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Written: Jun 09, 2003<br />Location: Kyoto, Japan
Japan
Simon Collins2006-05-24 11:54:17
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http://www.simon.collins.dsl.pipex.com
Written: Jun 09, 2003
Location: Kyoto, Japan
Hi All,
Only a few days and I’ll be back home in England. Getting quite excited about it although I know I’ll miss the travelling life.
This could well be my last travelogue entry after twelve months away.
I have spent the last week and a half in Japan. Culture shock hit in when I arrived. Japan was very different to other countries I had travelled in Asia. The biggest difference is the language. Very little English is spoken in Japan. There are some English signs but most are in Japanese script and there are three of these.
I spent the first few days with my friend Andy who teaches English in Karatsu, a small town near Fukuoka. Fukuoka is a fairly large Japanese city. It seemed very modern compared to Thailand. The pace of life is definitely faster more like the West than the East.
Pretty much all my impressions of the Japanese agreed with my expectations. They are very polite. Whenever you go into a restaurant, you are greeted with cries of arashaimase which means welcome. There is a lot of bowing, when greeting people. Even if they speak little English they will try and help you.
It is a male orientated culture in many ways. The salarymen go to work, for long hours then go to the bar after work. In Kyoto there is a whole area given over to men’s entertainment.
The women are very feminine and it has to be said very attractive. Femininity is not seen as something to be hidden as it is in the West.
We spent a day in Fukuoka hanging out, visiting a temple and an exhibition of paintings at an art gallery. The painting was not up to much my friend Andy studied fine art at University and said he could do better. There was a very good exhibition of photographs though showing the incredible colours of the different seasons in Japan. The cherry blossoms which bloom in spring
...
See photographs from:
Japan Gallery
