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Where do we start? Japan has been so different from the rest of Asia.

We have always felt extremely safe here, even more than home. This experience is borne out by the fact that in rural areas people don’t bother locking things away, even things like tools. We often see things like GPS left on car dashboards and some people don’t even bother locking their cars or front doors for that matter. That’s not to say there is no theft or violence, I am sure it hap-pens occasionally but it’s very rare. It is really nice to be able to wander around a city using phones and cameras etc without worrying about them being on display. We didn’t go to Tokyo but even in Kyoto, Osaka and Hiro-shima which are all big cities we never felt even remotely unsafe even late at night.

We have also free camped all over Japan and it is an excellent and safe place to do so. Some of the places we have stayed we would not dream of repeating in Europe. Even when we have been occasionally rumbled, people have always been tolerant and nice, in fact I cannot recall a single incidence of someone being rude or angry in the entire time we were there. Japanese society can be quite closed and regimented but both adults and children seem very well behaved and polite.

It could be described as a Utopian society, indeed there are parts of it we would want to cut out and keep but it is not without its problems. Bizarrely the sui-

Postcard from JapanKevin and Karen Browne

cide rate in Japan is amongst the highest in the world especially in the younger generation; there can be a lot of pressure to perform well and stigma attached to perceived failure.

The Japanese have somehow managed to merge high technology, natural beauty, ancient tradition, old fash-ioned manners with the thoroughly modern, in a way that seems effortless. It certainly isn’t; Japanese people work very hard with long hours and the standards of service almost everywhere are excellent. Some shop assistants at home and in Europe could certainly learn something about customer service from them. People are so enthusiastic to help and serve you better and equally mortified if something goes wrong or if you are kept

waiting. They do not skimp on manpower either because that inevitably means bad service so its not uncommon to see twice the amount of people do-ing any given job that you would at home.

To give some examples, most fuel stations have attended service and in all but the quietest there are two or three attendants who literally come run-ning out to serve you. In shops if you can’t find what you want and ask an assistant they run off at a funny little trot lest you have to wait too long. When we had to use public transport it was always incredibly punctual and I can only remember one occasion when a train was late. It was only three

When we left Kevin and Karen Browne, they were all set to sail from Vladivostok to Fushiki in Japan. As this issue is being prepared, they are in New Zealand, having bypassed Australia

due to complications with ferries. Here are their impressions of Japan

Vladivostok-Fushiki ferry

From Russia . . . to this!

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minutes but it still warranted an apology in Japanese and English for the delay. The only downside to their culture is that if something isn’t 100 per cent correct or complete there is no bending of rules or “that’ll do it” just doesn’t exist in their thinking. Also all the manpow-er involved with this level of service means that most things are correspondingly expensive.

Despite their seriousness and professionalism at work the Japanese do have a good sense of humour and you hear them laughing a lot but there is a time and place for it.

Most Westerners’ perception of Japan as a country is probably that it is a sprawl-ing metropolis of cities. This is certainly true around Tokyo and Osaka but a large percentage of Japan is rural. There is a central spine of mountains running down the country; this means any large cities are on the coast and provided you don’t mind mountain roads you can easily escape the cities. Roads in cities can be very congested and we often made better progress on the small mountain and coast roads than on some of the main highways. The junctions (or intersec-

tions as they call them) are all controlled by traffic lights and the traffic is very stop/start in towns.

It is very time con-suming to cover any distance in Japan because the main highways go through all the towns. The other options are the mountain roads but by their very nature they are incredibly twisty and it can be tricky to connect them to get to where you want to go. The third option is the expressways which are similar to our motorway network. These are defi-nitely the fast way to get around but the entire network are toll roads and if you pay as you go they are expen-sive. Locals pay less as they have a system called ETC installed on their cars and bikes. This stands for Elec-tronic Toll Collection and it is a cashless system which records when they drive on to the network and they pay a monthly bill straight from their bank account.

Japanese drivers are generally very courteous and careful drivers and most stick to the (fairly low) speed limits without question. Southern Japan is its indus-trial and commercial hub and it is a lot busier than the North. Curiously though the south is also the tourist mecca although there are interesting things to see and do almost everywhere. We both preferred the north of the country; it is quieter and more rural. The people were really nice, the traffic is a lot lighter and agriculture is the main preoccupation. We were spoilt for choice for places to visit and the countryside was beautiful. The south was a lot busier but you could still find beautiful out of the way places in the mountains and on some of the coasts. We were spoilt for choice for interesting places to visit wherever we were in Japan and we could

easily have spent longer there.

