At the end of our first full day in country, we met up with our travel group, four other families from across the U.S. and Canada, along with our local guides who would be helping us navigate our adventure. We were glad for a relatively small group, and even though none of the other youth were as young as our daughter, it was still great to have a mix of kids and adults along the way.
The next morning we met up in the hotel lobby and headed to the metro station for our first adventure.
The metro subway and train system in Japan lived up to its reputation as reliable, well designed, safe, easy to use and quite comfortable. It was our main way of getting around throughout our trip and it was so nice to see and experience such a successful, pervasive mass transit system that had clearly received significant investment over the years.
Waiting for a subway train in Tokyo
Riding the subway
Temple time
We headed to one of many Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples we would see in Japan. These incredible places each represented their own celebration of some aspect of or figure in their respective religious traditions, with architecture, landscaping and experiences that separate them from the surrounding secular world. Just to be in a building that was constructed many hundreds or thousands of years ago (and sometimes already burned down/bombed/moved/reconstructed several times), or to wander through a space that was clearly so meaningful to the people who visited, was an honor.
This day's visit was to Kinryū-zan Sensō-ji, a Buddhist temple in the Asakusa district of Tokyo. Before you get to the temple itself, there's Kaminarimon, the "Thunder Gate" that was first built in 941 and guards the entrance to the temple. As with many of the sacred locations we visited, commerce was never too far away, with a Starbucks in the background here, a little shopping or eating to do there.
Kaminarimon gate at Sensoji temple, with coffee options nearby
If you make it through that gate, you can wander down the Nakamise-dōri, a narrow street of shops and eateries that very much cater to the tourist crowds.
I went in to my first trip to Japan with a few concerns: would I stand out as an obnoxious, clueless American tourist? Would any of the Japanese language practice I’d been doing with our daughter be useful? Would we see and experience “enough” to make the extended travel needed to get there and back worthwhile? How much would I need to work on the newspaper from afar, and how much would the time I wasn’t working weigh on me?
The first concern was exacerbated when I subscribed to The Japan Times and read article after article about how overtourism to the country is creating challenges and sometimes harming local communities and businesses.
We visited a number of cities in Japan including Tokyo, Nagano, Matsumoto, Nara and Kyoto.
I also went in to the trip with a lot of excitement. Excitement about experiencing a part of the world I’d never been to before. About watching my daughter take in a new place and culture. About getting some distance from the day-to-day production activities of the newspaper. Excitement about my first international travel since living in Switzerland and since the pandemic. And more.
The trip we ended up taking was wonderful, and more than lived up to my expectations. We saw beautiful places, met great people, ate delicious food, got lots of walking exercise, experienced the highs and lows of international travel, and came out the other side with a new appreciation for life in Japan. I’m so grateful.
In this blog post and a handful of posts to follow, I’ll be sharing some highlights from our almost two-week trip, along with photos and links where I have them. Enjoy!
Travel there
We had a fairly smooth trip to Japan, 7,000 miles spread across two flights and 16 hours.
We packed everything in to our carry-on bags and while it was a bit more to lug around with us, avoiding any concerns about losing luggage was worth it.
During our first attempted landing on the flight to Detroit the pilot did a touch-and-go where the plane briefly made contact with the runway and then took off again, presumably because we were going too fast with not enough runway left. That was a first for me in commercial flights, though it was something I'd done plenty of during my own private pilot training years ago. The relieved clapping that erupted from many passengers when we landed for good a few minutes later was one of those nice reminders that the ability to travel the world safely by air is not to be taken for granted.
Our long flight from Detroit to Haneda airport went "left," if you're curious, cutting across Canada and following along the Alaskan coast, then down toward the islands of Japan. We spent the 13 hour flight reading, watching shows and movies, sleeping and just staring in to the distance. I was also able to do some work for the newspaper that needed to get done.
I may share more expansive comments later on the gear and gadgets that I used for this trip, but one worth noting early on is Airalo (affiliate link), a service where you can buy eSIMs to provide cellular data access when traveling internationally. In the past we've opted for our mobile carrier's offer to use our regular mobile data plan while abroad for a non-trivial daily fee, which can quickly add up and doesn't give much flexibility. With Airalo I was able to pre-purchase 15 GB of data on Japan-based mobile carriers for roughly US$20 total, install the eSIMs on our phones, and then activate those lines when we landed. It was so nice and gave us peace of mind for staying connected, getting directions and looking things up wherever we were. It looks like Airalo supports purchasing plans in over 200 countries.
