Japan

Like I wrote in the introduction the things I saw in Japan where the reason to start this series of country related postings. Pauline and I went to Japan in June 2016.

Pangea Travel

I don’t know whether this was related to Japan or just coincidence, but when we had decided to go to Japan it didn’t took us long to find a good travel agency. Where in the past we did choose a trip and had to try hard to change some part of it, that wasn’t any problem with PANGEA Travel. It was something new and something we had to get used to.

Where we were used to getting everything in one package from the travel agency, this worked differently. We got the general information from PANGEA. Part of the other information, like train tickets and vouchers, we got from PANGEA but it was clear this was from an agency in Japan.

That’s also not that different from other travels. We did however get another set of information when we arrived at our first hotel. Things we had hoped to get before that. At least it gave us something to read when we were relaxing after the long flight.

Trips

A big part of the package we received at the hotel consisted of information about the trips we were about to make. We had planned a lot some on foot, others by bike and also some with a mix of train, bus and on foot. In Kyoto we had planned a walking trip through the city. This brought us our first peculiarity.

Every travel agency in every other country has in their general terms a clause giving them the possibility to cancel a trip if there are to few participants. Not so in Japan. The first trip was the guide and just Pauline and I. With the second trip it was (a different) guide, Pauline and I and a lady from Austria. At the bike tripe the group was huge. It was Pauline and I and a family of three from Australia.

Elevator

The next peculiarity was with respect of the use of elevator. We didn’t notice it until we had our bus trip to Lake Chūzenji. It was a long trip up the mountain (and later back down). The guide told us Japanese people are patient. Sometimes it takes five hours to reach the lake. It will be dark and people continue down the mountain again without any complaint.

How does that relate to elevators? In elevators Japanese people don’t seem to be so patient. They are a zealous user of the buttons to open and close the doors. When they are at their floor they push the OPEN button almost immediatly. When they get into the elevator and have selected their floor they push CLOSE.

They don’t always do that though. If they think somebody else might also need to use the elevator they don’t hesitate to push OPEN and keep pushing it until everybody is inside.