It have been some months since I visited Tokyo and I’m glad to say I’m going back. There are many memories related to Japan although I didn’t even spend a month there. Here’s a summary of my first three weeks Japan in my life.

What I enjoyed most was to experience real Japanese life, away from the big city, with three and sometimes four generations in the same house. Having dinner with my host family, tea with grandma or playing and running with the kids.

The evening talk in the dining room were always interesting. Exchanging points of view and cultural backgrounds on different topics brightens and broadens one’s mind.

I understood almost nothing out of the daily conversations as I don’t speak Japanese. When they were talking to me, however, everybody spoke English as good as they could – some fluent!! There were even some funny situations like talking to a Japanese guy in english while listening whatever he said in Japanese. I won’t pretend it was a glorious communication but the results were great, since it was a chitchat of whatever came into our minds and yes, to a certain extent we understood one another.

Not knowing the language is a disadvantage in many ways, since I couldn’t read any signs or the menu. The good thing is, most menues have either pictures or samples for you to be able to chose whatever you think looks best.

I am still learning Japanese, whereas I am not at the point where I wish I would be. I recently (in fact, today) read an interesting entry which can be related to anything you want to achieve.

This Saturday 20th of March my journey will continue – I will fly to Japan for nine days. I have the gut feeling that this time it will be completely different from the trip before. It’s shorter and my budget is low, like many times. I want to get some impressions I couldn’t get before, like maybe visiting one or two museums if I can. More important, I will be in Japan during the cherry blossom, which is a national event like the beer festivals in Germany.

I will keep you up to date as soon as I have more plans to share with you.

Best regards,

Andrés

P.S.: I am not sure whether I can update information while I’m there but for sure I will as soon as I am here again.