Today Lily and I will be heading back to America, It has been a great experience to be able to live in another country for such an extended period of time. Most of the Japanese people we have come across while visiting here were quite friendly.
The language difference was difficult at times but not entirely impossible.As it turned out most people spoke about as much english as we spoke japanese.Maps or writing our question down on paper seemed to get us further. There were plenty of times that if the person we talked with first didnt speak any english, they were more than willing to offer to find us someone who did speak english so that we were not left standing anywhere feeling lost. We found that traveling to any of the remote areas would have proved to be too difficult without someone that spoke and read the japanese language.Our apartment managerial staff was helpful in finding a few wonderful places to visit, but often both the trains and places to stay were full on the weekends.However , i did manage to investigate many different areas we would have loved to go see if we had had more time and money.and an interpretor....Alot of the websites were in japanese but had a loosely translated version as well.
Ordering food was probably the most difficult, the best way around this was to only eat at places that had pictures of the food on the menu and guess from there. That worked out most of the time , especially when the waiter/waitress recognized us from a previous dinner and remebered what we had ordered.The sushi resteraunts were always good, as we expected.among other favorites were tempura foods, and noodle shops such as ramein, soba, udon. Among others were Chinese, Indian, french and Italian places but those were usually more expensive.
Our apartment was quite comfortable ,clean and safe and located in a convenient area.The subway was close and the few necessary convenient stores and resteraunts were also nearby.One of the hardest parts of the trip was for Lily and lack of kids to play with. We would see some kids on their way to or from school or at a park. However they did not speak any english and so were very shy as was Lily for the same reason..There were a few times she at least shared a few smiles with some kids her age but that was about the extent of it.Sometimes if the mom was with her kids, the mom would know enough english to ask our names and where we were from...and tell her kids names.I guess come to think of it, my conversations didnt consist of much more, except for the constant.".arigato gozaimus" (thank-you) which was always very much appreciated. "ohiyo-gozaimus".(good morning), "konichi-wa"(good day")
Our apartment was quite comfortable ,clean and safe and located in a convenient area.The subway was close and the few necessary convenient stores and resteraunts were also nearby.One of the hardest parts of the trip was for Lily and lack of kids to play with. We would see some kids on their way to or from school or at a park. However they did not speak any english and so were very shy as was Lily for the same reason..There were a few times she at least shared a few smiles with some kids her age but that was about the extent of it.Sometimes if the mom was with her kids, the mom would know enough english to ask our names and where we were from...and tell her kids names.I guess come to think of it, my conversations didnt consist of much more, except for the constant.".arigato gozaimus" (thank-you) which was always very much appreciated. "ohiyo-gozaimus".(good morning), "konichi-wa"(good day")
All in all, im ready to be back home..traveling is fun but Im ready to get back to real life. I someone asked if Id do it all over again, yes, I would....gladly.
