En route to Nihon

I’m currently in the air above Taiwan, on my way to Tōkyō Narita Airport (in the Kantō region of Japan), where I’ll catch a shinkansen to the somewhat-central Tōkyō rail station. (For those Pokémon-obsessed amongst you, I’ll be landing in Kanto approximately in the vicinity of Vermilion city. From there I’ll defeat Lt Surge and get my Thunder Badge).

Japan’s one of the few Asian countries I haven’t visited before, so this should be a fun new experience. We’re visiting during the typhoon season — just after a typhoon has visited, actually — and we’ll be touring Tōkyō, Nikkō, Kyōto and the surrounding areas. It’s going to be a bit of a whistle-stop tour, but at least it’ll give me a grounding for what to look out for if I return. Which I probably will, knowing me.

How we’re going to survive (or get around in general) is going to be interesting; none of us can speak the language — save for “wakarimasen” (literally, “I don't understand”) — and we can’t read it at either, so that’s going to make getting to places — especially on the trains — very difficult. Hotels have been booked, but whether or not we get to them is another question entirely. Language barriers in past family holidays has not usually been such a problem; most countries we’ve been to use the Latin alphabet and we can at least read the signs in order to get about. This time, it's all different.

Anyhow. So begins my family holiday to Japan. More photos and journal entries to come 🙂