Budget sashimi in Tokyo, fortune telling in Kyoto, a temple stay near Osaka – a tour of Japan can be as inexpensive as it is eye-opening
Where else can you get slapped by a wet fish before seven in the morning? As I joined the fishermen and merchants wading through seawater and wantonly discarding severed heads at Tokyo’s Tsukiji – the world’s largest fish market – I feared this might be my fate.
The frenetic tuna auction was in full flow. Surrounded by thousands of frozen fishes, auctioneers were ratcheting up the bidding in high-tempo, monotone mantras. Elsewhere, Tsukiji was an aquarium of the condemned: pink-tentacled octopi, sea cucumbers, wriggling eels, sea urchins, tiger prawns and red snappers – the few I recognised – all stared out with doleful, don’t-eat-me eyes. Somewere still flapping, some still swimming, but many had already been filleted to meet Tokyo’s insatiable appetite for fruits de mer.
I sloshed away from the mayhem and ducked under a row of red lanterns into a pungent dockside restaurant. Although it was cold, misty and ridiculously early, the place was packed with patrons craving the freshest fish in the city.
My sunrise sashimi was indeed deliciously fresh. And, at just ¥800 (£4) for 13 pieces, almost charitably cheap for a meal that might have required a bank loan in the UK.
I’d long fancied visiting Japan, but had always been put off by a lingering perception that it was prohibitively expensive. Yet with sterling appreciating against the yen by 35% over the past decade, and by doing a little research before travelling, it’s possible to make your money travel a lot further without compromising the real Japanese experience.
This certainly applies to Tokyo. Arriving in this turbo-charged metropolis is daunting; just looking at its subway map left me cross-eyed. To help get to grips with the city I’d arranged a Japanese Goodwill Guide. Located all over Japan, these guides offer free tours from an insider’s perspective in return for a chance to practise their English.
Kumika Wada, a teacher, met me on my first morning. Her advice was to break Tokyo down into bite-size chunks and not try to see everything. So that morning we moseyed around the winding lanes of old Tokyo’s Asakusa neighbourhood, where Nakamise Street’s artistic confectionery shops and stalls selling hot ginger cider lead to Senso-ji, Tokyo’s finest Buddhist temple.
It looks sparklingly new, but since AD 628 this immense red-and-gold pagoda has been burned and rebuilt many times – perhaps this is down to errant sparks from the giant incense burner, which churns out sweetened fumes in honour of a 5cm-tall Buddha. “It’s such a large temple for a tiny statue,” giggled Kumika.
Emboldened by Kumika’s crash course in subway use, I ventured back into Ginza that night to the opulent 19th-century Kabuki-za Theatre. Having once suffered a four-hour Chinese opera in Beijing, I erred on the side of sanity and joined theatregoers queuing for makumi one-act tickets.
For £3.50 I bought into 40 minutes of an otherwise lengthy production entitled Ninin Wankyu. The stage was visually stunning: a seated orchestra accompanied two actors playing out the tale of a disinherited playboy who’d blown his parent’s fortune on courtesans. Eyepopping, yes – but one act was enough kabuki for a lifetime.
Japan’s best travel bargain is its rail pass, which allows access to the lightning shinkansen bullet-train network. Hopping aboard the pug-nosed Hikari Super-Express bound for Kyoto, I was soon whizzing past Mount Fuji, which floated like whipped cream above a hillside of clipped tea bushes.
Even after Tokyo, Kyoto is a daunting proposition: its 1,200 years of imperial history have left acres of gardens, palaces and temples to explore. With so much to see, where to start?
Enter Goodwill Guide Mr Nakagawa, who arrived next morning at my door as promptly as a bullet train. I wanted to see Kyoto on foot, so the retired 68-year-old had meticulously planned a day of walking around eastern Kyoto’s backstreets.
Hokoji is one of Kyoto’s less-fashionable, yet still impressive temples, constructed by Japan’s greatest shogun, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who unified Japan 500 years ago. I would’ve struggled to find it myself,but thanks to Mr Nakagawa I found myself entering its peaceful eighth-century Kiyomizu-dera: the main hall of golden Buddhas, sitting amid a valley of cherry blossom. Below the temple’s biggest balcony, devotees use long-handled ladles to scoop water from a sacred waterfall. Instead, I paid ¥100 (60p) to receive a fortune scroll. I asked Mr Nakagawa to translate it, but he stalled.
But I’d heard enough. I spent the rest of the day avoiding the cracks between the paving stones.
Noodle bars are cheap – and, I hoped, safe – places to eat, and as we ordered steaming bowlfuls, Mr Nakagawa explained the bewildering number of varieties on offer. As I tackled a pile of soba, I noticed two women outside in fine kimonos with white-painted faces.
Eventually we did drift into Gion, visiting Hanami Street – an atmospheric lane of crowded, wooden, low-rise buildings with scarcely a toothpick’s width between them. Red lanterns marked exclusive, invite-only restaurants where geishas and maikos (apprentice geishas) entertain. We paused outside a school where maikos are taught singing and dancing. Suddenly a door burst open and a young woman in a yellow kimono hurried out, and clip-clopped down the alley on her precipitous wooden sandals. Several Japanese tourists bowed to her – she was no fancy-dress wearing fake; I’d just had a glimpse of a bona fide geisha.
Beyond Kyoto, I really got off the beaten track. Travelling to Onomichi, near Hiroshima in western Honshu, I’d heard of a spectacular cycleway from Honshu Island, crossing the Seto-nai-kai Inland Sea to neighbouring Shikoku Island. The route runs along the 60km-long Setonai Shimanami Kaido causeway, where seven monumental suspension bridges cross an archipelago of islands, using them like stepping-stones.
