Japan Trip The Good The New and The Culture Part 4

I got back from my Japan trip last week. And for most of this week, after spending eight nights in a hotel room about the size of the bed at home, I am glad to be back. It was my fourth time in Japan, and (I thought) Japan finally stopped being magical for me.

The bad and the ugly during my Japan trip

I had a bland-tasting bowl of ramen in a well-known restaurant in Ginza and wasn’t happy with the expensive sushi platter we got in Shibuya.

I also encountered a semi-rude waiter, freezing weather, and way too many tourists.

I queued in the Harry the Hedgehog café line in Harajuku for an hour before realizing it wasn’t the famous Kyushu Jangara ramen shop queue.

I didn’t correctly identify my favourite Japanese snack in Japan, salmon onigiri, at Konbini (a Japanese convenience store), so I didn’t even have it once this time.

I regretted not taking my DSLR a few too many times during the trip.

The bookstore, Tsutaya, in Shinjuku didn’t sell books or stationeries. It just had a Starbucks.

I took the wrong train route and ended up in a rural area outside of Tokyo, took another wrong train and had to run to a tour meeting place before 7 AM, and took yet another wrong train before deciding to simply throw the ticket away and find my way back to the hotel.

Disney Sea was a letdown. We left there by lunchtime after only spending a couple of hours and a couple of hundred dollars.

I got into an accident. I fell on the train station stairs, which seems inevitable as I have yet to acquire the skill of running on stairs while wearing a puffy jacket and juggling a heavy backpack and various paper bags.

To top it all, we were held hostage due to an ignorant world traveller who was lost in Nikko for hours, in the cold and the dark.

On my last day there, I couldn’t wait to board the 11-hour plane ride back to Melbourne.

No More Japan Trip?

With all these bad and ugly during my last Japan trip, you might think I would be done with Japan. Hey, even I thought so for a few days. But now, only a week after leaving Japan, I have started planning the next trip.

Japan Culture Checklist

I have yet to try natto and buy Nikka whiskey and corn soup from the vending machine. I want to visit Takasaki to burn my Japanese Daruma Doll believed to grant wishes. Also, Naoshima, Shirakawago, Nagoya, Okinawa, Manabeshima, Fukuoka, and Shikoku.

I want to immerse myself in Japanese culture once again.

The good news: is there is a discount flight from Melbourne to Japan, but the bad news is I don’t have annual leave anymore.

This problem would easily be solved if I lived in Japan. So I even picked a neighbourhood in Tokyo where I would live, Nakameguro.

Japan is not a love affair; it’s more like a lifetime.

🏮━ KK

Follow me on Instagram @KultureKween for more recent updates.