Highlights from Osaka:
Cooking and laughing with Saya who I met last summer in a hostel in Munich; roaming the city streets and photographing during golden hour; dropping my phone and then having a woman return it to me minutes after I realized and started to panic; meeting an incredibly kind and funny Japanese couple in a restaurant in Kobe (if you ever find yourself there please go to Horieza!) – they were literally waving at me from their front door with the husband jumping up and down enthusiastically, leaving me with the biggest smile… so often it’s the people you meet that make all the difference.
Looking back at my time in Japan, I had a wonderful time there overall but if I would do it again I would spend less time in the cities and more time exploring places off the beaten track. And get out into nature more.
Things that impressed me about Japan: the incredible public transportation and ease of getting around in and between cities (I can only dream that one day Miami and the US will be interconnected like Europe and Japan is- and using the Suica card for all forms of transport made it such a breeze); the toilets lived up to the hype – also- how are there clean and free public toilets in the metro station?? Only in Japan, truly.
What surprised me: how touristy Kyoto was. The bamboo forest, the monkey park, the Gion district- I did not expect so many hordes of people. And how grey and industrial Tokyo felt, but that also may have been impacted by how literally grey and cold it was for most of my time there.
I’m not quite sure why everyone is obsessed with Japan, but I do think I need to return one day and get to know it more in a different way.
Highlights from Japan: Nara Park – feeding the bowing deer and laughing so hard at people being chased by them; meeting Poorvi in a hostel in Tokyo and then again in Kyoto; hanging out in a tiny jazz bar in Kyoto with her and meeting Janee and Ben and listening to scratching strange jazz music while cigarette smoke permeated the air and vinyl records are displayed on shelves in a darkened atmosphere, where strangers sit touching and become friends… and you feel like you’re in a movie. Laughing so hard with Saya over a miscommunication. Cooking and trying new foods with her. Walking into a stationary store in Osaka and meeting a 90 some year old man asleep in the back and trying to converse with him over google translate. He didn’t let me photograph his portrait, just a picture of the store. I bought gorgeous postcards from him.
