Riverside sunset near Nara
A street in Himeji
Activity during sunset
A walking path near Himeji castle
A flower in front of the youth hostel
Past expiration date
The view from Kurashima youth hostel
japan
Found something
No pain no gain
Yesterday I was being very kindly hosted by a friend who worked with me at Asahi Kasei for a year. He and his girlfriend offered me a place to stay for the night in Sasayama, and they immediately made me feel at home. So much at home in fact, that while I was relaxing and playing games with Mathieu I almost forgot about my trip o_0. It was great to have a content-filled conversation in English for a change, and Mathieu's lifestyle showed a little preview of what could happen if I choose to stay in Japan. Despite, or perhaps because of the homely situation, I chose to cycle on to Himeji today. It's as if I've suddenly been reminded of why I'm doing this trip, and I don't want to lose my momentum.
Leaving Sasayama I continued to follow route 372 and was not disappointed. The beautiful landscape continued on and on for another 20-30 kilometers. The weather was great, the uphills tough, and the downhills rewarding. I put on my favorite music, struggled hard on every uphill and then found what I was looking for on the following downhill. On each uphill pass the scenery changes and the roadsides change to mountain rock or dense forest. The temperature cools down in the small passes, which is great because I'm sweating a lot on the uphills, which were a lot tougher today than yesterday. After completing the uphill there's sometimes a tunnel on top, which is freezing cold to cycle through. Then the mountain road starts to go down rapidly, and the mountain walls disappear, the road becomes wider, and suddenly I'm cycling down a hill with 40kph and the scenery opens up and reveals some rice fields hidden between the mountains, and a small village. There's no traffic, almost no people, the road decline is perfect so I can maintain 30-40 kph all the way through the valley, the perfect speed to enjoy the scenery. And then I reach the end of the valley and the next uphill begins.
That's what I found. The joy of cycling downhill on a wide open road at a nice speed with a beautiful scenery. That's what I was looking for when I started this trip, and that's what I remember from previous trips. It's not just the beautiful scenery, the uphill suffering is as much part of this experience as the downhill thrill. You can't have one without the other, or else it just wouldn't be the same. It's the ultimate reward for a tough physical challenge. On my first cycling trip to Kyushu I experienced this feeling while cycling along the coast of Shimashima island and Nagashima island. On the second trip I found this on route 26 and route 147 on the east coast of Shikoku. Now I can add route 372 wast of Kyoto to that list. It's been a long time since I felt this happy.
Conbini lunch is delicious and saves time
After crossing a bunch of hills the road turned towards the south, and as I got closer to Himeji the road changed into a countryside road similar to the ones in Kanagawa, sometimes passing through towns, sometimes cycling between ricefields, but the feeling of being surrounded by mountains was gone. The wind had picked up too and I was having a medium-hard time trying to keep my speed up. This turned out to be no problem, as I overestimated the distance to Himeji, and I arrived at Himeji with plenty of time to find a hotel and to take some photos of the castle before sunset.
The famous castle
Actually, finding a hotel took me quite long. I found a very cheap hostel (2100 yen for one night) on Google, and had to jump through some strange hoops to find the address. I took a photo of the google map on my compact camera and went off trying to find it, ending up in a residential area that was impossible to navigate. I had to ask directions three times and got sent to three different directions. I finally found the place by myself, but no hotel in sight. Considering how difficult it was to find online I guess it either no longer exists or never existed.
I decided to cycle to the station instead and find a business hotel. Big problem: it's golden week right now and a lot of hotels were either fully booked or they decided to kindly raise the price. One crappy (shitty, actually) hotel told me a one-night stay was 7500 yen. When I asked why it was so expensive they just told me "it's golden week". Running out of options, I got lazy and walked into a YMCA building that happened to show up in front of me, and I asked if they knew any cheap place to stay. Yeah, maybe a weird thing to do, but it paid off :D the YMCA guy showed me the way to a capsule hotel, something typically Japanese that I never had a chance to try. Until now.
Human storage facility
Inside one of the breeding chambers
Capsule hotels are weird. Weird beyond just the idea of sleeping in a tiny cabin and paying money for it. It's a very manly world here in the capsule hotel. I'm on the fifth floor in the common area right now, and on the fourth floor is a public bath. The common area has one huge TV showing manly things like baseball, or you can pay more if you want to see a soft-porn movie. Note that this is the common room and all the guests of the hotel can freely sit here. There is no non-smoking section, so I have to tolerate an annoying smoking guy who is sitting behind me. He can look at my screen, I wonder if he can read English.
