Day 71 - Matsumoto, Japan

We met up with a friend of mine, Iain, at the airport last Saturday so we've been here for over a week already. It was great to see him and to have another English person to speak to, plus he speaks and reads some Japanese which is proving very useful. After settling into the hotel and seeing a bit of Tokyo, we met up with a couple of Iain's ex-students (he used to teach English here) and the five of us drove up to Nikko. It was nice being driven around and seeing a bit more of the country but Etsuko was addicted to a song called "Carry On" which is by a Japanese boy band and insisted on playing it at least a dozen times there and back. Not content with just the song, she was also playing the DVD of it while driving and singing along to it. Scary.

Japan seems a bit more developed than both China and Korea and feels very much like London in so many ways. The big difference is the politeness of the people though. In London you're lucky to get so much as a smile from the tired looking receptionists in the shabby hotels, whereas here you are greeted with a long string of politeness followed by a pronounced bow at the end of every sentence. The first few days of this were really refreshing, but now it's almost comical. In every single shop, station or convenience store, and there are hundreds of them here, you are greeted by a cacophony of "Irasshaimaseeeeeeee" and for some reason it's said in a high-pitched, sort of school-girl like voice. Even by the men!

Again, like China and Korea, some of the food is really bizarre. I love trying it and I've become hopelessly addicted to curry filled donuts. It's an odd combination, and really shouldn't work, but it does and I love them. Having Iain here has reminded me just how much he eats, his appetite is insatiable and if he doesn't have a bowl of cold noodles or a banana cream pancake at least every couple of hours I'm sure he would implode. Let's see how long he can keep it up. It's odd to see bags of octopus tentacles between the Green-tea flavoured Kit-Kats and the Pringles in a supermarket but the initial shock has worn off now. I might even try some.

We've been making great use of our Japanese Rail passes and have covered hundreds of miles darting around from one place to another. It's a brilliant way to see the country but I guess it must annoy the locals who aren't allowed to buy them as they're only available to tourists. The trains are a real pleasure to use; they are always spot-on with their timing and are spotlessly clean. Even the little trolley-dollies moving up and down trying to sell us burnt barley tea and wasabi coated squid do a little bow on entering or leaving the carriage. I still get a kick out of seeing it but the locals must be immune because they don't even look up from their bento boxes. I was watching a food program on the TV this morning which is a bit like Saturday Kitchen, only there was very little cooking being done and the presenter was snipping bits off of a live squid and eagerly lifting the still twitching cephalopod parts to his mouth with his chopsticks. It was an education.

Matsumoto feels like quite a young town even though we've only just arrived and it's weird the way the young people pick up on particular looks. It's almost like they've chosen which particular type of fashion they're going to follow and have bought the manual on it. They follow it to the letter but in some cases it gets slightly lost in the translation. We saw one group of Rockabillies who had taken the hair thing to an extreme level and another girl that had gone for the sixties look. It's fascinating to watch, but you see all these groups of little clones wandering around dressed in exactly the same thing.

Now we're in Matsumoto, quite near to the Japanese Alps which we've bought some bus tickets for. We're hoping to see them tomorrow, but I doubt there's any rush, they're not going anywhere.