Ace Roqs’ Blog

So before my memories fade too much, I’m going to write some thoughts on my trip to Japan.

For whatever reason, our schedule avoided the typhoon completely, and every day was blistering Sun. I have the tanlines to prove. However, our train from Kansai was stopped, due to high winds, and that delayed our arrival in Tokyo.

We had the help of a couple of Tokyo kids when finding our ryokan for the night. Its amazing how helpful the Japanese are to gaijin.

Tokyo was pretty uninteresting. Its a huge city, but it doesn’t feel huge, due to a very efficient subway system. Twenty minutes to anywhere in the city. We hit the major sites: Shibuya, Shinjuku, Akihabara, Yokohama, etc. Saw Tokyo Tower and the Great Buddha.

The highlight of the trip was climbing Mount Fuji on my birthday. We made it to the top after about eight hours. Jessica and I got engaged at the top. Afterwards, we climbed down in the dark, with the help of a modified GBA for light. And after all the drama, we missed the last train back to Tokyo, so we slept in the train station until the 5am train. Next, shinkansen to Nagasaki.

Nagasaki was far more interesting. Nagasaki is very beautiful and the pictures pretty much took themselves. Nathan surprised us by meeting us at the train station when we arrived. He took us by a lot of cool places, and it was a blast to hang out with him while we were there. Watching him in action really shows how helpful it is to have even a basic Japanese conversational ability while touring.

By complete accident, we were in Nagasaki on August 6th. At 8:15am they sounded air raid sirens, and it was a very disturbing and disheartening experience when we realized what was going on.

We hit Hiroshima briefly on the way to Kyoto. Kyoto is still Kyoto, and having been there before, we pretty much just relaxed and enjoyed the familiar surroundings while catching up on a few things that we missed last time.

To review:
-Jessica and I got engaged on the top of Mount Fuji.
-Shinkansen is the bomb.
-Mister Donut is everywhere.
-Nathan can DDR and speak Japanese at the same time.