Where Next? Travel with Kristen and Carol
Where Next? Travel with Kristen and Carol
Japan - Travel with Kristin
We're visiting with a repeat guest, Kristin, about her three month stay in Tokyo, Japan.
You'll learn about daily life in Japan, must see destinations, and the best time of year to go!
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Hosts
Carol Springer: https://www.instagram.com/carol.work.life
Kristen: https://www.instagram.com/team_wake/
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Hi, welcome to our podcast when Next Travel with Kristen and Carol. I am Kristen and I am Carol, and we're two long-term friends with a passion for travel and adventure.
Speaker 2:Each episode, we interview people around the globe to help us decide where to go next.
Speaker 1:In today's episode, we are meeting with Kristen, a return guest who previously shared her stories about the Netherlands and France, and now we will hear about her three-month-long stay in Tokyo, japan. Enjoy.
Speaker 2:Welcome, kristen. We're so excited to have you again. Yay, well, I'm thrilled to be here, all right, and so today we're talking about Japan. Right, in your experience you lived there. For how long I lived there? For three months I lived in Tokyo.
Speaker 2:My ex-husband is a retired professor of fluid mechanics and he still has lots of colleagues in Japan, and for years he had dreamed of going to Japan to collaborate with some of his colleagues. And along came me to collaborate with some of his colleagues, and along came me, the third wife, who was definitely game. So we and we only had I had two stepchildren, but their mother was fine keeping them for three months, and and our daughter was 18 months old, so it seemed like the right time. So we took our child, we went to Tokyo for three months and, to tell you the truth, to kind of get ready for this, because it was a little while ago, I opened up my journals for when we were there. And for a second, because we've heard from other people as well how great it is to journal one to help you get through the challenges of maybe traveling so much, and also to remember a little historical remembrance for you that.
Speaker 1:I always journal, really okay. I still even home, I still journal too. Okay, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:I try to. I kind of ebb and flow with it. But, um, so it was in May and the first thing I wrote was I need to write about our trip and stay before it gets better. And I forget how miserably it began. And that was a challenge at the beginning it was.
Speaker 2:It was, we were totally traveling with a year and a half a child, who was a year and a half old for three months. You know, I wasn't sure, so I took all of her toys with us and we were. We had lots of wooden puzzles, and we had lots of wooden puzzles, which is just insane. And then my husband, for example, decided he had to take Dutch coffee. We had five kilos of coffee. I mean, really just ridiculous things. We were 50 kilos overweight, and so to the point that when they told us we'd have to pay 3,000 euros, my husband said, well, we're not doing it, we're just going right home. And I said no, no, no, no, no, no, no, we can do this. So we? So we negotiated it down to 900 euros and we got on the plane and left. You know, 11 hour plane ride, not easy, but still fun, again with a 18 month old.
Speaker 2:Was that the Netherlands? Yes, we were living in the net. I was living in the Netherlands and we get there and we were lucky because the colleagues at the university got us all set up in a residence hotel and the residence hotel turned out to be a great experience. I'll talk about that in a moment. But there was an American on hand who was a postdoc student, John Allen from Washington State, and he said oh, that's great, I'll take you out for dinner Now we've just gotten off the plane, but we go out for dinner and once again, let me look in my little. I made a diagram of what we ate. So we ordered fish and stuff and of course, my daughter ate Pepperidge farm goldfish. That was all we whatever. She did not, she was not interested in the raw fish, and we ordered different kinds of fish and one of the fish, well, it was still moving.
Speaker 2:It was still moving and I have this diagram of it where you see this head and it's just going and then gradually it stopped moving and we ate it and you know it was okay.
Speaker 1:so um, do you notice a different freshness?
Speaker 2:because it was so fresh I think at that moment we didn't notice it, but but I will say we just had fabulous fish. You know it was. Yeah, we ate so much fish, so much sushi, so many strange fish products, Fish products.
Speaker 1:What do you categorize as a fish product?
