The culture of queuing, being clean and tidy, and amazing manners is impressive.

Hokkaido is also the agricultural heart of Japan and it is famous for its flower fields. This explained the beautiful displays up and down the park, which were as pungent as they were beautiful.

We had a very cheap Japanese version of pizza when we got back to Asabu station before trudging back in a warm breeze and attempting to watch some Japanese TV with the house before going to bed.

At some point I will figure out how to upload my photos and show you.

Finally concious

10th July - Ichi

Having left England on Wednesday I have now arrived and had a night's sleep... subsequently it is Saturday!

That was my first time flying alone but obviously I was packed as a sardine with others, so not really that alone. After unfortunate train delyas to Manchester frightening me I managed to make it from the platfrom to the gate in under 20 minutes (would have been quicker had the signs ot disappeared and been replaced with counters of CK1  rather than the gate for TK050 - my flight.

I first flew to Istanbul overnight and was lucky enough to see their mosques and Haggia Sophia as the sun rose in the morning. UNforunately being in transit meant I couldn;t go and see it for real and I was glad of the stick of sexiness as I limped off the plane. It took me an hour to find a toilet clean enough to use and then I had another 6 to attempt to sleep. I couldn't though as I was worried I'd not wake up. I also couldn't get any water to drink so it was a very thirsty time.

My next Turkish Airliines flight was 13 hours to Tokyo. It hurt a lot and for some reason none of the vegetarian meals came with pudding!

Unlike on my third and final flight from Tokyo to Sapporo where I got a map to help identify the areas we were flying over, there was no flight info on the Istanbul to Tokyo flight. Therefore I can say with some confidence that we flew over the Great Wall of China, the Himalayas and at least 3 versions of Machu Picchu.

Tokyo airport was a great mini-induction to Japan. Something for every Palmer of the clan. Mum - everything is designed for people 5ft or less, Rebecca - toilets have enough options to cope with an RLP, Ellie & Catherine - food is so cheap you can try everything, and for me I liked that smokers have to go into little glass boxes so they don't smoke up all the entrances and exits. Even Lucy couldn't fault the cleanliness.

I was slightly disturbed by a full grown woman carrying a Hello Kitty and Hello Kitty suitcase but apparently this is a national emblem, and she also found me bizarre - I caught her taking a photo of me hobbling off the plane with my stick of ultimate sexiness. This was a useful emblem in itself and saved me a lot of time as I was allowed to use the priority 'diplomat' lane.

I found Andrew in arrivals, waving his Union Jack and grinning.

Although it was now morning the most I managed in terms of sightseeing was a milk ice cream at the underground part of Sapporo and round the shop before falling asleep into a bowl of instant ramen.