Last week I was sent to a city in Japan in called Hikone. There was an impromptu work related event that I won’t bore you with, suffice it to say I was sent there and was determined to make the most of it. I had never been in Asia before and to me this was an incredible opportunity to explore a whole new world in terms of flavors, culture and architecture.

Arrival

I arrived in Hikone on Saturday evening after a particularly heavy work week followed by a 13 hour flight. This trip gave me a new meaning to the word jet legged, I was thrown into a state of stupor and pain – yes, the contraction has not escaped me. The headache that comes with spending 13h seating in a small place without moving much. The unique environment that is laying in the belly of this beast at 11km altitude traveling at 1000 km/h, breathing its artificial air, hearing its rumors mixed with the societal hums that comes with us humans, it overloads my senses, every time giving me a horrible headache. More than a decade traveling by plane and this still gets me.

The airplane landed in the Kansai airport at around noon and it took around 40min to go through customs, they were very efficient, specially if you have filled the customs form online at the Visit Japan website. After we went straight to Osaka for our first culinary experience (see gallery at the end of the post).

Having just arrived, starving, annoyed and tired, we went to the first sushi joint we could find (first timers in Japan and with only a few days, we wound’t settle for less). We ended up at this little place inside the Yodobashi tower, called  Nipponichi Kaitenzushi. We had a pretty good time there, the sushi was really good and for a fair price. The restaurant served the food in those iconic “sushi treadmills” , it was interesting to see the food going around and you just pick what you feel like eating, amazing when you’re hungry since you don’t have to wait to order. It was the ultimate fast-food experience.

For the first time I had a real lunch with my colleagues and go to know them a bit, dive into their interests and get to know them a bit, that was a refreshing change from the day to day at the office.

After eating we all rushed to get the train, our stay was in Hikone which is around 1h30 away via JR, the Japanese state railway company. We were all exhausted, in desperate need of a shower and a warm bed, the train ride was the last obstacle between us and our well deserved rest.

I had heard some stories from other colleagues that had been in Japan before about how the trains are more silent if compared to European ones, that if you sleep in the train you most likely won’t hear the stops and will miss your destination. Therefore, I remained awake, trying to make small talk while observing the all new landscape, there was a strange felling settling inside me that I couldn’t still pinpoint.

We arrived in Hikone and went straight to the Hotel. We were staying at the Comfort Hotel Hikone, located at the center of the city, right across the train station, it is a good resting spot for a fair price.

Promenades

I only had around 3 hours/day after work and one free day which was Sunday. Not a lot of time, I know but I had to make it do. However short time I had between tight work schedules, I tried to spend outside, exploring the new environments that I had close to me.

In order to minimize travel time, I decided to stay in Hikone and explore what we have around there. One of the good sides of having never been in Japan is that everything is new so ever a walk outside is kind of amazing in a way. I spend some time observing the local architecture, the people with their habits, trying to absorb all that.

On Sunday, the only full day I had , I visited the Hikone castle, an Edo-period structure, located close to Lake Biwa (see pictures in the next gallery). The whole structure is comprised of the castle, a big garden with ancient structures and tombs and a museum with documents and artwork from the Edo-period. It took me around 6h to go through the whole complex, the ticket costed 1500¥ (around 10€), there was also a nice little Sunday market at the entrance close to an ancient temple that is also free to visit.

When walking into the castle, the first thing that hit me was the sobriety of the structure if compared with European castles of the same period (1600~1800), the sense of luxury was there but it wasn’t as opulent as a traditional German or French castle. Being admittedly ignorant about Japanese history, I wonder if all that sobriety had a philosophical root or something else. I enjoyed its sobriety and made me feel less out of place if compared with our European counterparts where, if I’m being honest, I feel a rejection when walking in, as if the blatant display of wealth was insulting to what I stand and believe in.

After the castle, I had a late lunch at this amazing little ramen shop called 麺や 江陽軒 彦根駅前店 (they don’t have a “western” name), which I don’t know how to pronounce, if you find yourself in Hikone at lunchtime one day, just go, trust me. They had the most amazing ramen I’ve ever had, I ate a Tsukemen type ramen, which is comprised of thicker noodles served separately from the broth. You are supposed to get a bit of noodles with the chopsticks and dip it in the broth and then straight to your mouth, me not knowing this, committed my first tourist mistake by pouring all the broth into the noodles, the chef almost cried, myself included. Be sure to check the food gallery at the end.

