I felt green to the core. The Vice-President of the United States (US), Al Gore, was coming to South Africa to deliver his An Inconvenient Truth address at Maropeng and I was going to introduce him to a packed audience.
But there was a slight challenge. Gore could only travel from the airport in a small convoy of hybrid vehicles.
A Japanese luxury vehicle manufacturer had recently brought out a range of stunning hybrid SUVs, with enviable fuel consumption and low emissions, and were keen to supply them for the trip to the Cradle of Humankind. But the reply from his office was quite prescriptive; he could only be seen in a hybrid sedan.
This was duly arranged and the Maropeng gathering was supercharged with Gore’s mission to save the planet and how we could make a difference.
The missing link is how did he return to OR Tambo that evening? Well… in a rather large helicopter. In some ways I turned from dark green to light green in a matter of minutes.
Make no bones about it, I’m not saying that we don’t need to preserve fossil fuels and cut down on all forms of pollution. I wouldn’t dare argue with the experts who have exposed holes in the ozone layer and correlate this with dwindling ice caps.
By its very definition, pollution has harmful, and even poisonous, effects and you will find it difficult to get an appointment with an ENT specialist in many of the areas around Africa where industry rules the airwaves.
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And when it comes to vehicle emmissions you can’t help but be totally shocked when the US Environmental Protection Agency calculates that the average passenger car spews out
4.7 metric tons of carbon dioxide a year!
So, for many of us, it was a like Tiger Woods moment when the Volkswagen (VW) scandal over rigged emissions tests broke and our minds went back to the ads for the Beetle comeback which showed flower power over two generations.
It is a gaffe that has denuded faith in VW and is likely to have long term affects on their market value, and possibly even the German economy. It is the biggest crisis in their 78-year history.
Media reports say the overall cost of the debacle could amount to $86 billion – that’s $30 billion more than the BP oil spill in 2010!
VW say that the defeat devices were fitted to around 11 million vehicles worldwide. But it seems not every owner will have to rush to get their cars refitted or reprogrammed. Volkswagen Group South Africa says that no action is required on the part of their customers or dealers.
Here is where things get complicated. According to VW Brand PR Manager Andile Dlamini, the irregularities reported overseas relate to a nitrogen oxide emmission standard known as Euro 5. In South Africa, the compliance standard is EU2.
So the VW and Audi diesel engines in question comply with South Africa’s regulations in relation to nitrogen oxide and, according to Dlamini, the software does not negatively affect the carbon dioxide values – which leaves me feeling that I should have concentrated harder in science class.
So any recall of cars around Africa will depend on that country’s specific emission standards.
Surprisingly, in terms of numbers, this won’t rate among the biggest recalls in history.
The automotive world is still reeling from the defective Takata airbags which can shoot out sharp metal shrapnel when deployed. Around 35 million vehicles may be affected in the US and an additional seven million have been recalled worldwide.
Nearly two dozen brands have been affected in this rather frightening scenario which has left some dealers disabling the airbags and affixing ‘Do Not Sit Here’ stickers to the dashboards as a temporary measure!
If we focus on a single manufacturer, then the recall record goes to Ford in the late seventies. It involved a failed safety catch which allowed all Ford automatics to slip from Park to Reverse with no warning. The safety defect was blamed for 6,000 accidents and 98 deaths. Repairs to 20 million vehicles and a host of law suits reportedly cost Ford $1.79 billion. A fortune back in the day!
It was a testing start for Mary Barra when she took the helm of the General Motors Company (GM) in the midst of a massive recall at the beginning of last year. Under the spotlight of becoming the first woman to head a major automobile manufacturer, she faced revelations about faulty ignition switches and pressure from investors to return more cash to investors.
Listed by FORBES as one of the Top 10 most powerful women in the world, Barra inherited the ‘new’ GM which was founded in 2009 after the trials and tribulations of bankruptcy and a Chapter 11 reorganization. And the leaner operation has been declaring profits since 2010 despite the costly recall and a dip in share prices.
GM sold over 180,000 vehicles in their Africa markets last year – which represents a 10% market share. The President and Managing Director of GM Sub-Saharan Africa, Ian Nicholls, says he is excited about the growth potential of the business.
