Across the Yellow Sea to another world

In Britain, I think most kids think of China and Japan as being pretty similar. Everyone knows the rhyme with facial mimes about the Chinese and the Japanese, even though probably only Prince Phillip would now perform it in public. The people of both countries look the same to us, they are all martial arts killing machines, they all eat with wooden sticks, their languages look unreadable and feature an abundance of the word "haaaai-YA".

Obviously as adults our perceptions are a little less simplistic - we know that while Japan is one of the richest and most advanced countries in the world, China still has a communist dictatorship and hundreds of millions of peasants living lives little changed in centuries. But I think we still consider the Chinese and Japanese to be similarly far removed from us in the west, almost unknowably different from us.

So when Japan made us nostalgic for home, it came as quite a surprise. Speeding along the main island of Honshu in the bullet trains, the towns we passed reminded me more of Germany than anywhere else - neat rows of well-built, clean-looking houses with dark tiled roofs, all very prosperous and ordered after the dirty mayhem of Chinese cities. (I suppose Germany and Japan have had similar histories of huge growth and rebuilding since defeat in the war.) The Japanese are very image-conscious, just like us; Chinese men in particular seem unfamiliar with concepts such as the comb. And anywhere decent-sized in China (thus essentially anywhere in China) is fun to wander around in the evening on any day of the week, because of the amount of street life going on at high volume all around you; strolling around smaller towns in Japan at dinnertime was like being at large in, say, Tunbridge Wells on a Tuesday night - a bit lonely.

The people are very different too, although to my untrained eye they look alike. Courtesy, etiquette and politeness are hugely important in Japanese society - when you go into a restaurant, for example, each waiter greets you with a volley of platitudes, something about being humbly grateful for your wondrous custom, so we were told. When the woman pushing the snack trolley through the train enters and leaves each carriage, she turns to the passengers and bows. They make the English look blunt and direct. The Chinese, on the other hand, just don't have room for politeness - there are too many people jammed in, it would take too much time to say excuse me to everyone, so they seem to accept that jostling and a lack of personal space are the natural way of things. In fact this attitude can be quite liberating - just push and shove with the best of them and you'll get on just fine, with no risk of upsetting anyone. In Japan there are a thousand ways you can offend someone, for example by resting your chopsticks in the wrong way.

Of course Japan still has elements of the oriental and the exotic. Often the Germanic-looking homes were fronted by paddy fields, which I don't remember seeing much of in Dortmund. And the fashion and celebrity that Japanese youth is so obsessed with is mostly, to put it bluntly, weird. Kyoto in particular is stuffed full of pointy-roofed temples. I think if we'd come to Japan from Europe, the many differences between the two cultures would have stood out more. But coming from China, which really is a different world, Japan seemed unexpectedly familiar.

As is now tradition, seven days after leaving Chinese territory I got food poisoning. In Laos this was lamentable but not exactly unusual; in Japan it was quite an achievement. Every westerner I spoke to congratulated me on having got diarrhoea in such a clean and hygienic country. Fortunately (hm) I didn't have it as bad as in Laos, but still it spoilt our plans to go out drinking at the weekend in Tokyo's Shinjuku district, famous for bars, neon lights, 'massage' parlours, the inspiration for Blade Runner and the setting for much of Lost In Translation. As in Laos, I'm sure I would have liked the country much more had I not spent a fair proportion of my two weeks there on the toilet.

I did enjoy Japan though, and I'd certainly go again if it wasn't for the expense of the place, which I must mention. On the second night, we decided that trying to keep to a strict budget would just spoil most of the fun, and would mean spending say 700 pounds each in two weeks rather than a round thousand. Since we may never come this way again, we came to the sensible conclusion that for the sake of a couple of hundred quid we might as well have a good time rather than eating noodle soup every night. Our hotel room in Shinjuku cost each night what we'd been paying for almost two weeks' accommodation in south west China, but it wouldn't have felt like we'd experienced Tokyo if we'd stayed in our first hostel, which was a long train ride from any of the action.

The 36-hour ferry journey from Qingdao in China to Shimonoseki on the south western corner of Honshu was far more smooth and comfortable than reluctant sailor Faye had dared to hope. Our cabin was roomy and luxurious (we even had baths!) and the food, our first taste of genuine Japanese cuisine as opposed to wagamama, was good and not even that expensive.
A just-woken Faye spots land on the second morning - it's Japan!


Within an hour of arriving we were on a bullet train. Now I'm no trainspotter but these things are beautiful. Watching the countryside fly by outside the window was not dissimilar to looking out of a Chinese train - but on fast forward.


East meets West - modern houses and paddy fields


Within two hours we were a third of the way along the main island. As you'll know we're not ones to cram loads of sights into our travelling, but this castle at Himeji features in You Only Live Twice and The Last Samurai, so it seemed worth the detour en route to Kyoto.


The most striking thing about these samurai uniforms (apart from the moustaches) was the size of them. Tom Cruise was well cast in the film.


Geisha girls putting on a show at Kyoto station


Two more geishas in Gion, Kyoto's traditional entertainment district


Ramen noodles


The Inari shrine in Kyoto. There are hundreds of these torii gates leading through a forest and up a hill, and they appear in the film Memoirs of a Geisha.




A brief and quite lucky glimpse of Mount Fuji from the train


Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo, the best place in the world for fresh sushi


Tuna heads


Jugs of Asahi in the Asahi brewery, Tokyo


Bill and Scarlett at the Park Hyatt




Piss Alley, Shinjuku, Tokyo


I was particularly amused by the cool young lads in the big cities, who looked like a middle-aged Hollywood director's idea of a rock star - huge hairsprayed bouffant coiffures, goth jewellery, skin-tight clothing. This lad is relatively uncool compared to some of the dudes I didn't manage to photograph


There's a major teen subculture of fancy dress - robots, teddy bears, Little Bo Peep, all with a gothic twist. Strange


A waiter attacks at Ninja restaurant


Torii gate on Miyajima island, near Hiroshima. This is one of Japan's top three sights, according to accepted wisdom. We didn't manage to see it at sunset unfortunately, when I think it would be stunning.


On Miyajima we had one night in a ryokan, a traditional Japanese-style hotel. One night only, at those prices, but it did feel very Japanese and had to be done once.


Dinner was an adventure, sometimes delicious, often puzzling. We ate most of it, but raw squid was a bridge too far.


This watch stopped when 'Little Boy' exploded over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945


Our last night in Japan, back in the port of Shimonoseki, and a drunken Japanese girl invited us back to her flat to enjoy her collection of 80s classics. An appropriately odd but amusing end to our time in Japan.