Road Trip to Japan

(Title inspired by "We should have a road trip to Japan" - Phong)

I think my most memorable (and probably most recent) family vacation was our trip to Japan in the summer of 2015. It was super exciting for me since I had never been out of the country before. I was also looking forward to seeing some of my Japansese relatives. Honestly, it was probably only a vacation for my me and my dad since my grandma and mom were going to take care of some banking business. 

My excitement quickly faded as the flight neared 13 hours. Once we landed I was exhausted and starving. We checked into our hotel and immediately started roaming the streets of Kichijoji to look for food. For some reason, I really wanted KFC? In Japan? So we stopped there for our first dinner. Thankfully, my mom and I could read some characters and narrowly avoided ordering fried fish.

Since it was so long ago, I don’t particularly remember everything chronologically. For the first part of our trip we stayed in Tokyo and the second part we stayed in Kyoto (my grandma’s hometown).

My dad and I were often left on our own since my mom had to accompany my grandma on her bank visits. It was always pretty nerve-wracking because neither one of us could speak Japanese (I was actually more worried that my dad would try to talk and accidentally offend someone). One time we ended up at Original Pancake House since we could just point to menus. Another time we had to eat McDonalds at 3 in the afternoon because my mom and grandma were taking too long at the bank. Japanese McDonalds is actually really good and so much better than in America.

Actually, most of my memories are centered around food. We ate a couple of dinners with people I had never met before (mom’s cousins and then some family friends).  Another day, my parents and I went to a soba shop. While we were waiting for our food, we saw something amazing. There was an old man sitting by himself at one table, but there was always a waitress walking back and forth with more noodles. We watched him and he ate THE WHOLE SOBA BOX at once. We still make jokes about it even today. During an especially rainy day, my brother took me to his favorite ramen shop. It was so good that I’m still upset I wasn’t able to eat the whole bowl.

We met with some family friends who took us to the Ghibli Museum. My brother took me to J-World. Robert also took me and my dad on a day trip to Nara where we got to feed the deer roaming around the city and look at temples. One deer bit me in the stomach while I was trying to open its food. We also hiked up a mountain path to a hotel that had really good green cream soda.

My favorite part of the trip was probably when my grandma got to meet up with all of her old friends. I’m pretty sure they used to play volleyball together. It was so cool seeing this squad of short, rich, little old ladies walking around town together. One of them owned a Kimono shop and another one owned a temple. We ended up going to a lot of temples and also walked along the Philosopher’s path.

Despite how much my family hates traveling (my mom finds it extremely stressful and I hate leaving the house), it was a really fun trip. I would love to do it again without the banking stuff so that we could hang out with my mom and grandma more though.