Work Week

The working schedule was tough, we left the hotel at 8 and came back after 19h every day which din’t leave much time for exploring. Again, my luck was that being a first timer in Japan, I was only interested at day-to-day stuff and of course the amazing food so I got plenty of time for that. Walking around the city after work every day was an amazing experience for me, trying to understand their architecture, the food in the supermarket and their overall day to day life.

I used to come home with the high school students, they seem to have it tough over there, going to school early in the morning and staying for extra curricular activities until the evening.

The work environment is surprisingly similar to other cultures I’ve worked with, you are expected to dress and behave in a certain way, which for some European cultures in my field (engineering) is not so common. The company is very hierarchical, distressfully so, to the point that subordinates blindly follow their bosses, afraid of contradicting them and potentially leading the company to worse paths. Won’t talk about this any further, but I felt I should just give you all a first impression.

The interaction with my Japanese counterparts was really good, I enjoyed very much their company, you are expected to interact with your colleagues after work and build some “community” environment with them, a thing that we don’t have in the northern part of Europe and that I miss very much from working in the global south. It was very familiar to me to engage in such activities, the feeling of nostalgia only growing with such interactions.

Being in this kind of environment makes the week fly very fast.

The nostalgia

While being there, I started to have this growing feeling of longing and belonging. As you may agree, this is a very strange collection of feelings to have about a place that you’ve never been before. Walking around those streets made me feel as if I knew the place, how things were supposed to work, thing’s didn’t look as new to me as a had expected, they looked familiar. That bugged me a lot, how could this be.

So far, the only answer I have to this is that I’ve consumed a lot of Japanese culture when growing up. Yes, I was one of the nerds that watched anime, traded cards and so on… . Therefore, my only answer to this was that I was recollecting these cartoons and movies. Since I watched them when I was a kind, the nostalgia of that time is also tied to that in a way. That is my theory, if you have another one, please let me know.

Itadakimasu

The word Itadakimasu, according to the Wikipedia, means “to humbly receive”, it is commonly used in Japan in the same way as sometimes people give thanks before eating a meal in western cultures. I believe this word expresses keenly my feeling for the Japanese culinary tradition, it is humbling to be able to taste such delicious, rich and at the same time simple palette of flavors.

Food in Japan has a different connotation if compared with Northern European cultures, it is more communal, the dishes seemed to be designed to be shared with others, a stark contradiction with the known fact that Japanese people are shy and the country is plagued with loneliness. I was happy to share my meals with my colleagues over a nice glass of Highball and will remain grateful for that time spend together.

Partenza

Our last full day in Japan was Friday, our plane was leaving Saturday morning from Osaka towards Amsterdam, for the last night, the company had put us in the Nikko hotel at the Kansai airport, therefore we had to leave work earlier so we could make it to the hotel, perfect excuse to get an afternoon off in Osaka.

I had only two goals that Friday, to buy souvenirs to my partner at home, she is a big fan of matcha and I intended to get her a traditional set so she could make her own matcha tea at home. I also wanted to buy at least one vinyl disk for my collection so I could remember this trip. So I left work and Hikone at 13h and went to Osaka.

There, I spent hours looking for a traditional matcha tea set, it was one of these cosmic events were once you want desperately to find something, you can never find it. No store had a matcha tea set, one thing that I learned that day is that things are very hard to find in Japan, google doesn’t work as well as it does in Europe, navigation is crap and the tunnels and department stores are very confusing. It doesn’t help that I don’t speak the language and no one seemed to speak English. I was in a pickle, I didn’t want to go back home with out that tea set, that is when I remembered the name of a department store that my colleagues recommended. The Loft department store was right by the train station, there at the top floor I found a traditional tea store where I managed to get a matcha set, the day was saved.

The vinyl stores were easier to find, apparently they like collecting disks over there, I went to the Tower Records in Umeda and got myself an anniversary edition of Daft Punks Random Access Memories album, 2011 remastered edition of Siamese Dreams from Smashing Pumpkins and the soundtrack of Ghibli’s movie Princes Mononoke recorded by the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, Jackpot.

Finally Home

The return flight was even longer than the way to go, 14h30 hours, we had to go through the North Pole because Russian airspace is closed. Arrived destroyed in Amsterdam with another 2h travel to go home but with a sense of mission accomplished. Looking forward to the next one.