Hello and welcome to the Casual Chat!

As you can probably tell, today I wanted to talk about when I went to Japan last year.

I did have a Casual Chat talking about some tips to go to Japan, but this is going to be more of how I planned the trip, getting to Japan, and of course what I did when I was there.

Plan Comes Together

The whole process of me going to Japan actually started in 2017, right as I was getting ready for my last year in culinary school.

The 2020 Olympics was happening in Japan, and as someone who had thought about going to Japan for years, the thought of going to go to Japan for the Olympics was in the forefront of my mind.

As I was planning and budgeting things however, a thought came across my mind. The Olympics was going to be expensive to get tickets for, I could only potentially go to a couple of events, and I wouldn’t really be experiencing Japan as much as I would like.

I could take the money I wanted to go for the events, extend my trip by a week and a half, and actually enjoy myself in a different country by myself.

So the plan was set: The end of March 2020 was when I was going to go to Japan. I had gotten my passport in 2019, set my flight and hotels up, and had everything at the ready for me to go to Japan.

Then the pandemic happened.

And the world shut down, literally two weeks before I was set to go. A selfish part of me still wanted to take my flight over as not everything had shut down by that point, but logic and reason prevailed and I decided to wait until things opened up at the end of the year or at the very least next year.

Five years, two moves, and one new job later, I finally had everything set and ready to go. In the intermittent time I really hankered down on planning my schedule.

It wasn’t a super strict itinerary, but it had bullet points of major things that I had where I was going and what I wanted to do. Other than those bullet points, I had a bunch more free time to explore wherever I was and see what I wanted to see.

Long Flight and Landing

As I was sitting in my Dad’s car driving over to the first airport, I was as you might expect fairly anxious. It wasn’t my first time flying, but it would be the first time that I would be traveling on my own.

I had done plenty of family road trips and quite a few school trips, even a couple of trips with friends, but this was the first time that I would be traveling on my own. It’s a hell of a thing to think about, especially because I was going to be in another country where I wasn’t the most proficient with the language (still not to be perfectly honest).

But I knew I had my plan ready and this was something that I had been planning for seven years and there wasn’t anything that was going to stop me at this point.

We had reached the airport, I said good-bye to my Dad, let my Mom know that I was at the airport and won’t be able to talk for a while, and set off.

The flight from my first airport to the next airport was short, only a couple of hours, and then I maneuvered my way through to my gate and waited. The flight was delayed for a couple of hours and I had to change my gate, which was a bit concerning at first.

The scheduled landing time changed, so to be safe I asked the first hotel I was staying at, a capsule hotel, if arriving late at night would be an issue. Thankfully it wasn’t, so that was one level of stress off my back.

Then came boarding the plane, and when I arrived at my seat, I realized that I was lucky to have a whole row to myself. Pre-flight routines are done and we take off, right into Tokyo’s Haneda Airport.

13 hours later we arrive in the evening and we disembarked not through a tunnel, but we had to take buses to where we needed to go next, which was immigration control. I had my passport scan, thumbprint and picture taken, waited in line to be checked out, grabbed my luggage, got a short term Suica card, and got on a train to Shibuya Station which is where the hotel was at.

It was pretty late and I didn’t have a lot of energy bandwidth at that point in time, but I was in Japan.

Finally.

Being a Tourist

After a Family Mart dinner because the closest restaurant next to my hotel had just closed for the evening and a Family Mart breakfast the next morning, my first day was basically exploring.

I didn’t have much planned for the day because I wanted a day where I could just wander and find interesting places. The capsule hotel I was staying at was actually pretty close to the famous Shibuya Crossing, which I didn’t realize the night previous.

I also happened to be pretty close to a Don Quijote, which for those who don’t know is a sort of variety store that has things like a grocery store in the basement, a floor for clothing, one for toys and gifts, and a whole bunch of other things. The one I went to was one of the larger locations I believe and I went several times to explore what was in there.

This first day in Tokyo was filled with me walking around to find restaurants that I knew like an Outback Steakhouse, a Mexican restaurant, a couple of cafe’s, some random small shops, and in general was pretty light all things considered.

The next day in Tokyo was very similar, which I imagine some people might bethinking why am I just doing light exploration of Tokyo? Well the reason why was because while Tokyo was the first place I visited, it would also be the last place I stayed in.

I had booked an overnight bus from Tokyo to Osaka and I knew that I would have three days at the end of my trip to explore more of Tokyo. Osaka would also have to wait because my next destination was actually going to be Hiroshima.

My original plan was to take the overnight bus from Tokyo to Hiroshima, but I was not able to secure the tickets for it. I could have taken the bullet train all the way to Hiroshima, but that would have been expensive, and I had decided against getting the JR Rail Pass for this particular trip.

Instead I had decided to take the overnight bus from Tokyo to Osaka and then take the bullet train from Osaka to Hiroshima. This would essentially count as my hotel stay for the evening and I would still be able to use the bullet train for my trip.

Arriving in Hiroshima was quick, as expected, but it was so quick that the ryokan I was staying at wasn’t ready to take me in until noon, a whole two hours. So I wandered near the ryokan for some time, grabbing some food while I waited, and then I was finally able to check in to my room.

Once my things were secure in my room, I did what I imagine a lot of tourists do and went to visit the Atomic Bomb Dome, which was only a fifteen minute walk from the ryokan. It was a somber moment, made even more so because there also happened to be a light drizzle to set the mood.

