Hear about my trip to Japan

I ought to state from the start that going to Japan was quite an ordeal. There's an eight hour time difference between the UK and Japan, so we lost eight hours from the day, on top of a hours spent in airports and a 12 hour plain flight.

I got up 4am the day we left, in an attempt to adjust to the time difference. It didn't work, but I did get about 20 hours without sleep for my trouble. Going to Japan takes a long time.

First stop was Kyoto. Our timing was pretty good. For the most part, the weather stayed nice and warm, and (thanks to a warm winter) the cherry blossoms were out.

We went to a very interesting stir-fry restaurant the first day.

The whole table was the frying pan; they just toss food on there. You then take the food off and put it on your plate. Great fun; you just have to be careful not to idly put your elbow down on the table...

Japan wouldn't be Japan without a lot of Buddhist and Shinto temples. And these were especially common in Kyoto.

Although for the most point that was a low point of the holiday in my opinion. The temples are pretty much how you'd expect them to be if you've ever played a videogame or watched a movie

Only difference is they've been turned into tacky tourist traps. You know the drill; there's a cordoned off pathway around the building/grounds, which you walk through, and are expected to take the occasional picture

They often don't bother with any signs explaining the significance of what you're seeing; the only signs there say things like "keep off the grass", "don't go this way" or "no photography inside this building please".

But it was a holiday with my family, so we had to take turns with what we did. And they did enjoy the templates.

To be fair, the builds and the architecture were really nice, but I didn't really enjoy them. It's hard to when temples are surrounded by tons of shops selling tacky tourist souvenirs. And isn't that a bit wrong anyway for Buddhist templates? It's like those souvenir shops you see in the middle of churches!

Kyoto, Tokyo, and most major Japanese cities are linked by the bullet train. The distances are quite long for a train; the Kyoto to Tokyo trip we did is probably comparable to from London all the way to Cornwall. But it only takes a couple of hours, thanks to the bullet train being the second fastest in the world. (Just in case you were curious, the French occupy the top spot.)



Tokyo was our next stop. Tokyo was very interesting, and the highlight of the holiday. Mostly due to all of the shops. I mean, who wants to do sightseeing when you could be shopping?!?

Research (done the night before in an internet cafe) pointed towards Yoyogi park (presumably no relation to the bear) as the location where cosplayers gather in Tokyo.

Expecting to see Clouds, Sephiroths and Yunas in their finest, we came along on Sunday afternoon and had a look around.

Alas, it seems Video Game cosplay is out of fashion; all we got were Jpop cosplayers. One of my precious illusions about Japan has been shattered!

Not that I'm saying that there's anything wrong with Jpop! I just didn't know who anyone was ^_^;;

People dressed up as maids also seems to be a popular thing in Japan. Some companies pay women to dress up as maids and hand out advertisements. (The advert in my hands is for a snack bar, which I was then pretty disappointed that we couldn't go to.)

Of course, it's a free world, and you don't have to be paid (or a women) to be a maid!

If you ever wanted proof that walking around at random beats research, we found a Square Enix store by just this method!

Ever seen a Disney store? Don't shudder just yet; stay with me a second. Now replace all of the Mickey Mouses with Square Enix characters. Now that pretty cool ^_^

Upon entering, you are greeted by an army of cute blue slimes and chocobos.

Should anyone get through that cuteness-overload, waiting at the back is a darked room where all of those final fantasy figures you see on the internet are actually brought from. Oh, and a few Kingdom Hearts figures. Guess we didn't get rid of all those Mickey Mouses.

Probably the best thing there was the life-sized statue of Sephiroth in the ground under your feet. Short of ripping up the floor, I don't think he was for sale.

Sephiroth may be planning to destroy the world, but he wasn't so busy that he didn't have time to pose for a couple of photos for us.





More internet cafe research (kids, always research your holidays before you go; internet cafes are expensive in Japan!) threw up Akihabara as somewhere that would be neat to go.



Once upon a time Akihabara was an electronics section of town. However most of these electronics shops have long since closed, and moved into huge department stores. Now Akihabara is the hub of the anime and gaming world in Japan.

You can't move for shops selling both anime and video games, and I'm not sure that the Japanese even know that there's a difference between the two now. Any video game needs lots of anime artwork in order to sell it, and any video game that sells well will promptly get associated magna books, artwork books, TV series, and soundtracks released within about 6 months.





One thing that quickly became apparent from all of this is that the Okatu culture is a lot different than gamers in the US or UK. It looks like it's more of a niche thing, rather than a full-scale national obsession.

Most of the games there are unknown in the west, mostly due to the fact that the only selling point for them seemed to be cute and/or pervy anime women on their covers. (I might be wrong on that point, but for the most part they didn't seem to bother advertising any other selling points; such as what genre of game it actually was.)





New releases there don't just get a stand in the front of the shop. They get billboards everywhere; when they try and push a game, they really try to push it.

They'd set up a stand in the middle of the street for Phoenix Wright 4, complete with TV screens, speakers, and a guy on a loudspeaker and people setting up little stalls in the street (complete with large TVs and a loudspeaker).

I really, really wanted to buy some games. Japan has all the RPGs about 6 months before we do. I could be innocently walking around, and I see things like Trusty Bell/Eternal Sonata and Phoenix Wright 4 up for sale. Oh, and their Xboxes and PS3s are a fraction of the price that they are over here!

Would have loved to have got all of that, but of course everything is in Japanese and I can't speak the language.





Most of the big shops are a little weird in Japan. They *can't* be big because land is so expensive. So they go up instead. Most of the gaming shops we went in are actually quite small, but they build upwards for 5-8 floors.

But the size restrictions mean the Japanese shops don't do stock rooms. There's not enough space. They just pile stuff onto the shelves and leave it until it sells. Unless something has been released in the last few months, it's pretty much gone. This made getting merchandise for things as "old" and "obscure" as the things I was actually interested in rather tough. What you see in the shop is what they have. That goes for models, artbooks, you name it.







So, how about a conclusion?

Jetlag will stay with you for a few days after the holiday starts. Unlike us, I would recommend being sensible and not piling on too much to do for the first couple of days.

While both cities do have both, I'd recommend Tokyo if you want to go for the shopping, and Kyoto if you want to go for all the temples. But getting between the two on the train is quite easy, so most people visit both.

Contrary to the Japanese tourist board, unless they work in a hotel (and sometimes restaurants) most Japanese people cannot speak any English. Either take someone with you who can speak Japanese, or be prepared to mime a lot.



Oh, and I did manage to get a little bit of swag from the place...