Welcome to Japaaaaaaaaan!!!!!! Every day or so, I stop for a second and say, “I’m in Japan.” I say this out loud and with a mix of shock, awe, and delight. I’m not sure I would have ever believed I’d make it all the way over here if you’d asked me even just a year ago. I know I’ve been bouncing around Europe a lot, but Japan just seems like such a faraway, fantastical place, and now I’m here!!

First, I should apologize that I have not finished the blogs for my last trip. I was only home for two weeks, and I felt like I could barely catch my breath before I was on a plane again. I’ll get to the rest of Scotland and my adventures with The Boy once I return home from these shenanigans.

I actually wasn’t even sure I’d get to blogging Japan at all while I was here. It is just so time consuming and the process can be very tedious, so with all of the action-packed days I’ve been having, I haven’t given myself even one second to type anything up. I even considered just waiting until I got home to do any sort of writing on Japan. Buuuttt…. It really isn’t the same. There’s a reason I can write a blog every couple days when I’m travelling, but then it takes me a week or more for each blog once I get home, even though I have a computer and more reliable internet there. It’s basically the difference between calling home to talk to a friend about my trip versus meeting up with them when I get back. When I’m here, I want to tell every story and relate every scene. I want to make you feel like you’re here with me because, frankly, sometimes I wish you were! But by the time I get home, it’s old news. You ask, “How was your trip?!” And sometimes you even say, “Tell me everything!” But after a couple minutes, you want to move on to talk about what’s new with you, or where I’m going next, or the latest gossip in the group. From over here, my blog’s a stage, and you can’t interrupt. Muahahahahaha! (Although for the record, when I get home, I want to talk about all that other stuff, too. That’s why it takes so long for me to write about my past travels.)

So, I decided to take some time to write. I won’t get caught up since I’m already several days behind, but it will certainly feel better than waiting another week to start.

I ‘planned’ this trip about a month out, but when I say, ‘planned,’ I actually just mean: “I bought plane tickets and did absolutely nothing else until I was already on my way over.” This was the least-planned trip I’ve had to date. There’s a reason I like to plan ahead a little bit: it’s easier, it’s less stressful, and if I wait until the last minute, there’s a much greater potential for things to go wrong.

I decided to bus to Vancouver, BC and fly out of there to save over $200 on my round trip airfare. Not a bad deal, even though I told myself in 2017 to never do this again. It wasn’t as bad as the last time, though, thank goodness.

The bus ride was easy and quiet, and when I got to Vancouver, I had time to find some lunch, buy a watch (my last one stopped ticking and I haven’t had time to get a new battery), and walk around a bit before heading to the airport. Somehow I didn’t take any pictures. This is understandable since there wasn’t really anything pretty to take pictures of except these tulips:

So I took one picture. And then I headed to the airport for my nonstop flight to Tokyo. There were some big fish in a very tall tank at the airport, but I felt pretty bad because they clearly needed more room to swim. They all kind of just sat there staring into space.

The flight attendants were adorable and answered every one of my requests with a polite and gentle, “Certainly!” Instead of a glass of wine, I got my own little bottle, and dinner consisted of butter chicken, rice, green beans and corn, salad, green noodles, an apple and ham salad, fruit, and miso soup. Gosh! It took me so long to eat. They also came around with ice cream and hot green tea partway through, and the flight attendant held out another bottle of wine to me before I could assure her that mine wasn’t even yet half empty and was only hiding in my seat back pocket.

It was honestly a great flight. I had a window seat and our row only had two seats, so I only had to bother one person to get out. Plus, the guy I sat next to, a photographer named Christian from central Canada, ended up being super friendly and we even exchanged contact info at the end of the flight. More on that later.

I watched one movie: Pad Man, a Hindi movie on the pad movement in India. I studied abroad with a girl who helped produce a documentary short on one village’s experience with this man’s invention and how it is affecting the women in their community, and it won an Oscar this year!!! It’s called “Period. End of Sentence,” and it’s available on Netflix, so go watch it! I’m super interested in the movement now, so I was excited to see that this movie was available on my flight. (Highly recommend.)

Unfortunately, I only slept about half an hour, and then they came around with breakfast, so I wasn’t about to sleep through that! We got a small tuna sandwich, a spicy macaroni salad (kind of a strange choice), and fruit. I had some iced plum wine (yum!) and some kiwi juice (double yum!!!).

**Side note: I’m on a city bus right now, and I think there’s a pigeon nest in the roof of the bus? Not sure how that’s possible, but I keep hearing pigeon noises above my head! So strange.**

I landed in a pretty sleepy state, and I slept most of the way on my two hour bus ride to Yokohama, where my friend Chris lives! We had an Asian best buddies group freshman year of college (hahaha… Not sure how else to explain it), and he moved to Japan last year for his first job after graduation. (He’s half Japanese, and his grandparents live only a few minutes away from his little apartment, so it’s not as crazy as it sounds.)

Chris met me at the station (yay! Reunions!), and then we set off in search of food.

He took me to a famous ramen chain where you have to buy an order ticket from a vending machine and then sit at a tiny little bar with dividers between you and the other diners around you. A waiter appears under a little curtain in front of me to tell me a lot of things in rapid Japanese and Chris quietly responded with a few “hai”s, before my ramen was delivered and the curtain closed completely. I guess people really value their privacy?? The ramen was delicious, though. Yummy yum yum.

Oh. And all the toilets are fancy. My favorite part is that some of them have a “privacy” sound maker that you can turn on in your stall to make it sound like constant flushing or rainforest noises. Uh… Brilliant! Even with all the fancy toilet stuff, though, the majority of restrooms don’t have soap at the sinks, only a few have hand dryers, and not a single one so far has had paper towels. Cray cray.

Then it was back to Chris’s place because we were both exhausted. I was also a bit disappointed to see that I would have a hard time fitting in clothing-wise. I examined my limited wardrobe meant for sunny days and light packing: two dresses, a romper, my black skirt, a pair of (short) shorts, leggings, and some tops. The standard in Tokyo so far seemed to be long skirts and wide-wide legged pants. For tops, it was all modest-modest necklines and practically no arms showing despite the warm weather. I had even thought about asking Chris what girls wear, but I got lazy/ decided against it. Soooo this would be the start of ten days of me kicking myself for not packing any of my long skirts or flowy pants that make me stick out at home but would help me blend in here. It would also be the start of ten days of me trying to refrain from clothes shopping. Gah!

But anyways…. Off to a good start!

私はあなたに最高を祈ります/ best wishes,
-Lizzy-wa