Two Places at Once
It’s no secret that traveling Japan is not exactly for the faint of heart and thin of pocketbook. Hotels on average cost about one hundred dollars a night, and that’s for a room that would be considered a closet in most developed nations. Train travel, while efficient and comfortable, is usually more expensive than, say, buying a kidney on the black market. Plus, you have to shell out plenty of yen for meals, drinks, museum tickets, drinks, karaoke, drinks, Hello Kitty souvenirs for everyone back home, drinks for everyone in the bar, and more drinks.
While the cost of traveling in Japan is quite high, Japan offers an experience most countries can not: the promise of being in two places at once! That’s because any bustling tourist destination is practically required to claim that it bears a striking resemblance to some other popular tourist destination somewhere else in the world. For example, in the past couple years, I’ve been to “The Greece of Japan” (Okayama) and three different cities all claiming to be “The Venice of Japan” (Osaka, Hiroshima and Otaru… this title is actually shared by seven different cities). Soon, I hope to reach one of the “Naples of Japan” (there are four). And, while I can’t get anyone on the Internet to back me up on this, I’d hazard a guess that Sapporo is “The Germany of Japan,” thanks to the high prevalence of all things beer and sausage in that city. My current hometown of Kobe could be “The Paris of Japan” as it has been dubbed both “The City of Light” and “The City of Fashion” (although this last claim seems doubtful considering some of the outfits I’ve seen on the train).
This system of claiming to be two places at once may not exactly be accurate. After all, I have been to Osaka many, many times and have yet to see a gondola. Which, when you think about it, is surprising as I’ve seen a number of things you’d never expect to see in any city; for example, a man dressed as a coffee cup, a dog with a mohawk and a leather vest, girls dressed up like Little Bo Peep, a ferris wheel coming out of the top of a mall, and more Power Rangers than I could possibly count.
While not accurate, I have to say I like thinking I’ve been in two places at once: it makes me feel efficient and like I’ve visited some exotic, far-off location while hardly even leaving my couch. Plus, as far as world traveling goes, I’m kind of slow. My version of “world traveling” involves packing all my earthly belongings into a collection of cardboard boxes, shipping myself off to some foreign country, and staying there for a good three months to three years. As you can imagine, this takes quite a bit more time than backpacking and Euro-railing. Hence, I’ve never actually managed to hit the real Venice or Paris or Germany or Greece (but I have hopes to in the next twenty to ninety years!). Yet despite my turtle-pace take on world traveling, this past holiday weekend, I managed to hit “The Detroit of Japan,” “The Colonial Williamsburg(s) of Japan” and “Japan’s Riviera.” Well, well, look who’s the world traveler now!
Nagoya: “The Detroit of Japan”
I’ve only been to Detroit once in my life. While I can’t exactly say it was an overly bad trip (after all, I didn’t get shot or die while running a marathon), I also can’t exactly say it was an overly good trip. Hailing from Buffalo, a fellow Rust Belt City, I don’t like to be too harsh or critical about cities that have gotten a blue collar bad rap. In fact, after arriving at the Detroit International Airport last November, I marched through customs directly towards the arrivals lounge with high hopes of discovering the hidden gems of Motown.
This was actually not that easy to do; at least, the marching part, not the high-hoping part. You see, it’s very possible I’m the only person alive who has ever gotten off an international flight in Detroit and actually attempted to stay in Detroit. When I tried to make my way past security to the arrivals lounge, the kind woman with the gun and badge stopped me to say, “Oh, you don’t want to go that way.” “But I’m staying in Detroit,” I informed her. At which point, I thought she might shoot me for being crazy.
During my short stay in Detroit, the only hidden gems I discovered were a bar that served fried pickles and a pair of discounted Nine West boots. All in all, not the worst trip of my life (there were discounted boots involved!), but, again, not exactly the best.