“We are finalizing the details of our agreement with Isuzu to build higher volumes of vehicles in South Africa. The Isuzu range has a reputation for reliability and capability, and is engineered for local conditions,” says Nicholls.
The Chevrolet portfolio extends from that tiny Spark, through the Captiva, to the daunting Trailblazer. The updated Trailblazer is handily placed to take a slice out of the Fortuner market with an attractive and comfortable cabin, in grey and black trim, and the model I tested with the 2.8-liter Duramax turbodiesel engine has grunt to spare with a fairly stable fuel gauge – well a claimed 8.5l/100km.
Strangely it’s the infotainment system of the beast that impresses me the most. The Chevrolet MyLink setup, with rearview camera included, is the essence of simplicity and makes you wonder why so many German marques make choosing a radio station a life study.
But it’s Opel that is really turning heads and order books.
“The Opel brand is on the rise with sales volumes up more than 76 percent year to date, on the back of a product onslaught,” says Nicholls.
For me one of the surprise packages of the year is the tiny Opel Adam, available in funky guises of Jam and Glam, with a one-liter turbo engine that loves to canter. It’s even more appealing than a Fiat 500 and has more standard features than any luxury car I have tested.
Little wonder it is bagging international awards.
But despite these positive outlooks, GM and virtually all car manufacturers, many surviving as hybrids born of takeovers, must be nervous about further major recalls that could spell financial disaster.
And here’s what will make them even more wary. The British government is to start its own enquiry into car emissions, running new tests on engines from across the industry and comparing the results with on-the-road emissions.
These independent tests could even challenge the claimed fuel consumption figures which, in many cases, seem to have been calculated on some of the steep downhills of the Tour de France.
Accountability is going to be the name of the game.

Do You Recall?

Great people often do uncommon things. Illustrious people, however, replicate greatness around them.
How else can one summarize the ‘many realities’ of Michael Ade-Ojo, the automobile mogul fondly referred to as Nigeria’s ‘Mr. Toyota’?
He is not called ‘Mr. Toyota’ simply because he loves cruising around in the Japanese-made marques.
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“I have dealt with the Japanese now for 44 years. And it is only through me that they can mirror Nigeria. Throughout these 44 years, there have not been any promises broken, or monies owed. My word has always been my bond. That is one of the things that I believe has helped my business – integrity. The fact that I always fulfil my commitments,” he says.
After more than four decades of mingling with the Japanese, Ade-Ojo has earned the rights to Japan’s Toyota Motor Corporation in Nigeria. His lifetime’s work has made Toyota one of the most ubiquitous car brands in Africa’s largest and most populous economy.
“There are countries where Toyota is number three or number four in terms of market share, but when you take it overall, Toyota is number one in the world. They don’t have to be number one in Nigeria. However, they have been number one in Nigeria for 15 years,” he says.
Plagued by a recall of nearly 6.4 million vehicles last year, the Japanese automaker bounced back quickly from this crisis to maintain the reputation of its 78-year-old brand. It ended 2014 on a growth note with increased year-on-year sales in the United States (US), China and Europe.
Ade-Ojo has done “mostly sales” jobs during a career spanning over 50 years. As a poor village boy, he sold charcoal, firewood, matchsticks and food. Years later, he ended up selling vehicles (cars, trucks, vans, buses, tractors, motorcycles and mopeds), auto and aviation fuels, industrial lubricants, automotive and financial services, including auto and life insurance.
A man with a proclivity for details and appropriate business or traditional decorum, he has earned the number one status in Nigeria’s auto market for constantly making his numbers but also on account of his market savvy, focus and stamina, especially during the 1980s and 1990s when Nigeria’s economy was in the doldrums. A walking encyclopedia of Nigeria’s auto industry, he recalls that “Toyotas were not that common during the 1960s&#8230; by 1981, Toyota sales in the Nigerian market totaled about 52,000 units; Datsun, 100,000 units and Peugeot, 250,000 vehicles.”
