Frame of my Mind

I’m so excited about going to Japan soon! Officially eighteen days until we leave. I don’t think I posted about it here, yet, so a brief recap on my life before the blog. About a year ago I asked if my mum would come with me to Japan, and she agreed. It seems she’s only doing it ‘for the giggles’, a milder form of lulz. It’s costing us a small fortune (especially with the current exchange rate) but I’ve never been abroad for more than five days before, and I’ve never been outside of Europe. For me, this is a trip of a lifetime and very much a big deal.

The excitement didn’t really hit me until about a week ago after I finished booking all the accommodation and worked out what towns and cities we would be visiting. Officially, these are;

• Tokyo – the capital city, many city-like things to be done here. Including going to the fish market one morning, and visiting Akihabara and the shrines/parks about the place.
• Hakone – part of a national park and hot springs resort outside of Tokyo. Mt Fuji can be seen from Hakone on a good day (no clouds). This is where we will be officially bathing naked with the Japanese.
• Kyoto – the old capital, full of shrines and temples and home to Geisha. I expect there’ll be a fair amount to see here, though my top of the list place to see is Fushimi Inari Shrine.
• Osaka – Osaka-style okonomiyaki is on the menu here. Osaka is another big and modern city, so I’m not sure what we’ll exactly end up doing. I will consider trying to see some Kabuki theatre (not the whole thing, the plays last all day). Kobe may be a day trip.
• Hiroshima – Yes, that’s where the Americans dropped a nuclear bomb. No, the city isn’t in ruins, and everyone isn’t deformed. General museum and memorial visiting here, but for the first night we’re staying on…
• Miyajima Island – There is a ‘floating’ shrine here. It doesn’t really float, it’s just on stilts on the water so it appears to float at high tide. I thought the place looked cute and peaceful, so I wanted to stay here for the night.

I think my mum is pretty excited, too. I let her pick the place to stay in Hakone. We could’ve stayed in an English speaking establishment or a hotel, but she wanted to stay in the little Japanese speaking only inn. Much to my amazement she seems to want to immerse herself as much as possible, and doesn’t like the idea of not sleeping on futons on the tatami mat floor. This is someone who went to France and refused to speak a word of French until we got home where she said ‘merci’ to the waiter at The Little Chef (a British roadside diner chain)!

There are small faults in my plan, and this is mainly to do with the fact that my mum is a life-long vegetarian. Apart from those few incidents she eats gelatine filled marshmallows, and that time she ate bacon as a teenager. You know, the kind of person who doesn’t eat fish (no arguments, please – last time I checked, fish were living). The Japanese eat lots of fish, but not only that, they cook everything (noodles, rice, soup, etc.) in fish broth. Vegetarianism is a very western thing and I guess the Japanese never thought of cutting one of their staple foods from their diet, so you won’t find little ‘v’s on the menu next to items that don’t contain fish product. I think she will adopt a regime of pretending it’s not fish broth, and will pick any bits of meat out of her breakfast. Other than that, she’ll be living off miso soup, boiled rice, cucumber sushi rolls, omelette nigiri sushi, bean paste onigiri and vegetable ramen, etc. Hopefully I will be able to decipher the Japanese menu quick enough to decide what may and may not be good for her to eat. Part of me does wonder if she’ll cave in and just eat the fish for two weeks because of the ‘once in a lifetime’ factor. If I was a vegetarian, I would. But then I didn’t make a very good vegetarian. I dropped it all aged 11 for the sake of some fish fingers.

Other preparations besides booking accommodation that I’ve made are; calling my bank and phone provider, buying train pass exchange orders, sorting out plane tickets, ‘test packing’ my stuff to make sure I can carry it, cramming more Japanese (which I’ve been studying for over two years, by the way), polishing and fixing my six-year-old DMs, and getting fit so that I am in a state able to handle two weeks of constant walking.