Even the lockers are tiny
The sauna/public bath thingie is even weirder. I thought I understood Japanese bathing etiquette pretty well after going to onsen for four years, but this is slightly different. First, you get a locker to put your stuff in, but the locker area is right next to the entrance. If I took off all my clothes there I would have to walk to the bath area naked and anyone entering the sauna could see me. There were no Japanese people around to mimic, so I had to figure out what to do. I first took a look at the bath area while clothes, and saw more naked Japanese people, and a bunch of people in the sauna all wearing the same underwear. Another weird point, because usually the sauna is shared with the public bath, and everyone's usually naked. I went back to the locker area and found a stack of underwear ready to use for anyone. That idea didn't appeal to me, so I kept my own. I was about to undress and walk to the bath area when a young lady worker suddenly walked by. I've been to many onsens in four years of Japan but I've never seen a young lady in the male bath area (although there were sometimes old ladies doing the cleaning). This confused me even more. Finally a Japanese guy came in and I followed him in, finally able to take a bath. This place is very weird to me, and has a different etiquette from Japanese onsen baths.
Going back to the topic of cycling, tomorrow I'm going to head towards Okayama, the next big city on the way to Hiroshima. I'm planning to take a ziggy zaggy route that will hopefully be more fun to take than the big roads. Unfortunately Okayama is about 120km's from here, and while I could do that in a day, I'd be very tired and stressed out to make it in time. I've been looking for hotels or hostels about 80-90 km's from here but couldn't find anything cheap. The good thing is: the weather's been getting better recently! No rain, temperatures rising. I think I can camp tomorrow and the day after tomorrow without any trouble.
Random Japan-related anecdotes
A stupid conversation today illustrates the many uses of the word 'hai'. This happened at the McDonalds (yes, I go there too much :S).
Cashier: will you be eating here? Me: hai (yes) Cashier: hai (I understand). What would you like to order? Me: I'd like a large coca cola zero please. Cashier: hai (I understand). that'll be 240 yen. Me: hai (hands over money) Cashier: hai (I accept your money) Cashier: hai (and I return your change) Me: hai (I accept the change and the receipt)
I hope this illustrates the silliness of Japanese. One word does everything. You can also the phrase 'hai?' meaning "I don't understand what you're saying". It all depends on the tone.
Speaking of silly Japanese, it's been bothering me for a while now, but Japanese are completely lab-rat-trained to stop in front of a railroad crossing. Always, no exception. Even if you can see perfectly that there is not a train in sight within 10 kilometers, a Japanese person will still stop in front of the railroad crossing, look both ways, and then slowly proceed to cross. Now imagine a hundred cars doing that and the kind of traffic jam this causes. I saw two of those traffic jams today.
Oh, and this story reminds me of another silly Japanese thing: a long while back when I took a trip by train to Hokkaido I booked a hotel in the middle of nowhere and was picked up my the owner by car, who drove me to the hotel. In the middle of nowhere there were traffic lights, signaling red. We had a perfect view of the road to cross and there was not a car in sight as far as the eye could see. The hotel owner waited in his car for at least 5 minutes, then said 'chotto matte kudasai', please wait, jumped out of his car, ran to the sidewalk and pushed the button that pedestrians need to push to cross, then ran back to his car and finally crossed when the light turned green. Japan is probably the only country where this would happen.
Japan sucks
Whoops, the adventure feeling is completely gone today. If I had to use one word to describe today it would be MEH.
I'm in Nara-ken now. Nara prefecture looks almost exactly like Kanagawa. Today's road was extremely flat with only one slightly hilly section. I cycled 80 kilometers today, but because I started early I was already at my destination at 14:30. Not a lot of cycling and not a lot of hills meant that I still had a lot of energy left. Unfortunately for me the area I arrived at was pretty much like Atsugi: just a typical Japanese city with nothing special anywhere in sight. The weather got cloudy too so I was very much bored and not feeling the adventure at all. Right now I'm at the youth hostel, which turned out to be a typical Japanese house next to a railway line. Every 10 minutes a train goes past and the sound of a bell disturbs the neighborhood. I'll be glad to skip this area and get to Kyoto. This is just too normal.
