Leah and I are back from a three-week trip to Japan! It was my first trip to the country, and only my second time away from North America. Over the next few months, you can expect plenty of posts with photos, observations, and souvenirs from the trip.
For now, here’s an overview of our itinerary and some initial thoughts of how it went.
Tōkyō (東京)
Restaurants under the train tracks near Ginza.
We started the trip with four full days in Tōkyō. I was worried I’d be totally overwhelmed, but I was pleasantly surprised by how manageable it was. Part of that was location: our hotel in the centrally-located but less hectic neighbourhood around Ōtemachi (大手町) and Kanda (神田) provided a home base for us to retreat to.
But even the busiest areas of Shibuya (渋谷), Ginza (銀座), and Ikebukuro (池袋) were not as bad as I expected. It turns out that thousands of pedestrians and tens of vehicles is not much more of a sensory overload than an urban experience with hundreds of each.
We mostly stuck to the central core of Tōkyō within the Yamanote Line (JY 山手線) and took advantage of our central location on several metro lines:
- Marunouchi (Ⓜ 丸ノ内線)
- Ginza (Ⓖ 銀座線)
- Hanzōmon (Ⓩ 半蔵門線)
- Chiyoda (Ⓒ 千代田線)
- Tōzai (Ⓣ 東西線)
I’m very glad I studied the geography and metro lines of Tōkyō before I left!
Locations we visited in Tōkyō.
Kanazawa (金沢)
The wooden bridge to Higashi Chaya (東茶屋) and Utatsuyama (卯辰山).
After we had our fill of Tōkyō, we took the Hokuriku Shinkansen (北陸新幹線) to Kanazawa, the capital of Ishikawa Prefecture (石川県) on the coast of the Sea of Japan. The city is home to roughly half a million people and many traditional arts and crafts dating from the Edo era.
In our three days in Kanazawa, we stayed in the historic Higashiyama (東山) teahouse district and took a bunch of craft workshops I’ll cover in future posts.
Locations we visited in Kanazawa.
Kyōto (京都)
One of the many torii gates of Fushimi Inari-taisha (伏見稲荷大社).
The final leg of our trip was five days in Kyōto. The cultural capital is home to lots of historic landmarks and is ground zero for Japan’s challenges for overtourism. Our itinerary was focused more on Kyōto’s traditional crafts than the major tourist destinations, and it became even more so as we adjusted our plans to account for travel fatigue.
With hindsight, it would have been better to plan a slightly shorter trip and stay somewhere on the Karasuma subway line (烏丸線) rather than the tourist-heavy Gion district (祇園), but we still had a very nice time.
The highlight of Kyōto for me was definitely the railway museum — more on that in a future post.
Locations we visited in Kyōto.
Food
It is cliché to talk about all the amazing food one eats on a trip, but this has historically been challenging for me since I have a bit of a fragile stomach.1 Fortunately, Japan is full of food that is tasty and easy on the stomach, so our trip was both gastronomically and gastrointestinally satisfying!
Our favourite go-to meals were cold soba (そば) for Leah and unajū (鰻重) for me, although we also had excellent yakitori (焼き鳥), okonomiyaki (お好み焼き), oyakodon (親子丼), shrimp omurice (オムライス), and grilled salmon teishoku (鮭定食).2 I definitely missed my daily serving of peanut butter, but Japan’s famously incredible convenience stores (コンビニ) made up for it by providing snacks and reasonable emergency meals.
Language
A wall from the Japan Kanji Museum and Library.
It’s been a hot minute since I studied Japanese in university, but I was very thankful for my basic vocabulary and ability to read hiragana, katakana, and a handful of kanji. I’m sure it’s possible to visit Japan without knowing any of the language — million of tourists do it every month — but language was so core to our experience that I have a hard time imagining it.
Multilingual signage can be found everywhere at major attractions, in many restaurants, and on public transportation.3 But it’s a lot more efficient to be able to read and listen for directions in multiple languages, especially in smaller places where the English versions might be slightly dubious.4
I was surprised at how much value I got just from having a working knowledge of katakana. Japanese has a lot of English loanwords, to the point that you can navigate many stores just by sounding things out. At a drugstore, you might see my lips move as I read スキンクリーム as su-ki-n-ku-ri-i-mu — oh, this is skin cream!
People were universally very complimentary of our Japanese skills — not because we were any good, necessarily, but because we were showing consideration by putting in the effort. And they were more than willing to meet us halfway by simplifying their own speech, dropping in English words they knew, and being patient with us. There were a few very special interactions and experiences we were able to have in Japanese, and I’m very grateful to everyone we met for accommodating us.
Back home
We had a wonderful trip, but it’s great to be back home in our own bed with our cat and our routine. I’m sure we’ll be back one day, although it might take a few years to work up the energy for another trip of that length. Until then, I hope you’ll excuse me using this website to look back on my experiences for the next little while!