Akita Trip

Thanks for listening to English Go podcast, to listen without advertisements, or to read episode transcripts, visit www.englishgo.co.uk for more information. Hello, so I have not long gone back from a holiday. My family and I, and my wife's parents, my parents-in-law, traveled to the north of Japan to a prefecture called Akita, which you may have heard me mention before, because it is not the first time I've been there. I've been there quite a few times now, and the reason we go there so often is because my wife's grandparents live there. So we went to visit them and also so that they would be able to spend more time with their great-grandchildren, which is amazing. Okay, so where should I start? I should probably start with the journey, because like last time I had to wake up at Cilioclock, and Cilioclock to me is sort of like, you know, three a.m. in the morning, that kind of time. I think I might have got up at half three, and then we had to be out for four a.m. And previously, I, we'd done this in the past, this kind of like waking up early, and we, we did it, I believe, because we were going for just two days, and we wanted to, you know, spend as much time as, spend as much time there as possible. That's what I thought. So this time, things were a little different. We were going for four days, but we were breaking the journey up, because it's a long journey on the car. I mean, it's about, I think it's, it's an eight-hour journey, and if you get traffic, that turns into a 12-hour journey. So yes, it's a very long journey in the car. So because we're traveling with children, it's a bit difficult. We broke it up. So drove like, for about, I think, five hours, then stayed somewhere overnight, then went to my, I guess, my grandparents-in-law, stayed there for two nights, drove back so many hours, stayed in a different place overnight, and then drove back. So we broke the journey going and coming back into, by staying, like, overnight at one place. Okay, where was I? Yes, waking up at silly o'clock, like very, very early. So the last time we did this, I believed it was to spend as much time as possible. So this time, I was thinking, ah, because we're breaking up the journey, we'll probably be getting up at sensible o'clock. What's sensible to me? A sensible early start is probably around like six a.m. I can do that. Okay, that's not, you know, that's not bad. Five a.m. is a little bit too early. Seven's okay, obviously, and anything after that. So I thought, ah, you know, I'm not going to be exhausted this time because when I wake up too early, I, for the following day, and maybe a couple of days after that, I just feel like a zombie, like I'm awake, but there's, I'm not fully present. It takes me a long time to recover. It just depends on the person. My, my wife and her family seem to be perfectly fine doing it, but I struggle. And I always have, I've never really known why. Anyway, so I was thinking, yeah, you know, nice sensible start this time. No, I was wrong. It was the same as last time, and, you know, waking up at three, getting out by four, sort of arrangement. And the reason was traffic. Well, actually, I'm assuming that, well, that's what the reason was. I didn't ask, actually ask anyone. I'm assuming it was traffic, because we left at a period known as silver week. So there are two valuable metals, two weeks named after valuable metals in Japan. There's gold and weak, and silver week as well. You have likely heard me mention golden week before, and mention how much I dislike golden week, because it's the, everyone's off for about a period of a week. And so everyone wants to go on holiday or go away somewhere or, you know, do something fun. And so because the whole country seems to be off, not everyone, you know, there's people who work in retail and like hotel and all kinds of services who sadly don't get any time off. But because most of the country seems to be off, it's just absolute chaos. You know, everywhere's booked, everywhere's full, everywhere's busy, all the motorways are are crowded. It's, as you can imagine, imagine that you're imagine your entire country just having the same time off at the, you know, at one particular period of the year. It really is crazy. I'm sure it's perfectly normal for Japanese people, but for anyone who lives outside of Japan, I don't know if anyone, if any other countries do this. Obviously in the UK, we have like bank holidays, which can lead to like a busier weekend or Easter holidays. But generally, when we want to go on holiday, we just book like a week off work, maybe two weeks off work, depending on what you want to do. And everyone has it at the, you know, their own time whenever they want to do it. Summer holidays for children. If they've got children, summer holidays can be a busy period. Anyway, back on track, there's a silver week as well, which is not quite as good as the golden week. I think you get more days in the golden week and silver week, maybe not as many. To be honest, I don't remember hearing about silver week until recently. I don't know if it's a new thing. I don't know if I was just somehow unaware of it before. I've known about golden week for years. But silver week, that was a sort of new thing to me. But anyway, so it was silver week. So I think we were going early to avoid all of the traffic. Because I think it was, it was still surprisingly busy at that hour in the morning. It's, I mean, if you were to drive along a motorway at like four a.m. in the morning in the UK, it would be quiet. Like, wow, I've never seen the motorway that's quiet before. There'd be a few lorries going along the