No Regrets!

They kept us well-fed on the plane, first with chicken teriyaki and then a ham sandwich and finally a cheese omelet. After meal service, the windows in the cabin were dimmed to the extreme, rendering the sky nearly black and the sun as a bright, perfectly round disc. An otherworldly scene with a dark blue glow that my puny iPhone camera sensor couldn’t capture. So beautiful, I couldn’t stop staring at it. (more…)

I woke up this morning feeling amazing. Rested, recharged, and adjusted to Japan time. Dave, on the other hand, was a mess. He barely slept last night, victim of the jet lag and wracked with the crippling anxiety of tonight’s dinner at Sky Restaurant 634. The restaurant is on the 345th floor of Tokyo Skytree, the highest tower in Japan. Dave has known this and been nervous about it for months. Today is the day, and Dave is so crushed by his debilitating fear of heights that he couldn’t sleep. Blackout curtains, melatonin, noise-canceling earbuds, and binaural meditation music did not help. (more…)

Dave did not sleep last night. Well, he did, but only for three hours. He tried everything, from sleeping aids to listening to his meditation music. He counted to 10,468 before giving up. Every siren from the streets below found a way to pierce through his noise-canceling headphones. Nothing worked. And then his mind started worrying about not sleeping, which of course set him spinning and produced more anxiety and made it worse. Turns out his worrying about the dinner in Tokyo Skytree, which is what he thought was keeping him up for the first couple of nights, was never the issue after all. Something else is afoot. Is he still struggling with the time difference? (more…)

Dave emerged from his room with an enthusiastic high-five. Eight solid hours of sleep. We took a lazy morning to recharge and blog before heading out into another crisp, sunny Tokyo day.

It took us a while to figure out the Tokyo taxi system, but I thnk we’ve cracked it. Red windshield lights mean vacant, yellow means off-duty, and no light means occupied. If you hail one that is not available, sometimes the driver will do the very Japanese thing of making an X with their fingers, which means no. Inside the taxis, Dave and I are becoming very familiar with the seven commercials in rotation on the seat-back screens. Some of them, including one that seems to feature a transgender bunny, are particularly annoying. I don’t know how the drivers, who have to listen to them all day, stay sane. (more…)

We checked out of our Tokyo hotel and left Kabukichō behind. While Tokyo is famously neat and tidy, it was early enough in the morning that the streets of Kabukichō were still littered with trash from the previous night’s revelry. It looked jarringly un-Japanese. (more…)

Last night brought a bit of stress. I was unable to secure timely bus tickets to Mishima Station, necessary for catching our scheduled shinkansen (bullet train) to Kyoto later in the day. Every ticket during our small window of flexibility was already sold out. (more…)

After a luxurious night’s sleep in our plush Four Seasons bed, we hopped into a taxi to begin exploring Kyoto. While definitely urban, Kyoto feels more intimate and homey than Tokyo, with no towering skyscrapers or dense city core, and the streets follow a familiar grid for more efficient navigation around the city. (more…)

Another early morning, another temple. While waiting in line to enter Kinkaku-ji, I caught sight of the most vivid rainbow I’ve ever seen. We didn’t get inside quickly enough to capture it arcing over the temple. That would have been spectacular. (more…)

This morning’s excursion took us to Kiyomizu-dera Temple, beginning with a charming uphill stroll along a shop-lined, rustic street to the entrance. The grounds of Kiyomizu-dera are massive, with meandering paths and a dozen different structures. Very walkable and cool, we spent a very pleasant couple of hours exploring it all. In a change from yesterday, the weather cooperated perfectly, with photogenic clouds serving as the perfect backdrop in the morning. (more…)

With nothing booked for the morning, Dave and I enjoyed a much-needed sleep-in. After packing up, Dave had words with the front desk after his super-sensitive nose had detected that his laundry hadn’t been cleaned properly. Once the issue was resolved to his satisfaction, we made our way to the train station to catch our shinkansen to Osaka. (more…)