Category: Japan
Kyoto and Osaka
I’m going to cram a few days update into one post because there were a couple days in Kyoto where the most we did was get out for lunch since I wasn’t feeling well. But those days of vegging out and watching movies (Independence Day! Will Smith! Aliens! ‘Murica!) paid off and we did get to get out on our last day and see Gion District in Kyoto before leaving.
Skiing and the first day in Kyoto
We finished up our last day in Nagano prefecture by going skiing in the Shiga Kogen area. It’s very close to where the 1998 Winter Olympics were held, was lightly snowing all day but still very visible, and the best part? There were NO people. Apparently last weekend was a big holiday weekend so everyone spent their money getting out and skiing then. We no more than 2 – 3 people on the same run as us most of the time, and there were some runs where we were alone.
Monkey park
This is our third day in Nagano and I’m really glad now that we picked to stay here between Tokyo and Kyoto, two fairly busy cities with a lot of people and noise. It’s so quiet here. I almost haven’t really known what to do with myself. Matt has tried to settle into a routine of working 2 -3 hours in the morning and another 5 – 6 hours in the late afternoon/evening. That’s just for now though, because he was able to secure night work. His next project can be done at any time, and there may be others that need to happen during US business hours. Last night he had a team call at 1 pm Central, which was 4 am here… so we’re still trying to figure out a rhythm so that he feels like he knows when he’s working, and when he can be done and hang out.
Snowy Nagano prefecture
Guys, we love Japan. I enjoyed my time here last time back in 2010, but I was alone and it was hard to enjoy it by yourself. There’s so much to take in that it’s better to have someone to process everything cool (and weird) with. Yesterday I met up with Atsuko to find a few technology items that we needed (chargers, cables etc) and she took me to a really cool store in Roppongi area.
Shinjuku
Sorry for the delay in posting. Japan has been awesome so far! We arrived in Tokyo around 5 pm local time on Thursday (Tokyo is 15 hours ahead of Kansas City). Neither of us were able to sleep on the flight which was about 13 hours, after which we picked up our pocket wifi, got our rail passes, and pulled out some yen since Japan is largely still a cash based society. The pocket wifi is a great thing in that we can use it as a backup for Matt’s work or for wandering around and being able to call and navigate – it runs off their LTE cellular network and pulls 75 Mbps down and 25 Mbps up with unlimited data. Pretty slick, Japan.