Category: Japan

Travel Time and Sanity Savers

View from airplane

I love to travel but I also get tired and cranky about the details from time to time. So these are some tips and apps that really help.

Often on foreign soil

If you do a lot of international travel, the Global entry program is definitely worth the money. For $100 for 5 years, a bit of paperwork, and a personal interview, you can breeze through US customs, and simplify security at lots of airports. You also have the option of expanding your pass. U.S. Citizens enrolled in Global Entry may use the Smartgate system when entering Australia without registration. With a little more work, U.S. Citizens may apply for the Dutch FLUX program, the Korean SES program, Panama’s Global Pass or the Mexican Viajero Confiable program for expedited entry into those countries. Additional fees and enrollment interviews will apply.

Usually a domestic traveler

Run, don’t walk, to get TSA Precheck certification. For just $85 for 5 years, you will minimize your security line hassles and time. You will have to go to a local TSA office for fingerprinting, but if you fly even 1 or 2 times a year, it’s worth it for the much shorter and simpler TSA Pre lines. You whiz through security without taking off your shoes, removing electronics or liquids bags from suitcases. It’s heaven. I’m notoriously cheap and this is a service I will continue to renew for eternity.

One caveat. If you fly a lot, you may occasionally randomly be selected to go through regular security. You’ll know, as your boarding pass won’t say TSA Pre. It will remind you of why you want to stay in this program. Also, some airlines don’t participate in the program. I flew American Airlines/Japan airlines in a code share to and from Japan. Since American was a TSA partner, I had Precheck for my American Airlines flight to Tokyo but did not have it for my return flights on a Japan Airlines plane. This was annoying, as Dallas/Fort Worth airport makes you go through security again after exiting customs to take your domestic flight. No TSA Pre might mean you don’t make your connection. Fortunately, we had plenty of time but we had to go through an extensive check of the sake we had purchased at duty free.

Not quite enough for Global Entry

If you don’t travel enough internationally to justify applying for Global Entry, you’ll definitely want yo download the Mobile Passport app. It will whiz you through US customs faster than you thought possible. I still think you should just commit to traveling abroad more, and get Global Entry, but this is a good stopgap.

Phone solution

As you probably already know, most US carriers charge an arm, a leg, and more for coverage in most foreign countries. There are several options to bypass that. 1) if your card uses a SIM card, you can buy a prepaid SIM card for your destination 2) rent or buy a cheap burner phone with data for your destination (downside: your information won’t be on the new phone unless you use Google and log in on the new device) or 3) my personal favorite – rent a Wi-Fi to go option. In Japan, you could reserve a Pocket Wi-Fi to be picked up at your Japanese arrival airport and returned as you departed. The fees were reasonable and it gave you great coverage in rural areas. Combined with leaving your regular phone on airport mode but turning on free Wi-Fi in hotels, metros, etc. it was a reasonable solution. Use Wi-Fi calling for phone calls and you’re all set.

Maps and more

When it’s available and not in beta, citymapper is my favorite app for getting around big cities. Here are the covered cities, but they are always adding more. It does a superlative job of combining all forms of travel: bus, train, subway, on foot, taxi, rental bike, and ferry.

For other places, like Japan, Google maps/navigator is a good bet. These tips will help you get more out of Google maps. And if you’re driving, you might check whether the Waze app has good coverage in your area. The social media input can be invaluable in a strange city.

Photos and social media

Usually, I carry a really good camera (a big bulky canon with several lenses.) This trip had such tight packing requirements that I opted to just use my smartphone (an LG G6 with really excellent camera optics.) I also opened up this blog, so I could share this adventure with friends and family who want to go to Japan but cant go right now. The smartphone was ideal for blogging on the way, and I was thrilled with the surprisingly good photos and videos it created.

When I want to play with the photos before posting, the Pixlr app is easy to use and has amazing options. Honestly, I didn’t use it as often as I should because we were always on the go and somewhat sleep deprived.

Another app, PicsArt, gives the option of creating collages with your photos. The few times I used this option, I really liked it.

Filmora Go was my video editing app of choice. And if you are starting a blog, WordPress is the blogger’s tool of choice for good reasons.

Travel light

I hope these tips help. The other key tips will be covered in future posts. Always travel light, and take a mini pharmacy along especially for countries with unusual alphabets (Greece, China, Japan, Morocco, etc.) But more on that later. For now, Bon Voyage!

Sake Splendors

Guest blogger Ray Shortridge

Rice is the basic element in Japanese cuisine, but it is also the principal substrate in brewing sake. An official of the ExcelHuman sake company guided us on a tour of their brewery and described the brewing process. For many centuries, sake has been a favorite alcoholic drink in Japan, and images on the walls depicted the pre-modern brewing process.

The brewery produced more than a dozen varieties of sake, and we tasted a few. Brenda preferred one with a slight taste of apple, pictured in the center of the right hand column.

