Marijana Kalčić

Japan was very interesting at first, because you expected the unexpected and what awaited us there was exactly that and a bit more. Everything you've read, seen in movies, on television: Japan is all that. Each city is a story unto itself. Tōkyō is busy, but somehow busily relaxed, no one is pushing you, everyone knows the order for walking and crossing the street, every rule is respected and nobody, and I mean nobody, blasts their car horn. It is a hive of shops, restaurants, and social life, but in the evening in the hotel you don't see or feel any of that because hotels have windows that don’t open. They also have prefab bathrooms, a kiosk-like thing with everything you need, installed into miniature hotel rooms. Everyone raves about their special toilets, but I didn't have the courage to try them. I stuck to the European system.
Although Nara is considered rural Japan, it is more developed than some big Croatian cities. Living is even more relaxed there than in Tokyo, which is 500 km or four hours away by high-speed train. The bullet train or Shinkansen is the pride of Japan and connects the whole country. The rides are fast, interesting and edifying. Edifying because you can see how people behave. Consideration for others is their first priority. You will never see a Japanese person sitting in someone else's seat, entering a carriage for which they don’t have a ticket no matter how empty it is, etc. In Nara, the emphasis was on local food that is both produced and grown in that region. They are particularly proud of that, and our European ways baffle them. They appreciate every blade of grass that grows, respect customs and proudly point out that the soy sauce is aged in the same barrels in which it used to age 900 years ago. They don’t care for luxury, what they care about is being grateful to their ancestors who taught them to work and making an effort to work according to the same rules for as many years as possible in the future.
Kyōto – the most romantic city on the east coast of Asia and beyond! On the one hand it is jam-packed with traffic and people, and on the other hand it is full of geishas who walk around the city in traditional costumes, take pictures with tourists, talk about the history of Japan and recite poetry about cherry blossoms. Kyoto abounds in Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines, wooden houses with small shops, cafés, and restaurants. My two days there were definitely not enough to get a feel for the city, but enough for enjoying the famous Japanese hospitality, kindness and cuisine. The food was delicious everywhere, especially the sushi, which I’ve decided not to eat in Europe any more.
Ōsaka impressed me the least. Maybe because of the relentless rain, and maybe because of the construction works throughout the city at the time. The downtown area was being completely refurbished, so the views of the city, apart from fog, were less than interesting. As it is a business and shopping hub, we did do a bit of shopping there, struggling with their size numbers that are incremented in thirds, but seeing that we were foreign and visibly so, we were offered tax free prices everywhere without asking for them, which meant our shopping was affordable.
On the train to Hiroshima, I went through everything I had learned about it. Of course, knowing about the atomic bomb I had expected to see a sad, depressing place... but, it couldn’t have been more different. They thanked the victims in a dignified way, with an emphasis on new life, the future, the beauty of life. Today, Hiroshima is a beautiful city, a city of the future. The only monument and reminder of the tragic events is the cathedral, which was the only building left standing after the blast.
The Japanese stick to tradition, they are proud of it and their motto is that traditional does not mean old. When you see Mount Fuji in the distance from a passing train, you have a feeling of familiarity and it gives you some comfort, as if you have already been there, as if it is somehow your home, too.
So you don’t get an impression that all is perfection in Japan, on the way back from Kyōto to Tōkyō, by the fastest and safest train in the world, in a country where there are no delays or problems with public transport, the Shinkansen lost power and for almost 5 hours we all sat motionless on the train waiting for the problem to be resolved. The Japanese endured it stoically, without emotion, most of them on their feet the whole time. I, on the other hand, was on the verge of a nervous breakdown because our flight was at 10:30 p.m. The airline told me that they would wait for no one and that we had to be at the airport by 9 p.m. The time game had started. We reckoned it would take us two hours to the central station in Tōkyō, then a 20-minute walk to the airport train platform, then 45 minutes by train to the airport station, then another twenty minutes to the check-in counter... provided everything went smoothly. A whole carriage full of Japanese who speak English using Google Translate had our schedule down pat and cheered us on to catch our flight. A young American couple joined in the action, looking for alternative routes, and so my daughter and I disembarked two stops earlier, ran across the station, jumping queues and breaking rules, with me shouting "We have a plane to catch" cut the line to barge into a taxi and hurtled at 160 km/h to the airport, where we arrived on the dot at 9 p.m.! As my daughter said: "I still can't believe we managed to get back home to Rukavac!"