It seems like I’ve been going to Japan every year for the past few years due to various reasons, so I guess this should not come as a huge surprise. Yes, I am flying to Japan again. Yes, I will be there for Maaya’s “You can’t catch me” 2011 tour, specifically the one in Osaka.

Come to think of it, this trip makes my waxing lyrical last year seem a lot less meaningful. Heh.

I will be in Japan from 26 March to 16 April. As this will be my final romp in Japan for the foreseeable future, I have gone all out in an insane attempt to cover as many locations as possible in one trip.

My confirmed itinerary so far:

• Osaka
• Kyoto
• Nara
• Hiroshima
• Miyajima
• Fukuoka
• Nagasaki
• Kagoshima
• Ibusuki
• Nagoya
• Ise Shima
• Tokyo
• Kamakura
• Nikko

Still trying to squeeze a few more places in, but this more or less covers every place I want to go to in Kyushu and Kansai.

The sheer logistics of this epic journey is mind boggling. I have been spending a good portion of the past week tabbing between Hyperdia, Google Maps, Japan Guide and Hostel World in order to craft the most complicated tour itinerary the world has ever seen. And they said I was mad.

The awesome thing is that most of the transport costs are covered in a lump-sum I paid for a 14-day Japan Rail Pass. This pass allows you to take unlimited rides on any JR railways, including the Shinkansen bullet trains (but excluding Nozomi trains), for a flat 45,100 yen. This is quite cool because I will need to take the Shinkansen at least ten times to cover that many places in just two weeks and each ride can cost more than 100 USD by itself.

The Japan Rail Pass is so awesome that permanent residents and Japanese citizens are actually banned from purchasing and using it because JR would go bankrupt in a matter of days otherwise. You have to purchase it from JTB or a tour agency in your home country.

Japan Rail Pass purchased from JTB

A tip I picked up from booking my accommodations is that in many parts of Japan it is actually possible to find private single-room business hotels that are similar in price or even cheaper than backpacker hostels in the same area. The catch is that these business hotels are mostly used by locals and bookings are done online in Japanese.

But 2,900 yen a night for a private room with proper facilities does make spending 2,500 yen to squeeze with 5-9 other people in the same dorm room seem like a scam.

Of course, the trade off is that you don’t get the interesting mix of characters one finds in a backpacker hostel nor the tourist-friendly English-speaking counter staff. My own itinerary includes both foreigner-centric hostels and Japanese-centric business hotels. It’s nice to mix things up a bit.

Really looking forward to setting foot on Gunkanjima. It’s like the Disneyland of urban exploration. Already booked my 4000-yen guided ferry tour.

Also hoping to crash a lecture or two at Toudai before I leave. Preferably political science or sociology. I blame too much Tokyo Daigaku Monogatari.

Do drop me a PM on Twitter or an email if you happen to be in Japan around that time and want to meet up for tea. I will be in Tokyo from 9 April to 16 April and Kyushu/Kansai before that. I can show you around Akihabara/Asakusa, which, sad/happy to say, I know like the back of my hand.

Kyoto is just about what I imagined it to be. The scenery is beautiful, the air is clear and the places of worship are numerous. The shop houses that line the streets around Kiyomizu Temple hint at a simpler past of mysticism and rituals, but find the time to slip in a tourist trap or two.

Kiyomizu Temple is one of the more well-known temples in Japan. The temple is situated off the side of a mountain and is partially located on an elevated wooden platform. It used to be a very popular practice to jump off the side of the stage because it was believed that people who survive the fall can have their wish granted. I would imagine that this was probably a self-fulfilling prophecy as a jumper’s greatest wish would probably be to survive the trip down.

Don’t be a pussy

Besides the death wish attraction, the shrine complex also includes a matchmaking shrine, which features a famous pair of “love stones”. It is believed that if one manages to walk from one stone to the other with eyes closed, he/she will successfully find love. My personal take on this particular legend is that people who attempt to do this will probably collide into strangers in the crowded area, and there is a high probability that at least one of them is of the opposite gender and looking for a relationship.

