Next Stop...

Somewhere, Japan

"When the Japanese go on holiday, they like it to be planned. Planned to an extent that would make a Sandhurst trained officer feel he was a happy-go-lucky, spontaneous type in comparison. `Assemble 0800 hours. Board bus 0810 hours for 43 minute journey to cathedral. Breakfast at 0855 hours in cathedral café`, that sort of thing. I once attended a presentation by a Japanese tour guide, about how guiding Westerners was different to guiding Japanese; it was particularly funny when he said that sometimes western tourists want to walk round a city away from their tour group. The audience, made almost entirely of `women of a certain age` gasped, utterly shocked at how anyone might do such a selfish, dangerous thing. 

`But what if they got lost? ` shouted one?

`But what if they got murdered or shot? ` bawled another. 

The hysteria was quite palpable. Flexibility and change on a Japanese holiday are about as welcome as syphilis.

So, as an antidote to this kind of rigid planning, here is what you need to do. Get on a train. Get off at any station which connects to another line. Ride that train for a number of stops equivalent to your age divided by three. Get off, and see where you are. No matter how uninteresting that place may look, spend a day there. Wander, get lost, get into a difficult looking but ultimately hilarious scrape involving someone’s cocker spaniel. Do anything, as long as you don’t plan it.

An alternative to this, if you think your Japanese is up to it, is to go to a ticket counter at your local station, ask for a ticket, and when asked `where to?`, just say `wherever you recommend`. The look of shock on the assistant’s face will be quite special."

 As I was searching for my holiday vacation spot I stumbled upon this recommendation.  While this may not be likely for my 2 week vacation, I plan to take this advice some random weekend and I plan to discover some random gem in the middle of Japan.