After being in Japan for a while now, I've observed that there are not many outdoor places that are very accommodating to people. For example, today I walked along a road at the riverside, but the entire side of the road was blocked off with barriers making it impossible to get close to the river. There is no possible place to just sit down and relax! Even if you improvise it's still impossible. If there were no barriers, or if the space between road and riverbed was only 10-20cm's wider, then it would be possible, but no. In the entire country of Japan there will be no such thing. There will be no loitering around at random areas. Japanese people go from home to work and back again, and if they want to loiter around they will go to a dedicated loitering place and spend their time in a concrete park instead, even if they have to go 5 kilometers out of their way to find one. This just plain sucks. In Holland, no matter where you are, there will be benches or grassy areas to sit on. I used to forgive Japan for not having these kind of places because Japan is overcrowded and Japan has no space, but that's simply not true. It has plenty of space to put a couple of benches alongside some roads, it's just simply not the 'Japanese way' to do that. It's for the same reason that there are no trash cans in this entire country: you dump your trash at your building's garbage collection place, or at a convenience store along the way. If neither is possible, Japanese people will carry their trash with them for the whole day. Unless they dump it at the riverside, which is why so many of Japan's natural scenes are spoiled by huge amounts of garbage. You suck, Japan.
I very much dislike these points about Japan. Japan is great if you can accept the Japanese lifestyle and don't try to change it. Things are the way they are, and you'd better accept them, or else you'll only get annoyed. If you can accept them, or if you are never confronted with the bad parts, then Japan is a great country. In every other case I can imagine that people won't like it very much. It reminds me of Apple: there's only one way to do things and it's convenient maybe 90% of the time. The other 10% you're screwed and you wish you were somewhere else. But, like Apple, sometimes there is just not a good enough alternative.
I like Japan because people don't bother me. Every0ne minds their own business and leaves you alone. I like Japan (well, the Tokyo area) because of the convenience. There's train stations everywhere, convenience stores, beautiful sights, anything within 1-2 hours travel. I like Tokyo because it's so huge and there's always something new to discover, and I never have to worry about getting lost because there will always be a train station nearby. I like Yokohama because it's beautiful and peaceful and just gives me a good feeling to walk around in. I like Atsugi because it's both near the countryside and near the big cities, and the area around it is great for cycling and exploring.
Lately I'm not looking forward any more to meeting new people on this trip. Especially the Japanese people's reaction is always the same. First I tell them that I'm from Holland and I work in Japan, then they ask me what's Holland and do they speak English there. Then I laugh and tell them that they speak Dutch, which is a little bit like German. Then they ask about my job and my trip and why my Japanese is so good. After that they run out of things to say and end the conversation with "Ganbatte kudasai": well, do your best. The most interesting conversations I've had on this trip have been with foreigners who have been in similar situations as me, living in Japan for a while and then having to decide whether to stay here forever or go home. I was hoping to meet more of those people at youth hostels, but today there's only one old Japanese guy from Yokohama and he's not very talkative. I have more interesting conversations online than in real life..
Tomorrow I'll reach Kyoto. If I start cycling early I'll have two and a half days there, and I should be out of there just before the golden week madness begins. I'll probably get my bicycle's gears fixed when I get there, although they've been remarkably fine recently. I really wonder if they can be any better than this, because even when I first bought the bicycle the gears were a bit wonky. I've finally gotten used to their current state, so I wonder if fixing them will make things better or worse. Oh well. Kyoto, here I come.
Some photos
Fuji in the morning
Fuji and Shinkansen
The strawberry road
Uphill climbs are sometimes worth it
Egg vending machine!
Different type of egg vending machine
Children playing while the sun sets
Coast area at Omaezaki
Omaezaki lighthouse
About 10 cats around here. How many in this photo?
Stupid gate thingie near Hamamatsu
Another interesting road..
Spot the sleeping person. He didn't wake up for at least 3 hours.
Nice boat.
