James May loves Japan – you can eat seaweed for breakfast, go island hopping on a bike and share a hot tub with a priest…
James May has ditched his Grand Tour co-presenters Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond in his latest series, Our Man in Japan. He spent three months travelling around the country by train, motorbike, bicycle and dog-sled, as well as by car. “I’ve always been fascinated by Japan,” he says. “This was my tenth trip there. I’m immensely intrigued by it. The things about it that are exciting are actually quite mundane, like going to a shop or a restaurant, or going somewhere by train, because everything looks different in Japan. The country has opened up a bit in the last decade and there are more international influences now, but it still remains a mono-cultural country. Japan is very Japanese.”
Holiday bookings to Japan have soared since the Rugby World Cup and it’s proving particularly popular with UK travellers. Tokyo hosts the Olympics in July and August, so if you’re planning a trip in 2020, May has a few tips:
EAT LIKE A LOCAL
“International hotels have everything you’d expect at a breakfast buffet – omelettes, sausages – but there’ll also be pickles, seaweed, rice, grilled fish, miso soup and that sort of thing,” says May. “I’d encourage people to try a Japanese breakfast. Apart from the fact it’s really delicious, it’s a nice way to start the day because it doesn’t make you feel bloated or lethargic. It’s all fresh, light and very satisfying.
“We all ate native for the whole three months, and I think it did us the world of good. The most memorable meal was in a place called Hamamatsu, where we had to stop overnight. We got there quite late and ran out to a simple local café. I had a plate of raw prawns and they were fabulous – almost hallucinogenic.
TAKE TIME TO LOOK AROUND
“The great thing about Japanese cities is that you don’t need to plan every moment. They’re densely packed with stuff and there’s a lot to look at, so just wandering around taking it all in is fab. I’d also recommend going to a digital art installation in Tokyo.
“It’s immersive and it’s all done with computer-controlled lights and special effects. You wander around in the dark and all these patterns and animals emerge. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever seen – it’s almost worth going to Japan just for that.”
DON’T OVERLOOK OSAKA
“Osaka is a party town – one of the few places in Japan where the Japanese seem to like being outdoors; everywhere else they prefer being indoors. There are lots of bright neon signs, and it smells exciting because there are street food stalls selling octopus dumplings and painfully expensive slivers of Wagyu beef. It looks more Japanese than Tokyo, which feels more international these days. People from Tokyo regard Osakans as having a pile-it-high, sell-it-cheap mentality, whereas they say Tokyo is very sophisticated, obviously. As a visitor, that in-your-face street life of Osaka is what makes it good fun.
GET OUT OF TOWN
“Surprisingly few travellers explore the wilderness. Even the Japanese aren’t there in great numbers. Around 90 per cent live in towns or cities. The sparsely populated southern islands are particularly beautiful. They have lovely coves and beaches where you’d find an expensive resort in many countries, but the Japanese leave them alone. The largest islands are Shikoku and Kyushu, but there are thousands in the Seto Inland Sea and some are about the size of a dining room.”
ISLAND-HOP BY BIKE
“On Shikoku, I took a tremendous bicycle tour. They’ve built bridges between some of the little islands, so you can cycle between them. We had a local guide take us, but you don’t need one – you can just hire a bike and off you go. And when you get peckish, you can stop by the side of the road and have a bowl of noodles or a jellyfish flavoured ice cream. I loved it.”
HOT TUBS AND NAKED PRIESTS
“I wasn’t expecting to end up in a hot tub with a naked priest, but I’d do it again. Communal bathing at onsens [hot springs] is still very common in Japan. An onsen isn’t just a hot bath; it’s strictly defined. The water has to have come from an underground spring and be a certain temperature. It’s not a spa treatment: it’s part having a wash and part-spirituality. There’s nothing seedy about it.”
James May loves Japan – you can eat seaweed for breakfast, go island hopping on a bike and share a hot tub with a priest…
James May has ditched his Grand Tour co-presenters Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond in his latest series, Our Man in Japan. He spent three months travelling around the country by train, motorbike, bicycle and dog-sled, as well as by car. “I’ve always been fascinated by Japan,” he says. “This was my tenth trip there. I’m immensely intrigued by it. The things about it that are exciting are actually quite mundane, like going to a shop or a restaurant, or going somewhere by train, because everything looks different in Japan. The country has opened up a bit in the last decade and there are more international influences now, but it still remains a mono-cultural country. Japan is very Japanese.”
Holiday bookings to Japan have soared since the Rugby World Cup and it’s proving particularly popular with UK travellers. Tokyo hosts the Olympics in July and August, so if you’re planning a trip in 2020, May has a few tips:
EAT LIKE A LOCAL
“International hotels have everything you’d expect at a breakfast buffet – omelettes, sausages – but there’ll also be pickles, seaweed, rice, grilled fish, miso soup and that sort of thing,” says May. “I’d encourage people to try a Japanese breakfast. Apart from the fact it’s really delicious, it’s a nice way to start the day because it doesn’t make you feel bloated or lethargic. It’s all fresh, light and very satisfying.
“We all ate native for the whole three months, and I think it did us the world of good. The most memorable meal was in a place called Hamamatsu, where we had to stop overnight. We got there quite late and ran out to a simple local café. I had a plate of raw prawns and they were fabulous – almost hallucinogenic.
TAKE TIME TO LOOK AROUND
“The great thing about Japanese cities is that you don’t need to plan every moment. They’re densely packed with stuff and there’s a lot to look at, so just wandering around taking it all in is fab. I’d also recommend going to a digital art installation in Tokyo.
“It’s immersive and it’s all done with computer-controlled lights and special effects. You wander around in the dark and all these patterns and animals emerge. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever seen – it’s almost worth going to Japan just for that.”
DON’T OVERLOOK OSAKA
“Osaka is a party town – one of the few places in Japan where the Japanese seem to like being outdoors; everywhere else they prefer being indoors. There are lots of bright neon signs, and it smells exciting because there are street food stalls selling octopus dumplings and painfully expensive slivers of Wagyu beef. It looks more Japanese than Tokyo, which feels more international these days. People from Tokyo regard Osakans as having a pile-it-high, sell-it-cheap mentality, whereas they say Tokyo is very sophisticated, obviously. As a visitor, that in-your-face street life of Osaka is what makes it good fun.
GET OUT OF TOWN
“Surprisingly few travellers explore the wilderness. Even the Japanese aren’t there in great numbers. Around 90 per cent live in towns or cities. The sparsely populated southern islands are particularly beautiful. They have lovely coves and beaches where you’d find an expensive resort in many countries, but the Japanese leave them alone. The largest islands are Shikoku and Kyushu, but there are thousands in the Seto Inland Sea and some are about the size of a dining room.”
ISLAND-HOP BY BIKE
“On Shikoku, I took a tremendous bicycle tour. They’ve built bridges between some of the little islands, so you can cycle between them. We had a local guide take us, but you don’t need one – you can just hire a bike and off you go. And when you get peckish, you can stop by the side of the road and have a bowl of noodles or a jellyfish flavoured ice cream. I loved it.”
HOT TUBS AND NAKED PRIESTS
“I wasn’t expecting to end up in a hot tub with a naked priest, but I’d do it again. Communal bathing at onsens [hot springs] is still very common in Japan. An onsen isn’t just a hot bath; it’s strictly defined. The water has to have come from an underground spring and be a certain temperature. It’s not a spa treatment: it’s part having a wash and part-spirituality. There’s nothing seedy about it.”