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“In those days, government and companies were financing vehicle purchases, but this stopped in 1982 with all the woes that came with economic downturn,” he says.
In 1984, an IMF-induced Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) meant tariffs were hiked and an embargo placed on car and spare parts importation.
“Even if you had the cash or access to credit, you needed an import license issued only by the military juntas in power to transact business internationally.”
As consumption habits and car cultures go, Nigeria is any automaker’s delight. With a head count of about 170 million and growing, it is arguably one of the largest motor vehicle markets in the world, rubbing shoulders with the likes of China, the US, Europe, India, Brazil and Mexico.
Ade-Ojo says car sales have grown steadily since 1999 when he was responsible for 12,000 of the 30,000 Toyotas sold in Nigeria that year. In 2014, Toyota recorded about 15,000 sales, of which Ade-Ojo’s companies sold about 45%. The other seven Toyota-authorized dealers shared the balance of 55-60%.
At least one in every four cars on Nigerian roads belongs to the Toyota clan. The ratio is even higher for sales of brand new Toyotas. Ade-Ojo reckons his annual turnover from vehicle sales alone over the last two years is well over N40 billion ($200 million).
In any country, invaluable business experience and a significant slice of the motor vehicle market easily translates to influence, leadership and corporate responsibility. Even though he disagrees with the timing and modus of the government’s new auto policy, there are reports that Ade-Ojo is poised to set up a Toyota assembly plant in the country, in conjunction with his Japanese partners.
The auto policy, which took effect in July 2014, had raised the import tariff on fully built cars from 20% to 70% for companies without assembly plants in the country; and zero percent duty on imported Completely Knocked Down (CKD) units. CKD refers to the total number of parts required to assemble a vehicle.
“I am not against the auto policy in as much as it is to industrialize… but we must industrialize with a sense of strategic responsibility to the local economy; but the way things are, we seem to be putting the cart before the horse. We currently lack the industrial support environment for car manufacturing. For an average car you need about 2,500 parts. We don’t produce anything locally, and we want to begin to industrialize, to make cars, we will only end up getting the short end of the stick!”
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With a reputation for being shrewd, his formula for success is passion, focus and diligence.
“I have learned the hard way to embrace stabilization. I realize that we have not done much profitable business outside our core business area of automobiles. This goes to show the importance of focusing on what you know and what you have passion for… So my advice to young entrepreneurs is that they stick to what they know and be passionate about it. At least, if you do this, you are not likely to be poor.”
His formula has certainly earned him a vast fortune, a solid reputation as a super salesman, with juicy stakes in numerous entities and a prime spot in the commanding heights of West Africa’s automobile ecosystem.
Nigeria has however been his primary business turf.
“All my investments are in Nigeria. I’m a believer in what you call the Nigerian dream,” he says while sitting in his plush house in the town of Ilara-Mokin, his birthplace on the outskirts of Akure, the capital of Ondo State in south-western Nigeria.
Ade-Ojo began selling cars in 1965, five months after earning a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Nigeria (UNN) in Nsukka, in south-eastern Nigeria.
“The first car I ever sold was a British Motor Corporation Wolseley car model,” he says. “I sold it to Mr Okubanjo, a permanent secretary in one of the ministries. We later became friends. This was how I got hooked on automobiles.”
Soon he acquired his very first car, a Morris 1100, with a loan from CFAO, his employers at the time.
He joined CFAO straight out of school – the company sponsored his last two years at university – and had a brief stint as an inspector of taxes at the Federal Inland Revenue Service, followed by four years at British Petroleum (BP). His “painful personal history”, growing up poor, including experiences and escapades at these companies propelled him towards his destiny.
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A near fisticuff with his manager cost him his job at CFAO.
“I had sold 20 trucks to Electricity Corporation of Nigeria (ECN) and this man from New Zealand gave the company the impression that he did the job. The company believed him and ignored the fact that I had singlehandedly brokered and sealed the deal. I showed my anger to management and I almost punched him… I was really pissed off. So in December 1966, CFAO decided not to renew my contract. I became jobless.”
