Notes from Japan
Finally, I managed to get to Japan to visit friends. Almost three weeks of legal rest is just a fairy tale.
The first day.
If sequentially, it was something like this: at 5 in the morning I left the house, at half past seven I loaded onto the plane and at 7 took off towards my vacation. True, I must say that I can’t imagine how this ruin took off - everything was breathing its last : ). Moscow met with heavy rain and heavy wind, and by the time we got to the hotel (after 15 minutes) it was already snowing, and after another 15 minutes the sun was shining, but in any case it was only 3 degrees and we were freezing a little. By the way, my native Belavia managed to break my suitcase in just an hour of flight to Moscow and 7 hours in a Moscow hotel, I tried to somehow reanimate it, but the handle stopped moving tightly. : ( Looking ahead, I’ll say that it turned out that the problem was not only in the handle, but in the fact that they almost completely managed to gouge the entire inner frame into small pieces, so I had to buy a new suitcase.
The flight to Tokyo took 9 hours. This time the plane was quite comfortable, I was especially pleased with the individual screen for each passenger. As a person who does not fall asleep in transport, it was extremely pleasant for me to land in Tokyo in just 4 films : )
The first feeling upon exiting the plane is very stuffy. I quickly go through passport control, take fingerprints, take pictures, ask about the purpose of the visit and let go on all 4 sides. Nobody even looks at my luggage. Oh, it’s a pity I still didn’t dare to bring dry sausages to my friends, it would be easy to ride : )
At the airport, nothing particularly Japanese is felt so far - there are mainly tourists and Japanese businessmen of the European type : ))))) It took about 2.5 hours to get to the friends' house and it seems with three transfers. The system seemed insanely confusing to me, you can’t figure it out without a “half a liter” : )
Real Japan began to be felt only when a flock of Japanese girls aged 14-16 flew into the car. Their clothes defied any description, skirts for jeans, T-shirts for sweaters, boots for bare feet and sandals for warm socks... And the phenomenal color scheme? A combination of seemingly incongruous materials? In short, a complete fusion)))
To begin with, I decided to see the Imperial Palace with an adjacent garden and the Ginza district, where the most expensive street in the world is located.
So: the garden of the imperial palace. We wander around for a long time, trying to find the entrance, they are sent from one barrier to another, from another to the third... Near it, we understand that wandering along the beautiful stone fence is a little fed up and we would like to somehow get inside. But alas, a chubby smiling policeman informs us that the imperial palace is closed today. And in the guide, by the way, it says that only Wednesday is a day off. Not good!! ! Okay, there's nothing to do, let's go to Ginza... In this area of Tokyo there are shops of the most expensive and famous world brands. The gaze darts from right to left, snatching out familiar names - Gucci, Armani, Tiffany, Cartier, Louis Voittone and stuff like that. All around the people are cheering, every fourth Japanese is wearing a muzzle (gauze bandage). I'm at a loss - they care about others, being afraid to infect them, or they care more about their own health, so that no one, God forbid, sneezes at them with their bacillus : )
We go to a cafe to eat. Y-yes, if you can’t read Japanese, you can rely on luck - out of the 20 dishes presented, I can visually recognize only eggplant and potatoes : ). With the help of Lena, I make a choice. Hurray, everything went well - the choice was right, everything turned out to be very tasty.
In total, we spend 9 hours away from home - a full-time work day.
