Episode 35: Discovering Japan - Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, & Beyond with Don George

Angie Orth:

It goes without saying that listeners of this show love to travel. Each journey is an opportunity to learn about a new culture, sightsee, and discover mouthwatering culinary delights. But how far outside of your comfort zone have you been? Today, we're talking to a prolific travel writer who's going to take us on an eastbound journey to a land where ancient tradition meets modern skyscrapers. A place where spectacular sushi awaits around every corner and tea time rituals date back over 1,200 years. We are going to Japan, and P.S., you won't need to pack your bathing suit.

I am so excited to introduce our listeners to Don George, who is not just an award-winning travel writer with tons of books and articles under his belt, but he's also a mentor for the entire travel writing industry—me, most especially, included. He literally wrote the book on how to be a travel writer, the Lonely Planet Guide to Travel Writing. I will say that that taught me more about my current profession than any college course I ever took. So Don, thank you for being here and for being one of my very first guests, and thank you for being my unofficial travel writing professor all these years. I really appreciate you.

Don George:

Thank you, Angie. I just got goosebumps, thank you. That's so nice of you.

Angie:

You really have paved the way for so many of us. Just having a book on the shelf that I can go back to and say, "Yeah, Don said that's the right way to do it." That's been priceless for me as a writer, so thank you.

Don:

I really appreciate that. Thank you.

Angie:

I can't wait to get into this week's destination with you because I've never been to Japan, so I can't wait to hear about it. Obviously, I've read a lot of your pieces on it, but I can't wait to hear it from the horse's mouth because you've spent more than 40 years visiting Japan and you've lived there. Even for a relatively small nation, there's a lot of ground to cover. Explain to us the layout of Japan, the 4 major islands, and what do we need to know as newbies?

Don:

The first thing to know—and this is something that surprises people often when I tell them this—is there are 4 main islands of Japan. There's Hokkaido in the north. Honshu—which is the main island—kind of in the middle. There's Shikoku, which is sort of southeast, and then there's Kyushu. Those are the 4 main islands. There are hundreds of other smaller islands, but all of Japan is about the size of California. Within "California" of Japan, there's an incredible range of geographical, cultural, and culinary diversity. It's an incredibly rich, alluring, and wonderful destination.

Angie:

What do you think is a good place or a hub to start if somebody is going to Japan for the first time?

Don:

I think you need to start with Tokyo. Tokyo is the capital. It's got everything. It's really the center of power and culture today in modern Japan. I would go to Tokyo and then I would go to Kyoto, where the old traditional culture still really thrives.

Kyoto's one of my two favorite places on the planet, so I really, really love Kyoto. It's just a great place to immerse yourself in traditional Japanese treasures and riches.

Then, I would go to Osaka because it's a major city. It's a really interesting city, quite different from Kyoto and Tokyo.

Then I would try to get out into the countryside and see—depending on what you're interested in—Mount Fuji from Hakone or go up to the beautiful Buddhist sacred mountain of Koyasan—Mount Koya, or get way out into the country, the island of Shikoku—where my wife is from—which is a really entirely different part of Japan. Very pristine countryside. There's a big diversity within Japan, but I would start with Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, and then follow your heart and your interests to other places.

Angie:

If people are coming from all over, is Tokyo the easiest to get to airport-wise? Is that where most flights are?

Don:

Absolutely, and then Osaka would be second. You can get to Tokyo from almost anywhere. Tokyo is where you're likely to arrive.

Angie:

OK, well that makes sense to use that as your starting point then, right? What are the contrasts between the cities? If Tokyo is the capital, the hub, and the culture, and Kyoto is more ... Take it away, what do you think?

Don:

Tokyo is the political and economic hub of Japan. It really is the capital. It's where all the governmental seats are, and it's the place where all the major decisions get made. You get a great sense of Japan's technology and entrepreneurialism, all of that is in Tokyo.

Then you go to Kyoto, and it's like going back hundreds and hundreds of years to a much simpler, quieter, gentler, way more traditional Japan, where every tiny shop looks like a little museum. You've got this one shop that just does chopsticks, another that just does wooden things, and one shop that just does ceramic bowls. So, you've got all these little, tiny treasure houses that I really, really love.