Autumnal colours

A Chinese garden in Japan

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Japanese food was a revelation for us; the portions were always small for my appetite but it was always super fresh, immaculately prepared and deli-cious. We tried food here that we might previously have turned our noses up at. Neither of us are fussy eaters and we were not big on seafood but we’ve had octo-pus, shrimp, squid, mussels and lots of other weird and wonderful things and liked them all. We also got fairly proficient with chopsticks – we had both used them a handful of times at home but not for a long time. The rice in Japan is special sticky rice so you can eat it with chopsticks and rice is served with almost every meal including breakfast. However we miss Western cakes and sweets – the Japanese do have them but they are an acquired taste, mainly full of air or to our taste buds un-cooked filled pastry. We introduced some to good pud-dings so hopefully it will spread amongst their friends.

We sampled public baths and hot springs several times. The Japanese are incredibly clean people and think nothing of spending hours scrubbing themselves at hot springs. We were the cleanest we have ever been after some of the sessions in them. I wonder what they thought of us sometimes when we turned up somewhere

having been camped in the mountains for a few days. We were always treated with courtesy and curiosity and if they were disgusted by our sometimes grubby appear-ance they never showed it.

We were treated with incredible kindness and gen-erosity by many people in Japan. Many overlanders and travellers don’t come here as it is expensive (not helped by the strong yen at the moment) but they are missing out on a fascinating and unique country. If we stopped for too long people would enquire if we OK or go out of their way to show or explain the place we needed.

The reason we spent so long in Japan is that there is so much to see round every corner. At some point you think “enough temples!” until the next one bowls you over with its magic or beauty. We could easily have spent longer in this country. Some of our best finds were off the beaten track, probably not even in travel guides. That said, some are touristy for a reason and we did a good mix of both.  

A few reasons why its time to leave Japan . . .•  You can’t stop bowing to everyone•  We are hearing  Christmas music in the shops•  You get upset when the toilet seat isn’t heated in a public convenience•  You express a long drawn out aaaahhhh when people are explaining things. (Very Japanese!)•  You expect everything to work first time•  You wonder why no water comes out the tap until you realise you have to turn the tap on i.e its not automatic•  You start to understand what people are saying•  Its about to start snowing•  We haven’t been eaten by any bears – time to quit while we are ahead!

Kevin cleans up

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in New Zealand to send the carnet on to.I leave the bike in the New Zealand MAF quarantine

compound and once it goes in that’s it. I’ve been clean-ing the bike for days as it will be inspected for insects, pollen, grass seeds, mud etc. I show the guys how to get into everything and leave the spare keys. I am not that comfortable with this but they can’t inspect it if they can’t open it I suppose. We just hope that everything will still be there when it gets to Auckland just before Christmas. After seven months and nearly 19,000 miles together I have to just walk away and leave the bike with a bunch of complete strangers who have all the keys.

The Hiroshima museum

Goodbye to the GuzziI am on my way to Osaka port at 6.00am

on my own. It is bitterly cold and I am really grateful for my heated clothing which is on almost maximum. The traffic is light until the outskirts of Kyoto where I swallow the expensive toll and get on the expressway. This speeds things up no end; I can cruise at 110kmh for the first time in Japan. I cover ground fairly quickly until the bike unexpectedly runs out of fuel and I have to switch to reserve way earlier than normal. I can’t understand it at first but then remember I have been draining fuel for cleaning the bike for days. I carry on looking for fuel on the expressway but none materialises so I have no choice but to jump off into the outskirts of Osaka to find fuel. I manage to find a gas station fairly quickly and its only when I pull up to the pump that the next problem rears its ugly head. We deliberately left with the bare minimum of spare keys (ignition and panniers) as I have to leave them with the bike for customs purposes. Neither of us were expecting it to run out of fuel and it has a locking fuel cap. How the hell am I going to get out of this one?

Suddenly I remember the emergency tank; it is drained in preparation for sailing but it doesn’t have a locking cap and I can plumb it back in fairly quickly. I get the attendant to put in 6 litres, that will get me there – phew! To add to my problems I can’t get back on the expressway so I am now dumped into Osaka traffic which is now in rush hour. Osaka is the second biggest city in Japan and is absolutely vast. I am utterly depen-dent on Doris, our GPS. Without the GPS I would have had no hope; when I get to the port I follow the GPS coordinates that out Japanese friend Maki worked out for me. I am surrounded by warehouses but there is an office up some steps, could this be it? I grab the carnet and our Japanese paperwork and go in. The lady on reception speaks no English whatsoever. I draw a picture of a boat with a bike inside it and write the name of the shipping company and there is a spark of understand-ing. She disappears off and comes back with a guy who speaks a tiny bit of English. I show him the same picture and write Madame Butterfly (the ships name) and a contact name we have. He recognises these which is a relief so I leave the carnet de passage and all our Japa-nese documentation with him plus a forwarding address