Harry Pears

Thursday 7th Feb 2008

My first ever plane journey was extremely boring. 12 hours to Japan isn’t the best way to have fun! However, it wasn’t too bad; apart from the fact that my friend woke me up at about 1am GMT only to say “I think we’re there.” We weren’t. I had got about half an hours sleep woke up, checked where we were, then went back to sleep. 5 minutes later I am woken up… We were over Russia. Still.

Anyway, when we arrived, everyone started to say how clean the country was. It really was, you could even smell it in the air.

We got on a train out of Kansai international airport heading towards Kyoto. What we saw from the train was nothing like we imagined Japan to look like, there were no really tall, modern skyscrapers and nothing else really modern about it. But we were there, and couldn’t believe it. It definitely was different from England, but it just didn’t seem like the Japan we all had in our heads.

Friday 8th Feb 2008

The plane landed at about 2pm local time (5am GMT – very tired). Basically, after going through passport control, we caught a few trains and a bus to our youth hostel in Kyoto. My God is the public transport in Japan good. First off, it’s clean. Especially on the main line trains and all of the buses, there is no littler or gum plastered under every seat. In fact, the whole of Japan was this clean. Secondly, the trains are always on time; putting the UK to great shame. Finally, the main line trains have really cool seats which spin around so you can face the people in front of / behind you!

Saturday 9th Feb 2008

Snow! For eight hours straight. Not that fun when you’re meant to be walking around Kobe visiting various temples. Everyone was wet, cold and feeling very jet-lagged. Luckily, we got the choice after lunch to go back to the hostel or to carry on looking at the temples, mainly because one girl has a condition and fainted so she went back earlier in the day. We had a few hours in the hostel, then got in a taxi, the back doors open automatically!, to the Gion hotel restaurant where we had the Japanese equivalent to fish and chips. Afterwards, we were supposed to watch a few sketches about Japanese culture designed for tourists, but the theatre was closed. It may be due to the weak earthquake the night before which I slept through, only waking up 5 minutes later because people in my room were talking.

Sunday 10th Feb 2008

Whole morning of travelling from Kyoto to Komono town. We went on the Shinkansen (bullet train) however because of the snow it didn’t go at full speed. We eventually arrived at the town hall to be greeted by loads of people clapping and smiling at us. It was a very strange few seconds as we walked from the lift into the meeting room. Having 32 English people visit your town and have one of them stay in your home for three nights is quite something in a small Japanese town. The press were there along with the head of education for the area and the mare.
My family were amazingly kind and we had a great time together. We went up a mountain to a viewing platform along with a couple of the children’s cousins. We then went through a forest obstacle course which was incredibly easy because it was designed for small, Japanese children. All the time, my host family were telling me how tall I was.