Lawrence visited 10 major cities in Japan. (April 2006)

(Enlarge photos)

I recently took a 3 week holiday to Japan『日本」 and with my 8 lessons from Kazuo san together with a basic ability to read Hiragana and Katakana, I felt ready to tackle pretty much anything.
I didn't have a definite itenerary when I left and ended up visiting Tokyo, Fukuoka, Aso, Himeji, Kyoto, Nara, Nagoya, Takayama (for the festival) and then day-trips from Tokyo to Kamakura and Nikko.

As many gaijin have commented, the Japanese are amazingly polite, kind and accomodating. The country is clean, modern, safe and technology is used everywhere. The trains are ridiculously fast, efficient and most importantly, run on time.

One of the highlights of my trip was Aso-san　「阿蘇山」, the volcano in central Kyushu「九州」.
Looking into an active volcano and then hiking round the spectacular scenery around it was truly amazing.
Of course, this being Japan, one could walk about 30 metres from the mouth of the (active!) volcano and buy hot coffee from one of the ubiquitous vending machines which you know will always work, be fully stocked and will give you the correct change.

I loved the food and was prepared to try pretty much anything. I had far too many culinary experiences to list but the Hida beef was incredible; those cow-massagers deserve respect.
The sushi「すし」 was out of this world, especially the meal in the Tsukiji fish「築地」 market. The Fugu「ふぐ」 I had in Tokyo was much more than just the novelty I had been expecting; it was probably the best meal I had on my trip.

The oddest thing I had was suzume「すずめ、雀」 (look it up :-) which was on offer in the Kyoto 「京都」food market and was surprisingly good, if a little crunchy「シャキシャキ」.

A close second for the most unusual food was the piece of horse sushi eaten in Tokyo...
I can't imagine that a country other than Japan could offer such an amazing mix of experiences.

Language-wise, I would have been disappointed had I not got into some embarrasing scrapes by either not understanding or not being understood.

My philosphy was that if this did not happen, I probably wasn't pushing myself hard enough.
Thankfully, I was not disappointed.

On several occasions, conversations simply had to be abandoned due to lack of vocabulary.
Luckily, I had many more positive experiences than negative ones and managed to have several conversations with the Japanese people I met on my travels.

Being able to book stays in youth hostels「ユースホステル」 over the phone purely in Japanese was incredibly rewarding.
Having even my limited knowledge of Japanese made the trip much more rewarding and memorable.

Things I would have done differently: For my next trip, I would like to go in Autumn「秋」, do a home-stay and travel North of Tokyo.