Michael Finally, we did it: After intense preparations, we got on a plane to Japan to wander around by ourselves for two weeks, have adventures, and teach the Japanese to be afraid.

Michael We naturally chose Japan Airlines, JAL. There are horror stories circulating about the limited seat spacing on their planes, as Japanese people are generally a bit smaller than Westerners and therefore require less legroom. However, each seat back is equipped with a small screen, where you can -- even in economy class -- not only watch 10 different movies but also play games like Tetris, chess, Connect Four, and more against a computer. The Japanese are ahead in the entertainment industry! This was also evident during takeoff and landing when the main screen displayed the image from a camera showing the runway from the cockpit, vividly depicting in color where the plane was currently going.

Michael Is there an airport that is located more idiotically than Munich's Franz Josef Strauss Airport? Yes! Tokyo's Narita Airport is so far from the city center that the bus ride there costs 30 euros per person. Since we had booked a hidden gem hotel, our plan was to travel to a large central bus stop and from there use our newly acquired Japanese language skills to direct a taxi to the hotel. At "Tokyo Station" in the center of Tokyo, we did exactly that. Upon arrival, we loaded our luggage into the first taxi we saw, and I said to the driver: "Yama No Ue to ui hoteru made onegaishimasu." And, lo and behold, the man nodded and said: "Ah, Yama No Ue no Hoteru. Hai!" I was speechless. Without hesitation, he sped (by American standards: recklessly) through the streets of Tokyo, past the countless neon signs of the shopping district Ginza, which we would later explore extensively.

Michael But back to the starting point of our journey: In Tokyo, you can mainly do two things: shop and eat. We ate out three times a day for a week without visiting the same place twice. However, dining out as a tourist is not that easy because the menus are usually only displayed in Japanese. And even if you, like us, can read Hiragana and Katakana quite fluently and know many Japanese dishes by their Japanese names, it usually doesn't help because the menus are full of Kanji characters. You need to know about 3,000 of them to be able to read a newspaper reasonably well. We know about 80 Kanji—and that's far from enough to understand even the menu of a sushi joint.

Michael In a warehouse district near the Shimbashi train station, the Tokyo fish market, the largest in Japan, takes place every day. Around 60,000 professional buyers search for fresh goods for their restaurants and shops starting at four in the morning. Tourists are not actually allowed there, but the travel guide mentioned that you won't be thrown out as long as you don't stand around stupidly in the way and disrupt people while they're trading. As usual, there were no signs, and we wandered around the district for a while until we finally made our way through the vegetable market, escaping recklessly zooming motorized cart drivers, into the fish halls.

Michael In Japan's big cities, you often encounter people wearing white face masks. At first, I thought: Aha, a case of tuberculosis. Let's keep a wide berth. But after the tenth person, I revised my opinion and concluded that the hospital masks are worn because of air pollution. Although Tokyo isn't excessively smoggy, there is a bit of smog. The poster in illustration 2 even promotes the idea that children should wear masks.

Michael In Japanese cities, there are vending machines on almost every street corner offering drinks of all kinds: from soft drinks like Coca Cola to cans of cold coffee and even beer and whiskey, you can find everything you want there, 24 hours a day. You read that right: there's even beer in the vending machines, and we've also seen whiskey. The machines accept up to 500 yen coins (about 4.30 euros) and even 1000 yen bills (about 9 euros) and reliably return the change. A small keg of Asahi beer and a bottle of whiskey for about 20 euros were the most expensive products I saw; otherwise, a can costs about 140 yen (1.20 euros).

Michael Japanese brand beers are, by the way -— as I already knew from San Francisco, where Japanese restaurants and supermarkets carry Sapporo, Kirin, and Asahi —- almost on par with German beers. And believe me, all the major breweries in the world are trembling when I arrive to taste their beers.

Michael Visiting Japanese public bathroom, you'll notice that paper for drying your hands is not always available, so you should always have tissues with you. Instead of brochures and flyers, distributors on the street often hand out packs of tissues, which sometimes advertise (occasionally questionable) services.