Speaker 2:Oh well, you know also roe. You know fish, fish, eggs, stuff like that, and then just parts of fish that you don't really know what you're eating but they're arranged decoratively on a plate. And you know one in Tokyo. So we did that.
Speaker 2:So then, so where we lived in this residence hotel, it was owned by a woman who was Japanese, born a week apart from my mother. They were both born at the end of World War II, which was kind of interesting, and this woman came from a very wealthy family, because the father was in air conditioning and he had brought air conditioning to Japan with GE in the 1960s A popular man Now. So Shizue was the oldest daughter. Each daughter was given a residence hotel and that was how they were expected to earn their living. And so through Shizue, I learned a lot about just about what it's like to be a woman in Japan and also how important it is to have your name live on. And because this man had three daughters, his name wasn't going to live on, so he convinced the husband of Shizue, so the firstborn daughter to take his name and, uh, and so his name would go on. Oh, so when you're talking about residence in, are you? Because I'm thinking of like?
Speaker 2:the hotel hotel chain here in the states, or are you talking about a hotel that's part of, like a resident, or is it? Was it really the residence? It was really the, the kind of the old style where it's, uh, it was an apartment building with about eight floors and you went there for a short, short-term stay, long-term, short-term stays well for people like us who were just going for three months not quite a hotel, but also not a real apartment, and we were about like at the fourth floor and there were about eight or nine floors, and so we never saw the sun. The first week we were there, it was in may, it was very rainy and it really felt and then, and when we would go outside, there were wires just everywhere. It was not the big skyscraper part of Japan, it was. Yeah, it wouldn't have been nine floors, it must have been like seven floors, six or seven floors and wires everywhere and it kind of felt like a scene from Blade Runner.
Speaker 2:It just everything was kind of gray and a little gloomy and of course we didn't speak the language. So sometimes I ordered, I went grocery shopping and brought home like fabric softener when I thought it was dish detergent. I would do that, yeah, cause we really we tried to live there. I mean, we did live there. I had to go to grocery stores and really nothing was in English nothing, nothing, nothing. And I didn't speak any Japanese and as someone who speaks a few languages, that was, I hadn't been in that situation in a long time. And you know how it is. If you speak English, most people have some kind of rudimentary knowledge. But it was all pictures and me trying to say Konnichiwa, konnichiwa, hi, hi, and that was funny.
Speaker 1:I went to South Korea with my kids this summer and took them and just because it's symbols, it's not letters and you can't, you know that also throws it off, but just not knowing what things are. And nowadays, of course, we went this summer, we've got Google Translate on our phones, which is great. And then they see my blonde hair and they're like, oh, she needs help. So at the grocery store or whatever, they just come up to me and help me and it was like thank you, and maybe you saw this too in South Korea.
Speaker 2:It really, I mean, there are so many different social codes than what we have. That was fascinating. I found there was much more of a difference between kind of the like the public face. There's like a mask, a public mask that you wear when you're outside and you're with people you don't know very well, but then at home there's a different mask, which of course, we rarely saw. But but there was a very clear distinction between just between how people behave in public and then how people behave in the confines of their own home, much more so than the united states, I think. In the united states, where there's less of a divide, so there's more about like being super polite In the public mask, would you say yes?
Speaker 2:I would say yeah, there's a, you would never disagree. The Japanese have this reputation that they never say no. They just say yes to everything. Even when they mean no because you don't say no. I've seen that in India, especially in working with offshore teams, they'll say yeah, yeah, I'm like can you really do it? Don't tell me you can do it if you can't, because then I'm stuck, yeah, having really do it. Don't tell me you can do it. If you can't, because then I'm stuck, yeah, having to tell the client why not right, so I didn't know that japan was like that.
Speaker 2:So interesting, definitely. And then did they have the thing about, uh, like trash? We talked to someone recently and they said there's no place to put the trash well, that's south korea.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, that was my.
