One of the things that has striked me the most since living in Japan is the general feeling of safety. I can’t remember the last time I felt so safe in an urban environment.

It’s a commonly remarked and commented upon facet of Japanese society, yet it strikes you quite strongly once you actually experience it on a daily basis. Since the turn of WW2 Japan has been a pretty safe society as far as developed nations go, with a pretty low average crime rate, traditionally one of the lowest in the world.

Now talking about Tokyo in particular, the differences with other metropolis such as London or Paris is striking. In Tokyo it’s pretty safe to walk the streets at any time of the day or night, whether you’re a man or woman. This doesn’t mean that nothing happens, but if you live in London for example you know full well that past a certain time and in certain places you best keep your wits about you if you dont’ want anything funny to happen. In Tokyo that’s not the case at all. It’s true that women are warned to be more aware, especially on public transports where cases of groping and other weird sexual antics do happen, but by and large Tokyo is a safe city to be in. Which is more than can be said for a lot of metropolitan centres in Europe.

This sense of safety is omnipresent - after a few months, I’ve found myself doing things I never would back home. I’ll go to the shops and leave my bike unlocked. I’ll even leave my shopping in the basket while I go somewhere. The other day I forgot my house keys on my bike, realised about 40 minutes later whilst in the gym and after a minute of panic decided that I could rush out in the hope they would still be there or I could finish exercising, have a shower and walk out to find them still there. Which I did. It felt quite odd telling myself it would actually be ok.

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written by Laurent \\ tags: crime, Japan, safety, Tokyo

Went out of town for the Golden Week holiday back at the beginning of the month, and to be more precise we went to the Nikko area, which as far as I can tell is located about 2 hours north of Tokyo, in the mountains (or the beginning of the mountains anyways).

Nikko is a pretty popular destination - it’s home to a National Park, lake, big waterfall, free roaming monkeys, hot springs and the Toshogu shrine as well as being a long standing Shinto and Buddhist worship centre. A huge complex of shrines, mausoleums and gardens, The Toshogu is the resting place of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the founder of the Tokugawa Shogunate, and if memory serves me right the last shogun too. Not only is the complex massive it’s also the most lavishly decorated of all shrines in the country. All of which makes for much staring, gawping and going ‘look at that’.

The Toshogu Shrine is massive, and definitely requires the best part of a day to completely discover and see in its entirety. We only stayed for a few hours and still managed to feel pretty ’shrined-out’ by the end. There are other shrines and temples in Nikko, but we had to be out. Definitely a place to see once though if only for the sheer magnitude of the buildings and intricacy of the designs and decorations. Add to that the fact that most of the shrines and temples were apparently built without any nails, but instead by slotting pieces of wood together, and you’ve got a most impressive cultural sight and architectural achievement. What’s more it’s located in a beautiful and serene wooden location (well as serene as it gets with hundreds of people swarming the place, but you get the gist).

We also spent the first day of our trip in Kinugawa, the town next to Nikko and famous for its many onsens. The hotel we stayed in was great - nice onsen, decent food and a karaoke bar with the craziest selection of songs. I wasn’t expecting to find the Monty Python’s ‘Always Look On the Bright Side of Life’ in a karaoke bar anytime soon, much less underground and classic hip hop songs like Ice Cube’s ‘It Was A Good Day’, Dilated Peoples’ ‘Work The Angles’ or NWA’s ‘Express Yourself’ :shock: The instrumentals to all of which were actual cheap covers done on casio keyboards and with lyrics minced through an engrish mincer :lol:

Kinugawa is also home to some beautiful gorges, as we discovered on a scenic boat ride in the morning, as well as an Edo period amusement park complete with samurais and ninjas walking the streets. That was a bit dear though so we gave it a miss.

All in all it was a nice holiday, and I can only recommend a stop in Nikko to anyone visiting the country. It’s a little cliche maybe but definitely worth it, and we didn’t even see most of it. Gutted I missed the monkeys though.

Nikko trip - Golden Week 2007 - Flickr Set

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written by Laurent \\ tags: holidays, Japan, nikko, pictures