Bathrooms in Japan

Bathrooms are great fun here - even public toilets. They are super clean and most of them have a control panel that rivals that of an airplane. But what is the bathroom etiquette here?

First of all, if you are in a private house you have to change from your house slippers into the toilet slippers that are provided inside the toilet. No joke!

If you are lucky, you will then find a Western-style toilet. Sit down on it and here comes the next surprise - the toilet seat will be heated. Even in public toilets!

When you are done with your business comes the tricky part. Where is the flush button? There are so many buttons on the control panel... Usually it is on the water tank behind the toilet. You push it - and then next surprise. Water will be running into a sort of wash basin above the flush tank. Wonderful example for saving water: You are washing your hands in the water that will be filling the flush tank!

You then hopefully do not forget to change back into your house slippers and start dreaming of your next wonderful bathroom experience in Japan.

There is only one problem: How will I ever be able to live again without heated toilet seats?

Eating in Japan

Cooking in Japan is a real adventure and going to the supermarket is usually the highlight of the day for me although it takes me about 1 hour to buy stuff for dinner. When we visited our first supermarket we did not have a clue what to do with about 80% of the stuff there. Now we are down to 30%, but it is still very exotic. And on top of all that we try to buy cheaply. We had some very big surprises about what is cheap and what is expensive. Let’s start with the cheap stuff:

Tofu is ridiculously cheap - a 300 gr slab comes for 25 to 50 cents, about 10% of what it would cost me in Germany. The same goes for bean sprouts, Pak Choy, spring onions, most fish and strangely enough for chicken. My favourite so far is squid. Squid for 2 people sells for about 1 to 2 EUR and is absolutely delicious. Instead of gooey rubber band you get squid that melts in your mouth. But there is also a lot of expensive stuff: Rice is double the price it is in Europe! And it is the most common food here, but due to import restrictions and/or customer preference they only sell expensive Japanese rice that always seems to end up as a soggy, slimy mess when we cook it. Potatoes and apples are so expensive that they are sold per piece (1 potatoe = 30 cents) and we have seen watermelons for 15 EUR per piece!

Picking Biwa

But there is also free food: To my big surprise and despite the fact that it is still only spring the fruit trees have been quite rewarding so far. We found a lot of orange and grapefruit trees plus a fruit called Biwa. I have never ever seen it before. It looks like an apricot but has a smooth skin that you have to peel before eating plus 4 bean like stones in eat. A lot of effort to eat them, but they are delicious.

Cooking is quite a challenge here especially because we want to keep expenses down. Dinner is experiment time and we are back to 3 course dinners. Lunch is usually some tempura fish or vegetable from a supermarket and when we are lucky we get discounted sushi (a huge sushi platter for the price of 1 piece of sushi in Germany).

But breakfast and snacks are still a problem. We tried Japanese breakfast, e.g. miso soup with tofu plus cold rice with seaweed, but we were both hungry again 1 hour after finishing breakfast. We changed to eating bread (which unfortunately comes presliced: 1 loaf of bread comes in 4 slices only, which means that you have to have a very wide mouth if you want to eat a sandwich) and jam, but this is bulky and not very healthy on the long run. And snacks pose an unsolvable problem. Chocolate comes in 50 gr bars and is outrageously expensive - the same goes for biscuits and chips or crackers. Tiny packages with half of the weight consisting of more packaging material at an outrageous price. Not good for cyclists, but good to help John loose some of the weight he has gained while cycling with me and 3 course dinners every night.

Cycling in Japan

Cycling in Japan is a horrible and wonderful experience at the same time. It can be horrible on major roads where the traffic is just overwhelming. There are tunnels everywhere. And navigation can be a problem in cities where everything is in Japanese and you have no clue where you are. But even in these bad circumstances things are made tolerable by the following factors:
 
- Japanese drivers are the most considerate and courteous I have ever seen. In almost 2 weeks we have never been honked at even once. They usually give you a very wide berth and are very patient in waiting to overtake you. And on top of that the speed limit even on major highways is 100 km/h. I have never felt so safe on roads as here in Japan.

- Most roads, especially in cities have a sidewalk cum bike path, so you can usually get away from traffic if you want to - in many cases even in tunnels. On the bike paths cyclists go ever which way and even on the roads locals drive in the wrong direction - and nobody seems to mind.

- And when we are looking for something, I use my three words of Japanese to ask for the way. Everyone is extremely friendly - not that we understand the answer, but we are pointed in the right direction and then just have to ask again.

But we also discovered a lot of extremely quiet and very scenic back roads with hardly any traffic at all and a scenery that rivals even New Zealand.

