Ryokan – An experience not to be missed in Japan!
Ryokan are traditional Japanese-style inns which are to be found all over the country, from the busiest, most congested sections of the biggest cities right down to the smallest villages.
Generally speaking, following the traditional pattern, all the rooms in a Ryokan are likely to have floors covered with tatami mats (made of rice straw) and the staff will usually roll out futons at night (thin mattresses) on top of the tatami for you to sleep on.
It is accepted practice that all guests (Japanese or Western) are expected to wear yukata (cotton kimono, usually of blue and white in patern) in the room, in other areas of the ryokan and for sleeping.
There’s absolutely no doubt that staying at a ryokan is an absolute “must-do” when you are traveling in Japan, as it will give you a unique insight into Japanese culture and traditions that you can never enjoy whilst staying at your average five star hotel.
However, be aware that a ryokan is “different” to what you are used to, and that, whilst your stay will offer an extraordinary and unforgettable experience, not all Europeans or Americans will find a ryokan totally suited to their needs or requirements.
The following insights, information and observations might give you some idea of whether a ryokan is for you or not:
- Shoes must be removed and left at the entrance. Traditional “flip-flop” style sandals, called Zori, will be provided for usage inside the ryokan (do not go outside wearing Zori!). Another reminder: you must take off zori (flip-flop) when you enter your room (tatami mat).
- Ryokan usually have a nighttime curfew, often 11 p.m., at which time the doors are bolted for the night, whether you are inside or not. In larger, more cosmopolitan hotspots such as Tokyo or Osaka, this probably means that you will have to consider train times and so on and you may well have to leave somewhere early to get back in time.
- Many ryokan are established in older, traditional wooden Japanese houses. This creates a great atmosphere, but also means that there are no elevators, only stairs. It also means if there is a fire, a ryokan is probably not a good place to be (straw mats and wooden houses are pretty combustible!)
- Ryokan noramally serve some form of traditional Japanese breakfast, and it would be an extremely rare (and non-traditional) ryokan that carried anything as Western as a menu! So, whilst a Japanese breakfast will be delicious and stunningly prepared and presented, it will not be to everybody’s palate. Such a traditional breakfasts might include rice, grilled fish, omelette, law egg, miso soup, pickles and black paper (seaweed paper), etc. all to be eaten with chopsticks. And, if you are not very good with chopsticks, the last thing you will want to do is to have to try to use them first thing in the morning!
- Despite foreign tourists increasingly sampling ryokan style accommodation, 99.99% of the guests will be Japanese, and therefore English is often not spoken. Even when it is, it is likely that only one person of the staff will speak English and obviously, that person is not there all of the time. On the other hand, I have personally been amazed and touched by the number of ryokan proprietors who have press-ganged their high school aged child (or the next door neigbours child or, in one memorable experience, the child of the local restaurant owner!) into the translation job for the foreigner. Nevertheless, don’t rely on it, so it will certainly help you to have at least a few words of Japanese.
In the most traditional ryokan you might also find:
Public baths: Usually one bathroom with a gigantic bathtub for each sex. Most ryokan will usually fill these tubs for preset hours each evening, e.g., from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. The etiquette of such situations could be the basis of a very sturdy novel, but suffice to say, just do as the locals do!
It is possible to reserve a room with attached bathroom, but to experience the true Japanese ryokan tradition, many westerners choose the public baths. Swimsuits are not worn.
Shared toilets: One toilet room, with both cubicles and urinals, is shared by both sexes in some places. You may also find a member of the opposite sex actually cleaning the toilet when you enter, and they will generally just carry on with their work whilst you “go”. Don’t worry about it – the locals don’t!
Rice-paper partitions (Paper sliding doors) or walls: The most rational of ryokan might sill enjoy rice-paper walls or partitions between the rooms, so you will have to be every bit as well mannered, considerate and quiet as the Japanese themselves whilst enjoying your ryokan stay.
My final personal observation would be that, having stayed in many different ryokan on many occasions; it is definitely an experience that I would recommend, as any down sides are far outweighed by the positives.
My best experiences have tended to be at ryokan outside the major cities, in smaller towns and the more rural areas, and, as a guideline, I would suggest using hotels whilst in the major cities, as city based ryokan are often somewhat disappointing, ad also often far more money orientated.
Here is a link to one of the top 10 ryokan. So You can check how they looks like….
Hiiragiya Ryokan – http://www.hiiragiya.co.jp/
You will find your destination and various price range of Ryokan (Typical rates are between 8,000 and 30,000 yen per night, per person includs breakfast and dinner) to search “Ryokan Booking”!
