Christmas and New Year in Japan

Japan rounds up my year of travels very nicely. I started 1 January 2007 with Israel, then visited exotic Inner Mongolia and Shanxi, holidayed in Hong Kong, road trip in Scotland and London, vacationed in Banyan Tree Bintan, and finally ended the year with a blast in Japan on 31 December 2007. Just in case you're wondering if I've been skivving at work, well, my boss wouldn't have approved my leave application if I hadn't delivered. :-) It all boils down to time management.

Japan. The land of my favourite author Haruki Murakami, manga, beautiful people, sashimi and the cat with no mouth. It's an amazing country with a fabulous mix of livable city chic, age-old traditions and natural scenery.

Japanese are probably the most well-behaved people in the world when they're sober. This trait is most obvious in Disneyland and Universal Studios where

thousands of people queue patiently and quietly to take rides. I bet such queues get out of hand in lesser countries but not here in Japan. CH and I are usually not the theme-park types, but surprisingly, we had a really good

time at both Disneyland and Universal Studios. We really enjoyed the Spiderman thrill ride at Universal Studios, which was worth the 1 hour queue.

Here's another example of how incredibly well-behaved the Japanese are. I've not stepped into a single toilet that's dirty (except those that are catered for Chinese tourists, and you could tell the Japanese cleaners have given up on keeping those toilets clean from the stern Chinese signages telling ladies where to dump their used toilet paper). They are indeed a first world country with first world behaviours.

I was so amazed by these automated toilets, I wanted to bring one home. These amazing toilet seats come with seat warmers (terribly comforting in winter), spray for the bum and bidet for female users. They even have short music that you can play while you're pissing so the "noise" won't put other users off. How far-fetched is that?!

CH and I also skiied for the first time at a ski resort near Mount Fuji. Fell on my bum several times before I got the hang of it, it was really enjoyable. We were blessed with good weather, so we could see Mount Fuji in all its glory. I think Mount Fuji is the prettiest mountain I've ever seen, because it's so symmetrical.

I've always liked Japanese food, it being my second favourite cuisine after Chinese cuisine. We had this fantastic sashimi boat with delectable lobster, scallops, sea urchin, prawn, squid etc etc. We also had Sukiyaki, Shabu Shabu and a steamboat meal called Chunko (see 3rd picture), which was supposed to be a Sumo wrestler's meal. It wasn't particularly fattening, in fact, most of it was vegetables and toufu. I am quite baffled how anybody can get that big eating this. Maybe this is just the lightweight wrestler's meal.

We also visited some cultural sites like temples, shrines and castles. The most beautiful is this surreal looking temple that is entirely gold-plated. The other one that was quite good-looking was the Osaka Castle which used to belong to some Shogun. Too bad we didn't get to see what's inside. The problem with tour packages is the agencies always assume that nobody is interested in museums and history of the country, so they just concentrate on bringing you to as many locations as possible for phototaking opportunities.

Again, CH and I are usually not the shopping-type of tourists, but we literally went nuts shopping in Japan. We were thrilled to find high quality clothings, toiletries and cosmetics at reasonable prices - we shopped so much we had to buy another luggage to bring our stuff back.

Other memorable things we did include the not-so-great but comfortable Onsen (Japanese hot springs) and a ride on the superfast Shinkansen (bullet train). People-watching was a lot of fun in Japan because almost everybody is a good dresser with plenty of cute guys and girls in outrageous costumes and hairdos.

I didn't forget to check out Haruki Murakami at the local bookstores. It seems like he has just released a new book, but it's only available in Japanese - got to wait for the English translation. CH and I enjoyed Japan so much we're thinking perhaps our next trip will be Sakura viewing in Hokkaido, and this time, we're gonna drive on our own.