B and I are staying in a traditional Japanese inn (ryokan) deep in the countryside in a national park. It is really remote and far away from all signs of civilization: wherever you look there are hillsides covered in pine trees and beeches/chestnuts. The mountains are incredibly steep and sheer, so that it seems incredible they were able to build a road at all. The town is a hot springs town, so the inn has an attached hot springs bath (which is mixed-sex and thus a little intimidating: we haven't gone yet so I will need to see how that goes). Tomorrow we will go hiking in the national park, which is very beautiful and has wild monkeys, though we probably won't see them. If we had more time and more energy, you can hike for several days, staying at mountainside huts along the way.
Yesterday we were in the historic town of Takayama, where we also stayed at a ryokan. The room rate includes two elaborate meals: for instance, we received 12 dishes for dinner and 8 for breakfast. The food is all Japanese and a little bit scary sometimes (tonight they served a whole roasted fish, scales, tail and all: its little mouth was open in an aaah! It was actually tasty but I couldn't eat it anyway since I was too grossed out). Mostly it's very good but since it is so low in fat and sugar it makes me long for a pile of donuts.
Japan is incredibly beautiful and historic: they are really proud of their history and have carefully preserved everything. People still wear traditional clothing on the street and milkmen regularly deliver milk and yogurt bottles. It is also impressively clean at all times, even in places like public bathrooms in high-traffic locations.
The Japanese appear to be super into baseball (more so than in Taiwan since the Chinese don't really care about sports): it's constantly on the news, in the paper and in advertisements, and the local team for the Kyoto region is the Giants (they wear black pinstripe uniforms). We went to a little local restaurant/bar and all the customers (men) there were avidly watching the game and making comments as they drank beer and sake. The game appeared to have a very large crowd attending.
Nara was also really interesting. It has the world's largest wooden building which is a Buddhist temple, and set in a large park full of beautiful old shrines surrounded by ancient stone lanterns. Actually it looked so perfect that I kept thinking it was a movie set. The park is also full of Japanese sika deer, who have lived there for the last 1000+ years (the Japanese think they are holy) and are very tame (though still wild animals as they roam freely). You can buy special deer biscuits and feed them, which I did. They are smaller than American deer and covered in white spots.
The main problem with Japan is that it is very expensive. A (small, everything is small here) soda costs $1.50-$2, a bus ride runs $2.50 to $20, and the train can cost several hundred dollars (like $300+). Partly this is because the dollar is at a historic low thanks to our bad economy, but partly Japan is just really pricey since they don't have any immigrants to do unskilled labor and food imports (which account for 50% of what they eat) are heavily taxed to preserve agriculture. You could easily spend $4-15 on a single piece of fruit. Even bananas cost like a dollar each.
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