Speaker 2:My experience in south korea, there was no trash cans like everyone was responsible for their own trash, and that might've been, that might be more recent due to, you know, climate change and everything. So I don't remember. I really don't remember trash anywhere. It was very clean. It was also I don't think it was the, it wasn't the world cup, but it must have been the european cup.
Speaker 2:So you know, and being with a dutch football fan, so my husband would get up in the middle of the night and, like at three in the morning, set the alarm to go to a bar so he could watch the game, and when he would go there would be businessmen sleeping in the street. They were like their head was rested on their attache case, but they probably had drunk too much and they weren't quite able to go home. So they just lay down on the ground and I mean it was not a homeless thing, it was really a I can't drive my car thing and there was no way that day. And so there is no way I would lie down on the street in my town in France. There would be too much dog poop and, number two, you would just be afraid that somebody, you would wake up and your phone wouldn't be on you anymore.
Speaker 2:So the notion of cleanliness and security, very, very different from what we have in the United States and in Europe. Even the homeless people, people beautifully well kept. There were these tents all over. We lived close to the major city park in Tokyo called Ueno Park and U-E-N-O Ueno Park, which means at the top of the hill.
Speaker 1:Ueno U-E-N-O.
Speaker 2:U-E-N-O. Is that like the central park of Tokyo? Exactly Yep N-O. U-e-n-o. Is that like?
Speaker 2:the central park of Tokyo, exactly. Yep, it is one of the biggest city parks in the world and there's a zoo. We were there for the big bonsai competition stuff like that. It's where you go for the cherry blossoms and there was an area where homeless people had been given tents by the government, um, and if you walked there in the morning, people were out there with their broom and they were sweeping up their their area, it, it it was. There was a certain amount of dignity also. I mean, I'm not trying to romanticize being homeless, I don't think anyone ever likes that, but it just looked a little nicer. Oh, okay, yeah, that's interesting. I always thought of homelessness is only like a, a us problem, like we talked to someone in um, costa rica. She's like no, we don't have that problem. I'm sure there's some, but not to the extent like we have in america. And that is a big city, so makes sense and very expensive city, right, right, uh, yes, very expensive but, it was a while ago so probably don't remember like the dollar won't make any sense.
Speaker 2:But like relative, did you find it was comparable to like what you were paying for meals and housing in the netherlands? Or do you remember being like culture shocked, or do you?
Speaker 2:well, we lived in a relatively like kind of a mid-sized town in the Netherlands, so it was much more expensive. Yes, because I remember my husband would get an egg salad sandwich every morning and it was some kind of exorbitant price. So, but again, sometimes when you're in a country like that, just for a three month stay, it's kind of monopoly money. You, we didn't really know and then, and we weren't really getting paid until the end. But going to going out for a drink, for example, was much more expensive than it was. It was similar probably to san francisco or paris or other major cities, so it was around the time that lost in translation, had come out. So, yeah, so there were lots of people making pilgrimages to well, to the hotel where they were and to a place at the very top there was a bar where you could go and look out over Tokyo. Okay, so you saw that as well? Yes, exactly, and even in my diary I can see.
Speaker 2:Oh, there were little skirmishes here and there, but one of the things that we agreed on as we were separating is that this was after having kids. This was really our best experience that we ever had together and and we would do it again in a heartbeat. You know the idea that every day, we were just learning new things, meeting new people and finding ourselves in very challenging situations, yet in a fairly controlled environment. I think that's what South Korea would appeal to me also, kristen, but maybe not other parts of Asia that are more wild, other parts of Asia that are more wild, cause, here it is still. It's very it's, it's, it's very precise, it's very. I really I liked that. You know, it felt like a challenge. Yet I wasn't dirty, I was. I knew my water was clean. You know that type of thing, right? Yes, that is big For sure.
