I’ve traveled to Japan many times for work. It was a joy to return as a tourist, and also to see some of the cities I’d previously seen for business through my sister’s eyes on her first trip. It was also a joy to discover that my sister and I have compatible travel styles, since this was the most time we’d spent together since we were children! We were there in the first week of April during cherry blossom season. After a long winter, the sakura are just as beautiful as reputed.
We were also there during the first week of April for the grey skies and showers that give the dense cityscapes a gothic glower.
Over the course of our trip, we spent time in Osaka, Tokyo, and Kyoto. I won’t rehash our itinerary, or try to capture in words the immersive impression of being very, very far from home visiting a country with an old, rich, complex culture completely unlike my own and where I don’t speak the language and can’t even read the alphabet to sound sound things out phonetically. I can only just remember not being able to read English, so being functionally illiterate is a very disorienting experience. That said, the cities we visited host huge numbers of foreign visitors, and we had a fine time navigating them. I wish the trains at home were as frequent, convenient, and fast!
Not pictured: the Shinkansen pulling into the station exactly on time and looking ready to launch into orbit. Also not pictured: the commuters queuing up at the sides of the doors so that people can get out before new people trying to get on. Similarly not pictured: rush hour. I do not love being packed into the subway. Fortunately as a tourist I could avoid public transportation at peak hours!
I’m pretty sure every single visitor to Osaka takes each of these photos every time. These are my versions.
We didn’t go to a single one of the Top Ten! Must Visit! tourist sites in Kyoto, but instead spent our time walking through the city and the neighborhoods. I don’t think I took a single picture that didn’t have a cherry blossom in it somewhere. And I wasn’t even trying.
I have a great fondness for all the little shrines and temples that I would never have known were there except for the scent of incense drifting through the neighborhood. It felt like I’d discovered a secret when the shopping arcade opens into a temple courtyard inhabited by a well-loved statue of a cow. In these densely populated cities, the quiet of the shrines was always welcome.
I’m not a food blogger, so I didn’t photograph everything I ate, but I’m pretty sure my domain would be revoked if I didn’t include at least one picture of ramen, sushi, and the man cooking fresh tuna with a blowtorch at the Tokyo fish market at 8 in the morning. The okonomiyaki is not mandatory, but it’s one of my favorite Japanese foods.
Not pictured, but also a favorite of mine are the onigiri and caramel pudding from seven eleven. I desperately want a Japanese seven eleven to open in my neighborhood at home! There’s one on almost every block, and they have ATMs that will read foreign bank cards, and amazing prepared foods that have been my lifeline when I’m too jet lagged or tired or overwhelmed to try to navigate a restaurant and menu in a foreign language. Oh, and while I’m asking, I want the bento lunch that you buy in the train station to eat on the journey to become a fixture in American train stations and airports.
Every place has its share of weird, wonderful, and inexplicable. Here are a few of my favorites from this trip. Don’t ask me what they are. They just caught my eye.
To wrap up the trip, we took a day trip to Hiroshima and visited the Shukkeien (shrunken scenery) Garden and the Peace Memorial Park.
I won’t try to describe what I felt and thought viewing the Peace Memorial, but when I got home I began folding origami cranes again, sharing Sadoko’s wish for world peace.
