Question:
My Japanese tutor is taking me to Japan fairly soon, and she gave me two options. We could visit the area around Tokyo, which she said she was more familiar with and would be more of a city environment, or we could go to the Kyoto/Osaka area, which would be more temples and less urban.
Just thought I'd ask if anyone had any comments, if you've visited Japan, i'd love to hear your experience and suggestions! Arigato!
Answer:
You really need to decide based on your interests. Tokyo (which includes Harajuku and Ginza, by the way) is a huge city. It's the place to go if you're more interested in the ultra-modern aspects of Japanese culture, street fashion, electronics, and the like. But personally I think Tokyo is kind of boring, because I'm not into big cities anywhere in the world and it just seems like New York City in Japanese to me. I prefer Kyoto, which is the place to go if you're more interested in Japanese history and traditional culture. This is the place to go if you want to see tons of shrines and temples, a chance to see real geisha, much more old-style architecture than what is left in Tokyo, and some great scenery (especially if you venture out to areas like Uji for day trips). This isn't to say you can't find aspects of both in each city -- Kyoto is a modern Japanese city, Tokyo has its temples and geisha and traditional arts -- but they have different balances of the two.
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