Speaker 1:So did you guys rent as you? You had the residential part of place. That's where we lived, and was it pretty reasonable and price? I was curious to, for if someone wanted to live there or do something like that, it didn't break the bank, it was pretty reasonable, it was okay was okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and again there was a postdoc student who was staying there. So I'm pretty sure that's why the university put us I mean helped us find that place and helped, uh, yeah, I don't, yeah, so so that was reasonable. It was a good solution actually for us yeah, I missed this in the beginning.
Speaker 1:were you there for the purpose of the university for the three months?
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, so my husband was working there for three months. I worked for a newspaper in the Netherlands at the time and I still had some articles I was working on, and this will show you the difference between 2004 and now. Again in my diary it says I had to go to the university to finish writing my newspaper and send it because we still can't figure out how to get email connected.
Speaker 2:I mean it was a little primitive then. Not everything was hyper-connected like that, so I was doing translation work when my child was sleeping and I'm writing articles and my husband was doing research.
Speaker 2:Translation what from net, from the Netherlands, from the technical Institute, there was a catalog they needed. It was like a 200 page catalog that they needed to have translated. So I actually found a student in the Netherlands who translated it and then I just edited his translating and it turned out to be a good fit. And what are some of the daily customs? Do they eat early, go to bed early? Are they European-like where they stay up late or never go to bed? Well, yeah, there were people who didn't.
Speaker 2:One thing that was interesting is that there was a big dichotomy between men and women, and if you go out at night, there were groups of men and there weren't really women. Women often went out during the day. That was it. If you went to any cultural events, women especially, you didn't see little couples doing things. You always saw these groups of men and women, and at night a lot of men went to karaoke bars. You know exactly like what you imagine. So there were all these kind of private karaoke clubs and that was the huge advantage of living in this residence hotel with Shizue, because she was a very independent woman and when my mother came to visit she would take us out every night and she had her own karaoke bar where she was welcome, which was not, and she was welcome there because the owner of the karaoke bar was also a woman, and all of that was very unusual.
Speaker 2:It's a fairly male dominated society which is changing. But, but when I was there, the women I met who had children had stopped working as soon as they had children. So so the women still didn't have the same role. But so you would go to your karaoke bar and get a bottle of something, whatever alcohol, and then your bottle is kept there. So you, you know, you have a drink or two, and then when you go back a couple of days later, your bottle is still there. It's under, you know, she's way up a and and that was, that was her bottle. So, okay, yeah, People go out for dinner also, but no, but the hours were, I would say, like they were kind of, let's say, normal for Americans.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah.
Speaker 2:Cool. All the kids go to school 8 to 3 or whatever. 8 to 3, yes, and once they start going to school, it's intense, though there's a lot of pressure on kids. Again, this nice woman she's away. Her grandson was 3 and his mother told me that no, no, no. I'm keeping him at home as long as I can Because I know when he goes to school everything will change and he'll feel pressure and it's a society with a lot of pressure. We talked to other Europeans and Americans who loved working there and considered staying there, but it was always the argument of the kids that they didn't want to submit their kids to this high pressure system. Yeah, the challenge of speaking.
Speaker 2:Needing to learn a new language most likely, unless there's but I think a lot of people who are there long-term relish the idea of speaking another language. So so yeah, People who are there long-term relish.
Speaker 2:The idea of speaking another language, oh okay, so, yeah. So we also found what was fun was whenever we would travel somewhere just for a day, a little day trip, and especially when my mother was there. We did a lot of fun things. And there would be other little children, which my mother loved. She was a special ed teacher for small children but as soon as the Japanese people came they would shoo away the other Japanese kids so they could take pictures of my daughter. So there was this little blonde-haired, blue-eyed child who was in every photo album of Japan, apparently pan, apparently um and uh. But really the fact that they would then shoo away, they didn't want the japanese kids in there too. So so that was uh, that was funny and was getting right.