motorway. But now in Japan, it was busier than I thought. And I think the reason was because everyone, not everyone, but lots of people had the same thought. Like, oh, I'll get up early. I'll avoid the traffic by doing so. And it worked. We did avoid the traffic, which was great. So we arrived at the first place after having stomped at quite a few service stations because we've got children. And we needed to eat. I think we had breakfast. I forgot what we had already, but we had breakfast on route. We had lunch at a service station, I think, as well. But the service stations are completely different to UK service stations. They really are. The UK service stations will usually have just like branded shops there. So you might find the marks and spences. You might, which is like a supermarket, a Gregs, which sells lots of baked goods like pasties, cornish pasties, cheese danian pasties, which are lovely. I wouldn't mind eating one now. Vegetable pasties, what else, donuts and sweet things, and a bit like subway type things, but you don't make it yourself. You buy them pre-built, pre-made, and soup, and I don't know, all kinds of things, coffee as well. So that's Gregs. And then you will get like KFC, McDonald's, Burger King. So basically, largely junk food, apart from the supermarkets, which sell sandwiches, which, yeah, they're okay, I suppose. But everything else is largely junk food. Or maybe you'll get some, I don't know, some like fake Chinese food there, or something like that. At the service stations in Japan, they're usually from what I can tell, from what I've seen so far, usually more independent shops. Occasionally, I see chains there, but as of yet, I've never seen them at McDonald's, or like a big branded place at a service station. And when you see them in the UK, the prices are crazy, as you can, I mean, really, I think they're getting on for like double the price that they would normally be, the prices are ridiculous. But I find the prices of the service stations in Japan quite reasonable. And the food is, I'm going to say it's healthier than junk food. I'm not going to say it's incredibly healthy. But yeah, it's a different experience. It's more like, I suppose it's more interesting, because it's an independent restaurant in many cases. And you never know what you're going to get, like this, you might go to a very small one, and they've just got ramen there, and maybe not much else. So it depends where you go, and where you stop, you just get different things that you can buy, or not buy. I remember one we went to was rather big, and it had its own bakery, and all kinds of things in it. Another thing, actually, that I've just thought of, and never difference that I always find amazing is at many of these service stations, maybe all of them we went to, there were people whose job it was to usher in our car to the next available car parking space. It's sufficient if that happens, isn't it? You know, instead of going to the car park driving around, looking for a space, someone just says it's a space here. The downside is, if you're looking for a space at the front, you're not necessarily going to get one, you're just going to be put wherever you're put, wherever you're directed to. So that's the downside. But the upside is it's just so quick, you know, you go in, someone says park here, you park there, don't, you don't have to wander around for just looking for a free space. I think I'm surprised by this because, I mean, on one sense, I'm not surprised. It's the efficient way of doing things. And to me, that's sort of like very Japanese, you know, like the trains run perfectly on time. So it's very efficient doing this. But it cost a lot of money. I mean, there was sometimes about at least five people, I mean, in a very big car park doing this work. So you have to employ, you know, at least five people for the whole day, every day. So in England, I very much doubt there's any service station that does that. I've never seen one. In all the years, I've been driving my car up and down the country. I don't think I've ever been ushered in to a car parking space. So it's a surprise, I wouldn't say it was a shock. I wouldn't say it was a culture shock. I would say it was a culture surprise, you know, like a sort of nice thing to find. And yeah, I remember thinking at the time, I wonder how long these jobs are going to be around for before like companies decide like, oh, we don't want to pay people money anymore. And it ends up going the way of the UK or maybe, I don't know, there's a computer takeover and there's some kind of system that shows you a map and direct your car to a place using lights on the ground or whatever. Yeah, it would be nice if that job can stay around because it feels a bit old fashioned to me that kind of job, you know, like when you used to go to a petrol station and someone would put the petrol in your car for you, which actually still happens in Japan sometimes, which is amazing. That hasn't happened in England since I don't know, the '50s, the '60s, I've never seen it happen that my parents have. But yeah, customer service, it's still very good here in Japan. But I should end this podcast here for now and continue next episode because I still have lots of interesting things to share with you. So until then, I hope you enjoyed this episode and goodbye. Thanks for listening until the very end of the show. If you've enjoyed this episode, please give my podcast a rating or if you have the time write a review. It's a really nice way of letting me know you enjoy these episodes and encourages me to make more of them for you. Thanks very much and have a lovely day.