Dan and I set off for Japan last month armed with very little in the way of research under our belts. We had a copy of Lonely Planet: Japan and figured that two days on the boat would be enough time to plan everything else. The sole thing we’d arranged ahead of time was the Japan Rail Pass, which we’d bought without knowing whether it would really save us money.

The Rail Pass allows for unlimited travel on Japan Rail lines throughout the country, including all but the fastest of the ultrafast shinkansen lines. The passes ain’t cheap — a 14-day pass costs ¥45,100, or roughly $500 (USD) — but they are universally recommended as a moneysaver. At a minimum, we knew we would be traveling from Osaka down to Hiroshima, up to Tokyo and back down to Osaka, with plenty of stops in between. The Rail Pass seemed like a good bet, and in fact, it saved each of us ¥34,640 yen ($383) on train travel. That’s almost as much as the cost of the pass itself.

In two weeks, we used the pass to travel via shinkansen from Osaka to Kyoto-Himeji-Hiroshima-Fukuoka-Kobe-Yokohama-Tokyo-Nagoya-Osaka, and took non-shinkansen trips to Nara, Takayama and all over Tokyo, where Japan Rail has a large network of intracity lines. All of this travel would have cost a startling ¥79,740 ($882) if we hadn’t had the pass.

It is true that to some extent, our itinerary was affected by the fact that we did have the pass. If we had been paying for every ticket individually, we probably would have skipped Fukuoka (Hakata), our only stop on Kyushu, and saved roughly ¥16,000. We might not have stopped in Kobe for lunch or in Himeji for an afternoon. And we probably would have taken some slower, cheaper trains rather than taking the shinkansen every chance we got. But we really appreciated the flexibility that the pass gave us to play things by ear and to explore as much of Japan as possible. Even though it would have been free, we never bothered to make a seat reservation, instead taking our chances in the nonreserved cars. (Without the pass, reserved seats cost more than nonreserved seats.)

All-in-all, we were very pleased with the decision to buy the Japan Rail Pass. If we had had a fixed itinerary, I would have used Hyperdia to calculate our potential savings in advance. But even without knowing that we would save money, I think it was a good decision. Not only did it save us cash, but it took financial considerations out of any discussion about where to go or how long to stay.

A shinkansen train whizzing through Himeji station.

The nitty-gritty: Japan Rail passes are available for both ordinary and Green Car (deluxe) travel. You can choose between 7-, 14- and 21-day passes. Your rail pass voucher must be purchased before you enter Japan, and the voucher is valid for three months from the date of purchase. Plenty of U.S.-based travel agents, including STA Travel, sell passes online online. We bought ours through a Hong Kong travel agent, which caused a few days of anxious nail-biting after we had deposited the payment into their bank account and we were still waiting for the passes to arrive (because that’s how you do business in China). Once you get to Japan, you bring your passport and your rail pass voucher to a train station to obtain your actual Japan Rail Pass.

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1. Japan: How Much Does It Really Cost?
2. Two Days on the Sea of Japan
3. Snapshot: Hida Folk Village

To be honest, when I began thinking about where I would go this winter, Japan was pretty low on my list. It was supposed to be so expensive, and it had always been more my brother’s interest than mine. But then I found out about the boat.

That’s right, it’s possible to get from China to Japan — or vice versa — by sea. I’m a sucker for quirky forms of transportation (like pick-up trucks turned public buses in Laos) and unusual ways of getting from point A to point B, so the Shanghai-Japan Ferry seemed like just the ticket. If I was going to go to Japan, there would be no airplanes for me. Not only does the ferry make a better story, but a round-trip second-class ticket on the ferry cost just 2,225 RMB, or $325 (USD). This was about $200 less than the cheapest flight we could find during the peak Chinese New Year travel season.

Our first, blurry, view of Japan came on the second night of the trip.

