Good Morning From The Land Of The Rising Sun...

Good Morning from the Land Of The Rising Sun...

Our first morning in Japan began really early. The sun rises quite early here. It was quite bright by 6AM - the bright sunrays filtered into our room through the drapes and woke me up. That for sure wasn't a happy situation given that we slept at 2.30AM!

But the sun does energize and make you active in ways more than one...

And our portable wifi router rental - "Pocket WiFi" got delivered to us. This will help us stay connected on the go...

For a nominal fee this is indeed a luxury to have - we used this for the first time in Istanbul and found it so useful. You needn't buy a sim card when you land. This is so much more convenient and you can connect multiple devices to it...

Catching up on the day's news - a rapprochement between Japan and Russia holds promise in light of a weakening United States presence in the region and the emergence of a big bully in the region. Frankly, not many will be too happy with the rise of Japan, militarily, given what happened in the early 1900s leading up to the Second World War...

In other news, the front page photo talked about canines being liberated from a dog farm in Korea, where they were being reared for meat! The liberated canines will now find their way to the United States. It is just so amusing how both Japan and South Korea share such a mutual animosity that they can't stop taking potshots at each other!

Converting money into Japanese yen gives a comforting feeling - one Indian Rupee yields about 1.6 JPY. But that's the end of it. By the time you take a taxi or buy a coffee, you realise how expensive Japan really is. The 3 kilometre taxi ride from Herbis to our hotel in Dojimahama cost us almost JPY 3000! Even Korea is cheaper than this...

I used to collect currency notes and coins when I was a kid and the fascination still remains, though I simply photograph them now! Japanese currency notes are quite nice to look at and to touch and feel.

Curious about what the notes signify, I did a quick search on Wikipedia - the JPY 10,000 banknote features Fukuzawa Yukichia, a Japanese author, writer, educationist, translator, entrepreneur and journalist while the reverse features a statue of hoo, a mythological phoenix from the Byodō-in Temple, in Uji, Kyoto...

The JPY 5,000 note shows Japanese author Natsu Higuchi, who went by the pen-name Ichiyo Higuchi. The reverse shows Kakitsubata-zu, a painting of irises by Ogata Korin...

The JPY 1,000 banknote was the most exciting for me. It features Hideyo Noguchi, a prominent Japanese bacteriologist who in 1911 discovered a link between syphilis and progressive paralytic disease. The reverse shows Mount Fuji (which is on my bucketlist), Lake Motosu and cherry blossoms...

It is indeed heartening to see that Nippon Ginko (Bank of Japan) has avoided picturing military heroes or politicians or even monarchs on their banknotes. Perhaps the Reserve Bank of India should also take note and move beyond the depiction of Mahatma Gandhi on Rupee banknotes, which I guess will be a political decision!