Japan part 1: Welcome to Japan!

Hello from Japan! After almost a week and a half, I finally have the time and energy. to sit down and right. This means the blog will be less chronological than I first intended, but I hope you will still enjoy coming on this journey with me! Pictures will come soon as well!

We left Vancouver on September 2nd, on an afternoon flight with Air Canada. Little did we know, it was going to be a long one. Not the 9 hours it would take to fly to Tokyo. That was expected. We found, after we got on the plane, that the four of us were unable to utilize the function that would allow us to call flight attendants for assistance, garbage collection, or anything else we needed. This was because, instead of a physical button, one could only use the call function through the touchscreen that controlled the rest of the in-flight entertainment system. While this may seem like a minor oversight, as four travellers who were all totally blind or visually impaired, this would have been a problem if we needed to use it in an emergency. One of the crew was gracious enough to try and help us out by putting tape on the appropriate part of the screen and showing us where to press, but this lead to only limited success.

Fortunately, that was the only major herdle on the flight. After landing, we took a shuttle to our hostel supplied by the site we booked.
Arriving at the hostel, the first thing that immediately was the quiet neighborhood. Despite Japan, and Tokyo in particular, having an image as a bustling and crowded place, it doesn’t take too long to get out of the busy city center to quiet, more suburban neighborhoods. Every time I have visited Japan, I have mostly stayed closer to busy areas of town, so it was a different feeling, and a nice change to stay somewhere quieter. The hostel itself was small and cozy, with traditional Japanese tatami rooms and futon beds, as well as a common kitchen for all the guests to use. Sandwiched between two coffee shops, and with vending machines scattered along the street, we were all set for our week long stay. We ended the night with some friends of mine for dinner at a kushikatsu restaurant, which was a great way to start our food adventures here in Japan! Kushikatsu, deep-fried scures, can be made with any number of ingredients, and we enjoyed trying everything from scures of shrimp to mochi, Japanese rice cakes. It was a great way to start the trip, and a great way to end the long journey! From there, it’s only gotten better. The next article will go into detail about our stay in Tokyo!