So much to do, so little time…
Many years ago, a friend of mine was working for a company who’s CEO at the time is now a very Senior US Government Official (no names mentioned).
One day, my friend got a call from the boss, informing him that he was planning a 14 day trip, and he wanted my friend to create an itinerary so that he could visit every one of the 22 offices that the company had, scattered throughout Asia.
After recovering from the inevitable paroxysm’s of mirth, my friend eventually managed to compose himself sufficiently well to fax the CEO a map of the USA, superimposed on to a map of Asia, to demonstrate the relative sizes of the two continents. Pretty soon afterwards, he received a very apologetic faxed reply from one extremely humbled CEO!
Many people don’t really grasp it, but Asia is a big, big place.
Think about the size of Russia (only a small part of which is in Europe), then add China and India, and you are talking about absolutely vast tracts of land, and millions upon millions of people.
This size inevitably means that Asia is a veritable melting pot of different races, cultures and languages, all of which will have varying degrees of fascination for visitors from the West.
Thus, it is a fairly common occurrence that a visitor to Asia (especially a first time visitor) will try to do too much, by perhaps trying to visit too many countries or places in one trip.
Don’t be too ambitious would be my advice. If you have only two or three week’s vacation, don’t try to visit two or three countries moving from town to town or from one attraction to another on a daily basis. By doing this, you guarantee that you see little of anything, and learn nothing about what it is that you are seeing.
Far better to take your time, relax, and soak up the culture of one country at a time. Enjoy the food, discover the people and give yourself adequate time to see what the country has to offer.
Give yourself the chance to become truly immersed in the culture of that one country, because it is in this way that, in my experience, you ensure that your vacation becomes a genuinely enriching experience, rather than a pell-mell race to “fit everything in”.
Wherever your vacation takes you, it is, by definition, meant to relax you. Traveling from place to place every day for two or three weeks is the exact opposite of this ideal!
Remember, if dear old DC (oops!) couldn’t do it with the resources of a multi-million dollar corporation at his disposal, you cannot “do” Asia in one trip either!
Goa, going, gone…
Ask you average Joe in the street in any major Western country to name two or three countries that might truly be said to represent heaven on earth and (assuming that you were fortunate to ask a Joe with even the basic knowledge of World geography) one of the answers that you would most likely get would be Goa.
Goa is an area of some 3700 square kilometers on the West coast of India in the region known as Konkan, and is famed for its stunning beaches, its world heritage architecture and for its rare flora and fauna.
With a history traceable back to the 3rd century BC, and with several centuries of Portuguese colonization clearly reflected in the culture, religious beliefs and cuisine of the region, Goa has long been an idyllic vacation destination for tourists from out friend Joe’s home land!
However, what was once a low-budget tourist haven is now facing a crisis, caused, at least to some degree, by the fact that tourism is Goa’s number one money spinner, both for the state and its people alike.
The crisis, according to leading environmental interests, is being caused by the fact that developers, keen to build more and more to accommodate the ever increasing numbers of tourists, have forced up land prices dramatically and have encouraged the tourism boom that now threatens the delicate coastal ecology of the area.
The diverse environmental groups who are based in this former Portuguese enclave, which only became part of India in 1961, have recently agreed to put aside their often unfathomable differences in an effort to put the brakes on the explosion of building activities taking place almost unnoticed in sleepy towns and remote villages dotted along the edge of Arabian Sea.
Perhaps somewhat surprised and shocked by the increasing clamor of protestors railing against hotels and apartments sprouting up all over Goa, the local government has promised to make efforts to try to keep the colonial-era character of India’s most popular holiday destination.
As an example of the steps being taken, Goa’s Town and Country Planning Ministry recently placed an indefinite ban on all real estate properties by foreigners.
But, perhaps not surprisingly, environmental groups claim that this is not addressing the real problem, and that suggesting that it is all the fault of foreigners is no more than an object lesson in denying responsibility!
They would say, and do so most vehemently, that it is unchecked building carried out by local business interests, who incidentally support the State government, that is the real problem. Indeed, local residents who now find the more sedate style of life to which they are accustomed disturbed by buildings being thrown up all around them would tend to wholeheartedly agree.
Moreover, this construction boom is taking place alongside a massive increase in industrialization throughout the region, which is making all previous predictions look somewhat silly. For example, a draft plan for the region that predicted a 30-percent rise in the settlement area between 2001 and 2006 had to be altered when values shot up by 21 percent between the months of March and August in 2005 alone!
