Blast off

A couple weeks ago, we made the big leap and went to Tokyo. I have family there we’ve been wanting to visit and Scott hadn’t seen Tokyo yet except for the airport so it was time to leave our island for the big city. If you look at a map of Japan, you’ll see that we are just about as far south as possible and Tokyo is about in the middle of Japan so we traveled quite a ways to get there.



We took the famed bullet train (Shinkansen) to get there, which was freakishly fast and a fun ride. From Fukuoka, it only took 6 hours. We reserved seats so we had a very comfortable ride and got to pass through all the major cities like Hiroshima, Osaka, and Kyoto. In Kyoto, it was snowing hard so we got to see the town covered in pretty snow.

The view from the train was great, but it took a while to get used to how fast we were going. Especially if another bullet train passed us, all you could see was a blur of white that dashed by in less than a second. This is a 6-8 car train, people! Scott kept saying that if anything happened, at least we wouldn’t feel it since we were in the front car it’d all be over before we knew it. Comforting! Luckily, we had a safe ride both ways.



When we got into town, we managed to figure out the local trains (which are a lot more varied and complicated than NYC!) and checked out Harajuku and Shinjuku. It was so crowded everywhere, probably in part because it was a holiday weekend, but it was a little overwhelming after months of living in inaka (our small rural town). It is a very crowded city with tons of people everywhere and bikes and vehicles and tourists. Much more concentrated than NYC.



The next day, we navigated our way to Asakusa, the “old” part of Tokyo. There’s a famous shrine there and some buildings that have been around since the Edo period. Scott even participated in the ritual of scooping incense smoke onto parts of your body that need healing.




The best part of our trip though was hanging out with my family. My mom’s cousin, who she grew up with, lives in Tokyo with her husband and daughter. They warmly welcomed us into their home and we shared food, drinks, and cigarettes together. They are all accomplished musicians, in fact, her husband is a pretty famous composer in Japan. So naturally after dinner, we had an impromptu jam session. It involved 2 pianos, a keyboard, a guitar, and a ukulele. We played some Simon & Garfunkel and Elvis Presley. It was glorious. Scott and I tried our best to keep up.



Alas, we could only stay for the weekend, but we hope to visit again. We made it home safely, but we had to literally run to transfer trains a couple of times because we kept waiting at the wrong platforms! Turns out it’s easier to get somewhere than to figure out how to get back. Oh, and we were super lucky to get an excellent view of Mt. Fuji from the train. Mt. Fuji is often overcast and hides behind the clouds, but we were treated with clear skies.