Crumbling ruins was a reality for Japan during and shortly after WWII. The entire country was essentially levelled by Allied bombing, and conventional firebombing caused more death and destruction than the atomic bombings. People see Japan as this thriving modern country now, but when you speak to people who grew up in post-war Japan, even people of our parents' generation... they remember when Japan was a ruined craphole. I once spoke to a friend's mother who recently visited a third world country. I asked her what it was like and she said that it reminded her of Japan during her childhood. So yeah, post-war Japan was literally like a messed up third world country. Sorry if this doesn't match your personal vision of what Japan is, but this is the reality that people had to actually live through.
You better stay away from the Touhoku region if you don't want to look at currently devastated parts of Japan.
Dude, Japan is usually GREAT for shopping for current TakaraTOMY releases! And if you're lucky, you can get them at cheaper prices than you would find online, especially if you shop in a place that exempts tax when you show a foreign passport and/or if you go with a local friend who has a discount card and you stack that discount!Originally Posted by DELTAprime
Or you go to Hero Gangu and haggle with the manager and continue that discount stack!
* Tokyo Disneyland
* Osaka Kaiyukan (it has captive whale sharks!)
* Tokyo Tower
* Kyoto Movie Theatre Theme Park
* Akihabara Gundam Café
* Universal Studios
* Hakone (Mt Fuji, Lake Ashi etc.)
* Arashiyama, Kyoto - has the Monkey Mountain and Sagano Bamboo Forest
* Nijo Castle in Kyoto and Imperial Palace in Tokyo
* Osaka Castle
* Studio Ghibli Museum, Tokyo
I would also recommend visiting at least 3 temples for reasons that have nothing to do with religion:
+ Kinkakuji
+ Todaiji
+ Kiyomizudera
First of all, the architecture on these structures is amazing. Kinkakuji is a temple plated in gold and Todaiji is the largest ancient wooden structure in the world. Kiyomizudera is worth visiting purely for the magnificent view that you get of Kyoto from that position. Plus you'll lose 5kg walking up there.
Although I find my most memorable experiences are necessarily places that I've visited, but the people that I've met. Nothing beats socially interacting with locals - either meeting up with friends when I'm there, or even striking up conversations with complete strangers.
Volunteering as a staff member at a festival
Getting into a verbal stoush with a publicly ranting racist
Making friends with a random lady and her family and then meeting up with them again in a completely different Prefecture!
etc. etc. etc.And I understand that the language barrier thing can be an issue - most people in Japan don't speak English. But part of the fun in going there is immersing yourself in the language and culture and just having a go! I could barely speak any Japanese when I first went there (I thought I could, but soon discovered to my horror that I couldn't
). And during our 10 day school trip, I also saw a lot of my students quickly improving in their communication ability by throwing themselves into the deep end. Some didn't improve as much as others because they were too hesitant and reserved, but like many things in life, you only get what you put in and fortune favours the bold.
One of my Year 9 students surprisingly picked up a lot of Japanese just be eavesdropping on other people's conversations. After about a week of doing this he insisted on following me when I went to book bullet train tickets instead of waiting with the group. He stood next to me as I communicated with the the rail staff member and was repeating words and picking up what they meant!
e.g.
Staff> 「禁煙車または喫煙車どちらがよろしいですか。」
Me> 「禁煙車お願いします。」
Student> "Yeah, good. We should get a non-smoking carriage."
We haven't learnt anything like that in the school course curriculum! He just picked it up by osmosis through eavesdropping and deducing the meaning, well... basically by code-breaking. It's little wonder that multilingual people are traditionally sought after as code-breakers (Alan Turing was unusual as a monolingual code-breaker, although his code-breaker was based on mathematics - at least, he was portrayed that way in The Imitation Game which admittedly isn't completely historically accurate).
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