014 - Japan I

I'm back from Japan.

Yes, I was in Japan. My brother and I both had free weeks, and my mom decided to capitalize on this and take us to Japan as we'll likely never get the chance to do so again, what with my brother starting his job and never having days off. So we packed up and headed off to see Japan, though the main purpose of the trip was to meet relatives we'd never met before.

What I did

Saturday - Arrive in Tokyo, saw Sensoji, hung out with Mario
Sunday - Arrive in Aizu Wakamatsu, saw Tsurugajo/Saito Kiyoshi Museum with Namae Mayumi, met relatives for dinner
Monday - Arrive in Kyoto, saw Kiyomizudera/Gion, bought shamisen strings, went to Takamashimaya/walked around Shijo area
Tuesday - Saw Kinkakuji/Ryoanji, went to Osaka and saw Osakajo/happened upon the outside of an Exile concert, met up with Kumiko in Umeda for okonomiyaki, walked around Umeda
Wednesday - Went to Nishi Honganji/Nijojo, had tempura for lunch, walked around looking for a hashi store in Shijo and ended up seeing a lot of Kyoto backstreet, helped brother buy glasses, had kushiyaki for dinner, met up with Hirokazu
Thursday - Return to Tokyo, went to meet relatives in Saitama, met up with Sami
Friday - Met up with Nozomi, return to states

Tokyo

We arrived in Tokyo at about 3 and with much confusion made our way to the hotel. I'm the only one in my family who can speak Japanese, so I ended up translating for everyone every step of the way. It wasn't necessarily a bad thing, it just meant that things took a lot longer than they really had to. So we took an express to Tokyo from Narita airport, found our hotel, and started our trip.
I began by calling everyone I needed to call. I called up a friend from school, Mario, and we decided to meet up that night for dinner at seven. We would meet at the far end of the Yuurakucho platform. Then I called two other friends, one Sami with whom I decided to meet on Thursday and one Nozomi who I couldn't get in touch with. Finally I called relatives who live in the area (Saitama) and we worked out a time to meet up on Thursday.
So after that we took a train to Asakusa and went to see Sensoji. The Asakusa area is my favorite part of Tokyo because it's this amazing mix of traditional shops and "modern" stores that seem to intermingle and become part of each other. The record stores blend together with the fan stores, the pachinko parlors reflecting in the windows of tsukemono dealers. So we arrived at Sensoji, I prayed, and we got back to the train station.
We were supposed to meet Mario at 7 and my mom's watch was reading 6:30 so we headed to the train station. We had to transfer trains at one point, but it was alright because the transfer was one stop away from Yuurakucho. So we're waiting to transfer and I look at the train postings.

...

The next one is at 19:58 and it's coming right now.

...

I'm not good at math, but I'm pretty sure 19-12 is 7...which means it's almost 8. So I asked my mom what time she had and she said 6:58. And then I asked her whether she'd set her watch forward.

Needless to say, I ended up calling up Mario later and hanging out for an hour and a half.

And that was day one.