Why you should go to the Japanese countryside
Japan has 21 world heritage sites, an internationally renowned food culture and magical high tech-toilets that will play classical music, shower your rear and even dry it.
Is it then any surprise that in the year of 2018, before any of us had ever heard the term ‘Covid-19’ that Japan had 31.19 million tourists visit the country?
Probably not.
Likely many of these tourists went on a similar itinerary where they landed in Tokyo, spent time soaking in a cacophony of ‘irrashimases’, admiring the neon signs and losing their direction in the bustling megalopolis. They probably enjoyed whizzing up and down the country too using the bullet trains and exploring places such as Kyoto, Osaka and Hiroshima!
Most importantly of course, I’m sure that they had a brilliant time!
However, I think that if you come to visit Japan, you should try to follow the cliche but rather fitting term and ‘get off the beaten track’
Let me explain my reasoning why…
I moved to Japan nearly 3 years ago for work and at the time had no say over where I would end up in the country, despite this I was longing to be placed in a big city. Tokyo would be wonderful… Osaka sure, why not… Oooh Fukuoka looks lovely too!
Imagine my horror when I received a letter from my new workplace informing me I was to live in ‘Yamaguchi’. First of all, I didn’t have the faintest clue where it was and secondly when I did find out more, pretty much all I found out was that it was very rural, blow-fish, known in Japan as ‘fugu’ was the local speciality. Also many politicians originated from here.
Great.
But you know what, ending up in the “armpit” of Honshu, as one person described Yamaguchi… ended up being the most magical experience.
Drinking my morning coffee while gazing out at verdant rice fields, being able to enjoy the nature of glorious golden beaches and feeling like part of a small close-knit community.
Of course, it wasn’t always easy and I sometimes struggled feeling like an outsider at times too, being one of the few ‘foreigners’ that lived in that area.
At one point, I started to attend a community English group and they asked me about the differences between Scotland and Japan. Given that Japan’s population is 98.5% ethicially Japanese, I said that I felt that my home-country was more diverse.
To which, one of the club members retorted that my town had lots of foreigners, he had seen at least three others including myself walking around there.
So yes, cosmpolitian the countryside is not. But the experiences you can have there are a lot more unique and exciting than always following the tourist trail. Besides, you can get the shock factor of saying you visited a rural place such as Yamaguchi to somebody in the city and get the reaction of ‘why?’
Why not! Japan is not all neon signs, fast-speed trains and packed streets.
So why don’t you explore the countryside, it’s waiting for you.
