I am.. Peter MacWhinnie.

This post is about the impressions I’ve come away with from my experiences in Japan. This post will ultimately become part of a paper, but I thought it might be easier to write it out as a blog post first. So, without further ado..

Destinations

From the cities to the historic sites, every place we went to seemed to be incredible. Of course, this could just have been the fact we were on the other side of the world in a (very) foreign country.

We visited a few historic sites while we were in Japan. We visited the remains of the castle in Namioka, where there wasn’t really anything left. Where the castle once was had been turned into a sprawling park with wooden barriers built up where the castle structures once stood. It was an overcast day when we visited the castle, so the green of the vegetation which was alive for spring seemed to pop.

The other historic site of note we visited in Japan was Hirosaki castle. There was hardly anything left of the castle, it was bombed during World War II. What was left, however, was quite pretty. All of the motes around the castle still had water in them, although the water was disgusting. There were also two entrance gates left which were huge. Walking through them you felt like you were entering something important. All that was actually left of the castle itself was a single guard tower. The outside of the tower was very pretty, but the inside was really nothing to write home about. The grounds surrounding the guard tower where the other castle structures would have stood were pretty. The grounds would have been stunning had the cherry blossoms been blooming the day we were there, but they were not.

We also visited a couple of Buddhist temples while we were there. The first day we were there we visited a small island where there was a small shrine and a few red gates (I don’t know the formal name for them). The island itself was covered in flowers and very pretty, but I digress. The same day we visited the island, we also visited Showa Daibutsu (Big Buddha) and its associated temple. The temple was beautiful, the grounds were clean and it was a peaceful place even though it was only minutes away from the city. The Big Buddha in the temple was.. big. Although I took several pictures of it, it wasn’t really possible to show how large it really was. You could see it from the highway in front of it.

We visited many, many places. More then I want to write about here. In many of the places, it surprised me how much it was like home. The cities largely reminded me of Boston. The streets seemed to wind about, even though in the end they all amounted to nothing more then a big circle. The architecture also reminded me of Boston in many places. The buildings weren’t very tall, but there were a lot of them, and many of them weren’t really attractive. There were also several bridges we saw there that reminded me of the charles river bridge. They were the same kind of bridges.

People

All of the people we met while we were in Japan were very pleasant. People who work in jobs that deal with the public in Japan (cashiers and things like that) seemed to all be consistently nice and were always smiling. It always somehow seemed like a genuine smile, as well.

One thing that was a source of entertainment was how fascinated some people were with foreigners. On multiple occasions, people came up and took our picture even though we were rather unspectacular looking. One night when we were taking the train back from Aomori-shi (city) to Namioka, there were two drunk men who got on the train. One of them was considerably more drunk than the other, and he was fascinated with us. He spent the entire train ride (he got off in Namioka as well) talking about us, and even took our picture. He did not realize that my brother Steven speaks Japanese.

Several people also tried out there English on my Mum. In fact when we were at lunch one day, there was a random guy who was out to lunch with his mother who walked up to her and introduced himself. Later, when we were eating, he came back and tried to talk to her again, which embarrassed her as she had food in her mouth and couldn’t say anything.

I have to say it was an interesting experience. Perhaps expectations are different, but people just seemed much friendlier than they are here. This was especially noticeable in the city, where people here in the ’states tend to be a bit more indifferent (or just rude).

Language Barrior

The language barrier was annoying. There was more than one occasion where it would have been nice to talk to people, and I didn’t know Japanese, and they didn’t really know English. If I were to ever return to the country, I would learn at least some Japanese before. It was good that we had Steven with us to do the communication, or things would have been considerably more difficult.

Culture

The culture is definitely different over there. Especially what’s considered polite when you’re eating. For example, you’re supposed to slurp your noodles, which a lot harder then it looks. You also try everything that’s put in front of you. Everything. Even if its awful, you finish the bit that you took. If you didn’t like it, you just say no thank you to more.

Another interesting difference that didn’t take long to get used to was taking your shoes off when you go into places. The temples we visited and many restaurants had you take off your shoes. In restaurants, I thought it made the experience a little bit better not to be wearing sweaty shoes while eating. It probably also makes cleaning the floor quite a bit easier. Mum, however, didn’t appreciate it nearly as much. She had to sit down to take off and put on her walking shoes, so it was always a little inconvenient for her.

Another interesting difference is the way you handle money. You don’t fold your paper money, and instead of handing it directly to the cashier, you put it in a basket on the counter. I came to prefer this to simply handing the money to the cashier. It seemed much less clumsy, and it made it easier to make exact change. It is worth noting that in Japan you carry cash, many places do not accept credit cards.

Something that struck me as perhaps a bit off, was the fact that Steven’s girlfriend Mio was considered fat. By standards here in the ’states she was very thin. Apparently a few pounds is enough to be considered fat. The longer we stayed there, the more it seemed odd that she was considered fat. We were in the north of the country, so people tended to run the whole gamut (fat to skinny).

Japan is clean. Very, very, very clean. Although there are no public trash cans, somehow everything is absolutely spotless. You could actually touch things in public and not have to wash your hands later. I got used to the cleanliness in Japan very quickly, and was a bit disappointed when we flew back into Newark and everything was filthy again. Now that we’re back in Maine, everything still seems dirty, although not nearly as bad as Newark.

Traveling

Going to Japan was my first experience really traveling. It was the first time I’d ever been on a plane, so I was a bit nervous the morning we left. The first time we took off (in a tiny, tiny plane), I was fascinated when I first looked out the window and realized how high up we were. Watching the ground move below us was incredible to experience the first time.

Layovers. I hate, hate HATE layovers. We had long layovers in both the ’states and Japan. We had a 5 hour layover in Newark, where there wasn’t really that much to do but try to sleep and hope my stomach was going to settle down (it was upset that day). When the layover was finally over, and we finally boarded it was a relief. I didn’t realize how long the flight was really going to be.

14 hours. 14 hours we were on the same plane. Non-stop, it was boring, very, very, very boring. There was inflight entertainment, and of course I slept some, but it was just so uninteresting. They fed us well on the long flight, with 4 meals. When we finally saw Japan out the window, it was an incredible relief. This was right before they handed us the immigration paperwork. The paperwork was a bit confusing, and a bit difficult to fill out as we didn’t know Steven’s phone number or address.

Once we landed, and finally got off the plane, we had to go through immigration and customs. A stewardess was nice enough to take us there. We probably wouldn’t have found it without her help. We walked, and walked, and walked. We kept going down flights of stairs, and it seemed like we were going nowhere when we finally arrived in the immigration room. We found the line, which was long, and waited. The wait was not that long, probably 10 minutes at the most. Going through immigration was easy enough, they took our fingerprints and a picture. Once on the other side we had to go through customs, which was easy. The guy didn’t even check our bags.

Coming back was pretty much like getting there. We had to take a domestic flight from Aomori down to the Tokyo area. It was morning, and a beautiful day out. Once we got to the right airport where we were flying out of, we walked around a bit and checked in. The Japan-half of the travel went smoothly, no issues. However, when we landed in Newark, it was raining. We had a long, long layover, and our flight was delayed! We weren’t sure if we were even going to be able to takeoff. It was raining and there was an electrical storm going on. When we finally took off it was a huge relief, although the flight back was sort of scary. We weren’t even allowed to get up and use the bathroom.

End

Well, I’ve been home for about 2 weeks now and I really do miss Japan. The people there were all so nice, and the food was delicious. One day I will get back there, and I will speak Japanese when I do it.