Japan has always been high on our list of countries to visit in this part of the world but we have postponed it until now as it's a very expensive destination. In fact we were planning to visit Vietnam this Easter but Catherine was selected to a attend a training course in movie criticism in Tokyo, with travel and hotel expenses paid. The time had finally come for us to head to the land of the rising sun...

Travel to Japan must be carefully planned in advance and Catherine's thorough research led to our choosing Nara, the first capital of Japan, and Kyoto, the subsequent capital, as our destination cities. I had only a week in Japan, but the French school has a longer holiday and as I write this Catherine is enjoying a quiet week by herself in Tokyo and the mountain resort of Nara.

A three hour flight took us to Kansai International Airport, built on land reclaimed from the ocean off Osaka. The airport is very attractive but perhaps not the model of efficiency that we would have expected in Japan. We found ourselves having to walk quite a lot in the airport, and we had some trouble figuring out which train we should catch for Kyoto. This was partly due to a lack of explanations in English - all through our vacation we were surprised at how little information is available in English, whether it be tours and guides to tourist sites or the level of English of most Japanese people. My Japanese is non-existent, of course, so perhaps I have no right to criticize, but isn't the Japanese education system supposed to be a pressure-cooker of hard work and intense competition and the basis of Japan's (until recent) economic success? How can their English be so limited?

One of our guide books offered an answer to this question... it seems that there is extensive scientific evidence that Japanese brains develop differently to Western ones. Vowels are very important in the Japanese language and this has had the effect of concentrating the processing of language in the left side of Japanese brains whereas both sides of the Western brain process language. It's been suggested that this difference is the reason that Japanese people have such difficulty mastering English!

We took a regular express train to Kyoto (not a bullet train or 'shinkansen') and got to Kyoto an hour later. (I wish I had got a photo of the Japan Railways employee at the airport adding up the cost of our train tickets ... on an abacus! So much for high tech Japan!)

Our first evening in Kyoto was a disaster. We had made a reservation at a 'ryokan' (Japanese-style inn) recommended by our trusty Fodor guide. We've been using Fodor guides for years and they have never let us down ... until now. The ryokan was described as a 'secret treasure of an inn' in the Fodor guide, and had received a special recommendation. We're sure the Fodor agent who visited the hotel didn't visit all the rooms for our 'western-style' room was shabby and depressing. We weren't allowed to open the frosted glass windows but if we had we would have looked out onto an ugly street. The communal bathroom was almost as dirty as the bedding in our room. And because it was a western-style room it had none of the minimalist charm of Japanese style rooms with their 'tatamis' (woven rice-straw mats), paper screens, and no-shoes-allowed elegance. The one good thing about a 'western-style' room is that it should include a comfortable bed, but our room didn't have that either - only a Japanese style roll-out mattress. Our guidebooks had led us to believe that we could expect to be welcomed with a pot of green tea - in reality our hostess welcomed us with a threat that if we didn't like the room and decided to leave then we would have to pay a cancellation fee for every one of the seven nights that we had reserved there.

There was no way we were going to spend even one night in this place but finding another place to stay in Kyoto in the exact week when the Japanese flood to this city to see the cherry trees in full bloom was a daunting task - we had to make dozens of calls before we found a room in the ANA Hotel at a cool 20000 yen per night, double what the ryokan would have cost us. What do you get for that kind of money in Japan? The ANA hotel (and the other hotels that we stayed in, all about the same price) was comfortable enough but really nothing special - the same standard of room would be half the price or less just about anywhere else in the world. Anyway, shaken as we were by our horrible experiences of that evening, we managed to sleep alright and woke to find the sun shining and inviting us to explore.... KYOTO...

Kyoto is the sixth biggest city in Japan, with a population of 1.5 million, and it's a top tourist destination, with 1600 Buddhist temples and several hundred Shinto shrines (Shinto is the homegrown Japanese religion). Like Nara, Kyoto is located in the Kansai region of Honchu island, the biggest of Japan's 2000 islands. Kyoto was first settled in the seventh century and from the beginning it was laid out on a grid system that copied the Chinese city of Xi'an and anticipated the same grid system, so boring and practical, now common in American cities. Kyoto was the capital of Japan for more than a thousand years, from 794 until 1868, when Tokyo became the capital. Much of modern day Kyoto dates from the Edo period (1600-1867) and the city was fortunate to have been spared the American bombing that flattened so many large Japanese cities during the second world war. Did you know that it was a FRENCH person who persuaded the American High Command not to bomb Kyoto, in order to preserve all the priceless national treasures kept there? This is indeed the case, according to my wife's FRENCH guide book...

Since Kyoto was not bombed during the war, the Japanese have little excuse for the ugly architecture of most modern Kyoto buildings. A hotch-potch of small shoebox houses and very plain commercial buildings occupy most of the city - even the two rivers running down the west and east sides of the city are unattractive. Only the oldest buildings, as well as the gardens, canals and the surrounding mountains, have any beauty and charm. Well, maybe I'm being a little harsh, for there are cherry trees everywhere in Kyoto and they are really spectacular in April as they explode into pink and white blossoms. Do you know WHY cherry trees are so popular in Japan? The cherry trees drop their blossoms while they are in full bloom and Japanese see this as a symbol of their willingness to lay down their lives for their country, should the need arise. Did you know that despite having millions of cherry trees, Japan has to import cherries from abroad, for their own trees don't actually produce any cherries!?

The ANA hotel is located right in the middle of Kyoto, just opposite the Nijo Castle. Our first stop, then, was the castle which was built in 1603 by a shogun called Ieyasu. The shoguns (military generals) wielded more power than the emperor at the time the castle was built and the castle is an impressive structure designed to put the emperor to shame. Impressive it may be but well fortified it was not, for the shogun did not fear the emperor. He did fear betrayal by his own court, however, and this is evidenced by the 'squeaky floorboard' system used in Nijo and many other buildings in Japan - it is impossible to move around with any degree of secrecy.