How’s it going?

I hope you’re doing well.

My name’s Andrew and I will be your host and your study buddy today.

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I’m a Canadian, but I live abroad in Seoul, South Korea.

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OK, so let’s get started with this week’s story, everyone.

I’m gonna title this episode, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Because I think that really describes how I spent my time in Japan recently.

I spent a week in Japan, and it really was the best of times and the worst of times.

And that’s a little reference to a line from a Charles Dickens novel.

If you weren’t familiar with that line, it’s a classic, cliched line that all English speakers will recognize.

So let me tell you about the best of times and worst of times in Japan in this story.

Let’s get started with it right now.

Here we go.

In February, my wife and I took a two-week vacation.

We spent a week in Hawaii, and on the way back to Seoul, we spent a week in Japan.

In the last couple of bonus episodes, I told some stories about visiting Hawaii.

So, if you haven’t heard those ones yet, I recommend going back and checking that out so you can go in sequence.

But in this episode, I’ll tell you about the Japan trip.

So, it took about a day, a full day’s worth of travel to get from Hawaii to Tokyo, which is where we flew into.

You know, when you go from your hotel to the airport and then check in at the airport.

And actually, that was a big debacle at the Honolulu airport.

It took us a long time to check in because our cab driver dropped us off at the wrong terminal and we didn’t know about that.

And so, we didn’t know where to go to check into our flights.

Even though my wife and I are pretty well traveled, we felt like newbies, like first time travelers ’cause we had such a hard time checking in at the airport.

Thankfully we arrived quite early, so it was OK.

But that was, yeah, a big debacle.

A big debacle means like a big ordeal or a big process to get something accomplished.

So yeah, finally checked in at the airport, got on our flight.

It’s probably about seven or eight hours from Hawaii to Tokyo, and then arrived in Tokyo, go through immigration, catch the train, go to our hotel, check into our hotel.

You know, that’s a whole day gone right there.

So, we spent one day just traveling to Japan.

I do have to say that after we arrived in Tokyo and we were staying around the Ueno station for those of you who are familiar with Tokyo, after we checked into our hotel, we went to a really awesome restaurant.

We had one of the best meals of the trip at this little local restaurant that was really close to our hotel, just a couple of blocks away.

We had a delicious salmon.

I had a salmon steak and oh man, it was awesome.

It’s funny, our very first meal in Tokyo, I think was better than all of the food that we ate in Hawaii.

I don’t know, Japanese food is amazing.

And so, it was a really great experience.

And I learned one thing during this trip, a little tip to all of you who will visit Japan in the future.

And let me tell you, there are so many tourists in Japan right now.

It’s pretty wild that I think probably many people out there plan to visit Japan sometime in the future.

Google Maps is the app that many travelers use, and I think many Japanese people use as well, for, you know, finding new places to go and navigating around the city and all of the functions and things that you can do in Google Maps.

Well, I realized that if your app is set to English, like it is for me on my phone, then when you click on a restaurant, you’ll get a lot of English reviews.

And most of those reviews that are written in English are left by tourists who have visited the restaurant.

And if you notice that there are no English reviews, then probably not too many tourists have visited that restaurant.

And when you have your phone set to English, then it’s likely that you’ll see the English reviews first.

So, I kind of realized that if you click on a restaurant to read the reviews before visiting it, and all of the reviews are in English, there’s probably a tourist trap or probably somewhere that tourists go, and locals don’t go as much.

So, when I was trying to find restaurants for us on this trip, I avoided the English reviews.

And if I saw high reviews that were written in Japanese, of course I don’t read Japanese, so I couldn’t understand the review, but if the rating was high and sometimes, I would use a translator to see what they had to say, well then those were the kinds of restaurants that we tried to go to to get a more local authentic experience.

And the restaurant that we visited had no English reviews at all.

It was only Japanese reviews, and they were positive reviews, and the restaurant was great.

Really cozy, nice atmosphere.

And yeah, after a long travel day, it hit the spot and we had a nice dinner that first night in Japan, in Tokyo.

I have to be honest and say that my wife planned a lot of this trip.

She took the lead with making the itinerary and all of the travel plans, which was just fine by me.

I actually don’t like doing that too much.

and I think she rather enjoys it, so it’s perfect.

And yeah, I wasn’t exactly sure what our itinerary was, but I was under the impression that we were only gonna spend one night in Tokyo and then go to a different area outside of the city to a place in the mountains, a couple of hours outside of Tokyo called Kusatsu.

I believe it’s called.

