The 3rd Station: Favio, Eric and Eddie try to get on a station a mile away, accidentally travel to a different city

Meditation:

Our first few days of navigation in Japan were...interesting. Although almost everything you read in Japan is in Kanji (the Japanese alphabet), they were kind enough to put major info such as train stations and signs in English as well. It made things a bit easier for us, but still the signs don't always contain key information. In our day trip to Osaka, we made it to the correct train track, but got on a train that arrived five minutes earlier than the one we wanted. We noticed something was wrong when we blew right past our desired station without stopping...and the next one...and the 5 after that. We wound up getting off in Nara (a different city) and taking the train back to Osaka. We were laughing like idiots the entire time. 

Favorite quotes of the station:

• "That's weird, why did the train skip our station?"
• "Dude...we just skipped another station."
• "I think something might be wrong here"
• "Why are we in the forest...are we still in Osaka??"
• "Well...at least we know how to get to Nara!"

What we learned:

To double check our track.arrival time, and ALWAYS ask an employee if we're in the right place

The 2nd Station: The Emmachi Walk

The 2nd Station: The Emmachi Walk

Meditation:

We do a lot of walking every day. A LOT of walking. After a long day of walking and sightseeing, we're dead tired. We get on the JR line and head to our home station, Emmachi. After 10-15 miles of walking every day, we'd be excited to get to Emmachi Station right? Wrong. We still have another mile and change of walking. People die on this walk.That's not true, people don't really die here, we do. And we don't so much die as scream out Japanese obscenities in agony. This blog was inspired by Emmachi.

What we learned:

The virtue of foot massages

The 1st Station: 40 hours of traveling

During our travels in Japan, we've had an amazing time. It's a beautiful place with an amazing culture. That's not to say this trip isn't without it's sufferings. Here we'll detail some of the struggles we've accepted and gone through. These are the kinds of things that make a trip interesting!

The 1st Station: 40 hours of traveling

Meditation:

Favio, Eric and Eddie embark on their much anticipated trip to Japan! We start off our trip with 40 hours worth of travelling. The drive to Houston went off without incident, then we went through a 14 hour flight to Beijing. The flight was so full of turbulence it was ridiculous, but we'd all gone to confession beforehand, so we weren't too worried. Once we arrived, we had a 4 hour layover before our flight to Tokyo. Once there, we took the Shinkansen (bullet train) straight to Kyoto, which took another three hours. Finally we arrived in our destination

Turbulence on the plane

What we learned:

The virtue of patience