Bike hire in Japan is amazing value: for just £2.50 I secured a machine for the day – albeit a girl’s bike with a basket. Cycling the Setonai Shimanami Kaido was truly unique. I spent the day ascending slipways onto suspension bridges with sweeping views of wooded islets and limestone bays. Then I’d freewheel through rustic villages with silver reptilian roof-tiles set amid orange groves, and past shipyards lit by welders’ sparks.
The most bizarre sight was Ikuchi-jima Island’s garish Kosan-ji. This temple complex was built by a local steel-tube magnate who spent 30 years borrowing designs from all over Japan before plumping for a Jackson Pollackesque mish-mash of styles – a kind of religious theme park. I preferred the simplicity of the abundant Shinto shrines, hidden in bamboo stands and marked by simple torii gates.
By Oshima Island my calves were screaming for more gears and I’d kneed my shopping basket once too often. But the end was nigh – the gargantuan Kurushima Straits Bridge loomed ever closer. A dizzying spiral slipway eventually coiled up onto the bridge and I cycled across its massive 4.1km-long span. It’s the longest triple suspension bridge in the world and, at nearly 100m high, the views across the Seto-nai-kai at sunset were stupendous.
Later that evening, having reached Matsuyama on Shikoku Island’s northern coast, my aching limbs attained nirvana in a traditional onsen (hot baths). At Matsuyama’s 19th-century Dogo bathhouse, volcanically heated water oozes out of the ground at 42°C. And while the burgeoning Western spa scene so often has the cachet of luxury attached, Japanese onsen are very affordable. For just ¥400 (£2) I entered a world of ritualistic bathing: strip naked, douse yourself while squatting on a three-legged stool, then enter the tama-no-yu (‘water of the gods’). I sank into the stone bath – bliss! – and was soothed by the trickle of thermal water issuing from a potbellied Buddha’s mouth.
And so from calmness to chaos: next I ventured into the crazy world of Osaka. Despite its 2.5 million inhabitants, Osaka’s a more compact option than Tokyo if you want to sample Japan’s effervescent nightlife. By evening a human travelator of revellers swept along the neon-lit boulevards around Dotombori – Osaka’s Times Square. Giant screens pummelled my senses with J-pop and adverts, while the beeps and blips and flashing lights of pachinko (slot machines) sent me spinning.
Osaka’s also a great place to dine out. Outside one restaurant, a giant, plastic puffer fish indicated fugu was on the menu: this highly poisonous fish can be lethal if not prepared properly – food literally to die for.
I didn’t fancy Russian roulette as a main course (particularly given my pessimistic fortune scroll prognosis), so I queued for Osaka’s much-loved takoyaki, paying just ¥300 (£1.50) for six octopus batter-balls smothered in bonito flakes. OK, they were a little chewy, but I got to eat them while gazing at a flashing Ferris wheel that sent bubblegum-pods circling 70m into the air around a giant blue penguin. Surreal? Just another night in Japan.
Near Osaka lies the revered Buddhist mountain community at Koya-san. It’s been settled since AD 816 by followers of the Shingon (‘true word’) sect and is dotted with 117 working temples. Making an overnight visit, I joined a trickle of pilgrims dressed wholly in white, who followed calligraphy-etched stone markers to the World-Heritage-listed Okuno-in cemetery.
The graveyard was both spooky and magnificent. A damp mist hung between the craggy leviathan cedar trees, sheltering some 300,000 ornate and mossy sepulchres. Lanterns guided me past the mighty tombs of shoguns and samurai, marked by tall stupas resembling skewered kebabs. There were memorials to victims of earthquake victims and the dead of WWII, plus many shrines dedicated to the deity Jizo, marking the passing of children. The oldest tomb dates to AD 997; the newest – a granite plasma television – was dedicated by Sharp Electronics to its workforce. Nearby, a pest-control company assuaged bad karma with a memorial to the termites it has extinguished.
The object of pilgrimage resides deep inside Okuno-in. The monk Kukai brought Shingon Buddhism to Japan from China in AD 806, and his modest mausoleum lies in a garden of golden-leafed lotus flowers. It’s located behind a serene hall of 20,000 votive lanterns. Below them, shaven-headed monks in mustard-coloured robes recited sutras inside the hall’s flickering interior where two lanterns are said to have burned for 1,000 years.
It whetted my appetite for one of Japan’s absolute musts: a stay in a shukubo (temple). At Haryo-in I was welcomed by Ryuko, one of six monks, who ushered me into a dining room where I was served shojin-ryori. This beautifully prepared vegetarian temple food arrived as small dishes of fragrant rice, miso soup, pickles, fungus and sesame-tofu.
That night I huddled under the covers on my comfy futon; a blizzard whipped outside, glaring brightly through the sliding screens. As the walls rattled ferociously in the wind, I lay thinking about my trip. Excluding flights and rail pass but including accommodation, I’d spent little more than £40 a day without sacrificing Japan’s wonderful fusion of the ancient and futuristic. I closed my eyes and drifted into a contented sleep.
I wasn’t quite so appreciative the following morning, however, when a bell demolished my dreams at daybreak. Ryuko, now wearing a purple cloak with caramel pompoms, glided in – it was time for worship.
The temple was freezing and Ryuko’s cold breath merged with clouds of incense as he delivered a mesmerising Sanskrit sutra. Cramp pulsed through my muscles as I made an ill-advised attempt to sit in the lotus position. For a moment, it didn’t seem such good value after all.
But as the ceremony went on, Ryuko’s gargling baritone voice and the crashing cymbals sent tingles down my spine. I realised that this chilly, uncomfortable, unforgettable wake-up call was probably priceless.