To put what are claimed to be hard facts by he environmental groups into perspective, they say that some 70 million square meters of fertile orchards have been turned into concrete eyesores in some of Goa’s 400 villages in the past ten years alone.
Put another way, this has led to real estate prices more than doubling in urban districts since 2004 to 3,000 rupees (US$67) a square meter while beach front properties now cost twice that.
And as if this was not enough, the local pollution authority has warned that mining and tourism in Goa – which sees nearly 15% of the four million tourists who visit India yearly – has already caused irreparable ecological damage.
Now, environmentalists quote a revamped State master plan that was unveiled in April, 2006 that is targeted to create six new cities from nothing across the state, each with the almost obligatory luxury hotels and business districts.
So, at the risk of sounding cheesy, where is Goa going?
It is clearly dreadfully unfair for westerners to enjoy all the fruits of their conspicuously consumeristic lifestyles, whilst attempting to deny those same benefits to others.
At the same time, taking an all too familiar colonially patrician attitude of “we know better than you do what is good for you” smacks of all things that were wrong about just about every Empire the world has ever had to tolerate (and the current example is most definitely included in this category).
But the fact is that Goa is still beautiful, and can be kept so for the benefits of future generations, with just a little more planning and forethought, a great deal more common sense and a conspicuous reduction in greed levels from all concerned, both in local government and in private enterprise, within the region.
West to East Jet Lag – Fact or Fiction?
Many travelers who fly from West to East, from the USA oe Europe to Asia will be on an airplane for 12 hours or more. Then, when they arrive at their ultimate destination, the time is “wrong” according to their body clock.
For example, when flying from New York (JFK) to Bangkok (BKK), you can expect an in flight time of 16 hours in real time, on a non-stop flight. Thus, if you were to leave JFK at 12 noon, you would arrive in BKK at 4PM (assuming that you are on time), having flown over the North Pole completely in daylight both in fall and summer.
So, is jet lag likely to be a major problem?
In my experience, flying west to east has never really caused me any major problems, although there are couple of general observations that I would make.
First, for many travelers, the change in climate can be confused for jet lag, and is likely to be more of an immediate problem. So, if this will be a first trip to Asia, if possible, give yourself at least two days of doing absolutely nothing, in order to acclimatize.
Secondly, especially in Southeast Asia, take at least two showers a day, and even more if possible. A shower is ALWAYS a great refresher, and will revive you whenever you are feeling “jaded”.
Third, try not to sleep until it is nighttime when you first arrive in the place where you have jetted to.
By doing this one simple thing, you will immediately be awake and asleep in the “correct” segments of the daily 24 cycle in the place where you are, rather than in the place you have come from.
In short, jet lag should not pose a huge problem, unless your trip is a combination of business and pleasure, and you have a meeting to go to as soon as you reach your destination.
Remember that “time”, as expressed by hours and days is an entirely man-made labeling system, and such hours are not fundamental biological elements.
Try as far as possible to ignore clock time, and follow daily “time cycles”, so that, for example, when it is dark, assume that means it’s time to sleep, and vice versa.
By following these simple guidelines, you can at least attempt to make sure that jet lag does nothing to hamper your enjoyment of your holiday.
United Airlines: Dot-Com Boom To Bankruptcy To Reorganization
Significantly boosting traffic to the San Francisco hub, United benefited hugely from the boom era of the dot-com world. When United failed to keep operational costs of their online transactions under control, and the entire dot-com industry’s bottom fell out, United Airlines struggled to remain afloat.
United Airlines lost approximately $2.14 billion on online revenues and then applied for a loan of $1.5 billion from the federal Air Transportation Stabilization Board. This government board had been established in the aftermath of the September 11 events in an attempt to help the nation’s airlines recover from lacking demand and revenues.
Though much blame is placed on September 11, United Airline’s decision to declare chapter 11 bankruptcy included many other factors that had been in place for long before September 11 and United’s money problems. Labor disputes, the rising cost of so-called low-cost carriers and problems in the management structure of the company all contributed to the financial situation of United Airlines.
After declaring bankruptcy, United continued to operate as well as to invest in new programs. In 2003 they launched a new carrier service that was intended to compete with low-cost carriers in the national coast-to-coast market including both business and high end leisure travelers.
In order to counter the rising fuel costs in 2004 and 2005, United introduced many fare increases as well as cut overall operations by fourteen percent in an attempt to reorganize and rehabilitate the airline.