While at BP he went to Benin City to relieve a colleague temporarily and “within three months I increased the total sales of that division by 25%. I grew turnover by 25%&#8230; the dealers were requesting for me not to leave. They actually wrote a petition to BP’s South Western Divisional Office in Lagos asking them to retain me in Benin… so I became restless; I kept ruminating over this Benin episode. I kept thinking to myself, ‘perhaps it was time to quit’. The funny thing is the chap I had gone to relieve in Benin eventually got promoted on the basis of my sweat. BP actually made him my boss.”
Months later, back in Lagos, he approached Danish-owned RT Briscoe, a leading heavy duty equipment and auto dealer, and asked if they would allow him to sell their products on a commission basis. They agreed. Armed with this agreement and key product information from RT Briscoe, he took a month’s annual leave from BP. The results of his moonlighting was a pleasant shock.
“Within the four weeks of freelancing, I sold 40 cars. I put pen to paper to calculate my expected commission and, to my great surprise, what I was going to earn from the 40 vehicles was more than my one year salary at BP. So, armed with that knowledge, I went back to work at BP.”
He quit BP soon after this “discovery”. On August 1, 1971, Elizade Independent Agencies (EIA) was born, co-founded with his first wife, the late Elizabeth Wuraola Ojo, who had been a year below him at UNN.
“I started it with my savings. I had been very thrifty, so we saved £4,000 ($6,300). We used this £4,000 to rent my office and showroom in Lagos. I lived in the same property. Eventually, that was also the very first property I ever owned.”
EIA became incorporated as Elizade Nigeria Ltd (ENL) in 1973, dealing in motor vehicle and spare parts sales and services. After-sales support currently provides 10% of bottom line for the Elizade Group of Companies, a business empire which now includes a string of companies in the auto, education, fashion, hospitality, financial services, petroleum marketing, technology, real estate and construction industries.
Ade-Ojo’s Toyota franchise revolves around controlling stakes in Elizade Group, Toyota Nigeria Limited (TNL), RT Briscoe Motors and the subsidiaries and associated firms of these entities. After a series of acquisitions and divestitures, he currently owns 100% of the RT Briscoe Group in Nigeria and 74% of TNL.
“I had become 100% of TNL in 2004 but after one year, Toyota came and said they want me to partner with a Japanese company. So I had to extricate 26% of TNL to Sumitomo Corporation of Japan.”
Beyond these organizations, his business empire also includes Elizade University, Elizade Autoland, Crown Motors (Nig) Limited, Classic Motors Ltd., Okin Travels Ltd., Odua Creations Ltd., among others. He is the chairman of TNL, Moorhouse Sofitel Ltd., Custodian &amp; Allied Insurance Plc, Baun Limited, Imperial Telecommunications Ltd., Crown Drinks Ltd., Meristem Securities Ltd., Meristem Wealth Management Ltd., MikeAde Properties Development Ltd., 3Line Card Management Ltd., and SMT Nigeria Ltd., distributors of Volvo construction equipment, Volvo trucks and Mack trucks in Nigeria.
He’s also been a director of several banks, including Ecobank Nigeria and First City Monument Bank. For his contributions to business and society, he was awarded the national honor of Officer of the Order of the Niger (OON) in 2005.
Professor Pat Utomi, renowned Nigerian political economist and management expert, believes that in an economy like Nigeria, where mobility and transportation infrastructure are key to socio-economic development, “it is appropriate to make the point that sometimes you have to trade” in order to tap into the inherent commercial capabilities of the market.
“Ade-Ojo is a super salesman. He is in many ways Nigeria’s Akio Morita, the Sony co-founder who came to be known as the paramount salesman of the 20th century,” says Utomi.
A lifestyle of globetrotting in private jets has not robbed Ade-Ojo of his modest manner. Constantly shying away from discussing his personal net worth, he tells FORBES AFRICA that, “considering that Elizade was the genesis of my business, it must be worth at least several billion dollars now, but you see what is important for me is that business must be conducted honestly and openly, and society must benefit from your business gains.”