Then Osaka is the merchant capital. In the old days, samurais weren't there, merchants were there so it's got a really distinctive, very earthy, of-the-people feeling to it, great cuisine, great energy. The Osaka people are full of this robust vitality that exudes out of them. Tokyo people are much more staid, conservative, restrained, and the Osaka people are just overflowing. So, it's a really interesting cultural difference there.

Angie:

Can we talk about the region a little bit? What is special about this part of Japan?

Don:

It's a really interesting region because it's sort of south central Japan. It goes all the way from the Sea of Japan in the north to the Pacific Ocean in the south. That's a slice of Japan that encompasses everything from beautiful mountain scenery to the cultural hub of Kyoto; Nara, which was the capital before Kyoto; and Osaka, which is this incredibly bustling mercantile place. And then Kobe, which is a really interesting cosmopolitan city on the coast. It's got a really great mix of culture and landscape, really beautiful. It's got its own very special energy—a tremendous Osaka energy kind of permeates that. It's got a different dialect, Kansai-ben, which is very colorful, vigorous, and fun to talk. And that's really different from Tokyo, which is the Kanto area, and people always contrast the Kanto and the Kansai. Kanto is way more formal, sort of stylized, traditional, quieter, I would say in some ways, almost bureaucratic. Kansai is way more explosive.

Angie:

So, maybe like Washington D.C. versus Beverly Hills.

Don:

Kind of like that! Without the poodles.

Angie:

Without the celebrities and the paparazzi.

Don:

Exactly.

Angie:

OK, you mentioned the different dialects. When somebody is visiting and they don't speak Japanese, is that tough not speaking Japanese? Do people speak English there? What's the vibe?

Don:

It's pretty tough. I mean, Japan is an incredibly modern, super technologically advanced society, but it's quite surprising to me that not that many people speak English or are comfortable speaking English. Even if they do know some English, there's a certain Japanese reticence about embarrassing yourself. So even if you kind of know English, you're often reluctant to speak English because you don't want to make a mistake and embarrass yourself. There's this sense of saving face, so it's quite challenging for foreigners who don't speak Japanese to get around. Once they get outside the main tourist hubs, it's really pretty challenging. You'll find people, you can always find somebody—I always tell people to go to the younger people like students because they're studying English right now and they're a lot more open to speaking English.

The Japanese are incredibly, incredibly nice. They will literally go out of their way for a half hour or miles to make sure that a foreign visitor doesn't get lost or gets to wherever they're going. They're incredibly nice, but they don't really speak that much English. It's an interesting situation for foreigners who want to venture off the beaten path. Sometimes it's actually better to go with a tour group or an organized group where you have somebody who does speak Japanese.

Angie:

I wonder if you have a story you can share with us about that Japanese kindness. Just a time that somebody shocked you with their warmth and kindness.

Don:

The one that immediately comes to mind is I had been given an assignment to go and buy an old woodblock print to be the cover of a catalog for Geographic Expeditions, which I still work for. It was in this beautiful old woodblock shop in Kyoto, and the head of Geographic Expeditions says, "No problem. You'll find it easily, everybody knows where it is." Well, I got to Kyoto and began wandering around asking for this woodblock shop, and people were like, “Uh no, we'd have no idea where that is."

I finally got to this covered mall, and I was talking to a really wonderful older woman who had a kimono shop, and she was trying to explain to me where it was, and I just couldn't follow her directions. Finally, she looked at me and she smiled very, very sweetly and benignly, and she said in Japanese, "Just a moment." She got up, went to her door, and she turned around the sign that said, "Open" to "Closed." She closed up her shop, sort of took me by the hand, and just said, "Follow me." We walked for literally 45 minutes, and she took me to the doorway of the woodblock print shop, and she went, "Here you are." And I was just, "You just shut your shop for 45 minutes to walk me here, and now you're going to have to walk back another 45 minutes?" I said, "Can I give you something or something?" And she just went, "Oh no, no, no, no. It is such my pleasure to help a foreigner." And that's just so incredibly typical. I mean, they're really, really kind.

Angie:

Isn't that mind-blowing? What a great reason to travel when you know that people are just going to carry you around by your hand because you couldn't find the place. That's darling.

Don:

Right, and it's kind of the tip of the kindness iceberg in Japan. There are so many acts of incredible kindness there.

Angie:

Let's go back to Kyoto. You mentioned it's no longer the capital of Japan, and Tokyo is now. Do you know when that changed and why?

