Ever since I watched Lost in Translation, I’ve wanted to visit Japan. Yes, Bill Murray and pre-Marvel Cinematic Universe Scarlett Johansson probably hyped up what I would actually get to experience if I got there, but my mind was enamored – the culture, the sites & sights, and the food and Suntory whiskey (which I did learn to enjoy later on).
Most of all, I yearned for the opportunity to be lost in all aspects of the word – elsewhere in a place foreign to me with no claim to who I am or should be and vice versa. There was just never time to make the trip though with a million different reasons to say no and choose otherwise for where to go.
Close to 20 years later, I finally got to yes and – I’m here, in Japan! But it’s been a harrowing trip with a lot of different factors that made it very uncertain for if I’d make it, thus the motto that my brother traveling with me and I adopted and the title for this post: don’t lose sight of your destination, but enjoy the journey.
So, a shortlist of obstacles that I enjoyed in my journey to get to Japan:
The CrowdStrike outage was impacting different matters at ORD even when I get to the airport – I wasn’t sure if I’d get a last minute cancellation while I was at the airport. 😰
Thankfully, the flight took off right on time!
~14 hours later, we arrived in Japan! We headed over to take the Shinkansen (“bullet train”) to head to Kyoto, only to learn that there had been a maintenance vehicle crash on the Tokaido line we were taking, resulting in ALL trains for the day being cancelled (link). 😮💨 Alright, deep breath.
After considering all our options, including heading back to the airport to take a flight to Kyoto or even driving ~6 hours, we decided to book a hotel nearby the station and try the Shinkansen the next morning. Reciting “journey before destination”, we decided to experience one tourist attraction in Tokyo that hadn’t been on our original itinerary planning: the Tokyo Skytower. Fast forwarding for a second to finalize about the theme of obstacles, on our way back to the hotel, we then got hit by a pretty major thunderstorm!
Finally, we re-directed our plans to a hotel close-by, tried to hit up an attraction that wasn’t high on our itinerary for the Tokyo Tower only to be hit by a thunderstorm as we were heading home! ⛈️
We’d known and thought we were prepared about summer in Japan being very hot and humid; we were not prepared.
But the strawberry vanilla soft serve ice cream we had the Tokyo Skytower was exactly what we needed – and didn’t even know existed in the world (or at least I’ve never seen that flavor at McDonald’s in the US!).🍦
In any case, there it is – my first post on the legendary sabbatiblog! ✅ The first is always the hardest so glad I got this going – I’ve got lots I want to to cover since this first post was written across multiple places – combination of Tokyo, on the Shinkansen to Tokyo we eventually were able to board while wrestling (unsuccessfully) with jet lag, and in Kyoto. You could say…I have a backlog! Till next time.
sabbatiblog 
Awesome first post, S! Can’t wait to read more. Loving having a guest-posted on sabbitblog.
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