And apologies to our Japanese listeners if I butcher the pronunciation of some place names or Japanese words in this episode.

Guys, please forgive me, but yeah, that was our plan was to go to the mountains because we wanted to hit up a Japanese style onsen, hot spring.

And so, I thought I was under the impression that we are going to go there directly the next day, but I was so stoked and excited to find that that was incorrect.

And my wife had planned a buffer day in Tokyo.

So that was awesome because after that long travel day, I was not looking forward to packing up my suitcase again, hauling my suitcase to the train station and taking a train and taking a bus and going to the mountains.

That just seemed exhausting.

So, while we were eating dinner, I was kind of complaining like, ah, it sort of sucks that we have to go tomorrow to the mountains and to the hot spring.

Like I’m really pretty tired.

My wife was like, no, we have a day in Tokyo tomorrow.

So that was just amazing to hear.

And so that was great.

we were able to sleep in a little bit the next day and just have a lazier day.

That day in Tokyo, we went to a temple called Sensoji, I believe is the name of the temple.

And it would have been amazing to see, I’m sure.

It looked really cool, but it was overrun by tourists.

Like there are so, so, so many tourists there.

It was so packed that it was just not a pleasant experience.

And I think that day was actually a national holiday in Japan.

I can’t remember exactly what the holiday was, but it was a day off for Japanese people as well.

So, you can imagine that, you know, people have a day off, maybe they want to check out the temple.

Plus, just so many tourists in Japan, people these days are saying that Japan is suffering from over-tourism.

And I felt that while I was at that temple.

So, my wife and I took a quick look at the temple and then we peaced out because it was just so crowded that it wasn’t a pleasant experience.

And yeah, we just sort of wandered around Tokyo, wandered around through some different neighborhoods.

We hit up a coffee shop called Lucent Coffee, and I wanna give them a shout out because we hadn’t planned on visiting there at all.

It was just a random place that we came about when we were ready for a cup of coffee, and it ended up being a delicious, delicious cup of coffee, amazing.

The coffee in Japan, so far, I’ve had some, really some of the best coffee in my life there.

So, shout out to them for their kind service and good coffee.

That was cool.

What else did we do that day… we wandered, just wandered around, explored some of the different places.

We went to a soba restaurant.And it was cool at the sober restaurant, all of the tables at the front of the restaurant were occupied.

And so, they sat us in the back on the floor seating area.

And Culips listeners will know that I’m interested in floor-sitting culture, and I’ve lamented here on Culips before and lamented means to maybe be sad about something, to talk about something in a sad way and to sort of complain about something in a sad way.

So, I’ve lamented here on Culips that I’ve noticed in South Korea, where I currently live, that floor sitting culture at restaurants is slowly disappearing and it’s getting harder and harder to find and more rare than it was in the past.

And so, it was cool to see a restaurant in Japan where we were seated on the floor at this soba noodle restaurant.

And we had a delicious meal there.

And yeah, I was really impressed.

This was my first-time visiting Japan with my wife.

I visited Japan several other times by myself, but this was our first trip there together.

And she can speak just a tiny little bit of Japanese, but it’s still way, way, way more than I can speak.

And so, when we go to the restaurant, she’s able to say like a table for two people and order the food from the server.

And, you know, if she needs something extra, like ask for extra water or ask for a napkin or something, she can do that.

And for me, my Japanese, unfortunately, is like at zero pretty much.

I know just a couple of words, and that’s about it.

And so, to see her do that is so impressive, blew my mind and was really awesome.

So yeah, that was comfortable having her do the ordering at the restaurant and also fired me up and motivated me to study at least some basic survival Japanese for my next trip.

So, I don’t have to be one of those guys who relies on their phone and body language and English when I visit a country like that.

So, my next trip, that’s my goal.

At least, at least some survival Japanese.

Anyways, finally at the end of the day, we ended the day off by going for barbecue.

I believe it’s called Yakiniku in Japanese and we had some great grilled meat.

So that was a great way to end the day, a delicious way to end the day.

Then we went back to our hotel and went to bed early because we had a big travel day the next day.

We had to wake up, we had to catch a train and then catch a bus to go to Kusatsu the next day for our onsen experience.

So that’s pretty much exactly what we did.

The next day we woke up, we went to the train station, we caught a train and then we had to transfer to a bus and then we arrived in Kusatsu.

And the whole journey took probably about two and a half hours, it wasn’t that long to be honest with you and it was nice getting to see some of the countryside.

Didn’t get to see Mount Fuji, unfortunately, from our train, but we did arrive at the village of Kusatsu.

