I thought the US was the most capitalist country in the world, and all things considered, maybe it still is, but Japan surprised me a bit in how privatized some parts of daily life are. The train system in Japan consists of several private companies (and no public ones). The main company, the Japan Railways […]

My coworker, Alex mentioned that track racing was a thing in Japan, so I went to see a race. I had to travel an hour and a half to get to the track for the only race in the area during our stay – at the Kishiwada Keirin. For some unfathomable reason, no one else […]

This is the ostensible reason why we came here in the first place, and Em told me I should blog about this, so here goes. The main highlight here is that Matt tied for first place in his age group for the piano competition! It was a couple of days ago, and I hadn’t written […]

I made my way to the Instant Ramen Museum in Ikeda, which is apparently the birthplace of instant ramen. I thought my family had been there earlier since we had planned to go in the afternoon (though our phone conversation got cut off before we could decide on a time). After getting lost a couple […]

Em has the gift of a finely tuned internal compass. I do not, so she was a bit concerned about me navigating the streets of Japan without her. Also, my Uncle Roberto warned me that getting around by train is difficult because most of the signage is written in Japanese with very rare bits of […]

This is the most serious aquarium I have ever seen. It’s situated right on the port of Osaka, which seems appropriate. Nearby is the most serious ferris wheel I have ever seen. We contemplated going for a spin in it, but we decided otherwise. I learned that the aquarium contained 1.5 times the world’s annual […]

Krafty had done quite a bit of research before our trip, and I am seeing it reveal itself bit by bit. This part included finding a video game store called Super Potato. We got there and found that it was closed though, which was strange because it was about 11:30 am on a Wednesday. Luckily […]

Noo Noo and Krafty had the idea to go to Namco Land, which is three stories full of arcade games. The first floor (the only floor on which there is an entrance) is all super cute claw grabber games. It’s an interesting choice. The second floor is clearly divided into male-targeted action games and female-targeted […]

The Japanese take their trains very seriously. We saw some quite striking train cars pull up to Kansai International Airport. It seemed like a car show but with trains. On some trains, the conductors wear white gloves. On ours, the conductor turned and bowed every time he left a train car and went through to […]

We saw the Umeda Sky Building today, which was just as epic as we had imagined. I was surprised to learn that Kira was afraid of heights and Kristin had vertigo. They were a bit nervous on the way up the glass elevator but got accustomed to the height once they were on top. Some […]