The potential downside of sea travel is, of course, time. Instead of a short couple of hours in the air, we were committed to 48 hours on the ferry. As we embarked, we had no real idea what the accommodation would be like or what we would do during all of that time on board. But the ferry turned out to be an almost entirely pleasant traveling experience. Technically, we were in class “2A,” which is organized into four-berth cabins. The berths themselves are quite a bit bigger than those in Chinese sleeper trains, and the cabin also includes a small common area equipped with a television. Thus, on our return trip, we found ourselves in the middle of the Sea of Japan, watching a very fuzzy live broadcast of the Olympic women’s figure skating finals, which were happening on the other side of the planet in Vancouver.

The berths were just big enough for the two of us could squeeze in side-by-side to watch bootleg DVDs on my laptop.

We found the cabin so comfortable that we hardly found any reason to leave. But if we had wanted to, we could have sung karaoke, played Wii and/or watched movies with our fellow passengers, who were a mix of Chinese, Japanese and a few western backpackers. The only unpleasant aspect of the journey was the food, which ranged from slightly tasty to barely edible. By Chinese standards, it was ludicrously expensive (35 kuai for small portions of a couple of dishes), but after spending two weeks in Japan it seemed like a bargain (only 500 yen for a hot meal)!

The nitty-gritty: The Suzhou Hao departs from Shanghai every Monday, arriving in Osaka on Wednesday morning. It then departs from Osaka on Fridays and arrives in Shanghai on Sunday. The best value is a round-trip ticket, which shaves off half the price of your return journey. You can make reservations through the Shanghai Ferry Company’s website and then pay cash for your ticket just before you board. There are several classes of cabin onboard, ranging from very swank VIP and “Special Class” cabins to a 40-person Japanese style cabin (for men only).

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1. Japan Rail Pass: To Buy or Not to Buy?
2. Japan: How Much Does It Really Cost?
3. Snapshot: Hida Folk Village

One of my biggest concerns before leaving for Japan last month was how much it would cost. The country is famously expensive, and since I make my living teaching in China, I’m not exactly rolling in dough. My traveling companion is in the same situation, so we knew we would have to really stick to a budget. And we basically succeeded — in the end, I spent a bit less than I had expected/feared.

Excluding the cost of getting to Japan, the total cost of the 15-day trip was ¥146,187***, or about $1,640 (USD). The Japan Rail Pass was a fixed cost, and on Wednesday, I’ll look at whether it paid off or not. Taking that out of the equation, I was spending an average of ¥4,000 ($45) per day on sightseeing and daily expenditures and another ¥2,600 ($29.50) on accommodation. That turned out to be a bit less than had been suggested by online sources. Posts on Lonely Planet’s Thorntree forum suggest a daily budget of ¥90,000 to ¥110,000 per day, excluding the cost of the Rail Pass.

Here’s what we did to keep costs down:

• Food & Drink: I spent an average of ¥2,960 each day on food.
  • We ate virtually every breakfast at Japan’s ubiquitous convenience stores, where it was possible to fill up (even for a very hungry boy) for less than ¥500. I will admit that I caved a couple of times and had Starbucks because it’s something I miss terribly on in Changsha.
  • Although we had a few more expensive meals, we also ate a lot of noodles and rice bowls for lunch and dinner. And when we wanted to have something pricier, like sushi, we would eat a little less than we wanted and fill up somewhere else on cheap food. (Probably more important for the aforementioned hungry boy than it was for me.)
  • We didn’t drink any alcohol.
  • I couldn’t cut my coffee habit just for this trip, but I did drink a lot of instant and canned coffee. Cafes charge ¥300-¥400 even for a plain coffee, making McDonald’s look like a bargain at ¥220 for a medium.
• Hostels: On average, our hostel cost ¥2,581 per person per night.
  • Japan has a ton of youth hostels, and while they are expensive compared to those elsewhere in Asia, they are still the cheapest option. On the plus side, each place we stayed was scrupulously clean and had a great staff.
  • Prices can range considerably, especially for private rooms, so it pays to comb through Hostelworld and Hostelbookers pretty carefully. This is especially true in Tokyo and Kyoto.
  • We did opt to spend ¥200-¥300 more per person per night for our own room (with a shared bathroom) instead of staying in dorms.
• Intracity Transportation: Our daily intracity transportation costs varied wildly from place to place. Some cities were very walkable (Hiroshima, Takayama) while others required that we take buses or subways everywhere (Kyoto, Osaka). In Tokyo, which is definitely not walkable on a large scale, we took advantage of the Japan Rail Pass as much as possible and got around the city mainly on its intracity JR lines.

