family trip pt 1

This is going to be a series of posts about my recent family visit. I still haven’t quite fixed my sleep schedule yet (slept from 1-5…last night) and I’m behind on work and studies, but at least my blog, triathlon training, and keeping my apartment clean (I know this wasn’t explicitly mentioned but it kind of just happened) have been going well. It’s kind of funny because this was roughly my original set of goals. from way back when and it completely collapsed after we moved apartments. There were just so many things to distract me constantly that I found it hard to maintain a schedule, but I finally feel a bit more settled with no big travel plans on the horizon. Also, this is going to sound crazy, but the weather finally got cold enough to run outside…I think I could’ve resumed running earlier, but it was simply way too hot. Crazy to think how weather-affected I am.

My family came to visit me from 9/19-10/5, in the break between my summer and fall semesters. I was very excited for this trip, because honestly one of the reasons I wanted to live in Japan was because I loved visiting it so much over the past few years, but I knew there was so much more to it than the classic tourist experience. Miles and I had tried our best to get as many local experiences as possible, but we were severely limited by the fact that we didn’t speak the language, didn’t have a phone number, and didn’t have “local” knowledge. For many places I’ve visited and lived in throughout my life, I felt like the tourist experience usually encompasses the “best” the city has to offer. For example, the San Francisco tourist experience includes seeing Golden Gate Bridge, Pier 39, Ferry Building, Coit Tower, Golden Gate Park… while there have been some more hidden gems I’ve discovered since living there, those places are honestly pretty great. I did really enjoy living in San Francisco, but there isn’t a whole lot more depth than what you can get from just a visit. There’s of course the automatic shroud of mystery around Japan from just the language barrier, but I felt like there was so much more to learn and understand about both the culture and the daily life than what a tourist can really grasp or understand from a short visit.

So, one of my goals for this year was to do just that - understand the culture better, discover hidden gems, and acquire as much local knowledge as possible. As much as I rag on language school, one really great thing about learning a language in an immersive environment by local teachers is that you do end up absorbing a lot more than just vocabulary or grammar - there are many cultural components included not only in the course content, but also embedded in the language itself, that makes a lot more sense when you see it in live context (one obvious example is conjugating verbs based on formality and keigo - an entire slice of the language dedicated to business/extra formal conversation). Anyways, the accumulation of all this knowledge wasn’t just for selfish reasons, I wanted to be able to give others the local experience I had wished for when I was visiting previously. I even told people to visit me later in the year so I’d have the knowledge and skills to provide a better experience.

I figured the end of September/beginning of October was as good of a time as it was going to get. I thought summer would surely be over by then, but I was wrong. Fall really began about a week ago, in mid-October - it was still pretty darn hot at the end of September. I didn’t have any flexibility with my school schedule though, so I mean, it still was the best time to visit after all. My mother, my brother Daniel, my half-brother George, and his wife Kim came out to visit. I think groups of 4 or 6 are a pretty good size for traveling in Japan - anything larger and it gets a bit unmanageable (difficult to make reservations and nearly impossible for walk-ins).

We did a pretty significant amount of planning ahead of time, and our schedule ended up looking like this:

Tokyo: 9/19 - Arrive in Tokyo, dinner at Hama Sushi (by far our favorite conveyor belt sushi place, honestly one of our favorite casual restaurants in Japan). Stay in Shinjuku (very close to the station) 9/20 - Meiji Jingu, Harajuku, Shibuya, fancy omakase dinner in Musashi-Koyama 9/21 - Akihabara, Kappabashi Kitchen Street, Asakusa, izakaya dinner in Yokocho Omoide 9/22 - Free day (was originally going to be Kamakura, but some people wanted to go shopping). Dinner in Shinjuku Kanazawa: 9/23 - Go to Kanazawa (via Shinkansen). Omicho Market and Higashi Chaya. Stay in Airbnb in downtown Kanazawa. 9/24 - Kenrokuen Garden, Kanazawa Castle Park, Samurai residences. Go to Yuwaku Onsen - stay at Sakaeya ryokan. 9/25 - Go back to Kanazawa, then Tokyo. Stay at New Otani. Evening in Ginza, dinner at Yoroniku (Azabudai Hills). 9/26 - Free morning (was originally going to be Tsukiji and Imperial Palace but we were all pretty tired). Flights out of Tokyo: George and Kim went back to the US, and my mom, Daniel, Miles, and I went to Nagasaki. Rent car, stay at Dormy Inn Premium (10/10 experience). Nagasaki (Kyuushu): 9/27 - Explore Nagasaki town: Atomic Bomb Museum, Peace Park, Dejima (would highly recommend), Chinatown, Glover Park 9/28 - Day trip to Unzen National Park. Visit Shimabara. Inasa Park (back in Nagasaki) at night. 9/29 - Go to Fukuoka, explore the city. Canal City, Hakata Station mall, eat Motsunabe for dinner. Taiwan: 9/30 - Mom, Daniel, and I fly to Taipei. I spend literally hours hunting for a cool MRT keychain. Ding Tai Fung dinner. 10/1 - Go to Jiufen and buy a bunch of things. See waterfall at Shifen. Night market. 10/2 - Attend event for lunch. Bike around Taipei’s riverside in the evening. End up at Raohe night market. 10/3 - Go to Kaohsiung. Go to Lotus Pond / Zuoying District (Tiger and Dragon Pagodas). 10/4 - I spend the day shopping at Decathlon, mom and Daniel go to National Museum of Taiwan History. Spend the evening in Pier 2 10/5 - Back to Tokyo, mom and Daniel leave for the US.

I’ll probably do a post for each section of the trip (may or may not be consecutively).