Into the rising sun

Japan, BONG (picture of strapping bare-chested chap striking a large gong).

We have culture shock. Two days sailing in a rusty tub over the Sea of Japan and we could be on another planet.

And this after all our fine words about how travelling slowly would cleverly allow us to bypass the sense of bewilderment brought on by sudden exposure to a new and very different place. You know, approaching a place slowly, witnessing the gradual changes as one travels through as one country or region gives way to another.

Sure, we experienced it in this manner all the way up to and into Russia. But not this time.

Rather, as we stepped onto the deck of the MV Rus and caught our first glimpse of the modest port of Fushiki we realised we had moored up in a place very different from that we had left.

The hot, humid air hit us in the face, torrential rain lashed down on the well-kept dockside. The streets were small, dark and empty except for the odd tiny van scuttling past.


And up above us, fluttering in the breeze, the flag of the rising sun, framed by a backdrop of blue, misty peaks.

Stepping off the boat, the people were immediately different. Gone is the pale and lardy Russian look; the 80-a-day, beer-swilling hubby and dyed-haired, micro-skirted wife. This skinny little Englishman is a giant in this land, squeezing my 10 ½s between train seats, cramming my enormous pack onto the luggage racks as immaculate businessmen and well-behaved school kids duck out the way.

And the service is different. In Vladivostok we spent a bewildering few hours trawling through customs and immigration, sucked into a scrum of liquored Russian tourists before being finally spewed out on the darkended dockside, apparently left to pick the guess the right ship to embark on.

A far cry from the hyper-efficient, ultra-polite world of Japanese officialdom we now find ourselves in, all laptops and bows. Blimey, even the newsreader on the television bows!

Perhaps this will be the only time we experience this culture shock, Japan is after all renowned as a rather insular and culturally isolated nation, happy to be adrift off the coast of Asia and its more boisterous neighbours.

Or perhaps we should steel ourselves for this every time we take a long boat trip, after all America should prove somewhat different from Hong Kong.



Either way, this is culture shock of a highly serendipitous nature. Lara couldn’t stop beeming, “at last - a civilised country!” Her Finnish genes were firing away and she danced for joy: goodbye Russia, hello nice neat, clean Japan.


But despite all these pleasant surprises I got the feeling that it wasn’t all going to be plain sailing. Lurking beneath the surface of this rigidly ordered and law-abiding society lies a complex web of manners and etiquette, a whole new protocol we have to fathom and follow.


Add to this of course a notoriously difficult language, particularly in its written form, which makes cyrillic seem a breeze.


As the monsoonal rains lashed across the harbous and we headed out into the streets we scanned the roadsigns for our next mode of transport.

The squiggles and squirls seemed all robots and rabbits to us. Anyone know the kanji for train station?
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How to...get to Finland without flying

Nobody has checked my passport since leaving London last Friday. Now I'm in Stockholm.

Travelling through Europe is a breeze, with the invaluable help of the Man in Seat 61. Here's how I ended up in an internet cafe called Matrix surrounded by Swedes playing virtual role play games:
London to Brussels on the Eurostar, arriving in Brussels Midi station. Brussels Midi to Koeln Hbf (Cologne train station). Tickets can be half price if you buy on line in advance at http://www.b-rail.be/ (you have to register to use the site). You will not be given a ticket, only a booking reference number and collection code. Write these down and take them with you. When you get to Brussels go to the ticket collection machines near the 'Ing' meeting point. Type in the codes and your ticket pops out.

In Cologne I stayed at: http://www.hostel-cologne.de/. Ask for a quiet room (not on the station side) and not on floor 3 - it stinks! If you don't stay in Köln, the cathedral is right outside the train station. Directly in front. One minute away. And it's free to go in. So if you have time between trains you can just nip in. For a taste of the local brew, there is a good pub (Brauhaus Früh am Dom) nearby that serves the famous Kölsch.

To buy cheaper tickets in advance from Köln to Hamburg (or anywhere in Germany or to Copenhagen or Stockholm) go to http://www.bahn.de/ (you can change the language top right). Again, you'll have to register. You get an e-ticket to print out. Take this with you. When your ticket is checked on the train you'll also need to present the card you bought the tickets with.

To buy a ticket in advance from Copenhagen to Stockholm is tricky as you can only collect them from Copenhagen airport. So I just bought mine at Copenhagen station on arrival from Hamburg.

In Stockolm, stay at the Af Chapman hostel on the recently refurbished 1888 ship. It's not cheap, but definitely worth it. Book in advance to sleep on the boat.

Take the Viking Line ferry from Stockholm to Turku, Finland. There are two sailings each day. One in the day (going through the archipelago is beautiful) and one at night (be prepared to party). I'm on the 07:45 tomorrow. You can buy a ticket as a passenger when you turn up (€17.50).

European public transport is clean, spacious and punctual. I have watched the United Kingdom merge into central Europe and turn into Scandinavia. Travelling overland has been cathartic, creating the space between crazy London life and the trip of a lifetime.

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Oh, so slow...

‘Oh you’re going travelling are you?’, a friend enquired, ‘Haven’t you grown out of that?’

‘Travelling’, I’m a little uncomfortable with the word – as if it’s shorthand for going on a long holiday, perhaps with the odd stint of earnest volunteering thrown in for good measure, the preserve of the fresh-faced teen or the work-shy college dropout.

Dr Livingstone I presume? Dr Alban morelike.

Who would want to spend their precious two-week holiday doing this, when they could hop in a plane and get there to the beaches and vineyards in a couple of hours?

A friend suggested that you go on holiday to get away from things, whilst you go travelling to get to things.

They had a point, but there is a third consideration here: how you get there. Travel gives you a chance to indulge in our natural urge to wander. A to B, via C,D and E.

We rarely get the chance to do this in our daily lives but, when circumstances force this upon me I’m often delighted by this unexpected opportunity. You learn the layout of the place, how it pieces together. You find a new pub or a tucked-away park, colouring in the big white spaces in your mental map of a place.

Extended to the world, perhaps then by travelling slowly, approaching the castle on a donkey rather than a rocket, you get the chance to adjust and appreciate the finer differences between places.

Whilst bringing the world closer to us air travel has obliterated this, creating a disjunction between travelling somewhere physically and arriving there mentally. You can get move between two very different places, such as London and Beijing, in a matter of hours, yet it takes day to get there in your mind. It’s as if someone has cut the power at the cinema and, when the wheel starts to whir again, Bambi has been replaced by Reservoir Dogs (or vice versa).

Travelling slowly allows our senses to appreciate these differences as a one region elides into another. We hope to recognise the gradual differences in the local accent or cooking and appreciate spotting the first snows or smelling the first spices.

So perhaps our plan, heading east slowly and incrementally, is the antidote to culture shock?
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