Around Japan in 100 Days
February 22, 2012
Last year British couple Jamie Lafferty and Katy Morrison won the Travel Volunteers competition to travel to all of Japan’s 47 Prefectures in 100 days. Click here to watch a great video they made about thier travels through Japan.
Now back in the UK we had a chat with them about their epic Japanese journey.
Having visited all of Japan’s 47 prefectures, where would be the top three places in Japan you recommend people visit?
It's very difficult to answer this. When we started our itinerary, we wanted to be able to say that there were better places to go than Kyoto and Tokyo, that you'd have a better time elsewhere... But in truth, they're both incredible, and you'd be a fool not to visit them on your first trip to the country.
After that, though, there's so much to explore. We especially found that the other islands had a very different personality from Honshu: Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku were all special in their own way – and none of them have anywhere near as many tourists as Tokyo and Kyoto.
On your 100 day journey through Japan, you had the opportunity to visit many places of the typical tourist trail. Were there any lesser-known destinations that you’d recommend people visit?
The east coast of Kyushu doesn't get many visitors at all, but it's absolutely stunning – the scenery is just unreal, all along the coast. Similarly, people seemed not to know much about Shikoku, but when we got there we found that between the four small prefectures on the island, almost every side of Japan was represented – you feel like you're seeing the whole country in miniature.
You must have tried a lot of regional specialities. What were the most delicious foods you tried in Japan?
Ten of our favourite foods were:
* Tataki, Kochi (seared bonito)
* Wanko soba, Iwate (endless buckwheat noodles)
* Gyutan, Sendai (grilled beef tongue)
* Okonomiyaki, Hiroshima (layers of cabbage, eggs, meat, seafood, noodles, bean sprouts and anything else you fancy)
* Tempura, Everywhere (battered anything)
* Kobe beef, Kobe (the world’s most succulent beef)
* Chicken namban, Miyazaki (juicy chicken deep-fried in vinegar batter)
* Genghis Khan, Hokkaido (barbequed lamb)
* Teiyaki, Nagoya (fish-shaped pancake things that are typically served with sweet bean paste or – better – with cinnamon and apple inside)
* Inairzushi, Kyoto (sweet rice coated in a thin layer of fried tofu)
What was your favourite experience in Japan?
Again, that's really hard to say – so many people were so generous with their time that it doesn't seem fair to pick one thing. For Katy, though, it was probably the autumn colours which started again and again as we headed south. We'd been living in the Middle East for a couple of years where the only seasons are hot and hotter, and there are very few trees. We'd probably been a bit starved of autumn, so the Japanese show was very special.
For Jamie, then probably hiking on Yakushima. It was wet, difficult and started at 5am, so for it still to be a highlight goes a long way to showing how incredible it was!
You visited the prefectures worst affected by the 11 March 2011 earthquake and tsunami – Miyagi, Fukushima and Iwate Prefectures. Do you think it’s appropriate for people to visit these areas and, if so, what do you recommend they do and see there?
With Miyagi and Iwate, then absolutely. Sendai was one of our favourite cities in all of Japan, and Iwate is home to all kinds of cultural highlights, the pick of which is probably the newly UNESCO-endorsed Chuson-ji.
With Fukushima, obviously there's an area which is utterly restricted and people can't, shouldn't and won't go. Thankfully it wasn't in a tourist area. Fukushima was never a really big tourist hub anyway, but there are one or two bits that are worth visiting. I wouldn't necessarily prioritise them over other parts of Japan, though – and that's got nothing to do with any radioactivity.
For more on Jamie and Katy's adventures in Japan, visit their blog at travelvolunteerblog.net.