I’ve been in Japan since February 2, and am leaving in about an hour.
On day 4 I decided to truncate my trip from 13 days to 10. I’ll tell you why. After four days I was tired of being cold all the time, even though I had properly packed for cold weather. I wasn’t enjoying myself. It meant that I couldn’t just stop somewhere like a park, temple, garden, and just sit and be present.
Further, I’d booked this trip with only 15 days to prepare. I knew going into it this wouldn’t be anywhere near enough time. A minimum of three months would’ve been preferred, six months even better, but this was the timing that worked so off I went.
When I visit another country I do so with the understanding that I’m a guest there. The locals should not need to speak English. In places like Iceland, Germany, and Switzerland, the population does speak enough English so that by using a combination of common phrases, gestures, pointing, and Google Translate, you can kind of get by. This was not my experience in Japan. And to be crystal clear: this is on me. But after a few days the yawning language chasm started to wear me down.
The other (or another) facet here is that my not reading or speaking the language meant I wasn’t realizing the full potential of the experience. When I tour Nijō Castle in Kyoto, it misses a lot without an appreciation for the history of the place. I can eat tonkatsu, but I can’t communicate effectively enough to figure out what’s up with the various sauces. Most importantly, it means that I can’t express myself fully, have a conversation, or learn more about the culture from native people.
Let me pause for a second. The above comes across as negative, but I truly did have a wonderful time. I see this as the first of hopefully many trips in the future, and the beginning of my relationship with Japan, not the end of it. I’ll share a recap and photos of the sites I visited in a future post, but to wrap this post I’ll bullet point things that went well, and how I’ll better prepare for next time.
For this trip, some of the things that went well include:
- Airalo eSim data service. For 99% of the trip it worked flawlessly, but for some damn reason it stopped working during the train from Kyoto to the Tokyo airport, and hasn’t recovered. Anywhere else on the trip and it would’ve posed a problem, but fortunately I knew which train I needed to connect to after exiting the shinkansen. I’d still recommend it.
- Trains and subways. That’s not to say there weren’t mistakes made. In one case I took the subway in Kyoto to the next station and, misunderstanding the GMaps instructions, crossed platforms and returned to the same Kyoto station I’d just left. It was easily fixed, and only 20 minutes out of my day. Overall, though, I was able to navigate trains and subways with ease.
- Hotel choices. In Tokyo, I stayed in a more traditional part of town named Asakusa, at a modern hotel. There was basically everything you would need within 500M of the hotel: several temples, several subway stations, about 1000 restaurants and shops, Don Quijote megastore (which is certainly a place), and safe streets to get lost on. Kamakura is a smaller town, and my hotel was on a main street a 2 minute walk from the train station. In Kyoto I stayed at a hotel built into the main train station, which meant a huge assortment of shops and restaurants downstairs, as well as easy connections to the rest of the city.
- Packing. Everything fit into my Osprey backpack, and truthfully I could’ve brought fewer clothes and still had everything I need.
- Money. The mobile Suica card worked great except when it came to the shinkansen. As good as the shinkansen (bullet) trains are, all the software around reserving and boarding them is the opposite. The ticket machine is nearly unusable (“Enter ticket to buy ticket” — WTF?), and then it turns out it doesn’t work with the mobile Suica card… you have to go to the ticket counter. But overall, entering and leaving subway stations, and even paying for food and drinks at 7-11 with them, worked perfectly.
- Walking and wandering. At no point did I feel concerned about my safely. None. Early morning, late at night. Walking along a rural road a mile outside of town. Through peoples’ roads/alleys. No problems.
For next time:
- At a minimum, finish lessons 1-30 of Pimsleur. The Pimsleur lessons are very sticky compared to Duolingo!
- Find a native speaker to practice regularly with. There were phrases I knew from Pimsleur but I was too self-conscious to try using them. “Arigato Gozaimasu” got a lot of use, though.
- Go when it’s warmer. For real. Not only was it cold most of the trip, it was also windy af. Did I mention it sleeted on me with 30-40mph gusts?
- Get out of the cities. Kamakura was awesome in that I could basically walk to all the key places in town within about 20-30 minutes or so. After spending 3 days in Tokyo, this was a welcome reprieve. I’d still be looking for smaller than that, though.
- Rent a bike or scooter. Averaging 10k+ steps a day is great for your health, but it limited what I was able to see.
- Travel with someone, since loneliness was a key factor in my ending the trip early.
Trip recap and photos to follow in a day or so.
Sugimoto-dera Temple, Kamakura Japan