Assumptions

Before my trip to Asia, I assumed:

• More people in Japan would speak English than in China.    
  

WRONG - I was blown away by how many people (particularly seemingly not-well educated market vendors) spoke enough English to transact business.  Perhaps I am confusing English with Pinyin, but I was also very surprised at how many of the signs on highways and on buildings in China were written in English.  I certainly did not find that to be the case with Russia (granted, it was 12 years ago) and assumed that China, particularly based on its anti-outsider history, would be similar to Russia.

• Tokyo would be a typical big city.

WRONG - My cousin Spittin' Image told me that I'd see lots of concrete buildings in Tokyo.  He did mention that there were a lot of parks, but I thought Moscow had a lot of parks.  While I enjoyed the Moscow parks, I didn't feel like they made the city seem any "greener" than it was.  I've been to Moscow, London and Dublin.  Dublin definitely had its own flavor and color, but all three cities seemed fairly gray-ish to me.  I did not leave Tokyo with an impression of gray.  I definitely left with an impression of green.  That could be because our hotel was in the middle of a park and we had to walk by it (and a really old famous Buddhist temple) to go anywhere.  But I was impressed by the green long before we got to our hotel just on our bus ride through the city center.

• Organized tours suck.

WRONG - I have very vivid memories of visiting special spots in Ireland and cringing when the big buses purged loads of foreigners onto a site.  T and I would just look at each other and say, "Can you imagine being on one of those?  What a waste of money to not be in control of where you go or how long you spend at a site."  I prefer to ramble alone in my own hired car in places like Ireland, but a small organized tour is definitely the way to go in Asia.  Especially in China, it was fabulous to let someone else plan my schedule: be in the lobby by 8:30, spend x amount of time here and there, get out now we're at lunch, get back on the bus, here's your hotel, dinner is at x o'clock, tonight we're doing dinner AND a show, etc.  I saw lots of stuff and I was only tired from the actual site-seeing, not the wrangling, navigating and thinking that I normally have to do on vacation.  Yes, there were certain places I would have liked more time or to skip altogether and I would have made different restaurant choices, but overall it was a pleasant experience.

• I like Japanese food.

WRONG - Well, even before I left I knew that I liked hibachi and not real Japanese food.  But I thought that I'd be able to find something like hibachi over there.  The only thing that came close were some REALLY expensive restaurants in our Kyoto hotel.  The vast majority of restaurants on the street were traditional Japanese cuisine which I already suspected that I disliked.

• I can't tell the difference between Japanese and Chinese cultures.

WRONG - Culturally the two are nothing alike, even if their arts seem very similar.  The Japanese are very reserved to the point that they won't even call out to get a waitress over to their table.  Their restaurants have a button on the table that they push which lights up their table number on a board to alert the waitress that they need attention.  My experience with Chinese people was mostly of market vendors and let me tell you, they are not reserved at all.  They yell at you, do back flips, shoot off fireworks, slaughter small farm animals - anything to get your attention.  The general population is not quite as in-your-face as the vendors.  But I still felt like the general Chinese populace was more interested in us than the Japanese - they at least looked us in the eye when we walked by them.  I admit that I still can't physically discern the difference between them beyond obvious things like clothing and hair styles (and smell).  But I have learned to hear the difference in the languages - there are just some sounds that the Chinese language has that Japanese doesn't. 

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