I am bringing this blog back briefly to report on my recent trip to Japan with my darlin' cousin Ariel. The question I think I have gotten asked the most about this adventure is, "Why Japan?" My response: "Why NOT?!?" But I guess a more complete answer could possibly be helpful. So here goes:
In third grade, we did a unit on Japan while we read Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Eleanor Coerr. We learned how to make origami cranes and made a thousand of them as a class, and though I had no idea what it meant at the time we sent them to the Children's Peace Monument. Along with this, we learned about Japan culture and history, you know, at a third grade level, and I have been fascinated and it has been on my "To Go To Someday" list ever since. Go figure, Mr. Rider was a really good teacher.
Enter Ariel: I cannot give her big back story, but she had planned a trip to Japan. Due to life being life, plans were cancelled, way-laid, what have you. She still had all the money saved up and sitting in its own account, and one day while we were talking she made a comment about how she would never actually go. Boo on that noise! I told her right then and there that I would go with her and started saving the very next day.
Fast forward to a year-ish later, after lots of planning and reading and saving and not truly believing that we would actually pull it off, we found ourselves at the airport bright and early!
Ariel took a nap in the sunshine and ended up with fun lines on her face :)
On the Narita Express after a very, very long flight!
Awesome monitors show the stops in lots of different languages: Japanese, English, Chinese, Korean...It also showed really crazy commercials for who knows what because it was all in Japanese.
In third grade, we did a unit on Japan while we read Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Eleanor Coerr. We learned how to make origami cranes and made a thousand of them as a class, and though I had no idea what it meant at the time we sent them to the Children's Peace Monument. Along with this, we learned about Japan culture and history, you know, at a third grade level, and I have been fascinated and it has been on my "To Go To Someday" list ever since. Go figure, Mr. Rider was a really good teacher.
Enter Ariel: I cannot give her big back story, but she had planned a trip to Japan. Due to life being life, plans were cancelled, way-laid, what have you. She still had all the money saved up and sitting in its own account, and one day while we were talking she made a comment about how she would never actually go. Boo on that noise! I told her right then and there that I would go with her and started saving the very next day.
Fast forward to a year-ish later, after lots of planning and reading and saving and not truly believing that we would actually pull it off, we found ourselves at the airport bright and early!
Photo taken by Nancy Brown
Don't I have the best luggage ever?? (Yeah, I totally just preempted you!) The most easily recognizable luggage of all time! Well, maybe, but definitely that I have ever seen.
Anyway, moving on.
So because airports are so exciting, let's just get these out of the way*:
Ariel took a nap in the sunshine and ended up with fun lines on her face :)
Hello plane! We had a two-hour layover that was extended by a two-hour delay of our flight. And when we finally began our taxi (which was already really long) we got called back because something had been "improperly loaded" so they would need to take it off, get the correct paperwork blah blah blah, reload it. Luckily, they decided to just take it off and send it later so we didn't have to wait so long.
After a long flight, and a LONG line through customs and so on and so forth, we hopped on the Narita Express to Shinjuku and somehow took the street exit we needed from the largest train station in the world (more on this later?) Thanks to google maps street view we found our hotel with just a tiny detour. Checked in, and pretty much went straight to bed.
So this was a boring entry, but after this we hit the ground running! Next up is day one: Akihabara! After some more pictures :)
Luggage storage place on the train! I wish all the trains had this!
Our hotel room!
*The Date stamps on my photos 1) wouldn't turn off and 2) generally show the wrong days.
2 comments:
Hey nice... dangit, preempted!
You should totes link to Ariel's blog for these posts (though they won't necessarily correspond, I get that), but that way we can get BOTH sides of the story as well as Ariel's no-doubt compelling backstory.
Also, when are you ever going to finish India?
:)
Linked to Ariel's blog now that she has her first post up :) Do you remember a little conversation we had about whether I should finished India and France first and then Japan or not and you said, "Do Japan now while it's fresh"? So yeah, I'm actually following your advice so India will be finished after Japan. Or if I get bored one day and decide to just finish it randomly :)
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