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Unforgettable Japan

Japan seen from afar and Japan experienced in the flesh are poles apart. I grew up in a sleepy English village, and before I first came to Japan more than a decade ago all I knew of the country were images of geisha and sumo, packed commuter trains, cool video arcades and city streets drenched in neon–the things that occupy the narrow gaze of many a travel magazine and documentary.

Japan, of course, does have all the above. Many of them make up my earliest memories of living in Tokyo. The first time I had to take a morning rush-hour train, I remember feeling as if I were binding on for a 300-person scrum, elbows flying and the tops of other commuters’ heads occasionally cracking me under the jaw, a downside to having become relatively tall overnight. A few days later, my first experience of Shinjuku was like being thrown into a Philip K. Dick novel: flashing lights, buildings blocking out the sky, sirens, shoulder bumps from the crowds and blasts of noise and air-conditioning from every shop front I passed. It was fantastic.

But it didn’t take long to discover that the stereotyped guidebook images were anything but typical of Japan. The Japanese don’t spend half their time bowing deeply and munching on sushi. Girls very rarely aspire to be geisha, nor boys sumo wrestlers. Walk into any good izakaya (pub-cum-restaurant) and the staid, reserved image often painted of the Japanese will be shattered forever (try Kamiya Bar in Asakusa and you’ll see what I mean). Head out to the countryside and things become slow, laid back and anything but high-tech. Here, it’s the changing of the seasons that still dictates the flow of life for many.

Over the last decade or so, I’ve been fortunate to have traveled to almost every prefecture of the country, from the wilds of Hokkaido in the far north to the sun-kissed Okinawan islands way down south. I’m also fortunate to be able to earn a living by writing about the many facets of Japan, be that in books related to travel and culture or features on business and sustainability. But even now, Japan regularly finds new ways of surprising and re-energizing me. Sometimes it is something as simple as stumbling upon an old neighborhood for the first time on a walk around Tokyo or finding an exquisite temple garden in Kyoto. Sometimes it is just a fleeting conversation with a stranger. On occasions it’s the familiar things that leave me smiling: nursery school kids getting wheeled around in giant laundry trolleys or the way any conversation with someone aged over 80 seems to begin with them telling me their age and proclaiming how active they still are.

I hope this book will help you find your own unforgettable Japan experiences. Happy travels.

Rob Goss