The Japan Chronicles: Part 1

**photos to be added later

Airport and Nagoya

We – Gloria, Jennie, Annie and I – started Saturday early; I woke up around 5A so I could shower before the 9ishA plane ride. Somehow, dawdling happened and we found it to be closer to 6A than we expected. Not wanting to miss our airport bus, we found ourselves speed-walking then running like the McCallisters with umbrellas through our sleepy little town – no better way to start a vacation in my eyes than an early morning adrenaline rush. We made the bus and got onto our flight without a hitch. As we’re watching the safety video and cruising around the tarmac our plane stopped and went quiet. The captain came on the intercom in a calm voice and notified us that the engine had shut off and that hopefully it’d be up and running in no time. Oh, okay. No problem, just a little engine failure before we take off. I’m not a religious person, but I said extra prayers (I pray when I fly, like I cross myself when I ride my bike in downtown Chicago during rush hour, hoping I'm doing it correctly). Despite my strong conviction that we were never going to make it off that plane, we arrived safely in one piece.

JAPAN!! We validated our JR Passes and hopped a train to Nagoya. We wandered around the streets in awe of the fact they drive on the left and the wheel’s on the right, my first reaction to this was, “They drive on the wrong side of the road” after which I corrected myself to “the other.” Then I forgot about it and saw a child in the passenger seat and thought it was driving. There were other moments like this when I was worried that the driver (actually passenger) was going to get into an accident because they weren’t looking at the road. Oh, misconceptions!

Nagoya was clean, and the air was breathable! AND YOU CAN DRINK TAP WATER IN JAPAN!! It was the most incredible thing! Japan is super friendly towards blind people, at least the less crowded areas, and the walk signs would chirp like little birds notifying when to walk and when to not. This also helped when my cohorts and I were zoning out soaking in our new surroundings.

We checked into our hotel, and situated ourselves on our third floor rooms only to find two beds, a TV, fridge and wardrobe in each room. The women’s toilets were on the second and fourth floors and the women’s bath was in a separate room on the fourth floor as well. After we unloaded our bags we explored the quiet town in search of food. Because we had a couple vegetarians in tow, we searched high and low before finding a place with a pretty extensive menu that wasn’t so expensive. As we walked in the place the host shouted something out and everything seemed to get quiet as everyone turned and watched us, it was only a glance (and it probably wasn’t even from most) and it only lasted a moment, but it seemed as if it happened in slow motion and if it were a movie the subtitle under the hosts hollering would’ve read something like, “Can I have everybody’s attention?! We’ve got our first foreigners of the night!” It felt as if we had walked into some vampire bar and the host had called out in some ancient language, “Hey everybody! We have our first group of fresh flesh for the night” – maybe I’ve been watching too much “True Blood.”

Blah, blah, blah we ate and then wandered around the town which seemed to be a small square full of shops that closed down at Western hours – not used to that after being in Korea for almost a year where places stay open until at least 11P if not later. We found a Family Mart and felt right at home in the safety under the blue, green and white neon lights. We definitely spent at least 30 minutes in there oohing and ahhing over the Fresh Cola Mentos, Green Tea KitKats, all different varieties of candies and snacks, and so many mango-flavored things. MANGO!! “This is so weird… and amazing!”

I’ll move onto Sunday. We got up relatively early and walked miles and miles to get to the Aichi Prefecture Gymnasium to watch a sumo tournament. We lost Annie and Jennie on the way, and before buying more expensive tickets than I would’ve liked without consulting Jennie all the reasonably tickets sold out and all that was left were $80 ones. I was disappointed, but I wasn’t about to drop that kind of dough on something when I had eight days in front of me in the most expensive country in Asia. Luck was on our side though, and we were able to see four wrestlers on their ways to and from the stadium. It was pretty awesome. And we went and saw a castle, too, and found a super sweet city park where the cicadas or locusts, or whatever were shrilling loudly.

After walking around in the blinding heat for hours, we made it back to our hotel, grabbed our bags and jumped on a train heading for Kyoto!!