There are hundreds of guides for traveling through Japan. Before I started to write this, I asked myself “what can I share, that is a bit different from everything out there? How can I really express the beauty of what I experienced in Japan?”. Hopefully, it is through two stories that I want to share with you All.
What you’ll find next is both stories, which I hope will inspire you to visit both places, a what I hope will be an inspiration for you to jump on that plane.
I went to Japan in 2016 with my wife. We lived in Argentina at the time and we only had 2 weeks of paid time off, so we needed to make every day count. We planned our trip so we could get to spend at least 5 days in Tokyo, 2 days in Kyoto and one night in Osaka (as recommended by a friend). Before I keep going, just wanted to emphasize that just staying for the night in Osaka may have been one of the best decisions we took. Osaka has great nightlife but during the day, there’s nothing pretty exciting about the city (to my knowledge). Kyoto is just an hour away by train, and it is here where you will get to explore dozens of shrines, temples, castles and historic sites.
Back to the story. First stop: Tokyo. We got there somewhere around midday, but jet lag is real people. As soon as we got to the hotel and took a bath, the only viable option was to sleep. After we got up, somewhere around 10pm, we decided that we needed a couple of drinks, so we headed to The Golden Gai, without knowing we were going to have one of the most wonderful experiences while traveling. The Golden Gai is a set of narrow alleys and passageways, that has a lot of very small bars. When I say small, I mean it. Some of them can only have 6 or 8 people at a time. We went into the first one we saw, where two ladies, drink, laughing together with the bar’s owner.
He seemed surprised as he saw us walk in. Later in the night, he told us that while there were a lot of tourists that visited the Golden Gai every night, his bar was not one of the ones tourists were attracted to the most.
Any first, both him and our two bar buddies were very formal, but after a couple of drinks, my Google Translator would have been blushing if it was a person. The bar owner knew English, so he helped in translating most of the stuff and only when he was in a separate conversation, we used the translator. That night, we got to meet some wonderful, interesting people! To make the story short, there was a local artist, an ex-wrestler who sang ¨Quizás, quizás quizás¨ (by Celia Cruz), a guy and a girl who went to the bar every Friday, and his best friend: a retired man, who had accepted a part-time job, only because he did not have enough money to “grab some drinks every Friday.”
At some point, the ladies left, and it was only me, my wife, and the bartender. I don’t really remember if anyone else stopped by (we drank a lot), but I do remember that we stayed until it was time for him to close. After hours of laughing, shouting, drinking and eating (yes, he cooks for you on the spot), he made us promise that we were coming back before we left Japan. We knew it was going to be hard as we would be traveling around a lot, but still, it all seemed so magical, that it would have been irrational not to say yes.
Fast forward (skipping through Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka), we got to Tanabe, in Wakayama!
Japan is a wonderful place, in only 146,000 square miles, it offers some of the most unique and diverse spots for getting in touch with nature. If you want to see some nature, embedded with treasures from the imperial times, please go to Wakayama.
If you’re a planner, you can always spend a couple of hours researching and planning your trip. Just visit the Tanabe Tourism Bureau’s very complete website. If you like a more loose vacation, where you can just improvise as you go, you can just book an Airbnb in Tanabe, the capital for this province, which has wonderful beaches by the way, and make sure you go to the tourism office, right as you hop of the train in Tanabe Station and ask for advice!
So, we got to Tanabe. Stepped of the train and surprise! Our Airbnb host was waiting for us by the train station, The city is not big by any means. It would have been very easy to get to their place, but anyway, she was there. She was so embarrassed. She had tried to reach out to us and let us know that there were severe weather conditions hitting the area, and that she thought we could be spending our time somewhere else in the country. Thankfully, I had not checked my email and I didn’t get her message, because even though, heavy winds caused by a Typhoon in the Pacific Ocean did hit the shores of Wakayama, we ended up having some of the nicest days in our visit to Japan.
While we were walking to the house, we told her that we wanted to hike a couple of trails of the famous Kumano Kodo. She was so sad for us. She knew that we wouldn’t be able to make it in time before the winds hit but she did introduce us to her husband, who knows the areas pretty well, and could maybe point us to a quick trail, that we could make before shit hit the fan. Not only did he immediately hopped into his car with us, gave us walking sticks and ponchos. He drove us for an hour or so, stopped at a 7-eleven, offered to buy food for us, drove us to the start of a trail, explained some of the differences between Shinto and Buddhism, planned a route for us and told us exactly where and at what time did we needed to catch a bus back to Tanabe.
We followed his instructions carefully, making sure we did not take more time than needed while trekking some of the most beautiful mountain trails I’ve seen. Imagine walking through a forest, while all of a sudden… there’s a shrine, walking some more and getting to a narrow road, that leads to a small cemetery. And after 2 or 3 hours of walking, depending on your rhythm, getting to a ghost town (everyone was ready for the winds), where the bus picks you up in the bus station, exactly at the time the itinerary says it will be there. Not one minute late or one minute early… Exactly at the time.
We did not know how to pay for the ticket (I don’t remember why), so I opened my wallet and showed it to the bus driver. He laughed and pointed at my pockets. I took out my coins and showed them to him.
– Tanabe?
– Hai, Tanabe!
He took a couple of coins from my hand and pointed towards the back of the bus.
– Arigato!
– Hai!
Back in the Airbnb, we were told that the roads were closed, as a precaution for any landslides, and that the train services were suspended as well. Knowing that we might have to stay for a couple of days in the city, without being able to either go back to Tokyo or do some trekking, we made sure we googled everything we could about Tanabe, as for us to explore the next day and called it a night.
Tanabe is an amazing small city, with crazy good restaurants and a beautiful shoreline. Music is played in some avenues, so you can take a stroll and listen to music! People are warm and friendly, Even though there wasn’t a lot of people around as almost everyone was in the homes, just resting, knowing that the winds would be hitting hard that night, we got to interact with waiters, clerks and one or two people who randomly stopped us in the street just to make sure we were aware of the weather conditions.
So it was night and the winds hit hard! The house was shaking! All good though. We had already been told that it was expected. We saw a couple of movies, drank a couple os Sapporos and went to bed.
Back in Tokyo, after promising to each other that we would go back and spend at least 10 days in Wakayama, and spending a night in a Ryokan (Japanese traditional hotel) close to Tokyo, we kept our promise and went back to our new friend’s bar in The Golden Gai.
It was a Friday night, so the place was half full! 4 people, including the owner were there. He looked at us, and without much protocol, he offered us to seat. He was much less enthusiastic than the night we met. I even thought he didn’t knew who we were. But as we started to talk with him and the other guests, he referenced our conversation form the other day. Half an hour later, his best friend showed up, looked at my wife and I and called us by our names! This was the first time we were meeting the guy, and he knew our names. He told us all about how his buddy had told him all about us and how he really expected us to go back! In short, our friend was not un-impressed that we showed up. He just expected us to show up as we had promised.
Needless to say, we had an amazing night. We met some more wonderful people, that came in and out of the bar and made a friend, who owns the best bar in the world.
The people in these stories are what stuck with me about Japan. To the day, I still wonder how the people that we met in Japan, manage to live in such an exact culture, where precision is key, where time means everything, and still make the time to drive strangers through the mountains, just so they can make a 2-hour trek, and where bar owners that are not used to foreigners welcome a couple of westerners and make them feel like they’ve been friends forever.
The above are just the two moments and people experiences we had that stuck, but we had more… so many more…
Please, if you’re wanting to go to Japan, go! And get to meet some of the most wonderful people you’ll ever meet.