Please welcome Flight Centre’s newest guest travel blogger, Mariel Clayton. I’m sure once you finish reading her first post from Japan you (like me) will be looking forward to more… and we’re in luck! Mariel has agreed to join us as a weekly contributor. As quick as we can let’s hand it over to Mariel -

I mean big.

Gojira-big.

I’m a rather ‘robust’ sort of girl in the west, and in Japan that’s made even more apparent. As I lurch down Omotesando-dori, I’m up against a tide of extraordinarily beautiful, lithe, stylish and graceful Japanese women, each one a perfect porcelain ‘bijin’ (beautiful girl), dressed in clothes that, even if I were to go on hunger strike and have a few ribs or internal organs removed, I would never be slender or glamorous enough to wear.

In the corner of my vision is a quick glint of fire-red and gold, and my photographers eye is attracted magpie-like to it. She is tiny, and it appears, so old that she is shrinking into herself. Her carriage is very, very erect, and she exudes a young grace, and an energy that is of such contrast to those lines upon lines on her parchment skin. She is so lovely, and I remember her still. This anachronistic glimpse of pride and poise amongst the contemporary fashion plates of young urban Tokyo.

In Japan, a common greeting is not ‘how are you’, but, ‘are you genki?’ Genki is not an easily translatable word, combining terms like vivacious, effervescent, lively and full of energy amongst others. It’s a glowing, tangible spirit that buoys the body and shines through the skin. This delightful older lady, no bigger than a tourists doll and just stepped from an Edo woodprint, is very, very genki.
By the time I have swung my camera up to eye height to capture her she is gone. Her tiny silk-swathed form swallowed up by the other sublime women in their Chanel couture.
It is one of the moments that is pure Japan.

Japan is often described as a land of contrasts, but that doesn’t work for me. Contrast is to me, opposing forces, opposing visions, opposing ideas and that is not how Japan is. The ‘contrasts’ in Japan work together, in concert. Tokyo is a new-old city. Her streets are open-cluttered and the people quaintly-modern. It is a city to get completely and utterly lost and found in. I highly, highly recommend it.

There is nothing to be apprehensive about going to Japan. The giant cultural and linguistic chasm gets smaller every year, and even a lack of shared words doesn’t impact on the level of hospitality. Common courtesy and good manners will get you everywhere in the Land of the Rising Sun, even when you don’t know where you’re going.

Arriving into Narita is an experience in itself. It seems there are at least 3 airport employees to every passenger that comes in, the ubiquitous blue uniforms are just everywhere. If you’re unsure of where to go, stand still (just not in front of the baggage carousel or you are in for some severe ankle damage) and within seconds you will be descended upon by a veritable tribe of blue-suited helpers eager to show you the Wa.

I’ve taken the Narita express, and I’ve taken the Airport Limo bus, and I can definitely say of the two I prefer the Bus. Yes it’s longer, but you see so much more of the landscape between Narita and Tokyo, especially in Cherry Blossom season when the surrounding views are punctuated by soft dots of Sakura pink. I don’t want the journey to end, I love moving from farmland to suburbs to the tangled web of Tokyo’s highways and Byways. My heart beats faster as the city approaches, columns and rows upon columns and rows. Metal and concrete and glass that perpetually shimmers in the neon underscored skyline. Going deeper into Tokyo is like going deeper underwater, but I can breathe. I can fill my lungs with the salty oily air off Tokyo Bay and the sticky sweet-and-cloying scent of soy covered seafood. Smells mix like colours and layers of sound just blend into the cacophony that is so quintessentially Tokyo. Then, while we’re stopped in traffic on an overhead bypass, in between the concrete apartments and the garish metal of Tokyo Tower, is a little temple. So hidden, it’s as though it’s fallen between the surrounding buildings, like a penny between couch cushions. Just calm and quiet in the noise. In my head I hear temple gongs start to chime, and the racing pulse in my throat slows… but only for a moment and then we’re off again, deeper underwater, deeper into the heart of that whirling giant, deeper into my own heart and the city I love beyond all others.

I am back in Japan, and my adventure is just beginning. I feel excited and passionate and awake.

Ok, maybe not awake, it’s been 36 hours since I slept and my watch is telling me it’s 5am 2 days from now and I should be drooling on my pillow like normal people. As physically exhausted as I am, sleep will have to wait, because I am already in my dream world, my body will just have to catch up.

I am alive again.

Narita, Japan is highlighted on the Flight Centre travel map.

Mariel Clayton is an Adventure and Sport Specialist with Flight Centre based in Oakville, Ontario and can be reached at 1 866 704 5366.

Categories: Destinations

This entry was posted on Monday, June 15th, 2009 at 4:53 pm and is filed under Destinations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.