Day 1 : The Harsh Realization
This is just another big city.
No one really wants to hear the plane story, but if you do, here’s the short version.
Zipair was cheap. The food was edible. I was a bit too big for the seat at 6’1″, 245 lbs (post bulk). The good news is nobody sat to my left or right, so I had three seats to myself. Long flight though, and I brought absolutely nothing to do.
Travel Tip: If you’re flying Zipair, get the express service. It’s like $20 and lets you skip some lines and makes baggage way easier.
The night I got there wasn’t anything crazy. JJ met me at the train station in Akihabara and we got CoCo Ichibanya (curry). Our room was a shared Airbnb with two spring beds and a Campbell’s soup poster for decoration.
Well, here we go. Day 1 was supposed to be full of culture shock and new experiences and, shockingly… NOPE.
Walking around Tokyo, to me, was nothing special at first. We saw all the same kinds of shops I see in America. The buildings are big, the people are busy. At least everything is in another language, right? Kind of… but also half of it is translated.
Well at least you get to see new people, right?
Not really.
There were almost more tourists than Japanese people around us. To me, it didn’t feel that different from somewhere like New York or San Francisco… except way cleaner.
Okay, maybe I was being a little harsh. My expectations from travel vlogs, anime, and my own imagination had created a completely different image in my head. Instead, I was just in another big city.
I would tell you all about the amazing shopping trip we had, but honestly we mostly just wandered around a department store.
We did have a great lunch though. We got Korean fried chicken and a bowl of melted cheese for dipping, and it was surprisingly cheap.
Then comes the crepe incident. OMG. THE CREPE INCIDENT.
Look at this a beautiful crepe, looks super yummy. Wouldn’t you love to enjoy this while walking around the city?
So you might be wondering why I’m upset at a crepe. It isn’t really the crepe, it’s what the crepe caused.
In Japan, you’re generally not supposed to eat while walking or eat openly in areas that aren’t designated eating spots. After ordering the crepe, I used the best Japanese I could manage and asked, “doko taberu?” which basically means “where eat?”
She didn’t really help me at all—just gave me an “I don’t know.”
So now, out of respect for Japan, I’m standing there holding this THING while looking for a place to eat it. I never found one that wasn’t another business, and I didn’t want to be rude and walk into a different establishment just to eat a crepe.
So I walked around with it for an hour… and didn’t take a single bite.
Eventually I wrapped it in a bag and put it in my backpack.
Why not just throw it away?
Because Japan doesn’t have trash cans.
Okay… they do. Just not very many.
However, the day continued. We rode a train to Kyoto to settle into our Airbnb, which would be our home base for the next few days. Below is a room tour video! It was a really cool place and an amazing price, about $40 a night.
After settling in we tried to go to a local food festival but they were packing up when we got there. Honestly, I was laying in bed that night wondering if I set myself up for failure with my expectations. Did I fly 14hrs for this?
To those reading, I’m not criticizing Japan or saying you shouldn’t visit. I’m just sharing my honest feelings compared to my expectations. Of course, there are plenty of cool things like museums, shopping, food, etc. What I was trying to convey is that the magic, or the ‘love at first sight’ feeling, just wasn’t there for me.