Now that this long-awaited (@ least for me) Japan trip is all but over :(, I'd like to share multiple things with the rest of you: a bunch of pix from throughout the trip, a few possible times which may or may not culminate in my 1st return visit here, a few guaranteed happenings, much closer to my Garden State home, in the near future, a few more "parting words" for my group of 30-some other travelers, & a reference to a certain recent animated Disney flick that may or may not have been all over your TVs & radios over the past few months!
Before you look @ just a few of the dozens of pix I took here, I'd like to tell you what I found most & least surprising here:
most surprising #1: the lack of any foreign languages here... While the few people who demonstrated decent knowledge of English demonstrated quite the fluency in it, I was expecting a ****-ton more English, as well as some Español &/or Português here... That does lead me to my next point, however:
most surprising #2: without the Japanese symbols all over the place, practically all of the cities here would decidedly resemble Montrèal, with all the French & Italian restaurants & signage on the streets!
most surprising #3: that I would end either on my own &/or lost so often; in fact, that already happened our 1st night, in Osaka, as well as our 1st day in Hiroshima, both days in Kyoto, & yesterday afternoon (local time, 7/11/14) in Tokyo...
most surprising #4: the yen being so deflated, that the ¥101-¥102 for every $1 ratio would seem much smaller than it actually was... I guess the best point by which to demonstrate that would be to proclaim that even all the high-end department & electronics stores here were selling almost everything under ¥10,000, which equated to somewhere close to $100!
most surprising #5: that there would be jazz playing everywhere... (*insert "shameless" plug for wbgo.org, my local jazz station, here*)
least surprising #1: the technology... from self-cleaning toilets, to elevators that moved @ about double speed, to automatically-opening bus/taxi cab/train doors, to the world-famous shinkansen "bullet trains", there was some sort of über-helpful technology for almost every possible situation!
least surprising #2: the Japanese population's overall helpfulness, in spite of the language barrier; even though it occasionally took some "haggling" to get them to agree to help, they almost always helped whoever was looking for some help (save for this taxi driver & transit cop I encountered our last night, as I was looking to return to our Ryogoku-section-of-Tokyo-based-hotel from the Tokyo Dome... those 2 were total idiots, & I refuse to forgive them chasing me from the area in front of the T-Dome where I 1st encountered them!)
least surprising #3: the cities were so massively sized, that they even put places like N.Y.C. & Toronto (Canada's largest city, in multiple socioeconomic categories) to shame in that department!
least surprising #4: my travel group, but I'll get back to them later!
now, the pix:
Since none of the other pix I was able to upload to any of my social media accounts were able to load here, I would encourage you to check those out to see the rest of my pix from this trip, but before then, I'd like to update you on some events happening (A) closer to home, & (B) on a more guaranteed basis than me returning here to Japan!
As of right now, the earliest I'd be able to return here, would be a January sometime in the foreseeable future... Considering my college (university, for you non-U.S.-residents here) campus is among the many that gives its students most of the month of January off, to rest up from their holiday season fun (& prepare for the next semester, but who gives a **** about that, anyway?), I'd like to think I'll have 1 of the next few months of January just wide open enough to be able to make the claim that I visited this country both in (almost) mid-summer, & also in the "dead of winter"... Also considering that I have a few (rather distant) Japanese-Peruvian relatives located near Hiroshima, that might drastically cut down on the lodging costs next time, also... Not quite completely, as was the case this time, but perhaps almost completely, as happened during 1 of my many visits down to Perù (2004), when my family ended up staying in 1 of their old houses in the Maranga section of Lima, instead of any hotels down there, which can be quite uncomfortable for anybody not used to the typical (quite dangerous) late-night party lifestyle in that country!
Until then, how about some much closer to home, as well as more guaranteed, events?
1: N.Y.C., especially mid-Manhattan, in December: If you've still yet to visit Manhattan around the holiday season, then **** you... I'm just joking about that last part, but seriously, though; WTF have you been waiting for this whole time - some "subconscious reawakening" of some type? You might think your area has the most special holiday celebrations, but when you manage to get a few million people from the entire world in & out throughout December, & then welcome a few million more of them on just a single night (New Year's Eve), that's when you've got something truly special, & on all of those fronts, I believe Manhattan has the rest of the world beat!
2: Montrèal, sometime between now & then: as I've mentioned in a few other posts, if your eardrums manage to survive hearing 21,000+ other people almost continuously for upwards of 3 hours, usually @ levels above 80dB (which most audiologists would tell you is the beginning of permanent hearing loss), then I'm sure they would be able to survive anything loud without much damage!
3: R.P.I.-Union College in NCAA college hockey, sometime in late January: if the 1st 2 installments of that annual game in downtown Albany, N.Y. were entertaining, then I'm sure however many more of those games end up being played will be just as entertaining, just as long as (A) there aren't any postgame brawls, as was the case this year, & (B) the bands get the occasional rest throughout the game, conidering they alternated playing almost the entire game this year, with almost no pre-recorded anything (music, sound effects, etc.) blaring through the arena's sound system, which didn't even happen during championship weekend in Philadelphia last April - There, the split was about 50/50 between the pre-recorded music & the bands!
If you'd allow me, I'd like to address the group again: For all the worries I had early on, about traveling alone, & out of the country, when I 1st booked my trip, & before the Facebook group was formed, you people surely reassured me, never mind everybody else, through your own admissions about something, or something else... I'm sure we'll all look back on this sometime in the future & recognize exactly how far we all came through everything else in our individual lives to be able to do this together this month, instead of all the "what-ifs" that could have possibly derailed this endeavor before it even started, so if nothing else, I'd like to commend you for keeping all your personal troubles behind, & stopping any drama that could have possibly occurred over here before that started! I don't foresee this being my only visit here (whereas some of you might have just wanted to do this just once, & then proclaim "mission accomplished" before hitting up another part of the world), but I will say this much: I don't think I'll ever have the same amount of adventure/individuality/fun/unpredictability/etc. again, no matter whether that's on my campus, in some other travel destination & situation, or back @ any of my former schools, where I'm almost certain everybody is patiently waiting to hear about this trip! I might have been always been wanting to visit this country, itself, over the years, but you made it even more special for me - I'm sure you most likely feel the same way about everybody else as I do, & if not, I'm sure those feelings will eventually find you, as they've already found me!
Last, but "most definitely" not least, I'm sure this tune almost immediately became the group's (unofficial) theme:
