Our Japanese Adventure: The Last Word

Vue la longueur du billet, j’ai publié une version française du billet…

As I start writing this post, I am sitting on the plane waiting for takeoff from Tokyo on our way to Toronto…like I have done in the past on all our long excursions, I like to end the story of our adventure with some thoughts about the experience.

First, I have to say that this excursion has blown all my expectations…this is a trip I had personally organized and like everything related to nature, you have no idea if the wildlife will show up when you want it…but it did…now, I had done my research and picked travel operators that I thought would help me maximize my chances of success and it worked out…that was the wildlife part and if you’re reading this post, the odds are that you followed the excursion and you have seen the photography.

What you didn’t see and it’s hard to show with photos, is the whole experience that we were exposed to…this was our first trip, where we spent a whole month in a country, and the language seemed like it would be a barrier…and, while we were with a driver guide on the first part of the trip on Hokkaido, for the second part we were on our own…the lodging had been arranged, the flight had been booked and train tickets had been purchased but we would have to deal with every little obstacle by ourselves and our iPhone as translation machines.

Both parts of the trip were exceptional, from a human experience point of view…we did experience every bit of Japanese culture, from lodging in ryokans where our futons were set up on tatami floors, to eating kaiseki meals (traditional multi-course Japanese dinner) and having miso soup and raw fish for breakfast…if you know me a little bit, you would be surprised to find out that I ate sashimi (raw fish) at breakfast and dinner…but I had so much trust in the Japanese folks preparing the food that I went for it…the piece of resistance was definitely the beef…I have never had, in all my life, beef that tasted so good and literally melted in my mouth…the Sherpa did appreciate the one-month foodie trip.

Other aspects of the Japanese experience, like hospitality, attention to detail, cleanliness, politeness and the full-time ready to help mentality of the Japanese people we interacted with everywhere we went, coupled with modern infrastructure both for transportation and technology, really made this trip exceptional…it was simply amazing…and the few times when we had little hick ups, the systems were able to react and keep the impact to a minimum.

But to be honest, I lucked out with the two travel operators I selected for the trip…the first part of the trip was arranged and planned with Hokkaido Nature Tours, an outfit based out of Sapporo…from the first time I got in contact with HNT about a year ago to start the planning, it was clear that I would be in good hands, Ido San was always quick to reply to my inquiries and would offer advice to meet my goals…and then, we got to meet our guide Yuichi San, who spent two full weeks with us…driving us around all over Eastern Hokkaido, looking for more photographic opportunities, taking care of every little detail…Yuichi San hails from eastern Hokkaido, so his knowledge of the area was an added bonus…without a doubt, the support of the whole team at HNT was instrumental in making the Hokkaido experience an out of this world wildlife excursion.

The Honshu component was a bit different…I only had two goals for Honshu…go back to Yudanaka to photograph the Snow Monkeys and visit the town of Hino, where I would have a possibility of photographing Mandarin ducks…well, Lexi of Inside Japan with the assistance of the team in Japan turned these 2 requirements into a 10-day mind-blowing tour…I did get to photograph the Snow Monkeys and the Mandarin ducks, but I also got to experience Matsue, Osaka and Himeji, which weren’t really on my list…we stayed a beautiful onsen in Yudanaka and Matsue…for that part of the trip, we were on our own…we had a car pick us up the first day at the airport in Tokyo to drive us to the train station and we had a car pick us up this morning at the hotel in Osaka to drive us to the airport…but, we had to get to where we were going by ourselves…having said that, from the first day when we ran into issues with our luggage forwarding to the day when our train was cancelled, we felt we had a whole team watching over us…the support from the Inside Japan team was incredible…so I would like to thank Lexi, Joshua, Cheyenne, Katie, Miki, Jonathan, Aiko, Robin, Jackie and the other members of the support team, for being there when we needed you the most…we never felt alone out there…you’re stars and you made this part of our trip a breeze.

But I can’t put the final word on this trip without a special call out to the innkeeper of the Jinpyokaku Honten in Yudanaka…she was exceptional…prepared all our beautiful meals, all of them at least 8 course meals, driving us to the train station a few times and filling out our TA-Q-BIN forms to ship our luggage to Matsue…so, a special thank you to her.

So, I met pretty much all my photographic objectives: Japanese cranes, Steller’s sea eagles, White-tailed eagles, Whooper swans, Snow Monkeys, Mandarin ducks…the only bird I did not see was the Blakiston Fish Owl, but it was a long shot anyway…had a bit of a surprise in Abashiri with Harlequin ducks…got to see some great landscapes on Hokkaido and Honshu, plus some cultural sites in Nagano, Obuse, Matsue, Osaka and Himeji…this has been a great trip…typically, after 3 weeks I want to come back home…on this trip, 4 weeks flew by like it was nothing…I picked some of the shots that really represent the trip…enjoy the slideshow.