Along with rate hikes United Airlines also cut many aspects of employee’s wages and benefits. The most controversial was in 2005 when United decided to cancel their pension plan. This huge blow to their employees is the largest default of its kind in United States corporate history.
Throughout 2005 and in the beginning of 2006 United kept extending terms of its bankruptcy and plans to emerge as a smaller but better run airline. Other major airlines are struggling to complete with their lower airfare. Only time will tell how successful United is at full reorganization over the coming months and years.
The History Of Northwest Airlines
Northwest airline founded a mail route that stretched between Minneapolis, Minnesota and Chicago, Illinois. The air mail was carried in biplanes like the Curtiss Oriole. These were open cockpit biplanes manufactured by the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company.
It wasn’t until 1927 that Northwest Airlines began to fly passengers. The next year, Northwest began its first international service route to Winnipeg, Canada. By the end of the same decade, Northwest Airlines was serving many smaller cities in that region of Canada and the United States.
In 1931 a landmark flight made by Anne and Charles Lindbergh was sponsored by Northwest Airlines. This pioneering flight to Japan proved that flying a route through Alaska saved up to 2,000 miles for a trip from Tokyo to or from New York City. This route became known as the Northwest Airlines Great Circle Route.
During World War II Northwest adopted its telltale red tail that remains the trademark of its fleet to this day. Originally the red on the tail section of Northwest’s planes was used as a visual aid to help spot the planes in bad weather conditions. During this era Northwest flew frequent flights to and from Alaska, carrying military personnel and equipment.
In 1947 Northwest Airlines became the first commercial passenger carrier with flight services from the United States to Japan, through Anchorage, Alaska. When such new Asian routes were added, this branch of the company named itself Northwest Orient Airlines.
During the 1990s Northwest Airlines began non-stop flights to many Asian cities and also began flying to China again, though it had flown there until 1950. Also, Northwest worked at strengthening its presence in the Southern United States and began other international routes to such destinations as Ireland, Britain, Scandinavia and Germany.
Following the United States tragedy of September 11, Northwest Airlines, like many national air carriers declared bankruptcy and has yet to announce when they are likely to pull out and show substantial profits.
Delta Airlines: A Major U.S. Airline
In December 2006 Delta Airlines will begin making non-stop flights to Accra, Ghana and Dakar, Senegal, from which point direct flights will continue on to Johannesburg, South Africa. This will make Delta Air Lines the only major United States airline to offer flight services to that continent.
Delta Airlines has been a pioneer in the commercial aviation industry since its inception in 1924 when it became the world’s very first crop dusting company. In the following year the company moved to Monroe, Louisiana where it was purchased by C.E. Woolman and gained the title Delta Air Services.
Named after the Mississippi Delta, this early incarnation of Delta Airlines had its major routes connecting Jackson, Mississippi to Dallas, Texas, Monroe and Shreveport, Louisiana.
Around the same time Delta Air started carrying mail back and forth between Fort Worth and Charleston, South Carolina, as well as Atlanta, Georgia and various other cities in Georgia.
In the year 1941 Delta changed headquarter location to Atlanta, Georgia. This move marks the beginning of a major growth spurt in both national commercial aviation as well as substantial company growth as Delta connected to other major U.S. cities such as New York, Chicago and New Orleans and a little later, cities in Ohio and Florida.
In the 1970s Delta bought Northeast Airlines and then Western Airlines of Los Angeles in 1987. This latter move encapsulated the massive hub cities of Los Angeles and Salt Lake City, making Delta the fourth largest American air carrier and the world’s fifth largest carrier.
Delta was a partner in the formation of Orbitz, the online travel website and even carried the Olympic Torch to Los Angeles for the 1996 Summer Olympic Games and remained lit from Athens, Greece to Los Angeles.
Though Delta Air Lines continued to grow and expand through codesharing plans with other major airlines, thus increasing their destination points, the juggernaut finally declared it would seek bankruptcy permission from the courts to terminate the pilot pension plan in an attempt to successfully restructure the company. According to projected profitability, Delta Airlines show a returning profitability by the end of 2007.
American Airlines: An Overview
In terms of fleet size and the total number of passengers transported, American Airlines is the largest airline in the world. In terms of total operating profits, American Airlines comes in second worldwide, right after Air France-KLM.
The headquarters of American Airlines is Fort Worth, Texas, and is located right next to DFW; the Dallas / Fort Worth International Airport. This airline carries out scheduled flights all around the United States, as well as to Latin America, Canada, Western Europe, the Caribbean, Western Europe, China, Japan and India.
