Japan trip report, with pics

[BretWeir]

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Please post more trip report.

How accessible is Japan for someone who only speaks English?

How ridic awesome is the food?

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I found it pretty accessible for day-to-day sightseeing. The subways all have English translations, and most signs are also in English. Most Japanese know enough English so that you can get by ordering food, etc. through a combination of pointing, English, and ten or so basic Japanese phrases. Obviously, TV doesn't make much sense (not sure if it makes much more if you speak Japanese, honestly), and you're at a disadvantage in museums and places like that, but it's definitely do-able.

I think it would be strange traveling alone; there aren't many people you can sit down and have a conversation with. In our 2 weeks there, Mrs. Weir and I had in-depth conversations (in English) with maybe 5 Japanese people. So there is something of a feeling of being a stranger in a strange land.

It helps tremendously to have a good hotel concierge who can make reservations for you; communication was much, much harder over the phone than in person.

I'll be posting some food stuff later. Short answer is that most of the food was either ridiculously great, or completely screwed up. Not much middle ground.

[Kintamayama]

Awesome trip report, which has me even more psyched up for my own trip to Japan a couple weeks from now.

BTW, as another poster mentioned, there's nothing to feel guilty about in using the Japanese pronunciation for the many borrowed words they use. It sounds perfectly correct to them!

[daryn]

excellent

[Chrisman886]

I thoroughly enjoyed all of this. Thanks for taking the time to share.

[theclock]

Good read, totally agree with:

"I think it would be strange traveling alone; there aren't many people you can sit down and have a conversation with. In our 2 weeks there, Mrs. Weir and I had in-depth conversations (in English) with maybe 5 Japanese people. So there is something of a feeling of being a stranger in a strange land."

I get that feeling all the time in Japan.

[BretWeir]

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BW,

Post more random pictures of men and women living their life.

Fav picture so far is those two cute vendors working the counter.

thanks

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Here's one random, on-the-street pic. A couple of times a day, you'd see women in formal kimono walking down the street or on the subway; I guess some jobs still require traditional dress. Anyway, here's a kimono-wearing woman we walked past standing outside a pachinko parlor smoking a cig.



I'll look for some more "day in the life" type stuff.

[slimon]

So Japan would be a terrible place to go by yourself kind of like lost in translation where you feel kind of lonely and isolated?

[BretWeir]

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So Japan would be a terrible place to go by yourself kind of like lost in translation where you feel kind of lonely and isolated?

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Not terrible, necessarily -- there's still lots of stuff to see and do. But there's some truth to the Lost in Translation comparison. If you're looking to mingle with the locals, there's not a lot of that going on (and we tried). I imagine I would have gone stir-crazy after a week or so if Mrs. Weir wasn't there to talk to. Which is why I think a lot of expats there for the medium- to long-term tend to spend most of their time around each other in the "Western" parts of the city (like Roppongi).

Incidentally, we stayed at the Lost In Translation hotel in Tokyo and it was awesome in every way.

[M2d]

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It helps tremendously to have a good hotel concierge who can make reservations for you; communication was much, much harder over the phone than in person.


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most service industry people we found in Tokyo had a very good command of english. (minor brag coming) that all didn't matter much to my wife and I, though, because we had my two english speaking cousins (spend a year in NZ learning english, so their command of the language was awesome) taking us almost everywhere for three stright days.

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How ridic awesome is the food?

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I'll be posting some food stuff later. Short answer is that most of the food was either ridiculously great, or completely screwed up. Not much middle ground.

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because of the aforementioned cousins, we really didn't hit up any "tourist" type of restaurants. we hit up places that they (locals) liked to go to, themselves. One evening, my cousin took us to a tremendous upscale fusion type restaurant that she had worked in where every dish was done to perfection and every dish's presentation was completely on point (sashimi course was served inside a 3/4 globe of ice about 6" in diameter. from that restaurant, we went bar hopping and ended up in my cousin's friend's bar in shinjuku, further stuffing ourselves on roasted kabocha, perfect yakitori, sashimi platters and other down home bar type food. the joints we hit that night were on complete opposite ends of the culinary spectrum, but both were amazingly good.

later dining ventures on our weekend included the best tempura I've ever eaten (It was my favorite food growing up and is currently one of my japanese benchmark dishes, so i've eaten a lot of tempura in my day) and the best sashimi/sushi I've ever eaten (and I've eaten toro straight off of a freshly fileted ahi tuna that had been swimming an hour earlier). it was so good for dinner that we went back for breakfast (yes, sushi for breakfast) the next two mornings, since we discovered that the restaurant was a 24 hour place.
for the record, it's been three weeks since i've been back and I haven't had japanese food yet (I usually eat japanese at least three times a week, between dinners out, dinners cooked at home and lunch at work). I just can't bring myself to eat the pale comparison that we have here in california.

[M2d]

damn, I wanted to go to a Lotte game when I was there, but we didn't have enough time. Ben's my homeboy and I played with and against him from little league up to college. he's done very well there and seems to like the atmosphere in Japan, even though he was very aprehensive when he first considered going over there.