***Yes, I really did write down every yen I spent in Japan and then typed it all into Excel to produce this graph. I was pretty careful, but it’s possible that I forgot about a water bottle or two over the course of two weeks. The act of writing everything down had its own budget-enforcing effect — I definitely thought a little more carefully about whether or not I should make certain purchases.

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1. Japan Rail Pass: To Buy or Not to Buy?
2. Two Days on the Sea of Japan
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This Buddha statue sits in one of the smaller buildings at Wat Xieng Thong.

This Buddha statue stood out from others at Wat Xieng Thong in Luang Prabang because the gilt on his face and neck was not the usual smooth gold paint that I had seen on other Buddhas in Laos. Instead it appeared as if small postage-stamp-sized pieces of gold leaf had been haphazardly applied over the original surface. There was no one around to ask, but I’m pretty sure that the gold leaf was not part of the original statue. The pieces were probably applied by worshippers at the wat as a form of offering to Buddha. I saw a similar thing at Sarnath in India, where pieces of gold leaf now adorn the giant stupa marking the site of the Buddha’s first sermon. On the smaller Buddha statue in Luang Prabang, the effect is distinctive and, I think, quite beautiful.

This is part of a new series of Friday “snapshot” posts featuring photos from my recent travels. If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe to my RSS feed to automatically receive my latest posts.

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Now that I’m back at home, I can say that I was pretty much correct. I don’t think I will be starting a “RTW trip” savings account any time soon. The two major sections of my trip — Southeast Asia and Japan — were wildly different from one another, so they didn’t exactly blur together. But I did notice that by the end, I was losing the ability to focus on some of what I was seeing. The day after we visited the Tokyo National Museum, I had to work to remember anything that we’d seen there. I found myself wanting to skip sites that seemed too similar. (Did we really need to visit another reconstructed Japanese castle?) While certain experiences will be unforgettable — visiting an onsen, watching fish be bought and sold at the Tsukiji Fish Market, visiting the Peace Memorial Museum in Hiroshima — my enthusiasm had dimmed a bit.

The best fish is displayed like a precious gem at the Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo.

However, I think some of this has more to do with the way I was traveling than simply the duration of the trip. This is (officially, at least) my last semester in China, and I wanted to cram a lot of stops into this, my final long vacation. This was especially taxing in Southeast Asia, where the transportation is slow and mostly uncomfortable. In an ideal world, I would have been able to spend a few more days in some places, and fit in a few more days chilling at the beach rather than looking at temples. On a real RTW trip, that slower pace would be possible. So the idea of long-term travel still has some appeal. The notion of spending six months in South America is still appealing, for instance — but I would want to spend it mostly in one place, studying Spanish.
As for writing that I’m “staying put for awhile,” I don’t really mean it. Plans are afoot to go away for a weekend later this month, and I’m already planning more trips within China for school breaks in April and May. Still, it’s nice to know that Monday through Thursday I’ll be sleeping in my own bed, able to cook if I want to and with no need to worry about where next to do laundry.

Unfortunately, my upcoming plans do not include the beach. Damn.

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Boiling sappan wood to make a natural red dye.

On the first day, my classmate Lynne and I began by learning something about natural dyes. Traditionally, Lao weavers used everything from turmeric to rusty nails to produce beautiful colors of silk. We got some hands-on practice: Lynne mashed annato seeds to make an orange dye while I chopped up sappan wood to produce both red and purple. Fun facts: Boiled by itself, the wood produces a pink dye; if you throw in a handful of rusty nails, it becomes red. And if you let the red dye ferment for six months, it becomes purple.

My teacher demonstrates how to spin the silk thread for my scarf.