Needless to say, my hopes for Nagoya, the “Detroit of Japan” were not high (and by “not high,” I mean “non-existent”). Nagoya is Japan’s fourth most populated city and home to a number of industries including Toyota (hence the rather misfortunate Michigan-city moniker). Only an hour away from Osaka by bullet train and conveniently located between Kansai and Tokyo, I’ve had the pleasure of passing by Nagoya many a time but I’ve never had much opportunity or reason to stop by. But this past weekend, Nagoya made for a convenient stop-over to our trip Eastward from Osaka. So my friend and I decided to spend the night in Nagoya, soaking up all the sights and sounds (and hopefully not too much smog) of the city. We were only in Nagoya for a grand total of 14 hours (and most of those hours were sleeping hours), but I have to say that Nagoya is no Detroit. And I mean that in a really, really good way.
While decidedly urban and industrial, Nagoya is not without a certain homey charm. I mean, there’s not many places in the world where you can be walking through the bustling downtown center, and happen upon a quaint little restaurant with gigantic octopus tentacles hanging to dry out front. Yes, that’s right, hanging out front on the sidewalk, right there in the open, where some sneaky urban dweller could easily steal them! I bet you, they don’t do that kind of thing in the real Detroit.
In addition to the presence of octopus tentacles dangling willy-nilly throughout the city, I have to say the people of Nagoya couldn’t be nicer. Okay, maybe not all the people, but definitely the fine people at the Peat Irish Tavern.
My friend and I happened upon this establishment after finishing up at a British pub and deciding that we needed to check out some more country-themed bars in the city. After all, who can be content with just visiting “The Detroit of Japan”? Why not also check out “The England of the Detroit of Japan” and “The Ireland of the Detroit of Japan” and “The Spain of the Detroit of Japan” and so on and so on… until you end up in “The Mongolia of the Detroit of Japan” and you can’t remember what your name is and whether you’re in Mongolia or Detroit or Japan or some universe running parallel to all three!
Turns out that the people of “The Ireland of the Detroit of Japan” are about the nicest people anywhere; possibly, it’s because they’re all juiced up on Irish whiskey or loopy from listening to too much fiddle music or, most likely, they were just bored. Besides ourselves, there was only one other customer at Peat’s. The staff, on the other hand, could have easily assembled an army to overtake Ireland itself. We counted three bartenders, four servers and one bar manager; not to mention all the kitchen staff who were probably off somewhere making potato stew with octopus tentacles or something of the sort.
When we rolled into the restaurant, the staff seemed so genuinely overjoyed to have customers they all promptly stopped staring aimlessly at the ceiling and descended upon us with a cheerfulness that, at first, seemed quite alarming. During the course of one drink, we were asked to sign the wall and had our pictures taken with all the waitstaff three times. Seeing as neither my friend nor I object to being treated like minor celebrities, we quite enjoyed ourselves. As we stumbled out of Peat’s, our new friends behind us biding us farewell and telling us to come back again soon, we had to agree, “The Ireland of the Detroit of Japan” was pretty dang nice. And that’s a lot more than I can say for “The Detroit of Detroit.”
Tsumago & Magome: the Colonial Williamsburg(s) of Japan
After our whirlwind world-bar tour of Nagoya, it was time to hike off the the fish and chips and sangria, so the next day we headed north for Nagano-ken, where we were planning to hike a portion of the Nakasendo highway. The Nakasendo highway is the 310-mile Edo period post road that connected Kyoto, the capitol at the time, with Tokyo, an up-and-coming economic center. Back in the good old 1600‘s, the road was used by feudal lords for shogun-mandated journeys, along with messengers, pilgrims, porters, merchants and, even, a princess or two (word on the street… err, highway, has it that Princess Kazunomiya traveled the road with a entourage of 10,000!).
Obviously, these days, there are quicker ways to get between Kyoto and Tokyo, but portions of the road are still preserved and serve as popular hiking trails. In fact, the trail is featured in the book 1,000 Places to See Before You Die, which is how I first heard about it. Not that I actually own a copy of the book or have even read the book. (l already have a list of about 20 places I want to see before I die and considering my world traveling pace, I better not die until I’m about 420 years old). Some friends who were visiting me in Japan had told me about it, and ever since then I’ve wanted to do it. That was two years ago. The trail is only about 5 hours more or less from my doorstep via various modes of transportation, but yet it’s taken me two years to get around to doing it. Do you understand why it’s best I don’t get it in my head to visit 999 more places?!