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He set up the Ade-Ojo Scholarship Scheme in 1991. Over 100 poor students have benefited from this scheme since its inception. A few years ago, he spent slightly over $205 million of his personal funds to rebuild Ilara-Mokin’s township roads. The town’s microfinance bank, primary and secondary schools have also tasted his generosity. His Elizade University, also located in Ilara-Mokin, cost him about N8 billion (about $40 million) to establish.
“I’ve been spending averagely about N1 billion ($5 million) every year to subsidize the university.”
In 2014, he put Ilara-Mokin on the world’s movie map. The town was the setting for October 1, a Nollywood flick directed by popular Nigerian filmmaker, Kunle Afolayan. Ade-Ojo’s auto companies helped finance the movie, which reportedly cost well over $1 million.
For those who may question the efficacy of Ade-Ojo’s dogged pursuit of projects and causes, his daughter, Deola Sagoe, a renowned international fashion designer provides a response: “With my father, what you see is what you get. He’s always been a pragmatic person, and particularly adept at spotting opportunities… he lives and breathes business in all spheres of his life.”
“I like the fact that Chief Ade-Ojo always puts his money where his mouth is. He is so unassuming he makes you rethink the essence of wealth,” Olumide Ojutalayo, a golfer and businessman says on the grounds of a world class golf course Ade-Ojo built in Ilara-Mokin.
Smokin’ Hills Golf Resort “cost me about $17 million to establish,” he says. “I built it for myself and anyone who likes to play golf.”
Soon, the resort will have a five-star hotel, an aircraft landing strip with hangars, restaurants and other entertainment facilities. The project might complete the transformation of the serene, leafy locale – with a current population of about 60,000 – into a modern, suburban community.
At the age of 77, Ade-Ojo has certainly earned the right to build himself a private leisure paradise. His passion for his birthplace is infectious. It may also have deep personal reasons. The fifth of six siblings, it was in the Ilara-Mokin village that he began life in a poverty-stricken family. Hunger was a perpetual companion, he says. He therefore grew up experiencing the harsh reality of rural poverty.
“I was often derided and mocked by people whose parents I considered to be better and richer than mine… so I think I must have been around 15 years old when I made up my mind to change the dynamics of my background.”
He credits his mother, his late wife and business partner, and current wife, Taiwo Ade-Ojo, an affable lady who had also been involved in his business for many years, for contributing immensely to the strong foundation, business success, peace and stability he has had in life.
“My mother made me work so hard. I hated it, in fact, my belief was that my mother was wicked… she drove me to do everything. I was the one sweeping the grounds, I was the one going to fetch water that we would use to bathe and drink every morning, and it didn’t matter whether it was in the cold Harmattan [wind] or the hot season. So after that, I may have had to hawk eko (cornmeal) before going to school…”
“In the evenings, I would sell kerosene and matches… at that time people could not afford a box of matches, we used to tie them 10 sticks a bunch to sell to people. So, I did all these, and I became a very successful laborer. I was going to farms with people, to support my school fees I would go clear bushes, or cut the weeds in cocoa plantations, or clear farmlands, burning the waste, preparing the heaps and then planting… all these I could do. I knew every aspect of farming.”
Amazingly, he excelled at Imade College, Owo town, his secondary school. His path out of poverty had begun. He enrolled for an 18-month course at the School of Agriculture in Akure. This led to a brief stint as a laboratory technician at the Ministry of Agriculture, Moor Plantation in Ibadan, in south-western Nigeria. While in Ibadan, he began attending pre-degree evening lectures at the British Council, studying zoology, botany and chemistry, hoping to eventually study medicine. He however had to ditch the idea after learning he also needed mathematics to qualify for medical school. He picked up a new set of subjects, economics, government and geography, and was eventually admitted into UNN’s Business Administration program in 1961. It was the first set of a Business Administration degree course in Nigeria.
His financial headaches trailed him to campus.
“After two years of struggle, I could not sustain myself in the university,” he says.
He was already working part-time as a research assistant. Unknown to him, a faculty staff member had secretly approached CFAO for financial support on his behalf. CFAO agreed. His tuition fees sorted, he still could barely afford one meal a day. Fate stepped in through the young Elizabeth Wuraola. They met in the university chapel one evening and became friends. Soon, she would begin to save him from hunger and the perils of poverty. She often gave him her meal tickets so he could eat at the cafeteria. One day, she gave him £40 ($63), her entire pocket for the 1962-63 academic year.