By the way, according to this highly scientific chart, if your age (by the end of this year) is found amongst the ones listed below (particularly the ones in red), then your love life is in trouble! (Top half of the chart is for ladies, bottom half is for guys.) The only way you can hot fix your misfortune is by going to the temple and pick up an anti-misfortune kit for 500 yen. A more powerful upgrade is available for 5,000 yen for those trapped in the infinite abyss of despair.

Kiyomizu also has all the normal stuff that other shrines and temples have, such as omikuji and ema. I got a shoukichi (small fortune) for my draw, which is a very emotionally confusing fortune. It’s sort of like saying, “Your life is probably going to be boring…in a good way.” My friend drew kyou (misfortune), which I had never seen before. I was convinced that they put good fortunes in all the slots as a good business practice. He attempted to tie his paper onto a provided stand, which supposedly negates the misfortune but totally defeats the point of omikuji, but he failed and tore it into two. The curse was too strong.

Once in a while, the temple worker comes to clear the gathering misfortunes

Ema (絵馬) is basically a piece of wooden board on which you can write your deepest darkest wishes and hang them up for strangers to see. There are very interesting to read. At a tourist-filled location such as Kiyomizu, a lot of the ema are written in English and Chinese.

Most of the ema were normal wishes about love, health and career. I picked the more interesting ones.

Random Photos

Kyoto JR Station

People who got hooked up successfully thanks to the shrine

Gramany

Somewhere in Gion

Minamiza

Some guy fishing in some river in Gion

My sleeping spot under the bridge

I am so cold… For those of you wondering, there are fibre optics connection everywhere in Japan. Even under bridges.

I’m typing this in J-Hoppers Osaka. This is my second day in Japan, but most of yesterday was spent travelling. I arrived at Narita International Airport yesterday afternoon with a group of friends, wasted the evening away wandering around Tokyo JR Station and took an overnight bus to Kansai.

This is actually my fifth time in Japan, so the weather, the environment and the general atmosphere no longer present the same difficulties as before. That said, this is actually my first time in Kansai, so the feeling of exhilaration that comes from the exploration of the great unknowns is not totally lost in the comfortable familiar. For one thing, people in Osaka stand on the right side of the escalators.

The end research product of scientific whaling

I will be spending four nights at J-Hoppers Osaka, just a station’s distance away from Osaka JR Station. I spent today familiarizing myself with the neighbourhood, Umeda (梅田), the traffic and commercial hub of the region and took a short tour on top of Umeda Sky Building. It is a very tall tourist trap with a great view of the entire Umeda district. I will be posting my photos onto my gallery at a later date when I have the time to process them.

Umeda Sky Building

I had always thought of Osaka as an exotic wonderland where everyone speaks in Kansai-ben while swinging paper fans around with highly exaggerated gesturing, but the real Osaka turned out to be a rather down-to-earth mix of Louis Vuitton and roadside okonomiyaki (お好み焼き) stalls, and I have yet to meet a Kansai-ben speaker. Perhaps Kyoto will be a more stimulating experience for my otherworldly thirst.

This is where I sleep

Speaking of okonomiyaki, it’s good stuff when consumed in an authentic setting. Eating Japanese cuisine in Singapore is often a rather sterilized affair no different from consuming fast food (i.e. Pepper Lunch), whereas dining in a small okonomiyaki-ya that fits no more than 16 people in a warm and cosy setting with a group of friends makes for a distinctively Japanese experience. That experience, more than the actual taste of okonomiyaki (which can more or less be summed up by the word ‘salty’), comes highly recommended. The best thing you can do as a tourist in Japan is to get out of the giant departmental stores and find a small eatery in a nearby residential area.

Breakfast

I shall keep this post short because I am tired from two days of travelling. The overnight bus ride was a rather unpleasant ride due to the large number of nuclear-powered highway street lights designed to keep the midnight truckers awake or burn their retinas out trying. Also, I shall never fly Northwest Airline again, for it gives new meaning to the concept of terrible in-flight meals, and American security theatre is a rather unfruitful and dehumanizing experience.

I will be dropping by Kyoto and Nipponbashi (the Akihabara of Kansai) over my next few days in the area before returning to Kantou via Shinkansen.