I visited Japan for a week, primarily to see my extended family for the first time since 2001. However, I did find some opportunities for sightseeing. Here’s an overview of my trip:
Day 1-2: BWI -> DTW -> NRT -> Tokyo -> Aomori
Day 3-4: Aomori
Day 5: Aomori -> Tokyo
Day 6: NRT -> DTW -> BWI
Day 1-2: Tokyo->Aomori
Sat. 28 September, 2019
After a sleepless 13-hour flight from Detroit, we were rewarded with another 3+ hour ride on the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Aomori City. I did get to eat dinner with a friend in Tokyo and experience the craziness that is Tokyo Station though.
Tokyo Station is basically a giant mall with a train station. Multiple floors of shops and restaurants and commuters passing through.
Underneath the chaotic appearance is a sense of order, explicit and unspoken. Delineated queues make for cleaner lines. Even in the absence of signs, people keep left on the escalator except to pass.
Our train at Narita Airport being cleaned.
Day 3-4: Aomori
Mon. 30 September, 2019
Aomori is a harbor town nestled in between mountains.
Aomori is a city of over 275,000 people in Northern Japan. It is the snowiest major city in the world according to AccuWeather, averaging 312 inches of snowfall every year. It is also renowned for its Nebuta Matsuri, a summer festival in which large traditional floats are paraded around the city.
Float exhibit at the Wa Rasse museum.
These floats are carried by a team of people, by the way! It is truly a labor-intensive affair from start to finish.
I got a couple chances to walk around the neighborhood on my own, so of course I brought my camera along. I would spend my summers here as a kid and would roam around freely all day, randomly making friends with kids my age along the way.
A retiree struck up conversation with me at this railroad crossing. He had a local accent and I couldn’t understand about half of what he was saying, but I gathered that he’d worked as a conductor for his whole life. He explained how the traffic lights worked, and how the bullet trains are actually the easiest to drive because of the high degree of automation. I was hoping to catch a train passing, and though I did see a couple, I never found a clear shot of the tracks.
The photographs, I assure you, are both beautiful AND excellent.
Magnets, how do they work
They were in the middle of transitioning from 8% sales tax to 10%. It was all over the news, and people were lining up to buy big ticket items before the tax rate went up in October. Here, for some reason, the tax rate was 8% if you takeout but 10% if you ate in?
The food, of course, was amazing. Very affordable too. A bowl of ramen costs about 700JPY, roughly $6.50. Ramen at the restaurant in my apartment building? $14…
Day 5: Tokyo
Thu. 3 October, 2019
With over 38 million people, Tokyo is the world’s largest metropolitan area. Here are some photos from my final half day in Japan.
Just outside of Shimbashi station.
I love the contrast between the older, small shops in the foreground and the modern skyscraper in the back.
I got to geek out at the Tamiya Plamodel Factory in Shimbashi. Though it’s not big by Japanese standards, the selection was far better than anything I can find in Baltimore. The store had a basement geared more toward Mini-4WD cars and RC cars, and an upstairs area with a race track and a gathering place for hobbyists. I got myself a 1/48 F4U Corsair kit.
Later went to iconic Harajuku, which was crowded even on a weeknight.
I could not help myself.
This was en route to dinner, right in the middle of rush hour. The trains are packed even though there’s one literally ever three minutes. I cannot imagine being a commuter here, and though it’s not as good for the environment, I feel like I’d rather be stuck in traffic than inside one of these trains!
In some ways, being in Japan as an adult has opened my eyes to how a society “should” operate, at least on the surface. The people are very polite, public transit is great, everything is orderly, and the streets are clean. Over the course of the trip, I counted a total of five discarded bottles on the streets. I bet I can find twice as many on my block in Baltimore. Things are far from perfect in Japan, but I can’t help but wonder what Baltimore would be like if the vast majority of its citizens took pride in their city enough to, for example, not litter.
I didn’t get to spend much time enjoying Japan’s history, so I hope to return another time for a longer trip, perhaps including other cities like Kyoto and Osaka.