Takayama and Tokyo

Hi everyone,

I'm home :( No, it's nice to see my family again, but I really didn't want to leave Asia. Traveling is just too nice. Let's tell you what I did during my last days in Japan.

After leaving Kyoto (which I still consider as my favourite city in Japan so far), I went to Takayama. I doubted a lot about also going to Hiroshima. I wanted to go there because of its famous history, but the city is also a bit out of direction. It would just take too much time to go there and I didn't want to rush. Since I wanted to see some countryside of Japan, I went to Takayama. From there I could take a trip to Shirakawago, an historical village, recommended by my Japanese friends. Takayama is a relatively small city with still over a million inhabitants. It is considered as a small Kyoto, but I don't agree with that. It indeed also has lots of temples, but the ones in Kyoto are way more beautiful. When I got there, I went to explore the neighborhood. I noticed that there weren't a lot of people of my age, so I assume that there are no universities in the city. I had read that there was a famous burger place, so I went there and met a German guy and one from Israel who worked there. I had dinner with them and while having that I met two Japanese girls. Since I hadn't seen anyone in the hostel yet (I probably was there too early), I asked them to have some drinks with me later which they agreed to. We went to some awesome bar that was very very small. The woman behind the bar could speak a little bit of Dutch and when she heard that I was from Utrecht, she wanted to call her Dutch friend in Takayama who was also from Utrecht. I didn't want to meet any Dutch people in Japan, so I asked her not to do that. Not because I hate Dutch people, but I hate it to switch back to Dutch and I also feel stupid talking English to people from Holland. Japan would also be the first country where I wouldn't have met Dutchies. Actually this didn't succeed, I met one on my last night in Takayama :(
The next day I went to Shirakawago and another small village close to that one. I must admit, they were very beautiful. Lying in the middle of the mountains and being very small. I loved them. The houses itself are not that special to me. They have thatched roofs, but we also have them in The Netherlands. I spend the second day sightseeing in Takama. I walked a lot, but as I said, I didn't find it very interesting. Just because I just came from Kyoto. That day I also had to switch hostels. I was used to book my new hostel for a night one night before, such that you have a lot of freedom to stay in a city or not. Unfortunately, this is impossible in Japan during weekends. Hostels need to be booked a long time before. That is a thing I don't like about Japan, just because I don't like to plan too much. The last thing that I want to say about Takayama is that it could get very cold during nights. Although the weather during the day was quite acceptable (24 degrees), at night it could be like 10 degrees. It was for the first time that I had to wear my jacket.
After Takayama I went to the last city of my trip: Tokyo. There I met some other Japanese friends of mine and an American guy, I met in Kyoto. I was really happy to see them again. Sightseeing in Tokyo consisted mainly of going to the different neighborhoods and walking around there to see the differences. There are not so many nice buildings there. I really liked Tokyo, although in general I don't like big cities. I think I just like the energy there. It is also very nice to go out there. Since I lived quite far from the neighborhood with the most bars and clubs this meant that I had to stay until 5 in the morning (at that time the subway started running again). Tokyo is a city that never sleeps, so it was alway busy in the clubs. A thing I didn't like there, were the many people that would try to get you into stripclubs and they could be quite aggressive when you ignored them. On my second night out there I was alone and I just went to some pub there where I met a Japanese and Korean guy. They took me to some hiphop place. I really liked it there although I'm not a big fan of hiphop.
On my last night, I went salsa dancing again. This was my third time in Asia. I must say that the level was not as good as in Korea, but maybe I was there too early (before midnight). There were some dancers that are really good, but not all of them. The people were not as friendly as in Korea and Thailand, where they directly started talking to me. I don't think this has to do with the salsa, because it is a general thing in Japan. People don't speak English very well and because of that are shy to start a conversation. I had the tendency to speak to random people (when I had to wait for a bus or another situation like that), but it was hard to find people that could speak English properly. Although I also had some very interesting conversations with people that were not so good in English. If you start talking to them, they are very friendly though :). Back to salsa now. The music was really fast, even the bachata. I like that with salsa, but not with bachata. Also the people were all around or over thirty, thus a bit too old for me ;) Of course, I still had some nice dances and now I've seen salsa dancing in Japan.

After a very short night, I had to go to the airport and after flying for about 13 hours I'm home now. I want to say thanks to all the awesome people that I met and made this trip so great. I hope I will see many of them again. I will now stay in Holland for a little bit more than a week. Then I go to Germany to study there for a semester. I hope I will also meet lots of awesome people there.

Thanks for reading this!

Huibert