SURVIVAL SKILLS: Total Immersion (The temples of Kyoto)

Having finished breakfast in Hakone, it was time to take the crazy bus back down to the train station and make my way to Kyoto, the last stop on my trip. I mentioned before that Tokyo is one of the most modern cities in the world. This is due to two main factors. Primarily the Japanese spirit of embracing modernity, but also because it was devastated by firebombing during World War II. Fortunately, Kyoto was determined to be too culturally valuable to destroy and was left mostly untouched by allied bombers.

If you're spending more than a week or so in Japan, you owe it to yourself to visit Kyoto, and see some of the 17 UNESCO World Heritage Sites scattered throughout the city. But be warned, to get around Kyoto, you're going to need to know a little more Japanese than in Tokyo.

SURVIVAL SKILLS: Ring of Fire (A day in Hakone)

My first week in Japan was spent in the heart of one of the largest, most modern cities on earth. On the way to Kyoto, I spent a day in a little mountain town called Hakone, which while modern enough, was still small enough to offer a completely different taste of life in Japan. I'm super glad I went, and if you should find yourself on vacation in Japan, you should go too. In theory, on a clear day it's possible to see Mount Fuji from the area around Hakone, but it was super cloudy the day I was there. So, instead I snapped this picture from the flight home at the end of my trip.

That pointy white cloud in the middle of that picture is actually the snow-capped peak of Mount Fuji, and it's a pretty good symbol for the volcanic side of Japan, which is the focus of part two about my trip.

SURVIVAL SKILLS: Being Tall (My week in Tokyo)

Sometimes you'll take some pictures, do some research, draw up an outline in your head, and then sit down to write your article only to find some other topic injected into your brain. Today is one of those times. I am not, in fact, tall. I'm 5'8". By American standards, this is somewhere around average. By Tokyo's JR Yamanote train standards, this makes me a freakish mutant.

The plan was to write my second pop culture article about anime, but here's what happened. I queued up Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex - Solid State Society on my iPod. Also, it was around 50 degrees and rainy today in NJ. The strange chemistry of these two factors made me think about December of 2006, when I spent two weeks in Japan by myself, with even less than a rudimentary command of the language. My entire week in Tokyo it was around 50ish degrees and drizzly, with various anime soundtracks (especially Ghost in the Shell) on loop in my ears.

While I was there, I took some notes about the trip and I took a surprising number of pictures. Here are the results of my strange moment in forethought.