The Landlady on blossoms and Japanese culture

I’m off to Japan with The Small Daughter and my friend ‘N’ on Thursday. When we booked the flights, we were blissfully unaware of the fact that it was blossom season and that, for this reason, the world and his wife would have already snapped up all the available hotel rooms. We also failed to realise how expensive a destination Japan is – they have to support all those fantastically healthy and long-living pensioners – and that even the cheapest hotel rooms will not give much change from £100… so much for budget travel. Furthermore, because we’re staying in ‘Japanese-style rooms’, we will be mainly sleeping on the floor of a shoebox that looks like an Ibis Hotel room without a bed, only three times more expensive. The Small Daughter is alarmed to realise that it is traditional for Japanese families to have a communal bath together on the roof in the evening. Well, I’m sure it will give us the opportunity to see a little more of our fellow guests than we’d probably like to.

“It is traditional for Japanese families to have a communal bath together”

I’ve heard conflicting views of Japan, my downstairs neighbour, who lived there many years ago, telling me that we will absolutely definitely make millions of social faux pas, simply because the culture is so different to ours. A flatmate of mine from 1986, who is a rock star married to a Japanese model, tells me that it is one of the best places in the world, simply because it is not as homogenised as the rest of the world and therefore totally different. He also told me not to believe all I read online, and that clothes, food and booze – my three favourite things – are all much cheaper than they are in the UK. Another friend told me that Japan is so amazing, simply because the Japanese – in a somewhat similar style to the British – do not pander to foreigners and continue to flaunt their stoic Japanese-ness in the face of all tourists, an idea which I love and totally agree with.

Now that we’ve managed to book all our highly expensive accommodation and bought our equally expensive Japanese Rail Passes, all that remains is for us to pack our suitcases. I am already having problems coming to terms with packing for a winter destination, as I’ve been used to the balmier climes of West Africa of late and am not used to stuffing in tights and jumpers. Worse still, the bag which The Small Daughter has to take, smells nay stinks, of the conch shells, which I foolishly brought back from West Africa, the smell of which is not even touched by Febreze and the like. Oh, the travails of travel…