Final post – The bad tour guide wraps up Japan

Well, I think my tour group hates me at this point – even though they’re family. Today I had hired local guide Kenji to meet us at our hotel and take us to Himeji Castle. It’s a fairly common tour to do from Kyoto with a fairly common itinerary.  But I had to mess with the standard tour. Himeji is about 50 miles from Kyoto and well-connected by train. The typical tour does the castle then heads over to Kobe to see some long suspension bridge and/or a garden and I just didn’t want to see the bridge and I think Grace and Mikey might have thrown me in front of a train if I took them to another garden. So I created a far better plan (subjective opinion, I am sure) and off we went.

Here’s some pictures of Himeji Castle. It was partially built in the 14th century.

Himeji was interesting because it was so different from castles we’ve toured in Europe. European castles were lived in – they were residential and often filled with gorgeous antiques. Himeji castle was used as a defensive fortress. It sat basically empty and would only be used when the royal grounds were under siege. The rulers would flee to the top of Himeji Castle, through the entry maze, up the winding paths, and then finally up 6 flights of crazy dangerous stairs. I am shocked that no one in my group fell on the castle grounds:

Here’s another picture that helps show the defensive architectural planning. Doorways grew progressively smaller so that, in the event the castle was breached, the aggressors would have a harder and harder time moving forward and swords and horses would be hard to bring in.

So, done with the castle, off to Kobe we went. Having dismissed Kenji’s suspension bridge suggestion as a real snoozer, I did a little looking around at Kobe.  In my research, I came up with the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake Memorial Museum, which focuses on the extremely destructive 1995 earthquake in Kobe and the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami.

I love a museum dedicated to a single thing: trains, an event, kites. There’s a toilet museum outside of Tokyo that I didn’t get to see and I’m still sad about it.

At any rate, we scratched the bridge and added the earthquake museum. Well, I scratched the bridge and none of my travel companions protested. Perhaps they should have. Here is how it worked out, in the 88 degree heat with oppressive humidity.

• We took a one hour bullet train from Kyoto to Himeji
• We walked 1.7 km to the castle and toured the castle, including 6 sets of scary ladders
• We walked 1.7 km back to the train station
• We took a slower train to Kobe
• We transferred to an even slower train within Kobe
• We walked 1.5 km from the station to the earthquake museum
• We toured the museum
• We walked 1.5 km back to the station
• We took a slow train to somewhere else in Kobe
• We transferred to a train bound for Kyoto
• We got off the Kyoto train at the Kyoto station and transferred to a smaller train
• We then transferred to one more train and FINALLY
• We arrived back at our hotel

Each time we took a train, our group had to purchase tickets, which was intimidating. On our first round, we took so long that the man behind us went off to find another machine. And we were slow despite having Kenji there to help us! The money is impossible to sort.

But I loved the museum. It was an excellent place to go when you’re about to leave Japan because, after watching the destruction footage of 1995 and 2011, coupled with the big chart they had about impending earthquakes, the entire group was pretty well terrified. I’m sure they were wondering why I brought them here at all. Did you know that 20% of all earthquakes over 6.0 on the Richter scale occur in Japan?

They have a simulator there where you can pretend you are being overtaken by a tsunami wave and you can try to out run it. Ron got away and left me behind and didn’t seem to care at all. Here’s the exterior of the museum since no pictures are allowed inside.

And here’s creepy signs they had in their bathroom. THREE different ways to call for help from one toilet? I was worried that they knew something about my digestive health situation that I was not aware of.

That’s pretty much it for us. We’ve got one free day left and then we head home. Everyone is striking out on their own tomorrow. Ron and I are going to see the Museum of World Peace, which apparently has one of the few exhibits devoted to Japan’s role in World War 2. I’m told it’s a simple bus ride away with only one transfer so it seems much easier than today.

I’ve enjoyed Japan and I’m happy I got the chance to come visit. But, truth be told, it’s a little bit hard here. There’s a stronger sense of nationalism and ingrained cultural strongholds than I’ve encountered anywhere else. And while it’s fun to gain insight into some of these traditions, the traditions somehow serve to distance the visitor and cause a little more dissonance than I am used to when I travel.

Lest that sound too negative, I’ll give you a few more cool things I’ve discovered here in Japan: they put a basket near your chair in restaurants and you store your purse right next to you in the basket. Everyone is polite. They have nice little wet wipes at your table. They cook rice much better here in Japan and they really know how to put a bathroom together. We had some fantastically functional, non-leaking, hot water showers, which is never the case in Europe.

Talk to you all in November – Israel and Jordan are next!

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