Do not trust your itinerary, especially if your plan is to stay in Osaka for five days, then travel 514 km by bullet train to Tokyo and spend another five days there. Itineraries don’t like people. Itineraries will inconvenience you with things like weather, Cebu Pacific, and flight cancellations. Should this happen, make sure that you have a wife or a husband that has the patience to rebook everything you have already paid for in the months leading to the trip. Also, prepare to shell out cash for additional fees and charges.
Do not expect Japan to be as hyper technological as what you’ve probably seen in movies. When you do arrive in Japan as planned (or re-planned), you will know that their Kansai Airport Immigration booths use sagging plastic covers, normally used for books, as an aerosol barrier. Their arrival lounge air conditioning is like the deep jungles of Myanmar and their lighting is like that of hospitals.
Do not talk on the trains. If you grew up in the province, please understand that trains are not wide rice fields where you can shout out the latest and greatest chisms about who sold how much coconut husk in exchange for three piglets. Trains in Japan are monastic spaces that everyone is expected to respect. They are comfortable traveling boxes where people can read, sleep, and rest from a celebrated day of overwork. Do not eat in trains. Do not answer calls in trains. Do not stare at people in trains. The Japanese are too polite and too reclusive to tell foreigners off, but it is a fact that they are not afraid to commit suicide should life be too unbearable. Please do not make their lives unbearable. The best railroad system in the world will demand that you be the best version of yourself.
Should you find yourself in a downtime with your group, do not talk about religion or your belief that there is no God or that if there is a god, then that god might be a jerk. This is especially true if you have a mother that just made her Holy Land pilgrimage a year before. If this situation is unavoidable, please expect your mother to smart-shame you and blame your seminary education as the start of her religious fervor, a fervor that you are now contradicting. Also expect that she will not join the Universal Studios trip the following day. Should this happen, make sure that you have a wife or a husband that has the patience to rebook everything you have already paid for in the months leading to the trip. Prepare to shell out cash for additional fees and charges.
When you visit Nara, please do not feed the deer. The colossal architecture of wood they call temples are mere baits for these criminals. You can see them huddled in groups, basking in ‘komorebi’, the sunshine filtering through the leaves and pine needles. Do not be fooled by this scene. They are luring you to buy the 100 yen deer biscuits sold along the way to their spot. Should you decide, against better judgment, to still buy that deer crack, please expect the following: a solitary deer, usually the most bambi-like will approach you, it will smell the air to confirm you indeed have biscuits in your possession; another deer will then sneak to your side and lick the biscuits in your hand as final check; once the goods are confirmed, three to four deers will surround you and chase you into feeding them the whole pack. Should you not buy another pack of biscuits, please expect these domesticated jerks to bite your hand, your behind, and your three-year-old kid’s stroller.
Do not bring wet wipes, loperamide or antispasmodic medicines. They are useless in Japan. The food served, even in the shadiest alleyways, can be trusted as sanitary and made with utmost care for reputation. Look for cod roe served with rice, or eel topped gyudon. Be as adventurous with food as you can. Eat dolphins, eat babies. Short bowel movement is a fear best left in your country of origin. In Japan, you can do a ‘number two’ anytime, anywhere. Even in Kyoto where traditional floor mounted toilets are still largely used, Western-style toilets are abundant. These toilets come with seat bidets that wash you with jets of warm water, with pressure that can be adjusted from barely-touching to firmly-massaging. If you’re shy, there’s a button on the wall to play music inside the restroom stall, so you are assured that only you can hear your own musical instrument.
Lastly, do not go in August. The temperature is unbearable. It will make you doubt your decision to spend so much money for so much sweat. If you come from a family of short tempers and overactive sweat glands, I advise you not to come in the summer. But Japan is a wonderful place, and if you do decide to go, you have stories to take home, and a promise to your wife that you will both come back when it’s 10 degrees colder.
kibinibis 