Please note that as I have been meaning to publish this post for so long, we have now actually done, and seen, much more than is written here. Unfortunately I can`t be bothered writing that bit up yet, so this will have to do.
First up was Osaka - Japan whitey rating of 5
(this is a rating of the number of non Japanese tourists spotted, which is a direct relation to just how much of a tourist destination it is. It`s called the Japan whitey rating because Japan has much less whiteys than other places, Thailand for instance has loads... you can even buy pretentious whitey bashing sticks which are used for smack pretentious white vest and fisherman trouser wearing white youths with.... can`t really, but it would be good. On the other hand Bolivia is like the whitey Sahara... everywhere you look there are Aymara faces and bowler hats. So the Japan Whitey rating is a comparison of whitey concentrations in Japan only. Please note that it`s not just white tourists that are counted, but any non Japanese tourists... the term being developed by a term used for the new arrivals that appear half way through a 2 week holiday abroad. It was the time in the holiday that my mum used to relish because she ceased to be in the "whitest people there" group, after a week of tanning).
With the amount of time we spent there (a total of 10 nights I think- though we did use it as a base for going to other places on day trips) it began to feel very comfortable. It`s pretty much a city for Japanese people. There`s not very many actually touristy sights, but I still liked it. As a first step into Japan it did bring up some surprises and it was dirtier than expected (but a bit of grime never hurt) but that`s what you get in a big city I suppose.
Nara - Japan Whitey rating 8.
We didn`t actually stay in Nara, but as it looks like the kind of place where everything closes at about 9pm (and that seems to be a common thing over here), but did go there as day trips from Osaka for a couple of days. It`s a nice place with parkland and old temples and deer wandering around everywhere. It does seem to be a tourist town though which seems to rule it out as a base for any other kinds of business (though that said, there does seem to be quite a few universities).
Kyoto - Japan Whitey rating 9.5.
As one of the big place you are told to see while you`re in Japan I was expecting it to be a big tourist city, and it does have loads of tourists (both foreign and domestic.... that`s something else that was unexpected... if you thought that you`d seen a lot of Japanese tourists somewhere in the world being lead around by a guide, forget it. If you really want to see a lot of Japanese tourists, come to Japan. They may like to travel the world and see foreign wonders, but it seems that first they want to see everything that there own country has to offer), however even though there are plenty of tourists buzzing around Gion ( the old geisha area) and the many temples, it is still a working city with regular Japanese people going around their business. Compared to Osaka it seemed a lot more snobby and upper class. It may have just been that we were hanging around the richer areas (shopping districts, Gion etc.) but the people in Osaka just seemed less full of themselves ( a bit like walking around Meadowhall and then round the Trafford centre.... although Osaka wasn`t full of Dobbers like meadowhall, when we got to Kyoto it felt like people were more into showing off how much money they had - just like the g-star jeans wearing muppets that wander round the Trafford Centre with their big "diamond" ear studs in). Apart from that, the temples were impressive and Gion is cool even if it does feel like it has been rebuilt as a bit of a "Old Japan" theme park.
Himeji - Japan whitey rating 5 (we didn`t see that many whiteys, but as it was raining we didn`t see that many Japanese people either so the whitey concentration was increased.... and it gets some extra points for the random goth geordies that were spotted (and heard by Anna to come out with the classic line, cue geordie accent "the problem with the Chili peppers is all the songs sound the same!"...spot on).
We only went to Himeji to see the castle, and we did. It was very impressive, but was let down a bit by the weather. The random old women that served us at the foodcourt in the train station were excellent too.
Nagasaki - Japan whitey rating 4.
As you`d expect, Nagasaki isn`t the most upbeat place to visit. Don`t get me wrong, the city is alright and has all the things all the other cities have (pedestrian shopping streets, slightly sleazy entertainment district, business area, Mr Donut), but let`s face it, when you are going to a city primarily to visit things to do with the dropping of the largest atomic bomb ever to be used against humanity... it isn`t going to be a barrel of laughs. However, the sun was sunshining and if you ignore the plaques scattered around the hypocentre area that tell you about the destruction caused, it`s actually quite an upbeat place. there are loads of memorials and statues donated by other countries in remembrance, and a lot of the areas immediately around the hypocentre have been made into parkland where the memorials are held. The museum was fairly grim, with details of the bomb and items found in the wreckage etc. but as has happened when I`ve visited Auchwitz and the Killing Fields (and I don`t want to sound heartless with this comment, but it`s the truth), it`s hard to find them truly depressing when the sun is shining and tour groups are circulating around the place. It is just unimaginable what happened in these places.
This is the point in the blog when Jack Bauer would pull around the corner in his SUV, open the door and start shooting, the clock would appear and the the beeps would sound leaving another week to find out what happened next. Well this isn`t 24 and it will probably take longer than a week for me to write up more... but then there is always Anna`s blog, which is proabably much more up to date than mine.
Inabit
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