And I think this whole village is just centered around hot springs, right in the center downtown area of the village, the central area of the village.

There is a hot spring and this amazing ancient cooling mechanism.

So, the water comes out of the earth and then there were all of these pipes, I guess, or channels that were built out of wood that were designed to cool the water.

So, the water comes out of the ground and then flows through these channels.

And as it flows through, the water, it cools down.

And guys, I did put some photos on our Instagram from the Japanese trip.

So, if you haven’t checked our Instagram yet and you wanna see some visuals, then please check out the Instagram.

You can see some pictures of some of the things I’m talking about here in this episode.

But yeah, the whole village seemed to be centered around hot springs and we stayed at a traditional Japanese inn, which is called Ryokan.

And I’m probably mispronouncing that again, so apologies, but the spelling is R-Y-O-K-A-N in English, Ryokan.

And yeah, amazing, it was such a good experience, traditional Japanese inn, and a beautiful room.

We had this huge room that was just gorgeous.

And we decided to sleep on the floor so there were no beds in the room.

And instead, we slept on these futon mats and slept on the tatami mats that are the traditional flooring in Japan.

And we slept super well.

It was pretty pricey, this inn, so we only stayed there for one night, but it was pretty upscale and really nice.

So, I’m glad we splurged for that one night.

But yeah, essentially, we arrived at the village, we checked into our inn, and then we went to our first onsen hot spring.

And this one was outside, so we had to walk to the hot spring, probably for about a kilometer.

And half of that was up this sort of hiking trail because this onsen, this hot spring, was really in the forest.

And then we arrived, and I think we had to pay maybe probably around five US dollars to enter.

So, it wasn’t too expensive and it’s a naked experience.

So, you have to go into the onsen naked and because of that, it is gender segregated.

So yeah, the women are on one side and dudes are on the other side.

So, my wife and I had to split up, but we went, and we did our own thing.

And I have to say it was such an amazing experience, very relaxing, just so calm, and nice to be in that hot bath.

and the natural hot water with all of the good minerals inside of it.

You feel like just a newborn baby after you come out of the bath.

And it was still winter when we were there.

So, to be in the forest and there was some snow lightly falling, it was just a super relaxing, awesome experience.

And yeah, really, really good.

I feel like hot springs are my new thing.

I talked about visiting a hot spring in Canada with my brother not too long ago in a bonus episode from the past, and I’ll put the link to that episode in the description for this one, if you wanna go hear about that hot spring experience.

But to do that in Canada around a year ago, and then to do this in Japan recently was so awesome.

And comparing the two was really cool too.

They are both really terrific experiences, but in different ways.

And yeah, I think this is gonna be my new thing going forward is to try and find hot spring experiences, especially ones outside.

It’s just so cool.

So, we did that, and we felt super refreshed when we came out of the hot spring, we drank some yogurt.

There’s a yogurt drink that’s famous in this village.

So, we drank the yogurt, and we went back to our inn, and we had a delicious dinner.

The dinner was crazy good.

We had our own private dining room, and they prepared the food for us in many courses and took it into our dining room.

We wore the traditional Japanese inn clothes, like they give you some clothes to change into when you arrive at the inn.

And those are called Yukata.

So, we wore our Yukata, and we went to the private dining room and were just pampered and spoiled, I guess, with this delicious meal of many courses.

So that was great.

And then after we went to another onsen in our inn, there was an onsen as well.

So, there were several different bathing areas and again, gender segregated.

So, I went to one, my wife went to another one and the one that I visited was also outside.

So now it was nighttime, so I was sitting outside and again, it was snowy out and yeah, just a really, really cool, relaxing, de-stressing experience after traveling for so long from Hawaii to that area, Kusatsu.

It was great just to relax in the hot waters of the hot spring.

And yeah, pretty much after that, we were done.

We were like completely, it’s funny to say, like after relaxing all day, you’re super tired and sleepy, but after relaxing all day, I was super tired and sleepy.

So, we slept and woke up the next day.

And also went back to the private dining room for again, a private breakfast, which was multiple courses, delicious.

And we hit up the onsen again in the morning before returning back to Tokyo.

So, guys, this pretty much at this point is gonna wrap up the good.

Up until now, it was amazing.

It had been a fantastic trip.

The first three or four days in Japan were amazing, but this is where things started to get bad.

So, we went back to Tokyo, and we stayed at a different hotel.

We checked into our hotel, which was around Tokyo Tower in that area of the city.

And again, that day was mostly a travel day.