Japan - hurray!

I have only spent 2 weeks in Japan now, but it is already on the way to become on of my favourite countries. So much has happened, that I really don’t know what to write about first. Maybe I tell you 2 little stories that will show how friendly people are here:

After John and I had arrived in Osaka airport, we had to take a train to get to downtown Osaka and to our pre-booked youth hostel. We left the train and had to assemble our bikes to ride the last km to the hostel. But what to do now with the empty bike boxes? It was already very late, there was no place in sight where we could deposit them and therefore we reluctantly decided to leave them at the station - but we removed the airline name tags before. When we had eventually settled into our youth hostel room, we received a phone call from reception at midnight. “Did you by any chance leave 2 bike boxes at the train station?” We were totally confused. How could anyone trace 2 bike boxes without name tags to guests staying at a youth hostel 1 km away from the station? And even worse: Would we be fined for littering now? We were very relieved when we were told: “The station master found these bike boxes and wants to know whether you want them tomorrow or whether he can throw them away. That’s all.” What a wonderful introduction to a country where people seem to care for you.

10 days later we were sitting in a supermarket stuffing our faces with cheap crappy cream cakes when an older lady approached us and asked us in broken English whether we were hungry. We thought that she was referring to our food attack and told her that we were indeed very hungry. This prompted her to go to a nearby food stall and buy us three stacks of sushi and meat. I was a little bit embarrassed when she gave us the food and left immediately with “God bless you” - but it tasted great for lunch.

New Romantic

We started our trip in Osaka where we could only stay for 2 nights. Due to the "Golden Week", Japan's main holiday season everything was fully booked. We were lucky to get a room in the youth hostel but for that we had to assure them that we are really married.... unmarried couples are not allowed to share a room! We could not do much sightseeing in 2 days, especially since we had to buy maps for the rest of our trip, but we were lucky enough to witness a fantastic drumming festival. Drumming seems to be a big pass time in Japan and various different drumming groups were perfoming a combination out of percussion and dance. We also discovered the subway stations were Japanese youth hang out dressed up in fancy "New Romantic" costumes or playing with their band. Unfortunately the latter activity is so popular that one band was located next to each other and everything ended in one big noise.

Koya-San

Our first bike ride in Japan was supposed to get us to Koya-San - the weather was horrible but we were discovered by an American expat who invited us to his home. His Japanese wife took pity on us and gave us our first supermarket tour: She very patiently explained what your are supposed to do with all that weird stuff and how it tastes. After this extremely enlightening experience we continued uphill to Koya-San - of course all in constant rain. Koya-San is famous for its Buddhist temples, but after a while we were more concerned about where to camp! This was our first free camping experience and we had no clue what to look for. When we asked in one monastery we were directed to an obscure spot outside the town on the map. We doubted that this would be a suitable campsite but we went there nevertheless. And the monks had been spot on- there were even remnants of an old camp fire. But we even found a better spot close by - and stayed for 2 nights as the weather was so bad. No big surprise: This was the rainy season....

The art of honking or what is New Zealand like

I liked my time here in New Zealand but I do not think I will want to come back in the near future. On the other hand I want to go back to Australia very soon. Why? New Zealand is beautiful, nice and pleasant, but it is also very European. Australia on the other hand is so very different from anything I have seen before. Australia’s landscape is not as spectacular as New Zealand’s, but it is very special and almost magic. Also people are much more outgoing and hospitable. And don’t forget the kangaroos either….

But both countries have the same art of honking: If a car passes you giving you a short double honk it usually means anything from “I have also been cycling 20 years ago” over “I even break for cyclists” to “I like your cute little butt in bike shorts” or to cut it short: Double honks are friendly.

A single long honk on the other hand is a totally different story and they are generally not friendly at all: My interpretations range from “I had to slow down for you stupid idiots” over “I hate everything that moves and is not in a car” to “My sex life is a desaster”. On top of all that these drivers usually give you a honk when they are right next to you therefore scaring the shit out of me.

That said I also want to add that we generally did not have many problems sharing the road. There were some scary moments when trucks passed me too close and I hated heavy traffic whizzing past me at 120 km/h on narrow single carriageway roads, but generally drivers were treating us ok - not super friendly, not totally bad either, just ok. I am very curious now about Japanese drivers now!

New Zealand: North Island

As soon as we had arrived on the North Island the weather improved - I don’t know whether this was coincidence or a generally warmer climate. The nights were warmer (which helped the cooking process of my 3 course dinners a lot!). I found the North Island much more interesting than the South Island - despite what all the guidebooks say. On the South Island nature is much more spectacular, but it is also spectacular in a European way - meaning that there is nothing unusual in it. On the North Island on the other hand there are a lot of striking features. First of all the North Island is of a very volcanic nature, so you see a lot of (hopefully extinct!) volcanoe craters and - most important for me - hot springs!