American Airlines has five major hubs that include Dallas / Fort Worth, Chicago O’Hare, St. Louis, Miami and San Juan. At American’s home base of Dallas / Fort Worth, the airline operates about eighty-four percent of all flights at the DFW airport.
American Airlines is very strong in the transcontinental market. American Airlines serves 172 cities and works with a fleet of 709 aircraft, as of May 2006. More than any other airline, American flies more passengers between Latin America and the United States than any other airline.
In 1930, American Airlines was incorporated as a singular company that was originally made up of 82 small airlines. These original 82 airlines were acquired by American Airlines through reorganizations and acquisitions. Originally, the term ‘American Airways’ was utilized as a common branding by several independent air carriers.
In cooperation with IBM, American Airlines started the first electronic ticket booking system, called Sabre. Before this electronic ticket sales and management system was invented, American employed a manual system involving a round and rotating file. It would take anywhere from 90 minutes up to three hours to look up a flight, book tickets and make out the customer’s paper ticket. The manual file system worked fine until growth made the system obsolete.
In the 1980s American Airlines changed their system to what’s known as a hub-and-spoke system. The San Jose International Airport and Raleigh-Durham International Airport were added to American Airlines collection of hub airports to accommodate north-south travel in the United States.
In 2005 American Airlines suffered losses from both the merger with TWA as well as the September 11 attacks. Then in July of 2005 the company reported the first quarterly profit in seventeen quarters. The company continues to do well and showed the best recovery after the 9/11 incidents.
Netflights: The UK’s Leading Independent Travel Company
So you want to find an awesome deal on airline tickets? If you live in the UK, why not try out the services of Netflights. Netflights has become one of the most well known internet travel companies in the United Kingdom.
Netflights’s home base is located in Docklands area of Preston and has more than five hundred employees. Netflights was established in 1992 and is also known by the consumer brand of Gold Medal Travel Group. Netflights is publicly traded under several brand names, including Get Packing.
Netflights offers closely with 130 scheduled airlines of the world’s top airlines at discount prices. Their website has received awards for its ease of use and clean site structure, as well as their superb online security.
In addition to stellar internet customer service, Netflights also offers complete phone customer service for everything from phone ticket booking to personal trip planning services.
Whether you need flight information and tickets for a short trip or require comprehensive multi-stop trip planning, the folks are Netflights are pleased to provide everything that your next airline travel experience may require.
At the Netflights website you can browse through the current best deals or use the flight search tool to see all the flights that meet your criteria. Right up there with Expedia, Netflights has simply tons of flight deals, flight and accommodation, as well as flight, accommodations and car rental deals every day.
Not only does Netflights offer some of the best deals on airline tickets and hotel stays, but they also offer pretty comprehensive detail of airport parking structures and airport layouts in general. This can certainly come in handy for making your way around an unfamiliar airport much easier.
Also, Netflights offers a premium program that allows frequent users to receive even greater discounts on flights and other travel related services and merchandise. For more information visit their website at NETFLIGHTS.COM
Early Airline Development in the United States
The demand and pricing for air travel services depends on a number of factors, including leisure passenger needs, business passenger needs, demand for business cargo shipments and all of these are of course influenced by overall economic activity of a given area or region.
Overall, the demand for air travel services has risen rather consistently. While annual growth rates during the 80s and 90s ranged between 5-6%, this was a drastic 15% in earlier days of aviation during the 1950s and 1960s.
Growth rates are certainly not consistent across the board and differ from area to area. In areas where deregulation provided greater pricing independence and so competition, the results were lower fares and sometimes very dramatic spikes in overall growth.
After World War I the U.S. was inundated with aviators. Many of these aviators opted to use their war surplus planes to perform various barnstorming programs for passengers and spectators.
In 1918 the United States Postal Service began to use airplanes to experiment with air mail service. They used aircraft gotten from the United States Army. After the Army flew many air mail missions, the Post Office decided to start their own air mail network, as the Army proved to be unreliable.
Though the 1920s brought passenger airlines, many of these companies still dealt primarily with transporting mail. Then in the year 1925, Ford bought the Stout Aircraft Company as well as started construction on an all-metal aircraft that became the first American passenger airliner.
Pan American World Airways was the first American airline to go international, and was the only U.S. airline to do so before the 1940s. Even during the depression the American airline industry was profitable for most airlines and continued to be so until the start of World War II, when the U.S. saw much better airline profits than war-torn Europe. Around this time the airline industry really took off with advances in technology as well as manufacturing of aircraft.