So going from Kusatsu back to Tokyo, checking into the hotel, that pretty much occupied most of our day.

In fact, I don’t even remember what we did that evening.

Pretty much just crashed out.

The next day was a shopping day on our itinerary.

And I was interested in record shopping in Japan.

And my wife was interested in doing some clothes shopping.

And I also wanted to do some running shoe shopping because running culture is so amazing in Japan.

They have great running stores and it’s easy to find good running shoes compared to Korea here where it’s a little bit more difficult.

And also, I mean, Japan’s an amazing place for record shopping as well.

One of the best places in the world, at least that I’ve visited.

So, I was super excited, and I had a long list of record stores that I wanted to check out.

So that day we went to the Shibuya area, and we did a little bit of record shopping, a little bit of shoe shopping, a little bit of clothes shopping, and just walked around and had kind of a nice busy day checking out some of the more commercial shopping areas of that part of Tokyo.

And it was a long day, we were out and about for pretty much the whole day, from the morning until the evening.

And in the evening, after eating dinner, we came back to our hotel.

And I have to say that Tokyo is like a mega city’s mega city.

It feels so much busier than Seoul for whatever reason.

Like Seoul is a mega city and it’s super densely populated, but Tokyo feels like another level.

And of course, if you look at the population between the two cities, Tokyo is much bigger, but it really feels that way as well.

It feels super, super, super dense and populated.

And maybe it’s just because I’m not as familiar with Tokyo and I don’t know, it’s just a really busy place.

And I was kind of feeling exhausted as we were coming back to our hotel from that day of shopping in Shibuya and Shinjuku and some of the areas around there.

So, coming back to the hotel, I felt a little bit exhausted.

And when we got to the hotel, I sat down for a moment and suddenly it was like this wave just hit me.

And all of a sudden, I started having a fever.

I started sweating a little bit and started getting a headache and just not feeling really good.

And then boom, it hit me like a semi-truck.

I had to go to the bathroom, and it was a nightmare in the bathroom.

I just got hit with the worst, I don’t know what it was, food poisoning or maybe norovirus or something, but I was suddenly so, so sick.

And we have this expression in English called, maybe you can guess what the meaning is.

It’s to come out at both ends.

So, if you’re sick and you’re throwing up and it’s coming out one end of your mouth, and if you’re sick and you have diarrhea and it’s coming out the other end, well, that’s the expression that we use to come out at both ends.

And man, was it coming out at both ends.

I was so, so sick.

Very suddenly, it just sort of hit me.

And I stayed sick for the next several days until we had to go back to Seoul, in fact.

So, we were planning to stay in Tokyo for another three days before coming back to Seoul.

And that whole time I was just in the hotel, being really sick, like running to the bathroom almost, at first it was every 15 minutes or so, and then little bit later towards when I left, it was like maybe every hour or so, but yeah, it was terrible.

I’ve never had an experience like this.

I’ve never had food poisoning before or a virus before.

And I was trying to figure out like, what was it that I ate or what happened?

How did I get so sick so quickly?

And it was really weird because my wife and I had exactly the same food and she was fine.

And I thought, hmm, if it was a virus then a virus would be infectious and probably, she’d get it too, but she was fine the whole time.

So, I don’t know, I don’t know what happened, but it was a terrible experience.

And of course, I didn’t wanna spoil my wife’s vacation.

So, I told her, you know, you can go out and explore Tokyo and do the things that you wanna do.

And so, she did that.

So that was great.

Actually, she had a wonderful time, and she would go out and then come back at the end of the day and show me all the photos that she took and all the things that she did, including doing some of the things that were on my list that I wanted to do.

So that was really unfortunate, but yeah, it was, I mean, it was lucky that our hotel room in Tokyo was so small.

It was only a couple of steps from the bed to the bathroom, but I was just going back and forth from the bed to the bathroom.

Yeah, every like 20 minutes or so.

And I instructed my wife to go get me some supplies from the pharmacy and the convenience store.

So, she picked me up some medicine and picked me up some Pocari Sweat, a lot of it, because I was worried about becoming dehydrated.

So, I was drinking a lot of Pocari Sweat and fluids, but I couldn’t keep anything down.

Any food that I’d consume, or even the Pocari Sweat and water that I would drink would just come right back up again and out again.

So, a terrible experience.

In fact, that first day when I was really sick, I couldn’t do anything.

I had a bad headache.

I couldn’t watch TV.

I couldn’t watch Netflix on my phone.

I could just sort of lie in bed and listen to podcasts.

I couldn’t do anything visual.