Speaker 2:I'm assuming no one has cars in tokyo, it's just all public transportation. Well, that is really interesting. That was something I learned that if you buy a car you have to show proof of a garage where you put it. Interesting, I know, isn't that brilliant? I keep trying to push that on my town, where I'm a town counselor here in France, saying you know, what we could do, but nobody's buying that yet.
Speaker 2:But it's so logical when you have a very densely populated urban area. Okay, and what time of year did you go? We went in May, so it was a very rainy season May, june and July. Okay, so is there a certain time of year that is best for tourists to go spend a month at a time there? Well, a lot of people like to go in the spring because of the cherry blossoms. Okay, unfortunately, with climate change, the cherry blossoms came like two weeks early this year, so you can't bank on that anymore. But well, like in Washington, you know they come earlier and earlier. So, but still, the spring is a nice time.
Speaker 2:And is Tokyo? What would the weather like compared to like a US city? Is it kind of New York-ish where you have all four seasons or more California? I think it's a little more California in that it doesn't get very, very cold and it was unbearably hot and humid. So, okay, so that's not like California, it's like the best and the worst of both coasts, or maybe not the states, or like DC or something. It never really gets that cold in dc, right, but it does get hot and humid in the summer, but still there is that kind of that. You know that asian rainy season in the summer there was, there was a lot of grayness and it was it rained a lot there. That was where I discovered these beautiful not beautiful, but these clear plastic umbrellas. Every, every store had clear plastic umbrellas, because wherever you were, suddenly it could start to rain. So, um, and is it tokyo? I need to get a map. How far is that from the water? It's not that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not that far but you don't really, oh that yeah, it's not that far, but you don't really.
Speaker 2:Oh, oh, yeah, well, it's on some kind of a bay, so kind of kind of New York. Oh, of course there was water there. Yes, of course, it just wasn't where we were. But yeah, now that I'm thinking of it, yes, the really the more modern area was there's water there. There's, yeah, there's a big port, it's all like my map and it's all in Japanese.
Speaker 2:I've never seen maps, have that in multiple languages before. That's interesting and I'm trying to find a map. But uh, do you remember what city you lived in? It's been a while, ha ha ha. Oh, yeah, we lived in what we lived. Yes, yes, yes, we were in Tokyo. We visited other cities Also. We went to Yokohama, we went to Kyoto, we went to Nikko, which was where we were in an earthquake. That was exciting. But yeah, you're in california, kristin, you have earthquakes all the time oh, yeah, and it was fine.
Speaker 1:A little dance, yeah, and then I see a huge green called chiyodo city.
Speaker 2:Looks like it's like in tokyo, but I don't know if that's just like, if that's actually a different city. All right, let me also look. Yeah, so I remember where we are. Uh, it's a very densely populated area, so the cities kind of run into each other okay, and then that part of japan. Yes, you mentioned that. I was thinking that was going to be the big um. Is it called the, the big park that you mentioned? Ah, okay, no, no, no, but the edu. Yeah, there's also edu.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, yes, but that's not, you know, you know, we know, yeah, we know, mark, we know. But, yeah, if you look at it, you can see yokohama, which is a nice do a good hour by a very fast train, but it's really contiguous, even though it's a completely different city. So, did you guys have a car or no? No, we didn't. No, no, no, thank goodness. How did you? Did you mainly just stay in, like Tokyo proper, and you walked everywhere? Or when you took these day trips and you took trains? Is a train system? Yeah, we took trains, it was very well. You've I'm sure you've heard of this the, the bullet train. The bullet train is the fastest train, one of the fastest trains in the world. It was the model for the tgv in france, the. You know the, the high speed train here, and the bullet train also. They are also, they're constantly building them in other countries.
Speaker 2:But famously, train conductors commit suicide when their train does not arrive on time. I know it's a very again, it's Switzerland maybe, but no, but there's a high incidence of suicide, a kind of suicide from out of pride, out of respect for certain traditions. Right away, as soon as it's not on time, or like that night, they go home and go. Oh, I failed. That's a good question. The train from London to Paris that was, I mean, two hours, so I don't know if that was. Yeah, it's a beautiful train system, but it is. It prides itself on this precision and yes, and yeah, if you it. It was like if trains were five minutes late, something like that, but anything over three minutes late and people resigned five minutes late, it was suicide, it was a dishonor for your train to Rodney and do these trains go throughout the country or just the Tokyo metro area?
