The Last Train

Before I stop blogging about our trip to Japan, I thought I would share a few of the more amusing photos and anecdotes from our Asian adventure. No list of tales from Japan would be complete without this observation: Hubby is 6’4” and Japan is not designed in anyway, shape, or form for people who are his height.

To illustrate this point, allow me to skip past the tales of his brushing his head on the hanging poster on the subway, or having only 1.5 inches of space between him and a low hung sign in the train station, and move straight to our last day in Tokyo when we discovered that Hubby was too tall for the shower. Luckily, my sweetie is going bald because there was no way his hair was getting washed that day since he was about a foot taller than the showerhead.

It only took a few days to realize that the Japanese people are, by and large, a very healthy and active kind of people. There were no benches conveniently situated to give the weary walker a break after a bazillion miles of walking. Nor were the locals intimated by the 90 feet of stairs that we had to climb to see every temple or shrine that Hubby insisted we visit.

Sure, the bicycles from yesterday’s post should have been a hint, but I’m not very good at hints. Nor, as it would turn out, am I a very good sport when it comes to miles and miles of walking day after day. In fact the blisters (which are only now starting to heal) were so bad at one point that I could barely make it to the washroom let alone all the way to wherever it was Hubby had scheduled for the day.

Never let it be said that Hubby and I are above mocking complete strangers. One of our favourite pastimes when we travel (and when we’re home for that matter) is finding misspellings and odd misinterpretations on signs. This could be anything from an innocent, “lack deep-frying” on an advertisement for fried food, to a warning asking us to “please wait long time if you order” on a specialty menu item.

Sometimes, however, the signs you see in front of innocent looking bookstores simply defy explanation. The oncoming generation has spoken. Or something.