The Politeness of Japanese Folk Despite Us

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Glyn's just asked me if I wore the toilet slippers. We're at a Ryokan (old Japanese style inn) in Yagamouchi / Yudanaka and I can't even get going to the toilet right. I saw two pairs of slipper in the toilet doorway and assumed that some lazy sod had left them lying about. Japan is the only country where I've read about the customs before arriving and when I got there, found it it was all true. Fortunately the Japanese are too polite to be angry, but we have been corrected, more than once. And we've been here about half a day.

We started by flying to from Manchester to Munich to Tokyo. Towards the end of the 11 hour flight from Munich, I finally got to see Japan through the clouds: a view of dark green mountains with slivers of pale yellow/ green agriculture and towns dividing them. As we got closer to Tokyo, the land below increasingly became urban until we flew right over it and I was impressed to see floating runways as we turned 180 degrees to fly over the sea where our runway began practically at the water's edge.

My first impression of Japan was politeness. There was an old guy sweeping the travelator who stepped backed and bowed to us as we stepped on it. Glyn almost knocked a Japanese lady over as she was so small he hadn't seen her, but she seemed OK about it.... Or was too polite to yell at the bloody tourists!

The first thing most people do when landing in a new country is visit the loo and here my adventure began. Passing the signs into the cubicle, which politely asked me not to stand on the loo, I was greeted with more controls than my TV remote at home (OK slight exaggeration). There was a bunch of instructions in Japanese and English explaining the controls but to be honest, the job in hand didn't keep me there long enough to read them all. I was also delighted to hear the sounds of trickling water emanating from a speaker at ear level when sitting, with a button next to displaying the instruction 'STOP'. Stop what exactly? The sound? Or was it something more sinister? I did wonder but did not summon the courage to press the button. I need to settle in before taking such risks. The facilities were super clean but sadly the Dyson Airblade rip off by Mitsubishi was a let down.

After collecting our luggage with made it to the Japanese Rail Pass office. This pass is only available to purchase outside of Japan, but we have to collect it here. It's for tourists and will cover most of our travel for the next two weeks for a lot less than if we'd bought tickets for every journey. The lady in the office made reservations to get us as far as Nagano which is a fair part of our journey.

We stopped at a vending machine that sold Pocari Sweat as a beverage, sorry to be boring, but I chose the water instead. The first train of the day was a monorail taking us to Hamamatsucho station, from there it was a train a bit like the London Overground on the Yamanote Line to Tokyo Station. We navigated our was through the crowds in the sweaty heat and got a bit above ourselves as we managed to find things rather more easily than anticipated (a lot of the signage flips through Japanese and English). At this point we marched off confidently in the wrong direction, then marched back. Eventually we found the right platform and sussed the free wifi long enough to see that there are zillions of pokéstops in Tokyo, but not close enough to use.

I was impressed to see a double decker train, but that wasn't for us - we were taking the bullet train to Nagano at 13.04. It was here I saw my first person wearing a kimono and wooden sandals (with socks) wandering along the platform.

When the train arrived we noticed that there were painted sets of double lines on the ground by each carriage of the train, with the words 'first' and 'second' written on them and people patiently queueing inside them. We were pretty sure there was no class system on the train so what was going on? We guessed where to queue but luckily for us, a Japanese lady who spoke perfect English rescued the confused tourists and explained that 'first' was the first train to arrive and 'second' was the next. So we promptly moved to the back of the correct queue. The lady helped us again on the train, directing us to vacant seats that weren't reserved as due to it being a busy holiday time, our seats are only reserved from when we get to a place called Karuizawa.

By this time, I was extremely tired, having not slept much on the plane but I dared not sleep as this would only cause trouble missing stops and other unforeseen mishaps that usually happen. I was also pretty hungry as the flight was unaware I'm a veggie so I'd just eaten a couple on tiny bread rolls and some salad.

The 1hr 40 min journey to Nagano was smooth and eventually the concrete and high rises gave way to rural areas where the buildings shrank as the mountains grew. By the time we got to Nagano, the mountains were getting rather large and full of themselves - probably because the Winter Olympics have been held there in 1998. Now Nagano is tiny compared to Tokyo, but it is still HUGE with buildings at around 6 storeys high and a large station to get lost in. But to be honest, we didn't do too badly and due to previous planning, we knew the line to look for. Glyn even managed to use the ticket machine successfully (better than Joanna Lumley who epically failed on TV the other week) - although they charged us an extra Y100 each on the platform (it's around Y134 to the UK pound).

The loos were less impressive here but did have a baby seat attached to the cubicle wall to dump your kid in whilst you take a dump. Glyn tells me that in the men's they get an umbrella holder instead.

After using a coffee vending machine plastered in photos of cats, we alighted the 'Snow Monkey Express' - only a 50 minute journey this time! This was the end of the line and we got to see the rail guy rotating all the seats 180 degrees before we could get on. Now it was me that planned this itinerary and in hindsight, this epic journey directly after a long flight was not the best idea (but there was some logic behind it). In my defence, I did make Glyn aware of this before we booked accommodation. In Glyn's defence, he probably wasn't listening.

We'd not gotten far into this last journey when it began to bucket down and I saw my first Japanese lightning! Woo-hoo, my first Japanese storm! Arriving at Nagano, there were people there to greet us and direct us on our way. Glyn and I are always highly suspicious of this kind of thing as it's usually people wanting money, but not here. The lady told us our Ryokan was walking distance, gave us a map and sent us on our way... In the rain.

Yudanaka is a town surrounded by mountains that was shrouded in dark fog and rain. A 10 minute walk took us to our Ryokan where we immediately messed up the shoe custom upon entering. We had taken off our shoes but had wrongly assumed that walking in socks was acceptable but we were quickly directed to an array of slippers, none of which fitted very well. The proprietor showed us our room that had futon beds on tatami mats, we stepped in, then quickly stepped back out as we had made the epic fail of wearing slippers on tatami mats - duh! It's socks it this point!!

The toilets and washing facilities are shared and I desperately needed a wash so headed down to the ladies communal area where the water is naturally hot from the local springs. Fortunately I was alone when I stepped in, not sure of what was going on. I was confronted with a changing area where I stripped down to a towel and stepped into the wooden wash area containing a hot tub at floor level with showers at hip height. I had no idea where to put my towel, so being alone, I dropped it on the floor. Big mistake because when I got into the tub, displaced hot water flooded the entire area and soaked my towel. Bugger. I felt a bit foolish. We've also been supplied with Kimonos but that's another thing to potentially get wrong I guess.

Afterwards Glyn and I went out for sushi at a local place recommended by our guy at the Ryokan. We were the only customers and immediately messed up the shoe wearing (or not) issue. As the owner of the sushi restaurant was wearing shoes, I assumed it was OK to keep mine on. Wrong! I was corrected and put on the given slippers. But then when I went to crawl into the space where we ate, I got corrected again as now I had foolishly kept the slippers on when clearly they should be removed. The owner was understanding that westerners don't get it, but still! The meal was lovely but I was concerned about the 2 metre trip out of the building, I knew I would mess it up again. We were also given extra miso soup but I had to give Glyn mine as it had a prawn's head in it - I didn't want the staff to see me give it away in case it was an insult. Then the heavens really opened but the owner gave us brollies and despite me having my own waterproofs and hat, thought better of declining the free umbrella.

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Photos

Airport loo
With too many controls