We went to Yokohama, Japan - a port city 90 minutes by "limousine bus" from Tokyo international airport. Darin had to be there for work and I tagged along as "complimentary spouse". In Japan, I felt for the first time what it must feel like to be illiterate. English is not widely spoken and almost all signs, menus, directions, instuctions and labels are written in Japanese only. At most restaurants they simply tell you "no menu in english" and we had to resort to pointing at pictures hoping that whatever we ordered was edible and not something very gross. Here I was thinking in Afrikaans, trying to locate the word in English, looking at Japanese and resorting to body language.
All in all, the food everwhere was excellent. Our favorite was tempura (I liked the shrimp and veggie ones and Darin liked the pork) that is served with cabbage on which you drizzle a molasses sauce. You also get a little mortar and pessle in which you grind some sesame seeds to mix into a past for dipping the tempure in. Delish!
Out of fear of being rude, I read up on some Japanese etiquette and learned that blowing your nose in public as well as eating or drinking while walking around is a huge boo-boo. But the bowing still confuses me. I never knew to whom to bow, when to bow, how deep to bow or how many times to bow but luckily I found out that nodding is acceptible for stupid westerners like ourselves, so I nodded a lot.
The not-being-able-to-understand-anything made me get lost a few times - I got on the wrong train, went to the Art Museum and couldn't understand any of the descriptions, wandered around grocery shops looking at items wondering what it was. It felt like I was stuck in that movie called "Lost in Translation". I also went to Chinatown (Yohohama strangely has the largest Chinese settlement in Japan) which was even more overwhelming because here I didn't know if I should even speak the 2 words in Japanese that I knew (hello and thank you).I found myself thinking of the time with my parents in New York City when my dad (who was obsessed with observing orthodox jews in their environment at the time - don't ask) made my mum and I join him in a quest to secretly follow an orthodox person to his neighborhood in Brooklyn. Our presence in this community was frowned upon, and as we walked down the street, every shop changed there "open" signs promptly to "closed" right in our faces. Anyway, this is a story for another time..
Not that I felt unwelcome, just uncomfortable. One day we went on a sightseeing tour of Yokohama, hoping to see more of the sights without having to find things ourselves. When we got on the bus, we realised that the tour was in Japanese only - the tour guide didn't even speak english. We spent the rest of the day listening to Japanese commentary and being driven around in a bus to destinations we did not know. Each time we got off the bus, she held up a little sign for us with the time at which we were to return to the bus, so it worked out well! We went to a rose garden with a view of the bridge, to Sankeien Gardens (an authentic Japanese Garden) and took some really nice pictures.
To view more pictures of Yokohama:
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