Afterword

Having spent only a tiny few days in Japan, and that mostly in Tokyo, it would be completely presumptuous of me to even begin to draw conclusions based on what I had seen. Certainly, it would be wildly inaccurate. Nonetheless, if I don't do it, someone with equally little experience will - at least I have the saving grace of stating up front I don't know what I'm talking about.

First, some things I can be certain of:

Singapore Air.
As you might have guessed, I give them full marks for this escapade. As a package deal it wasn't exactly what I'd have chosen, but the price was right, they delivered and they delivered well on all aspects of the trip. They made sure that we had all the information that we needed to get everything included in the package and the information was timely and accurate.

Crown Plaza Holiday Inn Metropolitan Hotel
Full marks here, too. The hotel staff was very helpful; every member that we came in contact with from the bellhops to the night clerk staff spoke very clear English, which made it very easy for us. Clearly they had even labeled our room somehow as being an English room. The automated operator on the phone was in English, when people answered the phone it was in English, the cleaning staff left their notes in English and each morning a Japanese English-language newspaper was slipped under our door.

Each morning I'd get up and walk out of the hotel, I'd notice that the newspapers slipped under the doors of the different rooms were in different languages, indicating that they kept track of what language went with each room. The room was small, but well maintained and had the high-tech toilet. Prices in the hotel; however, were exorbitant. A Coca-Cola was 450 yen ($3.75), and that was the cheap beverage. Across the street at the AM/PM a Coke is 120 yen ($1). The menu for the hotel restaurant listed prices that must have been misprints. The scrambled egg and bacon breakfast was approaching US$20.

If you can afford this hotel, I'd recommend it. It's very good and convenient to the subways.

...And now for some things I'm a lot more subjective on:

Subways
The subways are efficient. They're not as good as Singapore or Taipei, but certainly miles ahead of London. The English signage is not always obvious, the instructions on how to purchase a ticket (also through automated kiosks) are terse and I seriously doubt we'd have figured out that we could buy a stored-value subway card if it hadn't been explained in Lonely Planet Japan. The Metro Card was a lot easier than trying to figure out each trip's individual cost.

One thing really good about Tokyo's subways, they have automated fare adjustment machines, which means if you buy too cheap of a ticket you can adjust it before leaving the subway, so you don't get stopped at the turnstile. That never happened to us, but the fare adjustment machines were in obvious placement at all the stations. Other places we've visited you have to talk to a person to pay the difference if you screw up on calculating your own fare.

Subway reading material stereotypes to address:

• The subways are packed with people reading manga (comic books) and hard-core pornography.
  Most people read newspapers or played with cell phones/video games. I saw lots of people reading on the subway, but I only ever saw one person reading manga and he was obviously a school boy. I did see one man, totally unselfconsciously, reading something which I translated as "Big Busts" (based on both the writing on the cover and the pictures contained within) and another, equally unselfconsciously, reading a magazine graphically portraying acts of torture against naked school girls that probably would have made Japanese POW camp torturers proud.
  That was rather disquieting.

Tokyo
Tokyo is a seriously ugly city, with small oases of beautiful greenery. Even among the dull, grey, featureless buildings you can be walking along and suddenly an old home will still be standing, with a small, immaculately trimmed garden. In Tokyo's mad sprawl, most of that has been extinguished. Even from all my reading, there wasn't much in the way of historical features left. Most of the sights of Tokyo are those of the modern economic miracle that was Japan. The economy isn't so hot now, but the infrastructure and culture still stands. If you want to see "historic" Japan, Tokyo isn't the place. If you want to see shops and museums, this is the place.

Nikko
This was a nice little town. I think to appreciate it you'd need 2 or 3 days, and a rental car - we simply didn't have time or ability to hike to all the places of interest in the area. There are plenty of historic sites to visit, plus there are outdoor activities for the more nature-minded. If you learn your lesson from our mistakes on the trains, it's quite quick and easy to get to from Tokyo.

Vending Machines
My tally of vending machine items for sale concludes at:

• Soda
• Beer
• Condoms
• Hot Coffee
• Ice Cream
• Disposable Cameras

We did not see engine parts, sex toys or schoolgirls' used underwear - all items reputedly sold in vending machines in Japan.

Cost
Japan is expensive. I think there was little doubt of that, but many of the reports of outrageous prices were clearly selective reporting. The free-market economy works strangely here. Two stores side by side could sell the same item, one being 100% or higher more expensive than the other. The watchword is comparison shop for everything.

Cell Phones
Surgically attached to the ear of every citizen at birth, as far as I can tell. Subways ban their use on the trains, so they sit using text-messaging on the entire trip. They do have cool cell phones, though. Many are tiny, tiny little phones, with color screens and video games. Cell phones in the States are really obsolete compared to those in Japan.

Lonely Planet Japan guide
OK, this isn't part of Japan, but it's an integral part of my trip. I love Lonely Planet guides, they're indispensable, but I'm not so sure I'm pleased with the 2000 edition of the Japan guide. Despite the missing pizza fiasco, which I can just attribute to a misguided editor who fails to understand the cosmic importance of pizza, (there are really people like that, even in this day and age. I hear pizza hasn't caught on with the Flat Earth Society either) the guide just didn't seem all that clear in places.

Maybe it was just us, but we didn't get as much out of this guide as we usually do. When we get back, I'm going to start comparing the old and new edition to see if the older one was clearer.

And so wraps up my first trip to Japan. I say "first" because there will be another. I enjoyed our trip to Japan, but there is still so much that I feel I didn't see - the things that were important to me. I think I've got the shopping out of the way, now it's time to see the country. I don't know when, but I will.

If nothing else, I need to climb Fuji-San before it erupts. The papers indicated that seismologists had begun recording activity under Fuji in the last few months, a sign that the now-dormant volcano won't remain so forever.