“She gave it to me to go pay part of my school fees,” he remembers emotionally. “That was the turning point for me.”
“So, this is really the heart of the matter… She was denying herself for me. This was what made me feel that, yes, a woman could assist you to succeed; even when I approached her, my intentions were not that serious. But I felt it to my marrows that I was going to marry this woman because there was now real love between us. I tell you, I didn’t regret that I stuck to her. But I lost her on November 8, 2003.”
The ‘Elizade’ brand name was coined from both their names, Elizabeth and Ade-Ojo.
Behind every great man is a great woman. Ade-Ojo has never let go of this greatness.

From  Farmworker  To Multi millionaire

Sushi, the Japanese culinary export of note, has endured several incarnations since finding its way to the Johannesburg sprawl over two decades ago. But it didn’t really go mainstream until the start of the noughties, just under a decade after the country’s first democratic elections and hot on the heels of the Y2K scare. It was the cuisine of the millennium in South Africa, the poshest thing you could go out and order. It was food for the monied, then. But not anymore.
The sushi was good back then, righteously prepared and well worth its billing, says Andrea Burgener, a food journalist and restaurateur.
“The first time a piece of sushi wandered into my mouth&#8230;I was seated at the sushi bar of&#8230;Ohsho, a fine upstanding restaurant armed with the sort of sushi chefs you’re scared of.”
Ohsho, which opened its doors in the late 80s, no longer exists but it introduced the tastebuds of the city to its charms and its price tag. “Ohsho&#8230;[was] Johannesburg’s introduction to sushi; a formal introduction, with no sushi merry-go-rounds or California rolls. Very pricey. Very good. I spent every penny I had going there,” says Burgner.
But Johannesburg is a particularly fickle city, at least when it comes to sushi. After Ohsho and Daruma, the other sushi institution in town, faded into culinary purgatory, a new sushi convention followed – cheaper, mass produced, on-the-go sushi. What followed was a terrifying trend that Burgener christened as the age of ‘McSushi’.
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“The Japanese chefs [at Ohsho or Daruma] would have thrown themselves upon their sashimi knives at the idea of putting cream-cheese and strawberries anywhere near a piece of sushi.”
But as the sushi trend continues to grow in Johannesburg, fusion has become the de facto status quo. Enter Vusi Kunene, proprietor of the city’s The Blackanese Sushi Bar in Maboneng. Kunene; not to be confused with the notorious Kenny ‘Sushi King’ Kunene infamous for eating sushi off of barely-clad models at his 40th birthday party a few years back, found his way to sushi while on a break from Jozi. Working in Cape Town, the former waiter found a passion in sushi. In the mid-2000s, returning to Johannesburg, Kunene decided to hedge his bets on a sushi operation. He teamed with other burgeoning sushi chefs in the city. Together they experimented at food fairs and held sushi classes across the city, eventually opening a restaurant two years ago.
Today, he’s the talk of the town, sushi and Kunene are almost synonymous. As the name suggests, there are no sushi purists at The Blackanese. But Kunene understands the sophistaction of Japanese sushi convention, although avocados and strawberries feature heavily in his creations. Kunene hopes to do something big with his sushi brand. But, for now, he’s happy with its success and all its perks. “I love the satisfaction of changing people’s lives through food,” he says.
The golden days are gone but the sushi apocalypse, imagined by Burgener as “curried sushi in a Tex-Mex wrap from a vending machine [or] free sushi enclosed with your favorite magazine”, is far from fruition. Hopefully, sushi innovators like Kunene will keep that reality at bay for a little while longer.

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Sushi And The City

In true Japanese hard working fashion, the country has rebuilt rapidly since the earthquake and tsunami of March 2011. The resilience of the people is told in two words: gambaru, to always do one’s best, and gaman, to suffer in silence.