In the afternoon, we met our teachers and began work on our scarves. The weavers who produce OckPopTok’s beautiful wall hangings also instruct the classes, so you are really learning from the best. The women don’t speak English, so much of the instruction takes place through body language. Every time I forgot to change the foot pedals, my teacher would cough. If I was about to lose the pattern, she would reach over and yank the threads back into the proper position. And when more complicated problems arose, the male interpreters did a good job explaining what I was doing wrong. (But they don’t touch the looms themselves. In Lao culture, weaving is women’s work — if a man weaves, he is supposedly never going to get married.)

My scarf nears completion.

The weaving itself is not easy. Just as I was starting to get the hang of plain weaving, it was time to make the first stretch of pattern. The pattern is set by the heddle, a complicated pattern of vertical strings and loops that controls the movement of the warp threads. Assembling the heddle is what qualifies someone as a master weaver, so this was not something that I did myself. But even though it was set up for me, there was still plenty of work to do. The weaver — or in this case, the weaver and her teacher — manually moves the loops up and down as she progresses through the pattern. Any small mistake would be obvious in the final product. But my teacher kept an eagle eye on my progress and quickly corrected the mistakes I inevitably made.

All told, it took about eight hours over two days to finish my scarf. By the time it was ready to come off the loom, my back was stiff, and I was very glad that I didn’t have to do that every day. But the finished product was lovely, and all the work felt well worthwhile.

It is worth pointing out that OckPopTok’s classes are not cheap. My two-day course cost $100, including all of the materials and lunch on both days. And some visitors might not find two days of weaving to be exactly vacation-like — it’s hard work! But if you do have a serious interest in textiles, the quality of instruction and the high level of individual attention make OckPopTok’s classes worth every penny.

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1. Snapshot: Wat Xieng Thong, Luang Prabang

Wintertime at the Hida Folk Village outside Takayama, Japan.

After two weeks of all cities, all the time, it was a bit of a relief to arrive in Takayama, a small town* in the Japanese Alps. We’d seen Japan’s hypermodern side on display in Tokyo and learned about its 20th century history in Hiroshima. In Takayama, we would get in touch with its rural past. Takayama has preserved a historic district where dark, low wooden buildings allow you to imagine that you are back in a pre-electronics, pre-convenience store Japan. During January and February, you can tour hundred-year-old, low-tech sake breweries still operating in their original locations. And if you venture a half-hour outside of town, the Hida Folk Village has collected examples of old-style farmhouses from around the area. The gassho zukuri houses, like those pictured above, were designed with steeply slanting straw roofs to keep snow from accumulating on top. Today, they are filled with old agricultural implements, silk-making equipment and household tools to show how Japanese villagers lived in the 18th and 19th centuries. Even on a short tour of Japan, this was a worthy stop — and, in winter, it was full of opportunities for frolicking in the snow!

Written from the road in Osaka, Japan, en route back to China (by boat!). If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe to my RSS feed to receive my latest updates! For more great travel photos, check out DeliciousBaby’s Photo Friday.

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@chinaandbeyond have you got a ny recommendations for a months stay in china. leaving hk nxt week

This got me thinking. A month is long enough that you can really see a range of what China has to offer, but you still have to be selective (unless you want to spend every night on an overnight train). Based on the places I’ve traveled, I’d suggest an itinerary something like this one:

• Guangzhou (1-2 days) — This is one of the economic hubs of modern China, and makes a nice segue from Hong Kong to the mainland. The food is mostly the same, but the zeitgeist is much more “Chinese.”
• Shanghai (2-3 days) — Of course you’ll visit, it’s China’s financial capital. But you really don’t need that long to see the main attractions.
• Suzhou (1 day) — The gardens are beautiful, and it’s doable as a daytrip from Shanghai.
• Beijing (4-5 days) — The sites and the food are iconic. In 4-5 days, you can see almost everything, including a day visiting the Great Wall at one of the more remote locations like Mutianyu or Simitai.
• Xi’an (3 days) — The Terracotta Warriors are a must-see, but the other sites (especially the Han Yangling tomb) are well worth your time.
• Lanzhou (only as long as you need to be here) — There’s nothing much to see in Lanzhou, but it is a necessary transit stop.
• Dunhuang (2 days) — The Mogao Caves. Enough said.
• Xiahe (2 days) — Meet monks at the Labrang Monastery, one of the most important in Tibetan Buddhism, and explore the Ganjia Grasslands.
• Langmusi (2-3 days) — Trek into the grasslands and spend a night with a family of Tibetan nomads.
• Guilin (1 day) — Much like Lanzhou, this is a necessary stop for transit without too many exciting sites of its own.
• Yangshuo (2-3 days) — Take a break from the heavy sightseeing and enjoy Yangshuo’s natural wonders. Rent a bike, take a boat ride or simply walk around and enjoy the magnificent karst scenery.
• Dragon’s Backbone Rice Terraces (2 days) — Marvel at the fact that the terraces, which stretch as far as the eye can see, were carved long before the days of bulldozers. The hike from Dazhai to Ping’an will take you through a few different ethnic-minority villages.

But there are plenty of places I still haven’t been. You might want to replace the week in Gansu (Lanzhou, Xiahe and Langmusi) with a trip to Sichuan or Tibet — places I’m hoping to explore in the next few months. For hiking and a glimpse of China’s minority culture, Yunnan is a possible alternative to Guangxi (Guilin, Yangshuo, Rice Terraces).

If you can stay longer, you might add a stop to Hangzhou or Nanjing near Shanghai, or visit Jiayuguan on the way to Dunhuang. The Chengyang Wind and Rain Bridge is near Yangshuo and the Rice Terraces in Guangxi. Really, the possibilities are practically endless.

Send more questions my way via Twitter (@chinaandbeyond) or e-mail (jessica –at– tochinaandbeyond.com)!

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Kiyomizu Temple was our first stop in Kyoto, due mostly to its status as a World Heritage Site (I’m traveling with a collector) and its proximity to our hostel. It turned out to be an ideal introduction to the city. Kyoto is famous among tourists for its temples, shrines, and gardens, and quaint streets like Sannen-zaka allow you to imagine that you are in “old Japan.” Yet these pockets of religious tradition and natural beauty are surrounded by an entirely modern city, complete with confusing subway system, ubiquitous convenient stores and strangely automated dessert restaurants. The view from Kiyomizu captures the way in which these two sides of Kyoto are, of course, inseparable.

Written from the road in Hiroshima, Japan. If you liked this post, please subscribe to my RSS feed!

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We were trolling the streets of Kyoto in search of something sweet when Dan, my travel companion, spotted a sign for the restaurant. The name was innocuous and our demands were minimal, so we headed up to the top of a department store to check it out. When we reached the sixth floor, we were confronted by the machine at right, which resembles nothing so much as a Japanese subway ticket vending machine. Although we were momentarily fazed by the Japanese-only buttons, we eventually pieced together the fact that Sweets Paradise was no ordinary dessert restaurant. Your 1,480 yen, paid directly into the machine, would buy you the right to stuff yourself silly with desserts for 80 minutes. The exorbitant cost was  clearly going to be far outweighed by the chance to see exactly what a Japanese-style dessert buffet would entail.

Happily, it did not only mean mochi (though a few varieties lurked on one of the trays). Virtually all of the desserts were Western-style cakes and puddings, cut into bite-sized pieces perfect for sampling. After six months of inedible Chinese baked goods, Sweets Paradise’s offerings were a refreshing change of pace. There were no red beans masquerading as chocolate, and the pastries even contained butter! But there were a few cultural miscommunications, nonetheless — I only narrowly avoided topping my ice cream with beef curry, which bears an unnerving resemblance to fudge sauce.

After a plate (or two), we could sit back and contemplate our strange surroundings. Sweets Paradise is perhaps not a top-notch culinary experience. But it is orderly, Western-influenced (though not Western-dominated) and unnecessarily automated — much like Japan itself.

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