Speaker 2:No, throughout the country, but it's, of course, different tracks than other trains. Again, just like here in France with the TGV, it's a different track system. And did you explore? Is there some cities that you've got to go to, kobe or Osaka, or up to the mountains? Is there any like must? Yes, so we were in Tokyo. Then we went down to Kyoto. Okay, and Kyoto, I can't find it now. Ah, kyoto, okay, and Kyoto is where, when you think about temples and really old architecture, that's where you go. Kyoto there was a healthy mix of the old and new, of people walking around in more traditional Japanese dress, in kimonos, and again, the architecture was still these beautiful old temples. And outside there we went to visit another colleague, so he took us to a bamboo forest. Oh, nice, yeah, it's hard to imagine just how beautiful. Just one kind of wood everywhere, and there were different kinds of bamboo. This was the beautiful bamboo. Since then I've learned there is less beautiful bamboo.
Speaker 2:Oh, really, okay, and then, and then temples and um a real a real respect for history and, of course, just like when you go to any country, that very a source of you know, a sense of pride to show us this, these historical temples and nature. And were you there for any major holidays? There were always holidays. We were always walking out of the street and there was a parade of scantily clad men carrying the shrines. We didn't always understand it, but we lived very close to a shrine called the Yoshima Tenji. We lived very close to a shrine called the Yoshima Tenji. Tenji is a kind of shrine in the Shinto religion and it was where school children or students went to put a wish, to tie a little wish onto a big tree. That was there. So there were always people there. But again, we just happened to be there for this big festival. And when we were Kyoto, there was also a big festival which I wish I remembered the name of it, but people dressed in kimonos, big floats in the shapes of dragons, and you know it was. It was fascinating, very cool, okay, and then what are some of the kind of popular meals there other than, like the fish, rice, breakfast, lunch and dinner? Well, and noodles. So they have lots of kind of noodle cafes with the sobu noodles and udon noodles and ramen noodles. Noodles and udon noodles and ramen noodles no, but lots of noodles, which, again, when you have a kid who is a year and a half, that was the easiest thing. So we found a great noodle place that had an outdoor terrace so she could just let the noodles fall where they fell, but again, really excellent noodles. We also used chopsticks. We already knew how to use chopsticks so we used chopsticks for all of our meals.
Speaker 2:We let's see to buy food. What we did is we went to. There were big department stores. The department stores were about eight stories high. The top floor was always some kind of children's play area where there were big, very colorful plastic things that you put change into and so children would play there. And then as you went down, there were traditional menswear and where you buy appliances. And as you go down then the ground floor was a little like an indoor market with all kinds of delicatessens, so you could buy really expensive delicacies.
Speaker 2:Or it was the only place where we could buy peanut butter for my child, who is still a picky eater. She lived on peanut butter noodles, hot dogs, which we found there, hot dogs which were already wrapped in a little croissant and then she ate salmon. But that is where we would go to get little bento boxes and you probably know what a bento box is because now they think they're more common in the United States and in Europe. But that was where I had them for the first time. So it was a nice little meal of maybe some fish and some rice and then maybe a little green kind of bean pods and then a little lychee, some kind of moshi or lychee dessert, and that was that was also very common. That and, and what I knew if I went there is that somebody I would be able to communicate with people because I had a rudimentary knowledge of English for tourists and for people like me.
Speaker 1:When you said green pods, I'm assuming, or also like edamame. Yes, that was it, I was yeah, yeah, big favorites with my kids, although my kids won't eat um fish, so you have a lake up my fish noodles, mac and cheese, peanut butter is an option chicken and pretty much still to this day, and they're like teenagers yeah, no, my daughter's 20, and that's uh.