Plan your trip to the Japanese archipelago of 6,852 islands in springtime, during the Sakura cherry blossom festival. It’s part of the Hanami tradition, a celebration of the flowers, that started in the 8th century. The idea is to spend a day picnicking beneath petal showers.
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Nara, nearly 40 kilometers south of Kyoto, has 30,000 cherry trees. The former capital is home to eight UNESCO World Heritage sites, vying for your attention: from the 16-meter bronze Buddha in Todai-ji temple to the five-story pagoda at Kofukuji Buddhist Temple. Don’t leave until you’ve visited Kasuga-taisha. The vermillion, wooden, Shinto shrine is located in Nara park, where more than 1,200 deer—the sacred messengers of the shrine’s Shinto gods—roam. Three thousand stone and bronze lanterns are illuminated during the Man-toro lantern festival, which is celebrated in early February.
Kyoto should be at the top of your list if you’re looking for a cultural experience. The city is synonymous with Kinkaku-ji; the zen Buddhist temple also known as the Golden Pavilion. The two top stories are covered in gold leaf. The pavilion ‘floats’ on a pond with 10 small islands. Be sure to take a walk around the splendid garden.
A short stroll away, at the Temple of the Dragon at Peace, is the most-celebrated rock garden in Japan. This life-size version of the zen gardens we have in our homes, contains 15 rocks, surrounded by white gravel that is raked daily by monks. While there are many theories about the meaning of the garden, in essence, its intention is to evoke peace.
At sundown, wander the quieter alleyways of the Gion district; you might see a Geisha. Have dinner at one of the many restaurants along the banks of the Kamogawa River, or unwind at a teahouse.
Nearby Osaka is great for a half-day trip, especially if you’re a follower of popular culture. Visit the Dotombori entertainment district, or the southern districts, for a taste of Japan’s nightlife. If it’s electronic goods you’re after Den-Den Town is the place to go. In the Kita area, take a glass tunnel escalator to the top of Umeda Sky Building, with its twin towers. But Osaka’s most popular attraction remains the 16th century Osaka-jo castle with its memorabilia museum.
Hiroshima is a real-life history lesson; there’s no need for a textbook. The city, and all its monuments, are a grave reminder of the atomic bomb dropped by the Americans on August 6, 1945.
If you’re visiting Japan for a week, or longer, buy a discounted Japan rail pass for the Shinkansen bullet train and travel as far as you can. A day trip to Mount Fuji, en route to Tokyo, is well worth it since it’s only 100km south west. The active volcano, which stands at 3,776 meters, hasn’t erupted since 1708. At the foot of the mountain lie five lakes and Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park.
Once you arrive, you’ll agree that Tokyo is everything you’ve heard about it, and so much more. The multiple subway and train lines that intersect and circle the capital are a worthwhile way to get around. Visit Shinjuku station: the busiest transport hub, according to the Guinness World Records.
Nearby, in Harajuku, you’ll find Takeshita Street. This is where the fashion-conscious youth spend their time, wandering between boutique stores, photo booths and fast food outlets. You’re almost guaranteed to see teenagers engaging in cosplay (costume play). They dress as anime characters, something out of a Halloween movie or in modern Victorian dress.
If you’re a shopaholic, Ginza Street will keep you busy for hours on end or, at least, until your credit card is cut. The Gingko tree-lined street is home to designer and department stores. Rest at a corner cafe or find respite in one of the many art galleries and museums along the stretch.
For sushi, like you’ve never tasted, head to Tsukiji fish market—the world’s largest wholesaler. Be prepared to stand in queues outside the best restaurants, many of which have been featured on Japanese reality TV. It was here that I tried sea urchin for the first time; the delicacy is expensive due to its delicate texture.
As dusk draws near, head up the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building. Entrance is free and the panoramic cityscape views, from 200 meters up, are priceless.
While in Japan, I read Haruki Murakami—now my favorite Japanese postmodern author—in the hopes of understanding Japanese way of life. There are some things Murakami won’t tell you, like how to make a peace sign with your index and middle finger, when taking photographs, to gain respect from the Japanese.
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The best place to start: www. japantravelinfo.com

Tag: Japanese

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