Around The World: Stop One

Stop one.

I have been so blessed to have been able to travel the world, it is one of the most glorious things in life that I love to do.

In October of 2015, my best friend Andree and I headed on a five week journey. We started planning it months before and decided we would pick anywhere we wanted to go. We had a lot of different places in mind, but we finally narrowed it down.

We left Fredericton, N.B. and our first stop was in Tokyo, Japan. The flight time was a whopping 19 hours and 25 minutes, fortunately, all of our flights were booked in first class. Our seats were pods, which are basically beds that give you the option to lay down in, very comfortable!

We got to our hotel and the beds were very small and low to the ground. On the plus side, the toilet seat was heated , that was awesome. Everything was very clean and neat.

We didn’t speak any Japanese and that was a problem. The language barrier made it hard to find our way around the city and make a plan of what to do or see. If I ever traveled there again I would definitely have a translator.

I would like to be able to comment on the food, but because I was celiac and had a severe shrimp allergy no restaurant would serve me. I had a Japanese exchange student write a note describing my allergies and as soon as anyone read it, they refused to served me. Things are so proper there and nobody wanted to take the risk.

I ate buffet for breakfast and begged a restaurant manager one night to give me a bowl of steamed rice. We went for a traditional Japanese meal where you sit on the ground and Andree tried the traditional fare, while I made up for it with Saki.

We also did a bus tour. The city was very much a concrete jungle, with a few parks spread throughout. The bus stopped at a couple of temples, we even got to watch a traditional wedding at one of them! Next, we went to a market and bought a few Kimonos for souvenirs.

People told us Tokyo was the shopping mecca of the world… that would be the case if everyone wore Hello Kitty. We weren’t familiar with the style of shopping in Tokyo, we love to shop and it definitely was different than anything we were used to. We went to a shoe store asking for size 9 and 10 and they didn’t understand, no stores had those sizes, we were like giants there! The only thing we bought other than a few keepsakes in Tokyo were suitcases to fill up on the next stop.

We spent five days there and I think it was my least favourite stop on the whole journey.

Stay tuned for stop two!