Today is Monday, October 23, 2023. As the Japanese might say upon seeing someone for the first time, konnichiwa, which means “hello.” So here I am, back from our Japanese sojourn which ended on Saturday, October 21, where our return journey lasted until Sunday, October 22, when we got back to New York in the morning, at around 7:40 a.m. The whole trip back ranged close to 34 hours, with our landing in California at LAX in the morning on Saturday and lasting until 11:45 p.m. that day when we boarded a Delta flight back to the Empire State. Our return back was longer and more arduous than our initial excursion out on October 9 when we stayed overnight at an airport hotel and boarded a flight out to Japan the next day.

Unnecessary details here, since you’re more interested in what we experienced in the Land of the Rising Sun. All in all, I must say that we both had a fantastic time. We were grandly impressed with what we saw and experienced. It’s not easy to sum up what we discovered for the brief time we were in Japan which didn’t even total two weeks, but the overall impression was one of amazement, appreciation, and respect for what the Japanese have done since the conclusion of World War II. In some respects, we think the Japanese eventually did win the war. Just go to Tokyo and spend several days there and you might come to the same conclusion. This impression, you must realize, is definitely not an in-depth examination of the psyche of the Japanese people; it’s just a surface impression at best. What Elliot and I were struck by was the cleanliness that we saw in both Kyoto and Tokyo, the two regions that we visited during our trip. The subway system was the cleanest I have ever seen. It was also the most challenging and confusing, but I expected this, and we could pat ourselves on the back for being able to navigate this labyrinthine system without too much difficulty. We were able to express our queries to the many subway assistants found throughout the system, even though they were not very clear in communicating their answers to us in their broken English.

Which leads us to the second striking impression we formed while visiting these two distinctive cities: not too many Japanese, even those in their twenties or thirties, spoke English or even attempted to. Some people whom we met in the street waved us off when we approached them with a question in English. So we didn’t totally expect this, but we shouldn’t have been shocked by this reality since I must say that I did read this in some of the guidebooks that I brought with me on this trip or heard it on some short videos that I watched on YouTube before embarking on the excursion.

Some of the highlights of our trip included visiting the Sensoji Temple, which is the oldest temple in Tokyo, built in the city in 628, and known for its main Kaminarimon Gate, where a giant lantern hangs, going through the Kabukicho district, well known for its neon signs and lively nightlife, wending our way through the awesome Shinjuku Golden-Gai region which is known for its various drinking and eating establishments all found within its many alleyways, going up to the tallest structure in Tokyo called the Tokyo Skytree, the city’s version of our Empire State Building, walking through Tokyo’s Ginza Shopping District, which is like California’s Rodeo Drive, where you can find luxury brands such as Fendi, Gucci, and other famous designers, going through the Kyoto Imperial Palace which served as the residence of the imperial family until Japan’s capital transferred to Tokyo in 1869, entering the Fushimi Inari-taisha Shrine located in Kyoto which is dedicated to the Shinto God of Rice, Inari, that features thousands of bright red torii gates (which are the traditional Japanese gates most commonly found at the entrance of or within a Shinto shrine that represent the border within the secular world and the secular worlds of the Shinto religion), seeing the Kinkaku-ji Temple that is known as the “Golden Pavilion,” walking through Arashiyama Bamboo Grove, and wandering through the precincts of the Kyoto Railway Station where we stayed at the luxurious (for us, at least) Granvia Hotel located within the station that had dozens and dozens of restaurants and shops on the bottom floor. These were just a few of the sites we saw on our visit to this fascinating country.

One of the most challenging features of the trip, as I mentioned above, was negotiating the vast subway system. We must have ridden the subway in both Tokyo and Kyoto a host of times. We didn’t get lost, which is pretty amazing, given how intricate it is (one station, Shinjuku, supposedly has 16 – 16 – lines converge there); we did get lost outside in an attempt to find a spa that we intended to patronize on Elliot’s birthday, located in the Golden-Gai neighborhood, because of the lack of communication skills of those whom we asked for the directions. If this were the only snag we encountered on our trip, it’s a pretty darn good rate of missteps encountered on such an intricate vacation!

There was one other: Elliot had booked a sumo wrestling look-see early on in our Tokyo stay, and we missed this because of assuming the date was on a Saturday, but not on a Friday, which it actually was. This would have been the second day we were in Tokyo, so in a sense, we might have welcomed missing it because it was scheduled for 7:30 a.m. which would have meant getting up extra early this day in our hotel room at the Knot Tokyo Shinjuku. Our first day we woke up early to meet our first bus tour of the city that began at 7:50 a.m. This was the only time I debased myself by walking into a Tokyo McDonald’s located around the meeting site to have a spot of breakfast before boarding our touring bus. We weren’t able to have breakfast at the hotel since it was too early.

Our vacation in Japan, unfortunately, coincided with the dreadful situation in Israel which is still going on without any hopeful solution to the horrors that have occurred in the region and the Gaza Strip for almost three weeks. My heart goes out to the families that have lost loved ones in Israel and to those Palestinians who have suffered under the counterattack from Israel, especially those who were killed in that rocket mishap that struck a hospital in the area. Now there have been people who have been taken into captivity by Hamas, which I’ve heard on MSNBC total 222 individuals. Some elderly prisoners have been released very recently. The President has already traveled to Israel to offer our nation’s support to Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week. This ongoing situation has aroused passion on both sides. I just want peace so that the body count does not go innumerably up. We were able to follow events in the Mideast on the only English-language channel in our hotel rooms: NHK World: Japan. Every other station broadcast in Japanese, as you would expect. Because of our extensive sightseeing and walking through station after station, we went to bed early: as early as 9, 10, or a little after 11. Which compels me to make another of my observations gleaned from our trip: the Japanese, for the most part, are generally slender. I rarely saw an overweight man or woman walking on the street. I would dare to suggest that this situation might arise from so much walking in the subway and from the national diet, which probably does not consist so much of processed foods. Though they do have McDonald’s and Wendy’s there.

And when we boarded the two flights from Japan and California, do I have to say that I saw more overweight people returning to the States?

So when we got home in the early morning hours of Sunday, we began the slow process of readjusting to the time difference here. Elliot took to bed as soon as we entered the apartment; I went out for breakfast locally. I did feel a little tired last night, so I didn’t write my blog. I did go to bed somewhat earlier, though: 12:30 a.m. (okay early for me).

Though we enjoyed our trip tremendously, we are happy to be back, even though I’m not very happy over the usual litter I’ve been seeing at the airport and everywhere else. I wonder how so many millions of Japanese are capable of not littering in their sparkling city of countless spires jutting into the sky when you can’t even find trash bins on the street. It’s probably related to a broad civic pride that is somehow missing in Americans in this sprawling country of ours. This is something we can learn to adopt from our Asian countrymen.

Stay safe and be well.

Here are some views of Japan:

This was a true animal lover’s delight: Nara Park in Kyoto where the deer have no fear in coming up to you to take food from you. The deer are everywhere.