The brewery’s high end variety, Donkura, was priced at 13,960 yen, approximately $120.

The apple flavored sake was far less. Hooray!

Paper Gods’ Shrine and Paper Adventure.

In Echizan, Japan, they honor the paper gods as it is a revered paper making village. Unfortunately, many of the talented papermakers are aging out of the business without young apprentices to teach the art. The Japanese government is funding stipends to encourage young artisans to move to the rural areas where the crafts are situated. They are also funding cross cultural programs with other countries to bring artisans to these areas. This is a U.S./Japan cultural exchange, for example.

The horse represents the area. clan and helps protect the shrine.

The horse plays an important role in Japanese culture and history, and hence also the history of papermaking.

We had a papermaking experience of our own in the papyrus papermaking studio in Echizan. We each made 4 postcards using tubs of prepared mulberry pulp and decorative natural elements.

Natural elements for inclusion in paper
The prepared paper pulp, with a color station in the background.

We could also “dye” the paper with watercolor paints. The lid fell off one if the colors I used, so it got more dye than I intended, but it still created a nice effect.

We also went to a great museum and papermaking studio where masters of the papermaking craft still work.

Making the large thin sheets of paper the area is known for.
Super fine, thin paper being manipulated
Paper sculptures by local artisans
A collect the stamp program to encourage young people’s interest in paper

Japanese Food as Art

Half the time I didn’t know what I was eating, but food was always presented beautifully. We did get a lot of seaweed and raw fish which was sometimes challenging. (I like variety in food everywhere except breakfast!) Still, even those meals were beautiful and usually delicious once I got over my cultural dissonance. Here are some of my beautiful meals.

Sushi and raw halibut topped with a local seaweed
Shrimp tempura and pumpkin and cheese balls
A fabulous beef stew. In Japan.
Raw fish and scallops
Ben to box meal. Note how red orange the egg yolk is
Opened Bento box. Lots of pickled foods here.
The closed Bento box is gorgeous

Ichijodani Asakura Clan Historical Ruins

Guest blog by Ray Shortridge

During the Fifteenth and Sixteenth centuries, the authority of the emperor waned. Land holding warlords exercised political power in the provinces at the expense of imperial officials. In the area near Fukui, the Asakura Clan held sway over thousands of farmers from their stronghold at
Ichijodani Castle.

Goldfish are a common sight in drainage ditches
Drainage ditches were well designed

The ruins of the castle stretch about two hundred yards along the east bank of a small rapidstream that flows into the Asuwan River a few miles downstream to the north. The fortress extended from the stream to the steep slope of a wooded ridge. Across the stream, the samurai serving the Clan dwelled inside a walled village that protected their houses and gardens. In addition to the samurai, artisans and merchants lived in the village that totalled perhaps ten
thousand residents.

T

Reconstructed village
When the curtain is out, the merchant is open, even today.

The five or six generation rule of the Asakura Clan ended violently. An ambitious Shogun who sought to unite the empire, Oda Nobunaga, attacked their stronghold and destroyed both the castle and the village. Over the past several decades, archeological work has revealed the foundations of the buildings, and several houses in the samurai village have been reconstructed. Today, a few re-enactors, curators, and groundskeepers roam an otherwise deserted ruin, along with a black cat and great blue heron that we spotted.

Sneaky vest

Ray and I aren’t fond of checking luggage so we tend to travel light. One way we manage, is travel vests. His is a very professional jacket with zip off sleeves fromScottevest. com. While it’s not the current model, it has lots of great design features and has held up well for years.

Mine is a photographer’s or fisherman’s vest from someplace like REI, Cabelas, etc. It is a more affordable if slightly less stylish option that has lasted twenty years or so of multi-use (travel and photography). It is finally starting to show it’s wear. Besides, I’m not as thin as I was when I bought it. So I’ll probably invest in a new vest soon.

But either option will make your packing easier. It doesn’t count as a bag, but lets you slip a lot of critical items close to your body for that long flight (prescriptions, e-readers, earpods, and so on.)

Chocolate Stop after Conveyor Sushi

Guest blog by Ray Shortridge

We dined at a conveyor belt sushi restaurant where chefs placed small dishes with a wide range of sushi on a conveyor belt that circled the counter around which customers sat. We could inspect the continuous flow of dishes and grab ones that suited us. Pricing was based on the patterns on the plates. The waitress entered the number of empty dishes on our pile and gave us a total to take to the cashier. Ours added up to a mere $10 for two people, so it was a good budget meal and tasty.

Afterwards, on the street, Brenda eyed pictures of ice cream cones in store windows and muttered “I’m craving chocolate.” After two weeks of fishy meals and no chocolate, that wasn’t really surprising. Fortunately, just a few steps further was a Godiva chocolate shop.

She purchased a couple of truffles, and we returned on two later days for icy drinks. Clearly, some of us can’t survive on fish alone.