Over the holidays, my wife, kids, and I spent two weeks in Japan, seeing places we had not been and visiting family. Japan is my favorite country to visit for many reasons mainly due to always experiencing something new every trip. This trip was no different. Starting in Osaka, we went to Ise to visit the Ise Shrine, one of those Japanese should visit in their lifetime. Took the bullet train down to Hiroshima prefecture to visit family. Then hopped over to Nagoya and on to Tokyo. We saw a few of the castles we had missed and a number of key and smaller interesting shrines and temples.
What stood out?
Japan’s Train Efficiency – Everyone raves about how efficient public transportation is at all levels. I think we rode everything except a ferry this trip to get around. We were worried as our train from Osaka airport forced us to transfer due to a disruption on the track. Other than that disruption and a delay on one of our bullet train rides due to a fire next to the track every train was on time.
Commercialized Christmas – I believe Japan is the epitome of commercialized Christmas. The sales, lights, cakes, and parties are all for the festivities and gift-giving. It is pretty much pre-gaming for Japan’s New Year celebrations. Christmas is a typical workday in Japan, so everything is open, but many friends and co-workers are out enjoying holiday dinners and festivities starting on Christmas Eve. We had to resist doing the KFC Christmas dinner tradition, which is popular among many.
Temples and Shrines Embracing Social Media – Two things stood out in this category. Many temples and shrines we visited leveraged something unique on social media to attract visitors. One example has played off their focus to become the Onigiri Shrine, which my daughter found on social media, representing one of her favorite Japanese foods. Walking to this shrine, we saw a steady stream of foreigners, all carrying bags from convenience stores containing onigiri.
There was another Gotokuji shrine, the Neko (cat) shrine, for all the maneki neko figurines around the grounds. I tried to visit on my last few trips, but I always had to cancel since it took two metros and two trains. Like hundreds of others, we made the trek.
The second surprise was the number of shrines taking multiple forms of currency. When you pray, you must toss coins into the box. Many of them could pay with digital currency. The same is true for stamps and amulets from each temple. It seems this ancient tradition are on the ball with adapting to changing times.
Delivery Services – Anticipating the full bullet train, we opted to ship our luggage from Nagoya to Tokyo. For 5 bags, it was around $60 and was there the next day. Both the airports in Tokyo and Osaka promoted shipping your luggage from the airport to your hotel to minimize the number of bags on the subway and trains. I have always been fascinated by the speed and efficiency of delivery services in Japan. Nearly every store will provide some sort of shipping option, even for heavier supermarket items. Food delivery services, which have always been available in Japan, are in full swing with many Uber Eats scooters zipping around.
Overtourism – Japan experienced an estimated 35 million tourists this year. There were so many tourists in Kyoto during the holiday period that it was nicknamed the 7th Ring of Hell. I had planned to spend a day in my favorite city but chose not to go because of all the tourists. It was even crazier in Tokyo after Christmas when many Japanese went home for New Year’s. The train stations, especially the bullet trains, were jam-packed. While Japan is equipped to deal with large numbers of people with courtesy and traffic flows, this is disrupted by selfish tourists that crowd their way in or, worst of all, stop as they exit an escalator to look around.
Your Toiletries and Accessories Needs – On this trip, we stayed mostly in Japanese brand hotels as they were more convenient to the specific sites we were visiting. All of them had these setups where you could get any of the small toiletries that you may have forgotten.
Beyond just these smaller consumables, most had a pillow and blanket stand where you could select pillows of different firmness. Two of them you could check out curling irons, lamps, and even a wheelchair. There was an honor system for most of these items to be returned.
Foreign Workers – The number of foreign workers in Japan is astounding. Japan has embraced foreign workers due to the declining and aging population. Japan has a shortage of people, especially in hospitality. Many of the front desk staff, servers, and nearly every convenience store worker were foreign. Most spoke decent Japanese, which was great, and offered similar levels of service and courtesy you would expect.
Food Quality – One of the main goals of this trip was to eat, especially lunch specials where many expensive restaurants have discounted meals at lunchtime. You can dine at a Micheline Star restaurant for lunch at a fraction of the dinner price. We have lived in Japan for several years and have returned many times, and I have rarely had a bad meal there. Unfortunately, we had several less than optimal on this trip, mainly when we ate around tourist areas. Outside of major cities and tourist areas, the meals were terrific. I am unsure if the foreign workers do not bring the same passion to preparing or if it is due to the volume of people, but something has changed. We can solve this by avoiding tourist zones, getting a variety of items from supermarkets, and having picnics.
Encouraging Overeating – I was surprised at how many fast food chains (US and Japanese) were promoting mega burgers with 4 to 6 patties and others with the various TikTok hacks of multiple items stacked high.
Meat and Tofu Sticks – We had seen these on a Japanese food review show we watched on the internet but were surprised at how prevalent they were. There were multiple forms of meat, tofu, and seafood “sticks” as a quick protein snack. We did not try any of them due to the high sodium count.
Coffee Pilgrimage – Unfortunately, with the family, I was not able to make my normal coffee pilgrimage to sample various coffee roasts. I did get in a few of them and found a great little shop with a wide assortment of beans, bringing back some hard-to-get ones from Yemen and Mt Kilimanjaro. I again went to Reissue, a “latte art cafe” near Harajuku, with my daughter so she could get her Instagram shot of her favorite Japanese character.
