Japan photographs, garden photos, Japanese gardens

Gotemba, Japan

Sponsored by 4 time sponsors Z&D of Fairbanks Ranch, California.

"Unlike America, where you can find a motel along the highway every once and awhile, Japan had them spread far and few between. The few we did find gave us a strange impression they did not want us. Every time I would approach an inn keeper of a traditional Japanese hotel, know as a ryokan, he would take one look at me and immediately swing both arms in front of his body and face, making a giant X symbol, as if in a protection maneuver to keep a vampire away, and saying in the best English he could muster ‘no beds’ and then point towards the nearest city ‘tourist hotel’. It was so strange and happened every time. Could every ryokan be full? I thought, after awhile, they might be prejudiced!?

At the end of the trip, when we finally stayed at one, it finally dawned on me they literally meant ‘no beds’, as you sleep on ‘floor cushions’, and they figured we would want a ‘real bed’, a 'Western style bed', which they did not have. There was obviously a misconception, that we would only want to sleep on that kind, which for us and probably a lot of other Westerners, simply was not true! Oh well. "
M.S.

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Go back to 2003 - "Gardens of Japan".