Speaker 2:You know, those are still her favorites my daughter's 18. Yeah, that, uh, it's funny. You take these kids all over the world and you hope that some of that rubs off on them.
Speaker 1:But oh, I absolutely understand. I, I noticed, um, well, it's interesting, I, I wake surf and we had a lot of folks from Japan that came and we have our worlds next year in Japan, and I had also heard and learned, also like Okinawa, I dated a Marine in college and it's very tropical and beautiful. There's a lot of areas that are warm and the climate is as such, I'm assuming and surf. I think there's also some surf out there too, I believe I would think so.
Speaker 2:I mean there are a lot of. I would think so. There are a lot of waves, yeah I remember we talked to someone once.
Speaker 2:They said way down, like the southern part, there's some islands are very like hawaii like so I can imagine, as you get closer to the equator, one of the really interesting things that we did that I would recommend to anyone. We went to, to the peninsula. I want to say we went to the shiva peninsula and what we did is we went called a ryokan. A ryokan which is r-y-o-k-a-n? Um. A ryokan is like a kind of spa hotel and it was. It looked like it was built of all these natural materials and in the middle of this very lush kind of jungle like environment, and there were all sorts of little rooms that were connected. First of all, you arrive, you take off your shoes. You don't see them again until you leave. They give you your first little pair of slippers and then they escorted us to our suite, where there were three different rooms with the tatami mats everywhere, but we had our person who took care of us, and so we told them where we wanted to go and we they took us to these hot springs that were in the Rio Con and that is part of the Rio Con, so. But we were separated because men and women were separated, but they were natural springs, and so the you were in the kind of stone bath which was inside but we could go outside in that same body of water. It was really fascinating.
Speaker 2:And then and then the meals were brought to our room. They were brought with these trays and we sat there and they explained to us what there was, but I don't remember a single thing, except it was so beautiful. But we ate fish for three meals breakfast, lunch and dinner. It was always fish, which, after a little while, you well, whatever, we have our own palates and we're not used to having 10 different fish dishes for breakfast, fish dishes for breakfast.
Speaker 2:And when it came time to sleep, then this man who was kind of assigned to us, he brought us our futons and so then we slept on our futons and then in the morning we went back out to our spa again and he took away the futons and it was, it was really it was. It was just pure luxury for three days. And when we would walk around and there were these little streams with little koi in them, it was really beautiful. And it turns out we were walking down one of the hallways and we saw pictures of the Dutch queen and her husband and her son, willem-alexander, who's now the king, and that was where they had stayed when they went to Japan. Okay, and so was this all in a specific town, or this is just a? This real con that's the town it's in, or is that just more like a? No?
Speaker 2:the Rio con is the sort, it's the name for this sort of hotel spa with a natural spring.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, very nice Okay.
Speaker 2:And now I wish I remember exactly where it was. But if I think of it, I will tell you.
Speaker 1:Kristen, I was going to go to some of the rapid fire questions. No, it sounds like it's a. A is a really neat experience and sounds like everyone was really nice as well. I'm assuming everyone's very courteous and I'm assuming the climate where you were was different than the tropics, but it was kind of more just normal. And did they get?
Speaker 2:well, except still very humid. That was the only thing, and it was very under. It was easy to understand why someone could make a fortune in air conditioning.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well. And then I also thought I think didn't we have the Olympics or something? There's skiing, there there's epic.
Speaker 2:In Hokkaido, yes, in Northern, yes, and that's totally different. It's a very long archipelago, I guess you would call it. Call it with. I think that between the islands that you talk about in the south, which are very southeast asian, tropical and lush, compared to hokkaido, which which is where everybody goes skiing, yeah, that's, there's a lot of variety for this for one small place. So did you meet people that end up like moving there permanently? Or did you ever meet any people that like went there and then they said, okay, this is so amazing, I'm gonna stay, or do most people just, I mean, of your friends, was it just short?