When we landed we did the whole "wait in long lines and answer important questions about our legal and travel status while completely exhausted" dance, before meeting our driver for a shuttle to our hotel.
Tokyo, first impressions
Our first experience of Tokyo was driving (notably on the left side of the road) through the downtown rush hour bustle at the end of the business day. In many ways it was a familiar experience: people looking at their phones, listening to their headphones or chatting with friends or coworkers as they navigated their way home from work.
But it also stood out to me early on that the vehicles were generally much smaller, the bikes and related bike/pedestrian pathways more numerous and the mass transit options more plentiful than anything we're used to in the U.S. Midwest.
As is usually the case when we leave the Midwest, we noticed the strong deference by vehicle drivers to pedestrians and cyclists, which held true throughout all the places we visited in Japan. (And that doesn't even begin to touch on the significant investment Japan has made in its excellent subway and rail infrastructure, more on that soon.) Pedestrians seemed to return the favor; when the crosswalks stopped indicating it was time to cross, everyone (except the occasional clueless tourist) stopped and waited, no jaywalking here.
After driving in to and through Tokyo for a bit it was tempting to think we had some sense of its size and shape, but we did not. "Oh, this part kind of feels like Chicago, maybe?" quickly gave way to "I can't believe it just keeps going!" (Tokyo proper has around 14 million people, greater Tokyo is closer to 40 million; Chicago proper is around 3 million, greater Chicago is around 10.) The place is amazing, huge, sprawling, and other than the neighborhoods right around our hotel, at no point during several days there did I really have my bearings.
Checking in to our hotel, the Villa Fontaine Grand Tokyo - Shiodome, was smooth and easy, made possible by the English-speaking hotel staff who knew exactly what we needed to get across the finish line from a long day of travel.
After we unpacked and converted some dollars to yen using the currency converter in the hotel lobby, we went in search of food. We wandered a bit and had to ask directions once but quickly found a place attached to a nearby subway station. Though we were tired and unable to summon even basic Japanese phrases, we were able to order a meal that hit the spot: dumplings, fried rice and chicken.
Our first meal in Tokyo
After being confronted with high prices for airport food and snacks on our travels, we gratefully noticed that our meal and drinks were only about US$17. This was partly due to the USD to JPY exchange rate, one of the factors contributing to the flood of tourists visiting Japan. (The lack of tipping/gratuities as a practice in Japan also meant no awkward "one more question for you" screens on tablets when paying for food and meals; hopefully it also means that the workers involved were receiving a fair wage.)
Then it was back to the hotel for some much-needed sleep.
Tokyo, day 2
We'd planned for our first full day in Tokyo to be mostly an acclimation and resting day before meeting up with the rest of our travel group that evening.
After breakfast at the hotel, I grabbed a copy of the local newspaper, Yomiuri Shimbun, something I try to do any time I travel.
July 5, 2024 front page of the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper
Since becoming a newspaper publisher it's been fun to compare and contrast how different publications handle content decisions, layout, ads, fonts, spacing, etc. but even before then I've appreciating reading about what events, issues and stories might be on the minds of local residents. Reading through a paper printed in Japanese using a live translation app was slow-going but still enjoyable.
We decided to walk over to Hama-rikyū Gardens, one of the many beautiful public parks in Tokyo. Surrounded by a mote, it's a lovely combination of ponds, bridges, lush green landscapes and wide open spaces.
A bridge in Hama-rikyū Gardens
But the overriding factor in our experience was the high heat and humidity, which turned out to be a theme on the trip as a whole. While we had a few cooler days along the way, most of the time we were just sweating it out in 90 degree temperatures wherever we went.
We'd brought clothing with us that was more in line with what locals seemed to wear — almost always pants or long skirts — but because of the heat we almost always opted for the much more touristy-but-comfortable look of shorts and t-shirts. So much for not standing out.
We wandered around some more but mostly hung out at the hotel, read, watched TV, re-packed our day bags and got ready for the adventures ahead.
Stay tuned for additional posts about our trip coming soon!
