You don’t know how good Madagascar custard is

Well, I think I can only drag out this Japan thing for so long, so I think I’ll probably just share a couple things I thought were interesting or different from how I typically do things here in the States. I have plenty more things I could say, but I don’t want to draw this out forever, so if you see me around and are interested in wasting some time on small talk, I have many more tales to regale.

Alright, this might sound a bit odd, but there are a ton of vending machines in the cities we went to. Maybe I just don’t notice them here, maybe they just blend more into the background, but every block had at least one vending machine. Most of them were for drinks (though unlike here, some of them would offer hot drinks), but a few would offer food and snacks. There were plenty of ice cream ones, but there was also one that sold frozen ramen that you would need to heat up at home.

Despite the multitude of vending machines everywhere, we rarely saw anyone eating or drinking while walking around. It was seen as a bit rude to do so, and so any food or drink purchased from these machines was to be taken somewhere else and eaten there. As such, there are very few public trash cans, which is something you don’t really realize isn’t there until you are stuck walking around with an empty taiyaki wrapper for half an hour.

Taiyaki is delicious. A cute little pastry in the shape of a fish with red bean paste in the middle for a savory treat, or custard for a sweet one. The stands we went to that sold them propped up their “premium Madagascar custard.” Is Madagascar some sort of prestigious place for custard? Was it made directly from lemur milk? Why did they bring the custard all the way from Africa when they have cows in Japan? I have no idea, but I do know that the taiyaki was delicious and I'm now a big fan of the Madagascar custard.

Everything we went to was pretty accessible either by public transport or by walking. Granted, we didn’t have much of a choice in the matter, but it still felt like the subway system was pretty impressive, with little in the way of delays or wait times. I was especially impressed by the shinkansen, or bullet train, which links a lot of the major cities on the main island and even connects over a channel to the large, more rural northern isle of Hokkaido. It turned what would have been a six hour drive from where we were in Tokyo to Kyoto to a threehour trip, and that was with various stops on the way. The speed was incredible, though staring out the window when too many things were close to the train made me a bit woozy.

Himeji Castle in Himeji was probably one of my favorite spots on the trip. I love history, so reading about the various hands that the castle passed through over time or the tale of Senhime, or Princess Sen, who stayed there for a time, was incredibly interesting. The effort to construct such a structure at the time was a bit mind boggling, something that did not really hit me until seeing it in person. The keep in the center was especially impressive and I could certainly see how such a structure could stand as a strong deterrent for any would-be invader.

While not knowing Japanese certainly had some disadvantages, I found that visiting the cities that we did was pretty tourist-friendly for English speakers. Most of the people we talked to knew at least enough English that we could usually get the point across and there were a ton of signs and information in English as well. A lot of places also had information in Chinese or Korean as well, which sometimes resulted in the same statement being repeated in three or four different languages, which I found pretty accommodating.

Everything was relatively cheap during our trip. Granted, the yen hasn’t been doing too well over the last couple years, but everything was fairly affordable even considering that, especially given that we spent most of our time in big cities. Drinks in vending machines were usually around 130 yen, which is about 90 cents, meals were probably around 1500 yen (about 10 U.S. dollars) at fairly nice sit down restaurants, and even our hotel rooms were not anything outlandish. This definitely helped given our fairly laissez-faire attitude around spending money on the trip (whoops).

All in all, it was a fantastic trip, one that I would recommend to anyone interested in visiting another country and one that I would certainly take again if given a chance.

A C ERTAIN POINT OF V IEW

BY

NATHANIEL U NDERWOOD REPORTER