The Cleanest Place in the World

Japan is everything we thought it would be, plus way too much more. It is filled with huge office buildings, bright lights, kimonos, lots of people, toilets with lots of buttons, many subway systems, good fashion, strange fashion, school children in uniform, soy-based food products, small keychains, zero rubbish bins, and extreme cleanliness absolutely everywhere. Japan is a country with a huge amount of history, with shrines and temples (and Starbucks) on every block, along with huge TV screens and Times Square-looking intersections every couple of subway stops. It is an insanely efficient country. People here could not be more helpful to answer our questions, even if they speak no English.

Here is our Top 10 list of our trip to JAPAN:

1. Tonbo, our WWOOF farm host – Two weeks in Japan is not a huge amount of time to see everything, but we decided before even planning which countries to visit, that we were going to spend a week farming in Japan to experience first hand, living inside a Japanese home, with a Japanese host, through an organization called World Wide Organisation of Organic Farming. Tonbo’s farm was relatively small, but we ate really well, and ate mostly (besides rice) from his own produce. It was an amazing week of broken English, cultural immersion, tatami mats and many swift changes of shoe attire. We also worked our buts off: feeding chickens, weeding, harvesting peanuts, cooking, sawing wood, pulling eyes out of potatoes and learning how to make grasshoppers out of bamboo, which we may or may not be able to show you depending on how kind the quarantine people are tomorrow. Our host, Tonbo, was unbelievably kind and made sure that we ate vegan and made a huge effort to communicate with us. We recommend his farm to anyone!

2. Onsen – We had no idea we would love this so much, but when Tonbo took us to our first hot spring near his farm, we got hooked. Our first onsen featured outdoor pools and a fancy restaurant where you ordered your food from a vending machine. Our second onsen was a “golden” hot spring in the countries oldest spring in Kobe. The water is literally gold as it is packed with nutrients from the earth.

3. 4km of Torii Gates – a long path connecting a small shrine to a larger one hundreds of red Torii gates away.

4.

Bamboo forest - And our day of biking around Kyoto’s Arashiyama area... this was in fact a big accomplishment since Lili is (self-admittedly) not the world’s best biker AT ALL

5. 100 Yen stores – Aisles and aisles of wonderful, almost completely useless, crap (This one is PURELY Natan’s – and he would like to add walking around Harajuku & Takashita Dori)

6. BOLA BOLA Guesthouse – After several painful nights of horrible accommodation, the BOLA BOLA house in Kyoto pleasantly (actually shockingly) surprised us with an amazing room, very helpful staff, and everything we needed.

7. Big Buddha in Nara – Biggest Buddha we’ve ever seen, gorgeous park, lots of holy (apparently) deer.

8. More than one person asking Natan if he had a head injury because of his white kippah – Ha ha.

9. Tokyo Metro System - SO CLEAN, so efficient, so easy to use.

10. Sawara and other accidental parades – Geishas, strange split-hooved shoes (and other ancient Japanese costumes) on parade!

THAT’S IT!

Our backpack honeymoon is over, and after two months of travel around the world, we are now about to begin the next chapter of our lives in Sydney. We are nervous and excited, and cannot wait to take our clothes out of these damn backpacks and eat some vegemite/avocado on toast.

Thanks for reading, or just looking at the blog titles and any interesting photos.

Natan and Lili.