2013

Category: 2013

Love And Hate, part 2

I exited the women’s-only toilet on Japan’s fastest bullet train to be told by JR rail staff that I’d broken yet another golden rule. It’s great to be back in Japan, my Asian home!

Ive just spent the day in Kyoto with its beautiful temple gardens which stand in contrast to the chaos of city life in Tokyo but for me it is somehow cripplingly boring. But now it’s time to leave, and to be honest it couldn’t come soon enough for me. What a day.. caught between the hordes of tourists and all that tedious ancient temple life – I’m sorry but I can’t stand all the unbearable reverence and anyway, those Japanese gardens are simply far too tidy for me. The day just made me want to get measured-up for an extra-large kimono and run away. Which is funny because usually it’s the noise of Tokyo that kills me, but here it was the insane sterile silence and the over-orderliness of the people, excluding the odd clumsy British tourist of course.

Can some places simply be too perfect? But then, just when I’m thinking there really isn’t anything here for me here I read that Kyoto is in fact the veggie capital of Japan with an amazing total of 47 vegan restaurants! Now we are talking.. So I make quick notes of the best vegan lunch option and set out to find the place.

But in my excitement I forget the maze of winding streets and narrow lanes that Japan is and I am soon lost again. Getting directions this way and then that .. I find myself rediscovering that ‘love and hate’ feeling I have with Japan. I remember that (at least for me) to purposely seek something out here isn’t the way to go. I remember I must go with the flow and accept whatever comes my way.

My veggie dream dashed I skip lunch altogether and decide to get the bullet train to Hiroshima – I see a place selling beer and order the only thing on the menu that is vegetarian… Chips! Yes, Sean san is back in style… drinking beer and eating chips – again.