Don:

Kyoto was the capital of Japan from 794 to 1868—a long, long time. It was the capital because that's where the emperor lives, wherever the emperor lived was the capital. But after the earliest 17th century, 1603, the political power pretty much resided in what was called Edo because there was a shogun there, Tokugawa Ieyasu, who was the head of all the shoguns. He was a really, really powerful feudal lord. The emperor appointed him to be the head of all the feudal lords, so the political military power was in Edo, but the capital of the country was still Kyoto.

Then in 1868, when the Western forces kind of came and opened up Japan—Japan had been isolated from the West for about 200 years—Commodore Perry and a bunch of people came to Japan and said, we want to start trading with you. We need you. We really, really want you to open up. Within Japan itself, there were 2 sides, one that wanted to open up and one that didn't. The ones that wanted to open up won, and when they won, the emperor was restored to power. It was called the Meiji Restoration.

The emperor was restored to power in 1868, and he decided to move from Kyoto to what was then called Edo, and they renamed it Tokyo, which means the "eastern capital." He moved from Kyoto to Tokyo, and that's when Tokyo became the capital of Japan. Tokyo now is an incredibly cosmopolitan place. I mean, it's so hustling, bustling, you get all kinds of cuisine there, all kinds of fashion is there. Of course, the whole technological world is exploding there. It's really, really a fascinating kind of wonderland to wander around in.

Angie:

Now, when you watch the time lapses of the intersections, when people are crossing the road, it kind of gives me heart palpitations. I'm like, "I don't know if I could do that." There are so many people and they're just go, go, going. But also, it seems very relaxed. People are conservative and they've got a mission and they're doing their thing, but they're also chill about it, right?

Don:

Yeah, that's another amazing thing about Japan, everybody is so incredibly courteous, considerate, and thoughtful. There's this sense of, "I have my space, you have your space. I'm not going to invade your space." You can be on this incredibly packed subway train, but everybody is somehow really fine, really cool about it. I mean, they're all in their own little space and it's amazing to me that the Japanese have perfected the art of living together that way. They're really, really thoughtful, considerate, respectful, and courteous, and as a result, Japan is an incredibly safe place. The crime is almost non-existent. It's one of the very few places in the world I can think of where a single woman can just wander around and really not have concerns at all.

Angie:

I had a friend who was just in Japan, and she asked her concierge, “Is it safe for me to go out and get some food right now?” They just looked at her like she was nuts. They were like, "What do you mean is it safe? Of course, it's safe, it's Japan." Just go anywhere and you're good. She was really taken aback and I was, too. That's something you do have to think about.

Don:

It's amazing to me how safe it is, and people just take care of each other.

Angie:

That's priceless in a destination. You really can't quantify that and how nice that is as a female traveler. Speaking of women, the geisha tradition was popular in the Gion district of Kyoto. Is this a living tradition or is it now viewed from a more historical perspective?

Don:

Interestingly, it's a super living tradition. It's still very much alive and there are still new geishas coming into the art form every year. There's a kind of geisha academy in Kyoto where dozens and dozens of young women enroll every year, and they go through a really rigorous program of learning all these different art forms, dance, music, singing, flower arrangement, and tea ceremony. They have to learn all of these things to really be a proper geisha. I naively thought that it was this historical relic that you learned about, but it wasn't a living thing. It's an incredibly living thing.

On the tours that I do, we get to meet geishas, we talk to apprentices and veterans, and get to find out how their lifestyle is. Sometimes, I think that people think, “Well, it must be very hard. They must somehow have been forced into that, or that couldn't possibly be their choice.” It really is their choice. They had all kinds of options and this is what they wanted to do because it's considered a very high art form, a kind of performance art. And you really are a specialist in Japanese culture by the time you become a certified geisha. You know all kinds of cultural traditions that make you a really, really sophisticated artist.

Angie:

You said that you lead tours in Japan. Can you tell us about that? Can guests interact with the geishas on your tours? How does that work? What's the cultural expectation?

Don:

You can reserve an evening with a geisha, you go to a restaurant, you have a meal, and usually 2 geishas will come—one veteran and one apprentice—and the veteran will play shamisen or a musical instrument of some kind. The apprentice will dance and demonstrate the traditional arts of music playing and dancing. Then they'll come and actually talk with you; they'll come to your table and sit and you can ask them any kinds of questions that you want to ask them, and they will very happily respond. There's no sense of awkwardness or is it impolite for me to ask this or ask that? They're totally used to being asked whatever you can imagine. It's a really, really wonderful opportunity to speak with a living treasure representing traditional Japanese art. I love that aspect of it, we get to meet with people who embody this ancient Japanese tradition that is still very much alive today.