Mass hike on Tongariro

We enjoyed both features: First we did the famous Tongariro Crossing - reputedly New Zealand’s best one-day walk. Unfortunately, we were not the only ones to discover that. We were already warned when the shuttle bus to the trail head arrived full and we were told to wait for the second one, which arrived a minute later - and was also full. We had to stand up. When we arrived at the trail head we had to realize that we had not come in the only shuttle bus - there were plenty of them and they were all full, despite it being almost off season. And so we started climbing up the mountain followed by a constant stream of fellow hikers. There were so many people that it was impossible to even take a discreet pee! The flow of people never stopped - we were never ever alone for a second. The amount of people was rather off-putting, but the scenery was nevertheless quite impressive: Craters, lakes in unreal colours, steam coming out of the ground and temperate rain forest.

Free roadside hot springs

I have always loved hot springs, so I was having a ball on the North Island. We discovered freebie hot springs on dirt side roads as well as impressive spa towns like Rotorua. I had decided to celebrate my “alternative“ birthday there and received a plethora of birthday presents from John even including a very rich birthday cake and champagne!!! On top of all that we spent the day in a very posh spa relaxing in hot pools until we were thoroughly cooked. Most interesting feature in Rotorua though was the local museum displaying all sorts of memorabilia from former spa times. Patients were treated with radioactive water and electro shocks - all this seemed more like a torture chamber than spa treatments to me.

But then it was time to head back to Auckland. En route we passed a lot of Maori buildings which is the other interesting thing about the North Island. Most of the Maori population lives on the North Island which is reflected in all sorts of weird place names and Maori influenced buildings, churches and cemeteries. On our very last cycling day in New Zealand we had the very worst weather of the whole trip. It was just pouring down the whole day combined with a rollercoaster hilly landscape and the steepest ascend of the whole trip. This combination lead to me being totally soaking wet - probably more from sweating inside my raingear than from actual rain. After that shitty day it will not be a problem to leave New Zealand.

Tongariro Crossing

In Auckland we had booked ourselves into the Formule 1 hotel - yes, to my big surprise they have Formule 1 hotels in Australia and New Zealand. I am a big fan of these hotels and have stayed in many of them in Europe. The one in Europe came as a big surprise - ensuite bathroom and shower, plus even a little kitchen and balcony smack bang in downtown Auckland for the incredible price of 22 EUR per room!!! We are staying here for almost a week while preparing for our departure to Japan.

And yes, that is the next surprise: John is coming to Japan with me! He always wanted to go there and it might not be directly on his round the world route, but it is not that much of a detour either. Probably me cooking 3-course dinners for him every night might have helped him in his decision. Right now we are in Auckland indulging in All-you-can-eat-buffets, white chocolate and Formule 1 designer hotels - all stuff we will not be able to afford in Japan.

South Island

We had planned to spend half of our time on the South Island and the other half on the North One. Things worked out differently: We ended up spending 5 weeks alone on the South Island until the weather became too nasty. The weather in New Zealand was a very changeable thing: In one respect we were very lucky as we did not have much rain. Even on the West Coast, the so called Wet Coast with an average yearly rainfall of 8 meters (!) we just had one really rainy day - that was all.

Unfortunately, we also had one day with snow (which melted pretty quickly, but it was still some sort of traumatizing experience to wake up by the sound of snow falling onto the tent). In another respect we were incredibly unlucky: 80% of the time we had a head wind - sometimes so strong that we could not cycle any more out of fear to be blown off the bike. And whenever we changed direction, the wind changed direction, too. I guess you can't have all the luck. In the end it just got too cold which was aggrevated by high humidity i.e. a lot of dew in the morning everywhere - you were soaking wet before you even start cycling.

The South Island is reputedly the more scenic one. We saw a lot of temperate rainforest, 2 glaciers, some wonderful coastal stretches and thermal springs. Sometimes we would stand at the beach and look at snow covered mountains. I personally preferred all the apple trees to the rainforest, but that is just my single-minded personal view. By the way: I have never eaten that many apples in my life before than on this trip.

We even saw some interesting wildlife (beside the omnipresent damn sandflies that caused a lot of bit marks around my ankles): Seals! There are huge seal colonies right on the coast line next to a very busy highway (which does not seem to bother the seals at all!). In the end I was happy to move on to the North Island, where the weather was definitely better.