Japan!!!

Jon and I had the wonderful opportunity to travel to Japan for a week at the end of October. Jon and his three shoulder surgeon colleagues at OSU went over there to shadow and learn from several Japanese shoulder surgeons. We decided to make it a work/pleasure trip along with the spouses of the other two surgeons. While we were there, Jon only had to work 2 full days and 2 half days, so we were able to enjoy plenty of site seeing! The other 2 spouses and I also ventured out on our own a few times! :) Jon's parents were amazing and stayed at our home with Kylie and Brooks! They arrived on Friday night, and we left bright and early on Saturday morning. The flights were long and uncomfortable, but so worth it! We arrived in Kyoto about 24 hours after we left Columbus. Thankfully it was Sunday night (they are 13 hours ahead of us), so we were able to go straight to bed. Monday was one of the full days for the surgeons, so I headed out with the other spouses to check out Kyoto!

Our first stop was the Kyoto tower, which was right outside our hotel.

It was a 360 degree view from the top of the tower.

This is looking north at a temple called Higashi Honganji and downtown Kyoto.

Then we went to the Nishiki Market, which is a cool marketplace with lots of odd food items and tourist shops.

While there, we decided to stop for lunch.

We walked about a block or two, and found this little place that had about 6 tables.

We walked in and discovered that no one spoke English, and there wasn't an English menu.

Somehow we were able to communicate the word "surprise" which the waitress thought was hilarious.

But we ended up with a delicious meal!

That night the Japanese surgeons took all of us to a Japanese-style grilled beef restaurant.

This type of restaurant is called "yakiniku."

They bring out plates full of fancy beef, that you grill on a little grill on your table.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture, but it was definitely my favorite meal of the whole trip!

The second day, we only walked around our area of town for a little bit before meeting Jon and the other surgeons for lunch.

I had to take a picture of my Japanese Coke!

It looks so interesting written in Japanese.

Also, almost no one served Diet Coke, so I drank a lot of regular Coke!

This was lunch at the hotel that day.

I was super nervous about it, but it was really good.

I can't remember everything I ate, but I know this one included some eel, as well as beef.

Dessert was some sort of amazing chocolate combination!

That second night, we were taken to a sushi master's house/restaurant for dinner.

We basically walked in to this couple's kitchen and sat at the bar while he prepared 10ish sushi dishes for us.

They gave us some different fishes that seemed really weird to us like, raw octopus, sea urchin, and salmon eggs. 

But there was also a lot of tuna, and some other more "normal" fish.

Some of it was a little difficult for me to eat, but I tried almost all of it.

It was a really cool experience, probably my favorite experience of the trip!

The next day, Wednesday, was another half day for the surgeons.

We spouses went over to the Nijo Castle in the morning (picture below).

Then we met up for lunch at an Udon noodle restaurant near our hotel.

This was my meal.

There is some tempura, udon noodles, and tofu dessert.

That afternoon was a big site seeing day for all of us.

We visited Kinkaku-ji (the golden pavilion), as well as the Arashiyama (temples and shops) area, and the Bamboo Forest.

The pictures above on the right side from top to bottom are the Higashi Honganji temple, Kinkaku-ji, and the Nijo Castle.

Japanese sign at Kinkaku-ji.

Boat rides at Arashiyama.

The Bamboo Forest.

That night, we experienced another Japanese culinary tradition called "kaiseki."

Here is a definition of "kaiseki" I found online:

"Kaiseki is the quintessential Japanese haute cuisine, a tasting course characterized by the perfection of its preparation and elegant presentation. Originally a meal of small dishes meant to accompany the bitter green tea of Japanese tea ceremonies, kaiseki has become a dazzling culinary tradition unto itself. Kaiseki eschews strong sauces or overly complex arrangements, instead presenting every dish with stark simplicity around natural themes that highlight the superior quality of seasonal ingredients. This absence of artifice means that every ingredient must be selected at the height of freshness and then carefully prepared to showcase its true flavor."

It was an interesting experience, but a little more difficult to eat than the sushi for me.

On Thursday morning, we headed north to Tokyo via "shinkansen" (aka: the bullet train).

The bullet train goes about 200mph, and it was super cool!

We even drove right by Mt. Fuji, which is what is pictured above.

We were completely on our own that day.

After checking into our new hotel, we decided to check out an area of Tokyo called, "Akihabara," or Electrical Town.

This is the area of Tokyo where most of the anime shops, video games, and latest technology is sold.

It was cool and fun to see!

We were on our own for dinner that night too.

We decided we could use some American-type food, so we ate a nice meal at a restaurant on the 42nd floor of the Ritz, which overlooked the Tokyo tower.

It was beautiful...and delicious! :)

Friday was our last day in Japan, and the surgeons had another full day.

Apparently, they were able to watch about 14 surgeries that day with a world-famous surgeon.

While they were working, the other spouses and I headed to the Tsukiji Fish Market.

The market had more fish than I have ever seen, and it seemed like every kind of fish was there.

Most of the first were still living, and they sell them to the restaurant chefs and owners each morning.

Clearly, it's very fresh!

After the fish market, we went to the Ginza shopping district, which is where all the big, fancy department store are located.

We walked through one called, "Mitsukoshi."

After shopping for a bit, it started to rain, so we ducked into a little "Spanish" restaurant for lunch.

That was an interesting experience, and probably my least favorite meal of the trip!

After that we went back to the hotel because it was raining pretty hard.

I started to feel cooped up in the hotel, though, so I walked over to the mall, called "LaQua" that was across the street from our hotel.

I found some fun souvenirs at a stationary store and I bought myself a pajama set at a store called "Uniqlo," which reminded me of H&M.

I bought them because of their funny name, "Room Set Sweat." :)

Speaking of funny Japanese to English translations, here were a couple that I found amusing from our hotel.

"Hot steam may cause fire report."

"Please 'using up a roll of toilet paper.'"

Friday night, we met back up with our surgeons and the Japanese surgeons for another sushi dinner.

We spouses had to meet everyone at the restaurant and had an adventure getting there.

We were given directions to take the train, which, we found out, is not the subway.

The subway station and train station were about a block apart.

We first went to the subway station, and started to get nervous when we couldn't find the right train.

We were able to figure out that we weren't at the "train" station, so we quickly walked over there.

We managed to get on the right train, but there was a miscommunication about where to get off.

We got off at the wrong station, and our ride was at another station.

So we had to get a cab, but it took us about 10 minutes to find the cab line.

We got in the cab, and we were supposed to call Jon so that one of the Japanese speakers in the group could tell the driver where to go, but we couldn't get reception.

We had the driver drive in circles for about 5 minutes until we finally got through to Jon.

After the Japanese surgeon and the cab driver were able to talk, we were finally off to our destination.

It took us two hours to get there! 

Once there, we enjoyed another sushi feast.

A few of us were sushi-ed out, but Jon and I were able to muster one final push to eat a little more raw fish! :)

It was a really fun night, with some great conversations!

My last picture is a compilation of pictures I took for Brooks of some Japanese cars.

Everything was so much smaller than our American cars.

That fire truck and the blue construction truck were both about the size of my SUV.

In general, everything was much smaller in Japan than in America!

Saturday morning at 10am, we got back on the bullet train and headed back to the airport in Osaka, which took us about 3 hours.

Then we spent another 24 hours or so on flights/in airports before arriving back in Columbus at 11:45pm on Saturday (so weird with the time change!).

It was an amazing vacation, but we were happy to be back with Kylie and Brooks!

It took us about 5 days to recover from the jet lag, but it was definitely worth it!

I highly recommend it!