Unfortunately as all good trips go, they must eventually come to an end. I feel like I normally would be more sad about leaving but we already have another trip planned in November to see the leaves turn color in northern Japan with my cousin Become and his wife Yolanda. Google “Post-Japan blues” it’s a real thing tourists get after returning home from a trip.
I was smiling to myself this morning when checking in to our flight as our next trip to Tokyo was showing up right below our flight home on the Delta app. Really, I should be thinking of this trip home as a round trip back to Japan, I’m just going back to replenish my bank account so I can spend it in Japan.
Again, I originally intended to go to Singapore and Malaysia this year, but I wasn’t going to turn away a chance to go to Japan twice in a year. Now my parents are wondering when we’ll take them here for a trip. I said maybe summer 2027.
Become already caught an early bus to the airport so I went to the public bath by myself. It was empty so I was able to snap a quick pic. I was alone in the bath and spent a few minutes quietly mediating on life, feeling grateful to be able to make memories with Joanna’s family on this trip, and all the house projects that await me when we get back home: replace dishwasher, finish the crawlspace insulation, electrical work, etc.
I had come up with a new plan last night where we could take the shinkansen to Yokohama. Spend a few hours there, maybe go to the Chinatown and have dim sum, then catch an airport bus directly to Haneda. I bought the FOUR shinkansen tickets at midnight before bed. I just needed to pick them up from the ticket desk in the morning. I handed out the tickets to the group and Joanna points out there are FIVE of us. Oops, this was easily fixed and I bought my own ticket so I could go home, but I wouldn’t complain too much if I had to stay in Japan
We abandoned the Chinatown plan as it was too far from the Yokohama shinkansen station. Joanna went shopping, I saw a restaurant sign for motsunabe which is pork tripe miso hot pot. I was skeptical when I had it for the first time in Fukuoka but that soup was incredible and I’ve been chasing the high ever since.
Unfortunately the dish wasn’t nearly as good as the first time I had it. The quantity was very small and chewy (bleh). Lucky for me though the restaurant has all you can eat mentaiko (marinated cod egg sac)….mmm my favorite :/
Amex opened their newest centurion lounge at Haneda around October of last year and I’ve been excited to try it out. We were able to get Joanna’s parents and Vianna in as guests to the lounge after a half hour wait. There was sushi and ramen to order and the quality of food was excellent. Unfortunately we only had half an hour before boarding so I wasn’t able to shower in the lounge (first world problems, I know).
After we arrived back in MSP, we got our bags and were in line to get through customs. The cute little beagle was doing its job by sniffing all the passenger bags. It got to Joanna’s mom, hopped up on its hind legs and sat down. Joanna and I bought thought “uh oh”. Turns out her mom had grabbed an apple from the lounge and had forgotten to eat it during the plane ride back. This turned into a $300 mistake.
Thank you again for taking time out of your day to follow along on my blog. I’m really glad that we were able to bring Joanna’s family on this trip to create some new memories together.
This trip in particular was challenging to find downtime to edit photos and write, but I’m glad I continued to make this personal project a priority. I’ve had several people ask me why I don’t just have Chat GPT write the blog since this takes up several hours each day to put together, but it totally defeats the purpose of having a personal journal of my adventures as I try to get better at story telling and photography. Making mistakes is part of the process of getting less bad at something.
My personal goal right now is to get through the next year and a half of Japanese classes through Normandale and maybe take the Japanese Language Proficiency Test at the basic level so hopefully I can get deeper and richer experiences for the next trips. I do have other places outside of Japan that I’d like to go so we’ll plan to mix it up too.
See you in a few months!
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