Speaker 1:no, that's interesting.
Speaker 2:Okay, of the people we met there, no, they were all there short term, you know. The longest was about two years. Since then I've run into friends who went and taught english in j, that type of thing. Or I have a friend who worked as a journalist in Japan, but the maximum was about four or five years and then, yeah, I don't know why people don't necessarily manage to stay there much longer. It's pretty far from the US. That usually seems like when we talk to a lot of people, that you know, it's just too far to go back and forth.
Speaker 2:People want to come back to their family, it's hard to get a sense of community. Perhaps that seems to be a common theme we hear. I think the sense of community has a lot to do with it. I think it's important to remember that Japan was isolated. Until the 1850s they didn't have trade with any European countries except the Netherlands. The Netherlands was the only country that they allowed ships to come close and do some commerce with them. But really there was a self-isolation policy and there's still a lot of discrimination towards other Asians, koreans, who come to work and do the ugly jobs in Japan. They are not considered of the same caliber person as Japanese people would be, and even though we're there and even though there's this fascination with keeping their skin very white every little child wore a hat all the time, women often had umbrellas, parasols to keep sun off of their face they had this kind of fascination with being as white as possible also.
Speaker 2:All right, so onto our rapid fire questions. So religion is I always hear it's a little unique. Do a lot of people identify themselves as being religious at all, or is it? You know? You mentioned, I think, shinto, shinto, buddhist? Yeah, people mention it, but they don't. I never saw anyone. It's it's more cultural, it's uh, this is kind of part of who we are, but I didn't see people that you would call you know, fiercely devoted, practicing um yeah okay and we talked to quite a bit about food already.
Speaker 2:But, um, what would you? What would be a normal breakfast there? Normal breakfast? Um, I think that for japanese people it's, it's a kind of fish I don't know which fish it would be maybe and and coffee or tea.
Speaker 2:I always think of tea, but two very separate things. Because the tea there's an entire ceremony there are. There is this you know, this special green tea, that which is probably sacrilegious to call it so simply green tea, but there's a whole ceremony. You can take lessons to learn how to do it properly. It is not for the meek, it is something that you have to learn. Whereas anyone can go get coffee oh, I know green sencha tea, I like a lot Whereas anyone can go get coffee oh, I know Green.
Speaker 1:Sencha tea I like a lot. I've heard about that quite a bit.
Speaker 2:And then let's see here Music. Did you see any like or hear any? You know specific cultural music that you recall Is that? No, the music that we heard was more associated with parades, with, you know, with large kind of festival gatherings, so that was a different kind of music. Was like instruments, like horn instruments or or no more. Um, no, lots of drums, lots of percussion. Oh, yes, that's what in epcot center, japanese reference and my cultural reference. Hey, I've been a lot of Americans. That's how they see the world. Epcot Center, closest place you can surf. Probably doesn't sound like you were too in touch with that community there, but I cannot imagine that it would be difficult to surf there. There is such a long coastline. Good surfing areas for Kristen, I think. We know the money starts with a Y right, the yen. Yes, exactly, all right. Well, thank you very much for giving us the lowdown and what it was like to to live in Tokyo and some hints to some must-dos while we're there.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, thank you for thinking of me again and yeah, so it was fun to revisit this fabulous moment in my life. And really I would say to anyone if an employer or if you have an opportunity to go somewhere with your work for three months, it doesn't matter if it's complicated, complications, you can work them out. Just seize that experience.
Speaker 1:Yes, absolutely Remote work. Yes, All right, okay, well, have a great weekend, kristen. Thank you so much. All right, I'll be in touch.
Speaker 2:Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed the podcast, can you please take a second and do a quick follow of the show and rate us in your podcast app and if you have a minute, we would really appreciate a review.
Speaker 1:Following and rating is the best way to support us. If you're on Instagram, let's connect. We're at where next podcast. Thanks again.
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