Zenbu zigzag ztreet
Some info on Japanese visas and quitting your job
I went to the immigration office in Yokohama today. Very post-apocalyptic place. Anyway, I thought I'd write here about my findings, because it might be useful for other foreigners who either quit their job or finish their contract and still want to stay in Japan. Keep in mind that everything written down here was told to me: a European guy with an engineer visa who has been employed as a contract worker in Japan for four years. Things will be probably be a little different if you're a Chinese refugee who arrived in a container.
So, my engineer visa is valid until 2012, and I assumed that I could stay in Japan until 2012 and do whatever I want until then. This is absolutely not true. If you are unemployed by your own choice, meaning you did not get fired but you chose to quit your job or your contract finished, then you have three months to find a similar job in Japan. Or else. Or else what? Exactly.
I asked the immigration bureau about the 'or else' part after explaining my situation, and the counterguy told me that if I can't find a job after three months I have to come back to the immigration for '相談' (soudan - consultation, advice). I'm not sure exactly what this means, and the guy wouldn't give me any extra info. However, if I am any good at reading between the lines, I think it means that it's quite possible to talk it over and extend the job-searching period for a couple of months. I asked what would happen if I found a job 5 months after I quit my job (2 months over the allowed time period), and this should probably be okay, provided that the job is in the same sector, meaning in my case that I have to find a job as an engineer. No butler's cafe for me!
After becoming unemployed in Japan it's customary to go to an agency called ハローワーク (Hello Work)、and register yourself there. Once registered, you will receive a percentage of your previous salary for the next three months. To be eligible to receive this money you have to go to the Hello Work office in your city at least once a week (not 100% sure about this as I haven't done this yet), so that they know you're still searching for a job and qualify to receive the money.
So how does this affect me? Well, in my case this is a bit troublesome (困る), as I'm about to embark on a cycling trip and won't be near 'my' Hello Work office for at least 2 months. If I do decide to stay in Japan and find a job (right now the chances of this are about 70%) then I'll have just under a month to find a job, provided I fly back from Kyushu at the end of May. If the trip takes longer or if I cycle back then I might not find a job in time. In that case I have to go back to the immigration office and hope that they'll be kind to me. If this also fails then I'll have to go back to Holland and try again from there. That's the options I have if I want to stay in Japan.
I'm trying not to think about this too much. It would suck if I went back to Tokyo at the end of May, spend three months finding a job, fail, then get deported. That's the worst case scenario, because I would be spending three months doing something very boring without any positive result. "Well, it won't come to that". Cross my fingers.
As one journey ends..
..another begins(?)
I just came across this page (in Dutch), about a Dutch guy who cycled from the Netherlands all the way to Tokyo, and then to Kyushu, which is where I'm going. He went all the way through Russia in seemingly incredible circumstances, and the photos on his website are amazing. This person left Japan on October 24 2005, exactly 5 days before I arrived in Japan. That's a beautiful coincidence.
Reading his travel report motivates me a lot. I've been worrying about rain and climbing up to 1km on the way to Fuji, but if you travel through Russia for months on end those things are a common occurrence. If I stay in safe little Japan I don't have to worry about road quality, finding food or possible encounters with thieves or other criminals.
If I leave now I think I can be in Kyushu two months later. That's my rough guess though, I haven't actually measured anything. I think it's quite possible that I can reach there considerably sooner. After reading this interesting travel report I am now also considering the possibility of going back to Holland by bicycle. If I can make it in time before temperature's drop, that is.
I've been giving this trip a lot of purpose in my mind, putting pressure on myself to decide if I want to stay in Japan for the rest of my life or not. I give myself two months to decide. If I find an answer, I follow up on it by either taking a plane back to Holland or by cycling back to Tokyo and finding a job. Or, if I can't decide after 2 months, continue cycling. Maybe that's not the right way. Maybe it's better to continue the trip even after I decide what to do with my life. Even if I decide to stay in Japan, 1 or 2 years of break time won't really matter. It's time to start thinking on the long term.
These are just some thoughts swirling through my head just before the start of my trip. It's somehow refreshing to see that what will be the greatest adventure of my life is just a very small part of someone else's journey. Now I want more :D
Trip preparations are good: luggage problem solved, thanks to my Japanese buddy who allowed me to park my suitcase and boxes in his room while I go around doing crazy stuff. My room is almost empty, and it'll take me about half a day to clean up the remainder. Bicycle bags are packed and ready to go. The weather is still fluctuating, being just about perfect at 15-20C two days ago, now cloudy again at 9C and too cold for my taste. The constantly changing weather is making me angry but I have no-one to be angry at. Looks like the rain will continue next week as well, but I'm tired of waiting. I want to leave next Wednesday, and the only thing that can stop me is heavy rain.