Angie:

Tell me about this Japanese custom of the onsen. That's always intrigued me, but also kind of scared me a little bit because I don't know the details. I think in the onsen situation, you don't want to do it wrong. What do people need to know about the onsen experience?

Don:

Onsen is hot spring bath. There are a lot of hot springs in Japan. It's such a volcanic country. There are hot springs everywhere. There are hotels and resorts that have private hot spring baths in your room, but the very fun Japanese thing to do is to go to a public hot spring bath. You walk into a room, usually segregated by men and women—way out in the country you can still find places that aren't segregated—but generally you're going to go to a segregated one. If you're a man, you walk into the men's room and there's a changing area where you take all of your clothes off.

Angie:

All of them.

Don:

All of your clothes off.

Angie:

All the way to the bottom.

Don:

People always ask me, "Can I wear a bathing suit?" And it's like, no, you cannot.

Angie:

Absolutely not.

Don:

You cannot wear a bathing suit. No, no, and no. Leave your inhibitions behind, leave the inhibitions in the changing room with your clothes. You slide open the door to this very steamy room where there are usually 3 pools, one is very hot, one is a little less hot, and one is a little less hot; there may even be one very cool pool. The thing you have to know is that in Japan, you soap yourself off before you go into the bath. That's super important because the bath is really for relaxing and just letting the hot water soak into your bones and becoming a noodle.

There are these spigots on the side of the walls, so as you walk into the room, you go to a spigot and there's soap, water, and usually a shower head. You wash yourself off really thoroughly, completely, and you rinse yourself off thoroughly and completely. Then you go into the bath and you just settle into the bath and let the warmth soak into you. You go to bliss land; it's really, really wonderful. And everybody is there, people of all shapes and sizes are there, and everyone is very natural and cool about it.

Angie:

It's not weird because it's common, right? Everybody does it.

Don:

It's totally common. You do it every day and you've done it from the day you were born, basically. It's such an incredibly accepted part of Japanese life, and a sort of beloved part of Japanese life that everybody just loves it and you just sink right in. As a foreigner, once you get over that notion of, "Oh my God, I'm naked in front of all these strangers," it's very comfortable and it's really quite wonderful, comforting, and cosseting in a way to be with all these other people in this beautiful, misty environment.

Oftentimes, there will be an outdoor pool as well, which I always go to. It's called the rotenburo, it's an outdoor hot spring pool you can go into, and then you're sitting under the stars, usually surrounded by some greenery, some vegetation, and it's absolute heaven on earth. I just love that.

Angie:

How long does it take to get over the, "Oh, I'm naked in front of all these people" feeling? How many times do I have to go in the bath before I'm like, "Now it's fine. Here I am." When do I get over that?

Don:

I lead these tours, and usually on the tours, people have not done this before. For some people, it's almost automatic. Immediately the first time they go in, they're like, "I get this and I'm really fine with it." For other people, it's sort of the end of the 1-week or 10-day trip. At the very end, they're thinking, "I may not ever get back here again. If I'm going to do this, I've got to do it now." They go down and they do it, and inevitably everybody says, that was not that big a deal. And nobody's looking at you, they're not staring at you. You're just one of the many people in this wonderful hot springs bath. "Why did I worry about it all this time?" they think, "Why didn't I start 5 days ago?"

Angie:

Why did I freak out for the whole entire trip thinking about this moment? And dreading the moment when really it was just a fun skinny dip, right?

Don:

It was a fun skinny dip, exactly. We are all brought into the world naked.

Angie:

Thank you. Naked as the day you were born, bathing with a bunch of strangers in another country. Why not?

Don:

Why not? It's one of those things that after you do it, you go, “I'm so glad I did that. Now, I really get it. I understand why it's a big deal in Japan. I understand how it's this beloved ritual that the Japanese do all the time.” I get it now. It's my ritual, too. Travel is always about stepping outside your comfort zone, and this is one of those big moments of stepping outside your comfort zone where the payoff is huge. It's really worth it.

