Japan – First Thoughts

by Cath

I’m back! Actually I arrived two weeks ago but I needed time. I needed time to reflect about this trip and absorb everything that had happened plus adjusting to my routine! After a trip I always have trouble in organizing everything back. Remove everything from the bag, upload photos to the computer, I don’t know how to explain it but just the thought of it makes me feel overwhelmed. I’m happy to report that I’ve finally did those two things!

But actually that’s not what I came here to write about. I wanted to leave a few thoughts about my trip to Japan. Nothing super amazing but I’d thought I’d share anyway.

There is a huge amount of people in Tokyo and I was not prepared for that. It’s really something else when you live in a country so small as Portugal. And even after visiting countries like France and Australia, I managed to get impressed. It was particularly difficult to my boyfriend who hates crowds, each one took their one time to process and after a few days it was “more normal”.

Japanese are really nice and polite. Even though there are almost no garbage cans, the streets were mostly clean. And the respect when walking in the street or on the metro, it’s truly something else. I’ll never forget this image: a huge crowd of people walking side by side, like a two-way street but without anything restricting you to go to the other side of the “street”.

I was super proud to be able to talk in Japanese. Even though my level it’s far from great, it was super useful and I loved trying my best and testing my abilities.

The food was really good and I became addicted to two things: miso soup (which I had already tasted but it never got much love from me) and jelly with fruit. To generalize, I liked almost all the meals but I’d not eat again most of the sweets I tasted. Also one thing to note: if you do love a good steak and don’t want to spend a large amount of money, you’ll probably find yourself in trouble in Japan. My boyfriend was craving a steak, he was already in withdrawal 🙂

For today that’s all, I’ve more things I want to share but I’ll get there post by post, still so much to process. Plus I’m going on another trip in a few weeks (I’ll never again schedule two trips so close to each other!)

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