Michael One day, I noticed a poster hanging in the window of a building that looked like a trade union center. On it, a Japanese person appeared to be giving the Hitler salute! Wow, I thought, the Japanese Nazi party, I absolutely have to report on this! And I quickly took a photo (Figure 1). Back home, I asked my Japanese colleague at work what it was all about.

Michael In five and a half years of living in the USA, I have gotten used to wearing a sort of sloppy California hacker look: short surfer shorts that come just below the knee with roomy side pockets (mostly from Billabong, DKNY, or Quicksilver), T-shirts that have been washed a thousand times (also surfer brands, but also Nike, Adidas, and some from the Costco supermarket in Maui, Hawaii), and sneakers that haven't been cleaned in years and are only half-laced (Mizuno Wave Rider) are what I usually wear -- my idea of a crossover between the Beach Boys and Public Enemy.

Michael I don't think there are any criminals in Japan. (However, I have heard that there is a kind of Japanese mafia called the "Yakuza," who roll their "r"s and have full-body tattoos, which means they are not allowed in public baths). You can carry hundreds of thousands of yen in cash without worry (you have to, because hardly anyone accepts credit cards, not even some hotels) and walk around with it at any time of day or night. It's also noticeable how clean the cities are. No graffiti, no trash. You only see homeless people hidden away in parks, and you really have to look closely to find them. No one hits you up for money. No one loiters or hangs around provocatively. No one honks wildly, yells, or makes offensive gestures. There's a lot more going on in San Francisco, I tell you!

Michael The Japanese infatuation with technical gadgets is also evident in everyday life: When you open the hotel wardrobe, the light turns on inside just like in a refrigerator. Or the bathroom mirror is heated from the inside, so you can still admire yourself even when you've taken such a hot shower that everything steams up. Department stores like Takashimaya offer lockers for purchases — and they are refrigerated, so you can store perishable groceries you just bought there.

Michael With Japan's "Shinkansen" train (pronounced "Shinkan Senn" with a soft 's'), the equivalent of the German ICE, we sped from Tokyo to Hiroshima, then to Kyoto, and finally, with local trains, to a sacred Buddhist mountain at Koya-san. If you, as a foreigner, pay about 250 euros per week, you can get a so-called JR Rail Pass, which allows you to use all trains of the Japanese railway JR, except for the super-fast "Nozomi," and travel across the country. The trains run precisely on time, are super clean, and only stop in major cities —- a nearly futuristic world if you're coming from America.

Michael In Japanese, there is a funny linguistic peculiarity: One answers a negative question with "Yes!" if you want to negate it. For example, to the question "This train doesn't go to Shibuya?" a Japanese speaker would answer with "Yes" if the train indeed does not go to Shibuya, while in German or English, you'd answer "no" for emphasis.

Michael A bothersome issue in Japan is what I call "busywork." In Bavarian, there is the expression "Gschaftler" — someone who pretends to be extremely busy (gschaftig) with something but ultimately just produces hot air. This seems to be a constant state in Japanese professional life. The salespeople are frantically busy, literally running from one place to another, and bewilder the startled tourist with wild torrents of words, which Japanese customers, by the way, let bounce off them without comment. Even if you know some bits of Japanese, like we do from our course, the staccato of the salespeople and servers is so confusing that you can hardly understand anything and, due to stress, can hardly say anything in return. Strict hierarchical thinking also prevails: it can happen that an employee frantically busies himself on the subway so that his boss, with whom he is going to lunch, gets a seat.

Michael In Japanese society, everything revolves around group affiliation -— usually a group of colleagues at work. The group defines the rules, and children learn this early on, as they hardly do anything other than kindergarten and school (from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.), sometimes even on weekends. This, by the way, leads to the fact that it is almost impossible for foreigners to start friendships with Japanese natives. Even those "Gaijins" ("foreigners") who live in Japan permanently and speak perfect Japanese reportedly find no entry into these closed-off groups.

Michael On our temple tours (Angelika was struck by what I called "temple mania"), we encountered a large number of students on school trips who apparently had an English class assignment to complete in addition to sightseeing. Groups of four, consisting of around seventh graders, had to approach one of the few foreign tourists (about five out of a hundred visitors) and ask them a few questions in English, jot down the answers, and take a group photo as proof.

Michael When a wealthy businessman in Japan really wants to let loose, he rents two or three geishas for the evening for up to 3000 dollars. These are professionally trained traditional entertainers who cover their faces with thick white makeup, paint their lips bright red, introduce themselves to the hosts during a formal dinner with a precisely defined ritual (Kaiseki dinner), give them compliments, light cigarettes, perform fan dances, and strum on hideous, out-of-tune three-stringed instruments. I wouldn't even pay 3 dollars for that, but hey, to each their own. According to current estimates, there are about 100 geishas left in Kyoto and 1000 in all of Japan. One evening, as we were leaving a restaurant and Angelika went ahead because I still had to pay at the register, the waitress excitedly informed Angelika that there were geishas! Geishas! passing by outside the door. However, Angelika misunderstood the waitress and replied that she was just waiting for her husband. We laughed so much! Make way for Angelika!

Angelika What beer is to Michael, a good cup of coffee is to me. However, I prepared myself before the start of our journey to switch to green tea, although I'm still not crazy about it. It seemed unlikely to me that the Japanese would brew good coffee. But what did we find in Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Kyoto? Small cafes in the European style, offering not only excellent coffee but also delicious cakes, including cream cakes. The cafes were always packed. The Japanese love their coffee. Unfortunately, there is also a "Starbucks" on every corner, the American coffeehouse chain that, like McDonald's, establishes itself in every country in the world (I read with horror in the New York Times that there are now "Starbucks" locations in Austria and Germany too - a misery). I believe you won't find as many "Starbucks" in any American city as you do in Tokyo.

Angelika Strolling through the food sections of the large department stores in Tokyo is a delight for the senses. There, alongside delicacies from around the world, you can find Japanese specialties such as crazy expensive Kobe beef. It comes only from specially raised cows that are massaged daily and even fed beer at times, costing up to 160 euros per kilo at the butcher. Unfortunately, the fourth case of BSE has just occurred in Japan, and even the Japanese are currently holding back on purchasing beef.

Angelika Regarding toilets, Japan has a lot to offer. First, there are the traditional ones, which are usually found in public restrooms: a toilet set into the floor that looks like an oversized slipper. You squat over it. But don't worry: no one watches you during this balancing act. There are stall doors you can close.

Angelika In the mega-metropolis of Tokyo, we were surprised by the many cyclists. But of course, parking spaces in such a dense environment are extremely scarce, and traffic during rush hour is only slowly moving, so it makes sense to use not only public transportation but also bicycles. We saw men in suits and women in stylish shoes pedaling away. No one wore a helmet. Some brave souls even rode on the street in the thickest traffic. It is often allowed to ride bicyles on the sidewalk. Sometimes, there is even a lane designated as a bike path. However, cyclists speed along quite quickly even when there is no specially designated bike path. Like in a slalom, they maneuver their bicycles through the crowds of pedestrians.

Angelika Before we set off for Tokyo, we read horror stories about the crowds, especially in the subway and train stations and the trains themselves. Of course, with 12 million inhabitants, we weren't surprised to generally move in a throng of people.

Angelika Wearing uniforms is a really big deal in Japan. Armies of schoolchildren are hopping around in school uniforms. The boys usually wear dark pants with a white shirt and a suit jacket that resembles Michael's wedding suit (a jacket with a stand-up collar that can be worn without a tie). However, we also saw some students with ties.