Angie:

Do you have a favorite onsen you might recommend to a newbie like me?

Don:

I do. There's an onsen on the island of Shikoku in this town called Matsuyama, which is the original Japanese onsen, it's called Dogo Onsen. If you've ever seen a movie called Spirited Away, which a lot of people have seen, the bathhouse in that movie is based on Dogo Onsen in Matsuyama in Shikoku. It's this wonderful, fantastic, amazing building.

The legend is that 3,000 years ago, the locals saw a white heron bathing in a hot springs bath, and it was injured. After it bathed there for a little while, it emerged no longer injured—it had been healed by the hot spring pool, and the locals went, that's interesting, maybe we should try that. So, they went into the hot spring pool and it really helped them, too. They felt better afterward, and so the legend at least is that's how the whole tradition of hot spring bathing got started, from that heron.

When you go to the Dogo Onsen on the very top of this amazing, fantastic wooden building, there's a beautiful little sculpture of a heron up there. I really recommend the Dogo Onsen as the place to do it. It's the birthplace of the onsen ritual, and it's a very special place. That's the spot.

Angie:

That's the place.

Don:

My tour goes there. So Angie, if you join my tour, we're going.

Angie:

Well, I'm sold. Count me in I'm coming with you on your next trip. I'm going in the onsen, I'm going to start worrying about it right now. I'm going to eat all the good food. You've completely sold me on Japan. Thank you, I'm in.

Don:

What I love about what I do is introducing Americans to off-the-beaten-path Japan. I think a lot of people think of Japan as Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Mount Fuji, maybe. That's like saying New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington is the U.S. It is and it isn't.

What I love is taking people out into the countryside where they meet Japanese people who are just living their everyday lives, who aren't that used to having tourists. It becomes this incredibly enriching opportunity for everybody. The tourists love meeting these everyday people who are thrilled to have tourists in their town and to show them what's special about their place. The locals are incredibly thrilled to have these foreign visitors come and visit them and honor them with this visit. It's a real win-win.

I keep getting reminded over and over again when I do this that travel really is a 2-way street. It is not just that we come to a place, and we get these great gifts and we bring them home with us, but we actually leave something really wonderful. We leave a gift too, which is the gift of the encounter, the engagement, and the cultural blossoming. We leave these gifts, and I like to imagine these Japanese people way out in the country telling their neighbors about these Americans who came and they had dinner with them and it was amazing. I just love the sense that that spreads from person to person to person, and how that makes the world a more understanding place. We understand each other better.

I love taking people off the beaten path in Japan and really showing them the everyday rights, rituals, rhythms, and riches of Japanese life. For me, that is the real payoff, showing them everything from little tiny culinary traditions that are specific to a particular region that they wouldn't know about unless we brought them to this little tiny restaurant in the middle of nowhere where they do something amazing. Those kinds of things really impassion me, and I love showing Americans this side of Japan.

Angie:

That's the best part of travel, right? Those moments you can't get anywhere else. The unmanufactured moments that you're not going to get in a big tourist attraction. It's the encounters with just regular people, and I love that.

Don:

It really, really is. We want to get people off the beaten path and into these moments of exquisite encounters that you can't get any other way, and that become the real treasure that you bring back with you. Yes, I went to that amazing temple, that monument, and that garden and they were all beautiful, but you know what I remember? That night when I was with 3 local people and we were sitting around a table drinking the local sake, and they were telling me about their lives and I was telling them about my life, and we all ended up hugging each other at the end of the night—which Japanese don't normally do. We all came together and got to know each other in a very special, wonderful way that could not be reproduced any other way, and that's what I'm going to bring home in my heart from that trip. Just creating moments like that is so fulfilling for me. It's why I became a travel writer. It's why I love leading travel groups. It's just why we do what we do. You know that, Angie, it really is why we do what we do, creating those connections.

Angie:

Absolutely, I'm so motivated. I'm so inspired. This is why you're the best at what you do. Thank you for being on my show and thank you for traveling with AAA. Come back any time.

Don:

I'm ready any time, Angie. I love talking with you.

Angie:

Don George, thank you for joining us, and thank you to our listeners for being with us. If you're planning a trip, be sure to connect with AAA Travel Advisor, check out AAA.com/travel, or visit your local branch. If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe. I'm Angie Orth, thank you for traveling with AAA.