Trip End Survey: Best and Worst Japan 2012

On our trip to Europe, Greg and I decided that we should rank various things best and worst. We saw some really great sites, stayed in some great hotels, and ate at a couple of great restaurants. But we also saw the worst of all of those things. We decided to do the same for our trip to Japan. The list below is a revised version of the one we used for our Europe trip 3 years ago. So here it is, the Best and Worst List 2012:

Illustrated Best and Worst of Japan 2012

Best historical thing: Hikone Castle

Hikone Castle

Best View: from vista point overlooking old village Shirakawa-go

Shirakawa-go

Best Hotel View: Grand Arc Hanzoman Hotel, Tokyo

Worst Hotel View:  Business Inn Tsuchiya, Nagoya

Best Hotel: Grand Arc Hanzoman Hotel, Tokyo
Worst Hotel: Business Inn Tsuchiya
*Note that since this was a much shorter trip, we only stayed in 5 different hotels.

Best Toilet: Villa Fontaine Roppongi, Tokyo. I liked the warm seats.
Worst Toilet: Business Inn Tsuchiya, Nagoya (only Eastern hole-in-the-ground style toilets available). Note that the men's bathroom in particular was both unbearably disgusting and smelly.

Best Animal Encounter: feeding the deer in Nara

Greg feeding the deer

Best French-Inspired Pastry: pastry with fruit and cream (yums)
Worst French-Inspired Pastry: Mayonnaise and corn pastry

Most Brilliant Food Invention: Pancake sandwich (with margarine and jellied syrup filling)
Best Dessert: E - cheesecake from 7-11

Best Food Item: G - sushi and miso ramen / E - triangular rice thingies with spinach

Best Drink: C.C. Lemon Soda
Best Local Liquor: G - warm sake / E - shochu

Best Castle: Hikone Castle, Hikone
Worst Castle: Himeji Caslte, Himeji (but only because it is currently under construction and covered with a tarp)

Best Temple: Nishihonganji Temple, Kyoto

Best City: Tokyo
Worst City: Yokohama (not a bad city, just lowest ranked)

Best Restaurant: the izakaya we visited in Nagoya

Best Nightlife: Karaoke

Best Subterranean Experience: crazy huge underground cities in Tokyo attached to subway and train stations

Best-Preserved Old City: Shirakawa-go
Best Backdoor Destination: Shirakawa-go

Best Weather: Tokyo
Worst Weather: Kanazawa (freezing cold rain all day)

Most Interestingly Dressed Locals: Harajuku, Tokyo

Clothing shop in Harajuku

Most Relaxing Place: Grand Arc Hanzoman Hotel, Tokyo
Least Relaxing Place: E - Business Inn Tsuchiya, Nagoya / Kyoto Imperial Palace park trying to eat food on a bench in freezing cold wind.

Scariest Moment: E - at Business Inn Tsuchiya when I realized there were no western toilets / G - none
Biggest Culture Shock: G - at Bunraku performance the women in the audience were dressed in fancy kimonos.
Cheesiest Tourist Trap: G - the cup of noodles museum in Yokohama / E - Guy wearing a castle suit, Osaka.

Guy wearing a castle suit in Osaka

Longest Distance Walked: New Year's Eve in Tokyo
Longest Travel Day: G - Traveling from San Francisco to Tokyo (21 hours) / E - Traveling from Austin to Tokyo (26 hours)

Best Inside Joke: "5 seconds"

Worst Hawker Experience: Chinatown, Yokohama (people kept trying to get us to come inside their restaurants and hand us fliers)
Biggest Revelation: E - the musical note button on the toilets makes a fake flushing sound meant to cover up other "toilet sounds" / G - "there are a lot of people in Japan"

Himeji, Bunraku, and the Castle in Osaka

I knew that Himeji Castle was under construction, but Lonely Planet Japan made the work seem like no big deal, so I convinced Greg to spend a couple of hours in Himeji before we took the train to Osaka. 

Instead of a castle, we got a scaffold and tarp covered building.  The lack of a castle to take pretty pictures of did not deter us from wandering around the city.  

Fish sculpture with tarped Himeji Castle in the background.

We saw a circus tent with families lined up, a model reproduction of Himeji Castle in a shopping mall, a temple, and a covered pedestrian only shopping street.  We bought some lunch at a grocery store and walked back to the train station to travel to Osaka.

Once in Osaka, we boarded the loop train and got off at the station nearest the castle.  We had not yet visited a castle in Japan and we were both excited to see how the experience differed from our European castle experience.

Osaka Castle

Osaka Castle was not exactly what we had hoped it would be. We knew this castle wasn't original, but we were expecting a reproduction of the original.  After being damaged and mostly destroyed several times over, the castle was rebuilt in the 1990s with concrete as a museum with modern conveniences.

Along with the elevator were museum exhibitions, which were informative, but not what we were interested in.   We wanted to see how royalty in Japan lived.

Osaka Castle

The time was getting late and we still had to travel across town to get to the National Bunraku Theater in time for the 4pm performance. Slightly disappointed, we quickly looked through the 8 floors of the Osaka Castle and then hurried to the  nearest metro station.  After some difficulty with figuring out the metro fare and a discussion with the attendant, we purchased tickets, walked through the turnstiles, and boarded the metro train.

National Bunraku Theater, Osaka. 

We had bought tickets for a New Year's bunraku performance.  Bunraku is puppet-theater in which a choral narrator and a musical narrator sit stage left down stage.  The main action occurs center stage with 2 or 3 puppets each operated by 3 people.  A puppeteer must work on his craft for about 30 years before he can become the main puppeteer and operate both the head and the right hand.

Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take pictures of the performance or the inside of the theater, but I was able to find this awesome video explaining the art of bunraku and summarizing one of the plays we saw (3:15 into the video).

A short explanation of bunraku followed by a summary (at 3:15) of the play 

we saw, "Tsubosaka-kannon Reigenki."

The performance we saw included excerpts from two longer plays. There are two daily performances (2 different shows) during January. We saw the second performance on opening day.

Bunraku poster for the performance we saw at

 the National Bunraku Theater in Osaka.

The audience was made up of middle-aged Japanese people and a few tourists.  By the end of the hours-long performance, I was going crazy with discomfort.  I was wriggling and fidgeting; I couldn't help myself.  I don't think any of the Japanese people moved at all! They were completely still and attentive the entire four hours.  I've never seen such an interested audience.

Although I very much enjoyed the show, I admit I became bored toward the end.  After the performance, Greg and I were talking and we discovered that in the penultimate scene where the wife threw herself off a cliff to join her suicidal, dead husband, we were both thinking the same thought, "Go on! Do it! Jump! Jump! Get it over with!"

We are both glad we had the opportunity to see the show.  Before we came to Japan, Greg asked me what I wanted to do while here.  I told him I wanted to see a kabuki play or other traditional theater.  While studying for my teacher's certification in drama, I learned about kabuki, bunraku, and noh theater. Reading about these traditional types of drama is one thing, but seeing a performance in person is completely different.

Tired and with sore bums, we left the theater and again walked to the nearest train station.  Fortunately for us with our JR rail passes, Osaka is circled by train stations and the bunraku theater wasn't terribly far from a station.

We didn't make it back to Kyoto until quite late.