Japan Trip 2011
This is one my fashionably late blog posts, as usual.
I went to to Japan in March last year, and it turned out to be the most unforgettable trip so far in my life. Why? As a start, I arrived in Narita less than 24 hours after the earthquake and tsunami hit Japan. I then had to take the train to Kyoto via Tokyo only hours after they restored public transport at reduced capacity, and experienced a lower magnitude earthquake while in Kyoto.
The greatest concern of them all was the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. I was in constant contact with family and friends via email and Twitter, trying my best to convince them that the situation wasn’t as apocalyptic as how the media portrayed it. The incidents at Sendai and Fukushima were beyond devastating by any scale, but at the same time, other parts of Japan lived on with their daily life and did their best to help via donations and lots of other means. To witness the great Japanese spirit and sense of community in person was a humbling experience.
I ended up visiting Kyoto, Osaka, Nara, Kanazawa, Miyajima, Hiroshima, Okayama, Himeji, Tokyo, and Ise. My favourites were Okayama for its chillaxing vibe, and Kanazawa for its snow-covered town. Here are some pictures from the last three days of the trip, I lost the rest of them because my laptop was stolen during transit in Kuala Lumpur (here’s the person who now has my stolen MacBook).
Best food? Ramen at Kyoto Station, extra eggs, a must.
I also loved this Yamazaki Pan chocolate bread I bought every day at Lawson.
Definitely going back there!
Etc: cafe japan okayama shiroshita kokaido travel
by Cliffano Subagio
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Okayama Shiroshita Kokaido
One of my most favourite places in the world to chill and relax is Shiroshita Kokaido, a little cafe in Okayama, Japan.
jazz, art, design: +1
Ghibli Museum Mitaka
As a huge fan of Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli (think of an older distant Japanese cousin of Pixar), I had always wanted to visit _the_ Ghibli Museum in Mitaka, Japan, and I finally made it there nearing the end of my Japan trip this year.
We took JR Chuo Rapid line from Tokyo station to Mitaka station, then followed by a ride on the museum’s bus which took us directly to the entrance of the museum. Ghibli Museum was not your typical museum with exhibits that you could only look from a distance. There, the visitors were encouraged to explore everything throughout the museum.
The view right after getting off the bus. You can see the giant soldier robot from Castle in the Sky on the rooftop.
These animation cels were used as tickets to watch Studio Ghibli’s short films, exclusively screened at the museum’s Saturn Theater. They were showing Pan Dane to Tamago Hime at that time.
The best part of the museum for me was the Preproduction Room display, specially the imageboard sketch drawing desk. I also enjoyed spotting references to Porco Rosso, my most favourite Studio Ghibli film of them all. The food at Straw Hat Cafe was surprisingly delicious and quite filling.
Actually, we almost didn’t make it to the museum. Following the earthquakes and the nuclear power plant incident, we cancelled our plan to stay in Tokyo for the second half of the trip, i.e. no Ghibli Museum visit.
Four days before the end of the trip, we were supposed to return to Kyoto from Hiroshima. But then we thought, what the heck, let’s go to Tokyo for a day just to visit the Ghibli Museum. So we did, we took the shinkansen all the way from Hiroshima to Tokyo early in the morning, visited the museum in Mitaka, then caught the last shinkansen from Tokyo to Kyoto. It was worth it.
9h Nine Hours Kyoto Teramachi
Right after the tiring 30 hours extended journey from Melbourne to Kyoto, I spent the first night in Japan at an awesome capsule inn called 9h nine hours Kyoto Teramachi. I found out about nine hours from Trip Advisor, and was soon sold on the idea of staying there after checking out nine hours website and saw the photo gallery – seriously, you have to check out those pictures.
What I liked the most about nine hours was its simplistic and really well done interior design in such a limited space, the fact that I had one of the best sleeps of my life ever, right there inside one of those capsules, was secondary.
I’m one of those people who have a thing about proper spacing in a simplistic design, so being there at nine hours was like being in a mini sanctuary for me. Everything was properly designed, the signs, the lockers, the mini lounge, the colours, the elevators, the doors, the capsules, the water bottles, the sleeping jumpsuits, the showers, the tiles, and even the toilets. I took dozens of pictures of the little details of this place, but as luck played out, I lost pretty much all of them when my laptop was stolen :(.
And here are a few that survived. Let’s start with the inside of the capsule.
My favourite feature of the capsule was the ambient light that could be configured on the black panel. The light gradually turned dark when I was ready to go to sleep, and gradually turned bright moments before my wake up time.
The corridor with the capsules on the left. The cyan lighting did give the impression that a drone from the Borg collective was going to show up from the other end.
The reception area in the morning, notice the graphic signs on the floor. Various graphical signs were scattered on the floor and on the wall of nine hours. Those signs were cleverly designed that they were descriptive enough without any textual explanation.
Minimalism and simplicity at work!
Narita To Kyoto Via Tokyo
My 3-hour transit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, turned into an 8-hour one after the tsunami hit Sendai right before I arrived in KL. Thanks to Starbucks and KLIA for the free wi-fi, thanks to Twitter for real time news (RIP Google News), thanks to family and friends who messaged me and Latte Girl via SMS, Facebook, and Twitter (RIP email).
It took a total of 8 hours from Melbourne to KL + 8 hours transit in KL + 7 hours from KL to Narita + 3 hours from Narita to Tokyo + 4 hours from Tokyo to Kyoto = 30 hours all the way through, but we eventually made it to Japan!
At Starbucks, nervously reading the news about the tsunami and the earthquakes before deciding to continue the flight to Japan at the very last minute.
Arrived at Narita airport at 12 noon local time. There were piles of sleeping bags (with Japan Airlines logo) and mineral water bottles at several spots in the terminal.
After immigration, I took the elevator down to the baggage claim area. There were several cordoned off areas with wet newspapers on the floor and water leaking from the ceiling. Damages from the earthquakes?
At the arrival hall, I saw more people stranded due to flight delays and cancellations. The situation was quite calm, the airport staffs were awesomely helpful.
Queuing for the JR train to Tokyo. I was glad to find out that they let people enter the train station in batches to avoid overcrowding the platforms.
Ken Watanabe look-alike was very helpful, translating the the announcements over the PA system into English, apparently the train was delayed by an hour and would run slower than its normal speed.
The crowded train. I was lucky to get on a direct train to Tokyo as several people got stuck at Chiba station trying to get on the Tokyo-bound train to no avail.
The queue at JR ticket office at Tokyo station was rather long, but the shinkansen service between Tokyo and Kyoto was operating as normal. Took a couple of hours of power nap on the bullet train.
Finally arrived at Kyoto station and had a bowl of ramen for dinner. It was weird how it felt like returning home instead of starting my holiday, the most mentally tiring 30 hours ever.
It’s now been a week since I arrived in Japan. We’re fine in Kyoto, it’s about 500km+ to the west of Tokyo. We’re getting used to the earthquake news on TV at night and even experienced a 2 magnitude scale tremor from the Shizuoka earthquake (no injury, no damage) 3 days ago.
The Sendai tsunami was a tragedy, my heart is with those who are affected. The Fukushima nuclear power plant incident was disastrous, but if you’re outside of Japan, please don’t buy everything you read in the media. The last 7 days proved how much The Age over-sensationalize the news about Japan, so, wanted: a decent Australian news website to replace The Age on my daily readings list.