I couldn’t read books, anything like that.

And slowly it did start to become better, but still by the time we had to check out of our hotel and go back to Seoul, I was really worried.

I was like, oh, do we have to extend our trip?

I don’t know if I can make it on the subway.

I don’t know if I can make it on the train to the airport.

Like, what am I gonna have to do if I have to go to the bathroom and I’m stuck on the subway?

And my wife was joking that she was gonna go buy me some diapers.

It was that bad, guys.

It was really, really bad.

In retrospect, I probably should have gone to the hospital.

But thankfully, just the night before, we had to wake up and check out of our hotel to get the airplane.

I was researching about the best medicine that you could take for this situation in Japan and trying to find what it was called.

And I found a medicine called, it’s got a really funny name.

And I don’t know how the Japanese pronounce it, but on the box, it was written in English, Stopper, Stopper.

And so, this Stopper medicine is supposed to stop any throwing up from happening, stop any diarrhea from happening.

And so, I instructed my wife, you must go to the drug store and get me some Stopper.

All of the reviews that I had read online said, this was THE medicine that you need to take.

And so, she got me the Stopper and thankfully it worked.

It stopped everything.

And so, I was able to take the train, and take the subway, and take the airplane back to Seoul and get home.

So yeah, that last part of the trip was really a bust.

I didn’t do anything for the final three days in Tokyo except run between my bed and the bathroom.

So that was really a shame and kind of unfortunate that the trip had to end with that sour note, ended on a sour note.

It wasn’t a pleasant way to end the trip.

I am kind of glad that it happened in Tokyo because it’s easy for me to visit Tokyo.

It’s only a couple of hours flight away and it’s not really expensive to visit there, at least compared to Hawaii.

So, the Hawaii portion of the trip was amazing.

And if I had been sick like that in Hawaii, then it would have been really a waste of time and money.

Of course, nobody wants to be sick on holiday, but if it had to happen anywhere, I guess I am kind of thankful that it happened in Tokyo because it’s easy for me to visit.

And my wife had an amazing time.

She was, thankfully also, she does well on her own.

So, she wasn’t upset that she couldn’t travel with me or not.

She’s pretty independent and does well on her own.

So, it was fine for her to spend a couple of days in Tokyo, hanging out by herself and just wandering around by herself.

But she had a great time.

So, we’ll definitely be back.

And next time, I hope that I will be fully healthy.

When we did come back to Seoul, I was still quite sick for another three or four days.

Like I felt like I was really out for like a week where I was useless for a week.

I couldn’t do anything.

So, I don’t know what it was exactly, but it hit me like a ton of bricks.

It was just an intense sickness.

And I lost weight.

Even if I look at some photos that I took of myself, I look really gaunt and gaunt means to look quite skinny.

So, my face looked really skinny.

And yeah, this was the lead up to my marathon as well.

I ran the Seoul marathon in mid-March.

I think it was March 16th, we ran it.

And this was like right at the start of March, end of February where I was going through this.

So, it was pretty much the worst timing imaginable to get sick while on vacation and while kind of prepping for a marathon.

But anyways, I survived in the end.

I didn’t die.

I’m here in full health.

I was able to finish the marathon even.

And thanks, by the way, to everyone who’s been asking me about the marathon.

I got a lot of DMs and comments on social media to either cheer me on or to ask me about how the experience went.

And so, I think I’ll talk about that next week.

So, I’ll do a Seoul Marathon recap for next week’s bonus episode.

But for this week’s episode, I think this is a good place to stop.

So, congratulations.

If you made it all the way to the end, thank you for listening my travel story about the best of times and worst of times in Japan.

And for this week’s completion code, why don’t we go with the idiomatic expression: “To hit me like a ton of bricks.” I told you that while I was in Tokyo, I got super sick, super suddenly, and that sickness hit me like a ton of bricks.

And that just means that something impacted you really, really intensely and suddenly, and when you weren’t expecting it.

And so that’s what happened to me.

That sickness hit me like a ton of bricks.

So, for the completion code, please leave a comment either on our YouTube page or our Discord community or our Instagram and just make an example sentence with that expression.

Something hit me or hit you or hit him or her, we can change the pronoun, hit someone like a ton of bricks.

And by leaving that example sentence that will signal to me and our entire Culips community made it all the way to the end of this episode.

All right, everyone.

So please take care.

Don’t be sick like I was.

It’s terrible.

I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.

So, stay healthy and happy.

Have a great week of English studying up ahead, and I’ll catch you in the next Culips episode.

Until then, bye-bye.