Natasha's experience in Japan - Part 1 (First Impression)

The journey started the day we arrived, how packed was the airport, how efficient the shuttle bus system was and of course, how fast the Japanese can walk, all these tiny little things printed in my mind. Apparently this is not new to me as I kinda knew this thru the readings and Japanese movie.

I remember there’s a dry garden nearby right after the bus moving. In Japan, the dry garden has nothing to do with flowers or grasses, not even a tree. I started to notice, the dry garden is actually consists of rocks and sand. The rocks are placed in the way of a picture to represent mountain and sea. This is something new to me.


I don’t know about others, but to me, Japanese Kanji are somehow look familiar to myself as if I knew them long time ago. Although I don’t have a clue how it supposed to pronounce, common sense does tell a lot. Duncan always gives me a clue and pronounces the wordings which I really have no idea to recognize at. As known, most of the Japanese Kanji are real closed to Chinese wordings. Unless it spells in Chinese wordings, otherwise I will usually prefer approaching the passer-by for a correct direction.




To be frank, I was worried to have this trip all alone by myself during day time most of the day when Duncan was still on his work schedule. How to recognize Shinkansen station, which direction to follow when you have all the Japanese sign boards right in front of you, how to ask simple question to a Japanese, how to order food and of course how to get back to your hotel. I have all doubts that if I manage to handle all these.





People in Japan like walking very much. No matter how far the destination is, to them, walking is like daily activity. Unless the destination is miles away, most of the time, you will see busy street with busy people. At the zebra-crossing, most of the time it can be a whole bunch of people came from nowhere, waiting to cross the street. Once the light turns green, that is the most impressive scene I’ve ever seen :)


Japanese people usually wake up early. Most of them rushing to catch an early train, but some of them do catch the right timing to get to the office. It’s not surprised to have no way to squeeze in between the line when you’re in the crowd. I don’t understand why all these people rushing to work at the same time, squeezing in between at the same time. No doubts, I hardly walked in between them as I was heading the station and these people were heading to the office instead. I remembered it was 8 o’clock in the morning.

The most important thing in Japan is “Punctuality”. As known, Japanese is the most punctual creature amongst others. You won’t be surprised you’re at the wrong train with only a few seconds difference from the train schedule. We experienced once. That was in Nikko. After a tiring trip in Nikko, initially we planned to go to Onsen (bath) before we left to Tokyo. Due to the destination is quite a distance from Nikko, we had to make sure we were at the station earlier before the train departs. We got to the station 2 minutes earlier and saw the train was already waiting. We got into the train and ended up we're at the wrong station after an hour. This is ridiculous but taught us a good lesson too. However, there’s another couple from Korea made the same mistake. So, we had to call off our plan and head back to Tokyo.



Streets in Japan are clean. You can hardly find a piece of paper on the streets in Japan. Not only how systematic the traffic is but the cleanliness of the environment did impress me a lot. I also noticed that beautiful decorations, graphics or statues are everywhere when you walked along the streets.






(From left to right)
Ground Decoration along the way to Nagoya Castle. It explains how the four seasons in Nagoya.
Giant Fish Memorial & Museum in Kobe
Giant Spider - Landmark in Roppongi Hill
Bronze Statue along the way to Oasis 21, Nagoya

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To be continued....