Here is an amazing phenomenon - I absolutely do not feel the difference in time. I calmly go to bed and get up according to Japanese time, and I get up around 7 in the morning and, in principle, get enough sleep. Today I had my first independent outing - I went to the gift shop a few stops from my friends house. Surprisingly quickly figured out the intricacies of trains. I arrived at the right place and stopped in the smoking area to relieve the stress of the first independent trip with a couple of puffs. By the way, smoking in Japan is a separate issue. When I was there for the first time 6 years ago, 75 percent of the population smoked, and everywhere - in restaurants, on the street, at all metro stations. Now, as part of the fight against smoking, the situation has changed dramatically. Smoking has been banned almost everywhere. Left in restaurants (usually after 2 p. m. ), at McDonald's (at any time), but you can't smoke on the streets and platforms. rather, at a distance of 1-2 kilometers there are special pens for smokers, where they huddle the poor, and the rest of the territory is a zone free from smoking. Well, maybe that's right though. : )
Went to the aquarium. Unexpectedly : ) It was cool to feel like a child again. I enthusiastically rushed from one aquarium to another - such cute fish, octopuses, jellyfish, small and giant, gray and multi-colored. And then there was a dolphin show - an amazing sight. After the oceanarium, we went to the building of the Tokyo City Hall, where there is an observation deck on the 45th floor. To my great regret, it turned out to be closed, so the photos of this huge Tokyo anthill had to be taken through the glass.
Today was a very busy day. I was invited to go to Hakone National Park. I find it difficult to say how much time I spent in total in transport. First 45 minutes to the central station in Tokyo - Shinjuku. Moreover, this time fell on rush hour, and this is a separate song in Japan. With so many people living in Tokyo and the surrounding area, commuting to and from work turns into sheer hard labor. There is even such a profession - pusher in the subway : ) During rush hours, they stand near each entrance to the car and in the truest sense of the word tamp people there : ) Then another hour and a half had to go by high-speed express train. This is certainly not a shinkansen, but it is also very impressive. The head car looks like some kind of bird of prey, girls with carts rush along the aisle all the way, offering food and drinks, like on an airplane. But most of all, I was impressed that when the train arrives at the terminal station, all the seats, which are also located like in an airplane (that is, they are all turned in one direction), by pressing one button waltz smoothly turn 180 degrees and again become in the direction of the train. But if suddenly you are traveling with a company and you want to sit opposite each other, then with a slight movement of your hand you turn the chair where you need it. Hmmm... Arriving in Hakone, we went to have lunch at a Japanese restaurant. It's still a joke, of course. It usually looks something like this - 10-15 pieces of tiny plates, in which lies 20-50 grams of food. I don't recognize 95% of this food by eye, so every time I bite something, I'm in for a surprise : ) After lunch, we set off on a trip to Hakone. First we go by bus to the pier, where we board the "pirate ship" to cross the lake. The spectacle is amazing - the ship is three-story and it has... an elevator !! ! We go out to the upper deck to admire the surrounding landscape. Somewhere the mountain sakura still blossoms. After the boat, we sit in the funicular and climb to a height of a thousand and a few meters. Here in the mountains hot springs beat and volcanic activity is still observed. Everything is in smoke and the disgusting smell of rotten eggs : ) By the way, everyone around eats black eggs that are boiled in water from springs. Then, through very picturesque places, we go down on the monorail to the mountain train. The train is definitely a joke. It looks the most ordinary, but it has a very interesting serpentine descent system. He cannot go around the mountain in a circle as cars usually do, because it is quite steep, so he descends on the principle of a pendulum. That is, let's say it goes to the right and a little down, reaches the station, the driver goes to the other side of the train and goes to the left and goes down a little, then he again goes to the opposite end of the train, and so on until the train finally goes down the mountain. Well, then again the express train and 45 minutes in my already almost native metro. Here I am at home. The day was definitely a success : )
We leave for Asakusa - the most touristic area. Here is the oldest temple in Tokyo built in 628. A three-hundred-meter street leads to it, strewn with souvenir shops. The people are dark. I buy the rest of the souvenirs, then part with the guys and go for a walk in Ueno Park. A very nice place, everything is so green around, people idly get drunk along the paths. Everywhere they sell some kind of authentic food, which is difficult to identify by appearance, but there are also native sausages and boiled corn : ). Here and there on the benches there are homeless people, and sometimes you can see stretched ropes between the trees where their underwear is dried. There is a large pond in the center of the park, which is teeming with half-meter carps, and some unfamiliar, but very cute birds swim closer to the shore. From time to time I stumble upon various street performances - musicians with guitars and accordions, clowns, mimes and just hangouts of young people famously dancing to the Beatles in outfits ala the movie "Dandies".
