Japan Recap | Johannes

I’m currently sitting in the Shinkansen back to Tokyo as my flight back to Germany will depart this evening. As I have plenty of time to kill, here’s a small recap of my two-week Japan round trip.

First of all, I can absolutely recommend Japan to anyone as a travel destination! Japan can offer you ANYTHING: you have beaches, you have mountains, you have huge modern cities, you have layed back countrysides, and you even can go skiing. As you can see, Japan offers basically all the different “vacation types” in one single country, and most of the time, they are only a few train stations away.

Me myself, I saw many huge cities such as Tokyo, Osaka, Yokohama or Hiroshima but I also saw so much nature, for example, on Miyajima Island or in Koyasan. I were at the beach in Kamakura and even visited Mt. Fuji (but didn’t climb it, the view from the ground was already enough ;) ). So I think it was my most varied trip until now.

Some other things apart from the sights that will stay in my mind:

The Japanese people and their work.

It is really striking when you come to Japan from Germany and meet all these extremely friendly Japanese people everywhere. I have not met one single person that wasn’t nice or that didn’t seem to be happy to meet me. Especially in supermarkets or construction workers that guide the correct way on the streets, all of them seemed so extremely happy to serve me. In Germany, especially in these kind of jobs people are often bored or angry that they have to do this job and you can really feel that as a customer. I’m sure many Japanese people are also not happy with their jobs but they do it with an “if I have to do it, at least I do it right” mindset, and I think Germany could learn a lot from Japan in this aspect.
Tourists are dumb.

Japan is, of course, a very popular travel destination and therefore, I were of course not the only tourist at all the sights. Especially at the very “instagramable” sights, there were unimaginable crowds of tourists. The strange thing is that there’s nobody there as soon as you make one single step from the “main sight” into any other direction. And they are really missing out on something! I were at many nice spots with crazy views and beautiful nature but all the other tourists were a few meters away in front of the big sight and fighting for the best photo spot. It’s not even that these “side paths” are hard to find or exhausting to get there, so it’s not that the tourists are just too lazy, it seems to me that they are really just too dumb to explore the sights a bit deeper…
Breakfast habits.

Maybe this one is just a personal one but for me, it was pretty strange to see all the Japanese people eating curries, rice, meat and fish for breakfast just as they would do for any other meal during the day. I was really glad to find some croissants and a bit of strawberry jam at the hotel buffet, so that I didn’t have to starve ;) .
Cheap food at restaurants.

As so many people in Japan don’t eat at home after work, the food in the restaurants is really cheap and often half of the price you would pay in Germany. Especially the prices of the sets that most restaurants offer are unbeatable: you get a starter, a complete meal, a drink and unlimited water for around 6€. I think this is what I will miss most…