Angelika Taking a taxi in Japan is a special experience. First of all, there are no foreign taxi drivers in Japan. If you're used to American conditions like we are, you'll be quite surprised, because in San Francisco, you almost never encounter an American taxi driver. We also didn't see any female taxi drivers in Japan. Taxi drivers usually wear suit and tie and a hat that resembles that of a train conductor from my old picture book. But the absolute highlight is the white gloves. Every taxi we rode in was spotlessly clean, and the seats were adorned with white lace covers. Taxi drivers don't speak any English at all, and I was glad that we had learned from our Japanese teacher how to say where we wanted to go. The problem is that it's not enough to show the taxi driver an address (preferably written in Japanese characters). He usually needs a very precise route description. This is due to the chaotic system in which addresses are written in Japan: it goes hierarchically by areas (first the district, then the city, followed by the neighborhood, individual streets, and buildings) and not by street names. House numbers do not necessarily increase or decrease sequentially; it can very well be that building number 20 is next to building number 1.

Angelika Trying to delve into the higher art of bowing as a Westerner is not an easy task. The status of the person you are interacting with dictates the depth of the bow and the order in which the two people bow to each other. No Japanese person expects a tourist to know how to bow. However, bowing can be contagious. In any case, I always automatically started to lower my head and perform a kind of bobbing motion, which regularly caused Michael to burst into laughter. Bows are more associated with formal situations, meaning that friends, for example, do not bow to each other.

Angelika Just as I always get a chill down my spine when an American clips their nails on the subway, a Japanese person shudders when a tourist doesn't take off their shoes at the right moment. In Japanese homes, Japanese restaurants, accommodations in Japanese style (traditional inns called Ryokan or Minshuku), and temples, it's customary to take off your shoes. If any type of shoes (even slippers) touch the tatami mats (tatami mats are straw mats that cover the floor like a carpet), a witnessing Japanese person turns pale with shock. Now, this might initially sound uncomplicated: take off your shoes -— no problem. But I tell you, it's a science in itself, because before you reach the room with the tatami mats, you switch to provided slippers at the entrance of the establishment.

Angelika Almost everyone in the world knows the story of the Japanese city "Hiroshima." During World War II, Americans dropped the first atomic bomb there, killing hundreds of thousands of people in an instant.

Angelika In Kyoto, we rented a room in a ryokan - a traditional Japanese inn. The term "inn" might sound a bit rustic, but a ryokan is more of an upscale version. It allows you to immerse yourself in ancient Japan.

Angelika The use of a Japanese bath poses the risk for Western tourists of stepping from one faux pas to another. It is important to follow some key rules. Japanese people bathe to relax, not to clean themselves. The most popular time for bathing is before dinner. In Japanese accommodations, travelers will find either communal baths (usually separated by gender) or private baths, both in the Japanese style. To accommodate multiple people in the communal bath, the dimensions of the tub-like structure that guests enter are somewhat larger. The bathwater is freshly drawn once a day and reused. Therefore, the first faux pas would be to pull the plug when leaving the "bathtub." Since many people enter the same bathwater, which contains no additives (neither chlorine nor bath foam), one washes before bathing.

Michael The Shinto religion in Japan involves many rituals and amulets: If you throw a 5-yen coin into a designated box in the temple and clap your hands, it brings good luck in a requested area. You can also buy lucky or disaster-repelling charms: Illustration 1 shows one that you hang on the car's rearview mirror, which amusingly reads "For Against Disaster" in English. Of course, there are also amulets for passing exams or blessings for children.

Michael To conclude our trip, we took the Shinkansen and several local trains to Koya-san to visit the monastery. This is a very popular spiritual destination for Japanese people and is hardly known among foreign tourists. You travel about 200 kilometers south of Kyoto, spending roughly a day on slow trains to the middle of nowhere, and then take a cable car for the last five minutes to steeply ascend the sacred mountain.

Angelika Every believer of the Buddhist "Shingon" sect (and also Japanese Buddhists of other sects) wishes to be buried at the cemetery at Koya-san, the headquarters of the Shingon sect. Even if it is just a lock of hair, fingernails, or parts of the deceased's ashes that find their final resting place in this cemetery.