Japan's biggest challenge: getting rid of all your stuff
It's been almost a week now since I quit my job, and most of the initial shock has passed. I'm getting used to the idea that from now on my life will essentially be a very long weekend. A lot of rain, a lack of purpose and a room that suddenly no longer feels like my home have made me feel bad for the past few days, but I'm slowly getting used to my new situation. I thought I'd post an update on how exactly I'm getting rid of my stuff, cause it's proving to be quite a challenge.
When you first enter Japan you'll already notice how difficult it is to throw things away: there's no trash cans anywhere! Then, perhaps you're on holiday, you have a nice encounter with Japan's beautiful natural sights, only to find that along the way people have dumped their computers, refridgerators and whatnot, creating a very ugly scene. Recently I found out why.
You cannot simply leave any large garbage in your apartment's central garbage collection point: you can only leave certain kinds of large garbage, and you have to call someone to come pick it up. In my case, the Atsugi Recycling Center can pick up all kinds of large things (closets, chairs, tables, microwaves etc.) if you make a reservation at least one week in advance. It will still cost you x yen a piece, and I believe there's also a max item limit (I'll find this out next week).
The worst thing is: the recycle center doesn't take refridgerators, and it doesn't take TV's or anything computer-related, or anything large that has electronics inside, basically. (although they didn't seem to have a problem with picking up my microwave oven, for reasons that I have yet to find out.) Apparently you have to contact the manufacturer (or a disposal company working with that manufacturer) and they'll come and pick it up for a fee. In my case, disposing of a 5+ year-old tiny refridgerator will cost me about 7000 yen (56 euro's). I now understand why there's so many TV's, refridgerators and PC's at the side of the roads here in Japan...
Anyway, the specialized-refridgerator-pickup-service will be here on Monday to pick up my fridge and take my precious money, unless I can somehow find another way to dispose of it before then. No, I don't mean driving into the countryside and dropping it off a truck. Today I went to the only reasonable second-hand store in Atsugi (two others: one is closing down, the other one is actually a chain store and only takes what is profitable for them without negotiating) to woo them into taking everything for free. They of course already know about the fridge disposal fee, so they won't just take it and pay for it, nor will they take it for free. However, if I also give them my remaining furniture and a very nice microwave oven then it might cost me less than 7000 yen to dump everything. I'll find out tomorrow if this brilliant plan will succeed or not.
In any case, all my bothersome stuff will be sold by next week, the question is just how much money it will cost me. I'm also selling some smaller things separately on this brilliant website called gaijinpot.com. Japanese people are pretty much allergic to anything second-hand, but foreigners in Japan jump at a chance to rip off a fellow foreigner just before he leaves the country. As such I am selling all my stuff that still has some value on here, and it's super effective.
Some things though, are very specific and hard to sell. My anime/manga artbooks for example, are near impossible to sell, or at least impossible to sell for any reasonable value. I let my friends pick and take whatever they wanted, kept a couple of them myself, and brought the rest to book-off, Japan's national second-hand chain bookstore. End result: 6-7 beautiful high-quality artbooks sold for 850 yen. Not very nice. I should have brought them to Akihabara instead, I might have gotten more. I went there today to sell two toys (Masterpiece Megatron and Masterpiece Starscream) and got a reasonable price: 9500 yen. I know that they go for about twice that much on ebay, but I can't be picky right now. Those toys are huge and sending them back home would just be a waste of money.
So there you have it: websites like gaijinpot, niche markets like Akihabara, second-hand stores and official disposal services that cost you money if you use them. I also tried selling things on a Japanese website called Rakuten, but that website is pure evil and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Seriously, that website might be the vilest thing Japan has ever created. Good thing it's Japanese-only.
It's still cold! 2-3 weeks to go until take-off..
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Talk about trolling
Check out this article by the Japan times: a Japanese general says some controversial stuff about WW2.
Countryside sunset
Bonus: click on the image to see the result of a Photoshop plugin called Fractalius.