After eating lunch and visiting the Hiroshima Pokémon Center, I was walking back to my hotel when I realized that I was also near the Hiroshima Museum of Art. On a whim I went inside, since I hadn’t been to a museum in quite a long time. It was only slightly awkward because as I entered the museum, a couple was getting wedding photos done, which I had to be careful to maneuver around as to not impose on them.

The most interesting part of the museum was that they were showcasing art from Odilon Redon, who for a good period of time was famous for his works of lithography and charcoal until he moved to pastel and oil paintings. I enjoy abstract and off putting art, so I was fascinated by the exhibit and while I would have loved to take pictures, we were not allowed to take pictures for this particular showcase.

The next day in Hiroshima was me basically wandering around the entire city, looking for interesting things and just soaking up the atmosphere. I had wandered around and found a small shrine in the middle of a mountainous area, a purple train, visited a mall, and just enjoyed myself.

I had to get up a bit early in order to catch my next bus back to Osaka, and I was used to long car rides so it wasn’t too bad. Going to Osaka to the hotel I was staying at, I was ready because this was going to be my longest stay.

I had chosen Osaka a sort of home base where I can visit the surrounding area while having a decently priced place to stay for almost a week. Osaka was a great time where I primarily visited a lot of food places and enjoyed street food in the bustling Dotonbori.

While I was in Osaka I had also managed to visit the Pokémon Café, and while it was definitely aimed towards children, I still enjoyed myself and spent a lot of money on souvenirs. After the café, I went to the Osaka Aquarium and despite the crowd, it was an interesting experience visiting the aquarium after not having been to one since I was maybe ten or eleven.

After a couple of days in Osaka, I had taken a train trip to wander around Kyoto for a while and after visiting the Pokemon Center there and eating in a hole in the wall ramen shop, I decided to look at Maps to find something interesting.

To my surprise, I had found that I was near the Kyoto International Manga Museum. It was one of the most fascinating places I had gone to because on the bottom floor that had shelves upon shelves of manga collected over the years that guests could read, and the upstairs had a time line of manga that started in 1912, along with showcasing tools manga artists use and even a section that showed pirated manga.

The next day I had returned to Kyoto for one major purpose, and that was to visit the Nintendo Museum. I had already secured a ticket at a time slot some time before my trip, and I was ready to go.

The Nintendo Museum was a fascinating jaunt through the history of Nintendo that had it’s earlier offerings of being a toy company and how it evolved into being the gaming company we know today. They even showcased the Virtual Boy, a notable dark spot in Nintendo’s history, and I even bought a pin set of that they had.

While I was there I also managed to get into one of the last spots in learning how to play hanafuda, a Japanese card game, and I so desperately wanted to buy a set of Nintendo hanafuda cards, but those were just out my price range unfortunately.

What was also cool about the Nintendo Museum was that there was a whole floor dedicated to playing a wide variety of games. They had given guests a card that had ten coins loaded into it and you could spend those coins to either on classic Nintendo games, games that used old Nintendo toys, and the one with the longest line which was basically a shooting gallery that used the Nintendo Zapper and the Nintendo Super Scope that ten people played at a time to zap Mario enemies.

My last bus trip then awaited the next day back to Tokyo, where I spent my last couple of days going to the last few places I had really wanted to visit, one of which was Odaiba where I saw the massive Unicorn Gundam. I was unable to get into the Gundam Museum (my fault for not reserving earlier), but I did see the Unicorn Gundam transform, which was good enough for me.

More time wandering and visiting places, I was also fortunate enough to see some of the cherry blossoms blooming. It was still early in the season so there wasn’t a massive crowd blocking everything, but there were places that were setting things up for the upcoming cherry blossom festivals.

I was unfortunately not able to partake in those festivals as my time had arrived to go back home. After one last Family Mart lunch and a bottle of Pocari Sweat, I was heading back home.

It was a bit touch and go, as I had to reschedule my flight home because of a massive delay making me have to change to a different airport that would connect me back home, and me only having so much time to get through security in that airport, grab my bags, go through another bit of security before taking the flight back home.

A seven year endeavor, finally finished.

Thoughts and Plans

I don’t want to be the kind of guy that says that brags about how going on an international trip changed me as a person. I am still, fundamentally, the same person I was when I left for Japan. But there was something gratifying about going to Japan.

I had worked hard, planned, been forced to reschedule, reset my plans, wait for everything to open back up, make sure I had the money to go on the trip, and a myriad of other difficulties in order to get the trip working. The catharsis of finally being on that plane to Japan was an experience that I’ll never forget.

I was anxious every moment leading up to that flight to Japan, prepared for something else to get in my way to force me to delay again. After all the work I did to get to that point, I was ready for something to go wrong.

But it didn’t.

I had set a goal to go to Japan and I had accomplished that goal, and while it was a bumpy road, I got to go on my dream trip to Japan.

Which then begs the question: am I going to go back?

Of course I want to go back.

I did the general tourist route of visiting the major cities of Tokyo, Hiroshima, Osaka, and Kyoto because I wanted to enjoy those experiences. Now that I did that, I want to go to the northern part of Japan, sometime in the fall or late summer before snow starts to fall and tourist season is over/low.

That, however, is going to be a while because I need to finish some other things first (university) and make sure I have the funds to go again. I am hoping either by 2029 or 2030 to go again, but who knows what the future holds.

There is a lot of time to plan and save, plenty of lessons learned, and a new goal in my sights.

Thank you for reading this very long and late Casual Chat, see you all next time!

平和,

From, J.M. Casual