The main problem with tourist trails? The tourists

Travel is best when you have a mission, however unlikely. It might be the need to buy a present for a friend obsessed with chihuahuas. It may be your own passion for opera. Or a mania for pigeon racing. The point is: you need something to take you off the conventional route.

In a lifetime of travel, I’ve had plenty of times treading the road most travelled. You have your copy of Lonely Planet or Let’s Go or – to go back a bit – Europe on Five Dollars a Day, and you tick off the attractions.

I remember my first trip to Italy, at age 28, thinking: “If I see one more Madonna and child, I will surely die.” Then, courtesy of the guidebook, endured a few hundred more.

Playful but stinky. (Also pictured: the snow monkeys of the Jigokudani Monkey Park)

The tourist trail, here’s the problem, is full of tourists. And of locals who are sick of the tourists. The tourists go to the same places and ask the same questions. The locals give them their rehearsed responses.

Which brings us back to chihuahuas. Oh, for a friend with some niche interest and a birthday in the offing, thus allowing you to see the world via a lens marked “chihuahua”.

Suddenly, the guidebook is dumped and you find yourself in outer suburbs or distant towns trying to learn the phrase, “Do you have any clothing featuring a chihuahua? Or maybe a pot in the shape of a small, annoying dog?”

In our case, visiting Japan over the last couple of weeks, we had assembled two competing missions.

The easiest was Jocasta’s attempt to establish herself as an Instagram influencer. Her idea was that she should take a series of photos mocking her husband.

She calls this “Also Pictured”, and it began a decade ago when she took a photo of me outside an ancient Greek ruin, adding the caption: “An ancient ruin. (Also pictured: The Temple of Hephaestus, 5th century BC.)” Oh, har-de-har. But it gave our friends a laugh and has, in the years since, given us a perpetual travel mission.

Soba at last! (Also pictured: buckwheat noodles)

For this trip to Japan, Jocasta’s efforts included a picture of me eating noodles with the caption: “Soba at last! (Also pictured: buckwheat noodles)”; and a photo of me with snow monkeys. “Playful but stinky. (Also pictured: the snow monkeys of the Jigokudani Monkey Park).”

But “Also Pictured” was really a sideline to our main mission: to buy chisels for our younger son, who long-time readers of this column might know as the Space Cadet.

He is an obsessive woodworker. “You are going to Japan,” he said as soon as our trip was mooted. “It is the home of the world’s best woodworking tools.”

For example, he noted, we were going to Kyoto which happens to be home to a legendary chisel maker. He showed us strange woodworking websites filled with breathless discussions of this ancient artisan.

“I think he’s dead,” someone said on the website. “No,” said someone else. “It’s just that his business doesn’t look like a business. You must just knock on the glass door and wait.”

An intriguingly challenging mission. What a gift!

We gave the taxi driver the address, but he couldn’t find it on his map. He could guess the area and maybe drop us somewhere nearby?

As we drove across the city, with the help of Google Translate, we told the taxi driver the story of our son, his woodworking and his admiration for the toolmakers of Japan. Suddenly, with a rush of patriotism, the driver became part of our mission. It was Raiders of the Lost Ark. It was Lord of Rings. It was The Blues Brothers. We were on a mission from God.

The driver poked the taxi into various back lanes, found himself defeated, and then circled around for one last attempt. Finally, it was there: the light on the hill, disguised in the form of a nondescript home with a glass sliding door.

No business name. No bell. But listen hard and you could hear the thump and whirr of tools being made. We knocked, the artisan’s son came to the door and we explained our mission.

The point of this story is not the particularities of what happened – although we did meet the great chisel master, Junnosuke sensei, and we bought two of his chisels and his family gave us some bottled water before we left because it was so hot outside.

What’s important is the chance to escape the tourist trail.

Some can do it on their own: they are interested in some odd thing, like fly-fishing or glassmaking or flower arranging – and allow that to dominate their trip. For others, like me, it requires someone like the Space Cadet with his odd passion for Japanese chisels.

Jocasta, of course, managed to combine both our missions with a photo of me in the workshop holding one of those beautiful chisels.

The caption, of course: “Not the sharpest tool in the shed. (Also pictured: items of the workshop of master chisel-maker Junnosuke sensei).”

Hilarious. But even this less-than-sharp tool understands the point: travel is so much more fun when you have a mission.