Having started the process of falling into childhood with a trip to the oceanarium, I decided to continue it with a trip to Disneyland : ) This is, of course, an indescribable feeling - just an explosion of the brain. We were practically the only people there without all sorts of cartoonish bells and whistles put on our heads, such as Minnie's bows, Donald's sailor suits, hats in the form of a one-eyed green monster from "Monsters Corporation", etc. We spent the whole day there and tried about half of the attractions. On one of them it was really scary - my knees were bent for half an hour after the exit. The rest can be called rather cute. And we also saw a parade of cartoon characters - also amazingly beautiful and bright, I had an association with the parade of samba schools in Brazil.
Today I was in Yokohama. It is a port city near Tokyo. In fact, it was through him that the opening of Japan to the whole world began. There is a Ferris wheel right on the shore of the bay. And that's where the nonsense is - I'm terribly afraid of heights, but still I always climb on these wheels, and then I die of fear there. But it is undoubtedly very cool to watch people and cars swarming from a height of 115 meters below. Then we walked through the park along the embankment. It's very, very, very beautiful - all around such bright saturated colors. I was very touched by the scene, how one Japanese woman tried for 20 minutes to seat her two identical poodles evenly in order to photograph them against the background of a flower bed. Dogs in Japan, by the way, cost crazy money. And they are almost all dressed up. And yet... ta-da-da-dam... about half of them do not go for walks, but go in special strollers. It looked especially comical when a healthy shepherd was carried in such a stroller. And in Yokohama there is a stunningly beautiful openwork Bay-Bridge. It’s a pity that we didn’t manage to walk along it, but from afar I admired enough. Then we wandered into Chinatown. That's where the complete mixture of everything that is possible - sounds, smells. They sell some incredible food and a crazy amount of teas. And the Chinese temples simply struck my imagination to the core. I still have no idea how this can be done by hand.
Well, it's done! I saw Fuji, I even walked on it. I can't believe it, it doesn't fit in my head at all. But first things first. Before going to Fuji, I was in several places from which this property of Japan should have been visible. But it wasn't. Therefore, when I was offered to go directly to the mountain itself, I happily agreed. On the evening before the trip, I read in the Lonely Planet guidebook that driving up to Fuji itself does not mean seeing it. She, they say, is such a bashful beauty that even for 50 meters she is not always shown. I really don’t really understand how you can’t see such a colossus for 50 meters, but it doesn’t matter anymore, because we were lucky and we were able to enjoy this amazing spectacle to the fullest.
When we first approached Fujisan, it seemed to me low, at least it did not stand out among other mountains. But as you approached, it became clear that 3776 meters was not a joke to you. First we arrived at the shore of the lake, from where the mountain was visible in its entirety in all its splendor. Still, what a perfect form she has... Well, not in vain, perhaps this is a symbol of Japan. Fuji can be climbed, there are hiking trails. True, it is open for climbing only in July and August, because the rest of the time it is covered with a thick layer of snow. The mountain is divided into 10 levels. By car, you can climb up to the 5th to a height of 2305 meters, which we did. It's a funny feeling - it's +25 below, and here it's snowing, well, it's very windy of course. And the clouds below. . .
Day fifteen
The last point of my trip to Japan was Kamakura. This is a very ancient city, which was once even the capital. It is famous for a huge number of temples - today there are 176 of them and an eleven-meter Buddha statue (the second largest in Japan). In fact, to be honest, I was not very interested in temples. They are all very similar to each other - just look at one or two to get a general idea. But the gardens and parks around these temples are just SOMETHING!!!
That's all I wanted to tell about Japan. The country is undoubtedly very interesting, mysterious and magical, but I would hardly be able to live there, we have too much difference in mentality))
