Japan, deciphered
Plus 42 photos! And why I'm already planning our next trip
The common perception of Japan is that it’s a land of contradictions, thrusting modernity cheek by jowl with Geishas and incredible natural landscapes that pulse beneath their exquisite surface with the power to destroy.
Japan is a place where tickets to the renown Studio Ghilibi Museum, a train and a bus ride outside central Tokyo go on sale on the 10th of each month at 10am for the month that follows. You can’t buy tickets on the door. Despite this being 1am UK time there I am, poised above the Buy button as the clock turns. By the time the page had loaded at 10.01 Japanese time I was already 16,559th in the queue.
I did not get tickets.
This is a land where online sites advise you not to use a debit card as it’s harder for them to refund you. Use a credit card instead. Trains are on average only 18 seconds late. Nonetheless drivers and staff will apologise profusely for such tardiness. And there is a park in Nara, 40 minutes from Kyoto where wild deer roam freely and eat biscuits from your hand.
It is all incredibly intoxicating precisely because these do not feel like contradictions.
After a month-long sojourn in the country with smallish in December/January just gone, and after much musing, I have come to the conclusion that the very inscrutability of Japan is precisely its point.