The five-mile portion of the trail that we were planning to hike connects two restored villages,Tsumago and Magome. These towns, Japan’s version of Colonial Williamsburg, are chock-full of old-fashioned houses, shops and inns. TV antennas and electric wires have been tucked out of sight, and city ordinances have been passed to prevent the selling or destroying of any of the original buildings in the towns.
Despite leaving Nagoya quite early on Thursday morning in an attempt to hit the hiking trail by the early afternoon, we didn’t manage to get to Tsumago until the early evening. There are not many trains connecting the Japanese backwoods to the bustling Nagoya. We found ourselves waiting in one train station for an hour and a half to catch a train that would take us only four stops. We could have probably easily hiked the distance in less the time it took us to wait for the train, but, alas, we were not exactly traveling light (while we were not rolling with an entourage of 10,000, we were rolling with suitcases… after all, we didn’t want to look un-pretty while hiking so there were cosmetics to consider… along with a number of outdoorsy fashion options… oh, and I had my computer… you know in case I needed to visit the information superhighway while on the Nakasendo highway).
When we finally arrived in Tsumago, it was too late to start the hike but we had plenty of time to explore the town, which was, as promised, chock-full of all quaint, old-fashioned buildings and quaint old-fashioned cobble-stoned streets filled with quaint, old-fashioned (or, umm, just old) people. After a pleasant stroll through town and a relaxing night at our inn in Tsumago, we woke up bright and early to begin our hiking expedition. After the five-mile hike through beautiful fall leaves, past a few waterfalls and through a couple cute little villages, we hit Magome, which was also chock-full of quaint, old-fashioned buildings and quaint, old-fashioned cobble-stone streets and quaint, old-fashioned (err, old) people… and a quaint, old-fashioned vending machine or two.
Tsumago and Magome may not exactly be “The Colonial Williamsburgs of Japan,” (you just try to get yourself a Coke Zero in Williamsburg!). They are more like “The Japan of Japan”: beautiful old buildings and pleasant surprises tucked in between some vending machines and parking lots and a few Ye Olde Tour Buses. All in all, a very pleasant two days (made all the more pleasant by the fact that I didn’t have to deprive myself of my daily Coke Zero fix!).
Shizuoka: Japan’s Riviera
The Riviera, much like Venice or Paris or Germany or Greece, is yet another travel destination I have yet to get to. So I was quite excited when I found out that this year’s national English teaching conference was located in Shizuoka, Japan’s riviera. In fact, I wasn’t even sure exactly where the Riviera is or what one does in the Riviera. (Although, I had a vague idea that this included partial nudity of some sort… which, when you consider the usual population of your average English teaching conference, this is probably not the best of ideas). It turns out there are twenty-three different possible Rivieras (including something called the “Redneck Riviera”). The website that I read that called Shizuoka “Japan’s Riviera” gave no explanation as to why Shizuoka would be considered the Riviera and exactly which Riviera they were referring to.
After our two days in Nagano-ken, I spent three nights in Shizuoka, where I was attending the teaching conference (which, in all honesty, doesn’t sound like something one should do while in the Riviera). During my short time there, I was able to glean that the Riviera must have a lot of 24-hour karaoke places, hostess clubs and Christmas decorations…. lots and lots and lots of Christmas decorations. In fact, Shizuoka has decked the halls and streets with, not only holly, but also dancing Santa Clauses! That’s right, the streets of Shizuoka were aglow with the vision of mechanical Santa Clauses shaking their mechanical booties in time to the mechanical Christmas music.
Luckily, Shizuoka did not include partial nudity of any sort (nobody needs to see a partially nude mechanical Santa!), and it proved to be yet another pleasant stop on my trip (despite the 24-hour karaoke place which was doing a teeming business underneath my hotel room window). In fact, it was so pleasant, I may even consider visiting the real Riviera some day… Well, at least one of them.
