Travel Blog #11 Part 1

By Trevor Weaver • May 17, 2026

To that end, my recent changes include: leaving Australia after 5 incredible months, relocating to Japan, where it turns out they don’t speak English, and starting a trip with friends. A 3 week respite from solo travel! How exciting! It was also a bit daunting, as I had become accustomed to traveling on my own, making my own plans and itineraries. I’ll probably write more about this another day, but the best parts of solo travel are that you can do whatever you want. Wake up when you want, hike whichever trails you want, eat however much tuna and beans you want. Nobody gets upset at you when you take the wrong turn for the third time in one day or that you didn’t get any accommodation so you’re sleeping in your car again. You can get upset at yourself, but what’s new, am I right?! I digress. Change is on the horizon. I was pretty excited to have travel companions to get a break from all the planning and getting myself lost. Matt ended up doing the bulk of the logistical planning, booking hotel rooms and excursions and the like. Goodonya, Matt.

It turns out, traveling with friends is really great. Who would have thought? (Sometimes we travel across the world to answer the questions we already knew the answer to, but we don’t accept the answer. It’s like taking a multiple choice test: if you aren’t sure on an answer, it’s often best to go with your gut choice, the first answer that feels right. Once you start questioning and overthinking whether that answer is correct, you’re neck-deep in the weeds of confusion. Then you must clear a path out of the weeds and find your way back to the original answer. The answer didn’t change, but the process of questioning and testing hypothesis gives the answer a newfound clarity. “Of course! It’s obvious!” You find yourself thinking, wondering why you couldn’t have just stuck with the original answer all along. Then you remind yourself that the journey is more important than the destination, that you’ve had so many experiences and adventures along the way that have ingrained in you without a shadow of a doubt that the original answer was in fact correct. I don’t know why it can be hard for us to see the truth that lies right in front of us, why we can’t see the forest through the trees. My guess is that the individual trees themselves are unique and interesting in and of themselves and it’s easy to lose ourself in them, forgetting that they are part of the greater whole that is the forest. To me, one of the secrets to happiness (something I struggle with) is learning to balance seeing the forest and seeing the trees at the same time. To climb out of the tree metaphor, when we can appreciate the life directly in front of us - the minutiae of daily life - while simultaneously appreciating the bigger picture of our life - where we live, how we got here - we can find contentment. It’s about balancing both sides, not getting overwhelmed by one or the other. If you focus only on the immediacy around you, you forget where you are. And if you only see the big picture, you stop appreciating the immediacy around you and lose track of the little joys in life. For more on this topic, you should read The Alchemist by Paulo Cuelho. It is about this and much more and conveys it far more poignantly than I can.

Konbini - コンビニ - convenience store. 7-Eleven, Lawsons, Family Mart. Imagine an American gas station or convenience store, but on every street corner, filled with cheap and delicious food, snacks, drinks, pastries. No offense to Town Pump, but this is just better. During our trip, we had breakfast (and many a snack) at one of these every day, barring the couple days in Hakone where our ryokan had a buffet breakfast. I typically got a fruit smoothie, coffee, and a combination of onigiri, egg sandwich, and pastry that had red bean paste. All for around $6 USD.

Red bean paste - anko - you know the saying: you can take the boy away from canned bean dinners, but you can’t take the boy away from beans entirely. Something like that. Japan has a lot of amazing inventions and customs, such as bidets, separate rooms for the toilet and bath/shower in apartments, Toyota, Pokemon, the list goes on. My favorite is sweet bean paste. I actually know basically nothing about what bean paste is, except that it’s made from adzuki and can be smooth or chunky, not unlike peanut butter. And that it’s amazing. It’s typically found in sweet treats, or wagashi. I think the most popular delivery method is in daifuku, which is mochi with bean paste filling. But you can find it in danish, bread, buns, pancakes, crepes, etc. Feel free to assume that in the following stories, there's some form of bean paste being consumed all the while. The bean quest is underway.

The adventure did not have an auspicious start. Matt and Cole had flight delays and I took a wrong train from the airport, so by the time we arrived at our hotel, we had missed our first event, a jazz show at the Pit Inn. Dang nabbit! But as the sagacious Andy Dwyer of Parks and Recreation fame says, “the show must go wrong!” We made it safely to our hotel, together, and that’s what matters. We had Korean food for dinner and Cole and Matt got to have their first experience ordering food in Japanese. This country is full of gracious and patient people that put up with our incompetent yet earnest attempts at communication. I’ll probably post a blog just about the food because it’s amazing and there’s just too much to discuss for this post.

The Museum was quite wonderful. Japan has a long and storied history that is quite interesting and full of war. Poetry, art, religion, and tea as well, but wow there was a lot of fighting. With a history of fighting comes an impressive array of katanas and armor, so the 10 year boy in me is not complaining. The 29 year old part of me really enjoyed all the art and ancient pottery artifacts just as much. Nearly. The highlight of the museum was the garden. A proper Japanese garden with tremendous trees, blooming blossoms, and serene streams. You’d be hard pressed to find a more peaceful space than a traditional Japanese garden. Cue the artsy fartsy photos! We also made a friend, Takatora, at the museum, who gave us some great tips for Kyoto and taught us how to say “beautiful!” in Japanese: Utsukushii (美しい). A phrase we found most useful.

After the museum we were off to Ueno Park for more wonderful trees and, to our great delight, street food and entertainment! We had the most fantastic gyoza and watched a girl perform J-Pop to an enthusiastic crowd. We ambled through the park with the crowds, everyone in high spirits, celebrating the cherry blossoms and sunny warmth. We also ate a fair bit of mochi as my bean quest has me trying every sweet thing, just in case it has beans in it. None of them did, but they were delicious regardless.

We had planned on meeting with my dear friend Gaku, whom I met in Melbourne a month prior, before the concert we were attending in the evening. It was SO nice to see Gaku again. He’s really great. So kind, pleasant to be around, patient, and accommodating. And a great tour guide! He took us to see the famous stairs from the final scene of Your Name, my favorite anime movie. If you haven’t seen it, you should check it out. There was a shrine next to the stairs and Gaku also showed me proper shrine etiquette. He then took us to a really cool park, then to a downright scrumptious Japanese curry restaurant. All the while, we walked and chatted about Japan and America, pestering Gaku with questions about his life, how to say things in Japanese, which konbini has the best fried chicken. It was a marvelous time. We walked so many steps. Gaku, the gracious tour guide he is, delivered us to Blue Note Place for our jazz show. Thanks again, Gaku!

We saw GKO at Blue Note Place. He’s a Chinese-American pianist that loves Japan. He was quirky and funny, and great pianist to boot. He played one of my favorite pieces of all time, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, written by Ryuichi Sakamoto. It’s a hugely popular song here and the whole crowd was mesmerized. It’s a sort of alchemy, capturing an audience’s full attention. It’s one of my favorite things about music, both as a performer and listener, when every single person in the room is held captive by a piece of music, encapsulated in the magic of the moment. You enter an ethereal space where time no longer holds sway. When it ends, there is a collective, joyous release from all, as if everyone was holding their breaths. Magic.

The tour was fun and surprisingly extensive. It covered every aspect of the Harry Potter films, from set creation to sound effects. They had model sets from all the movies to walk through. The Forbidden Forest had a massive animatronic Aragog that was just as scary in real life. The butter beer wasn’t half bad either. It’s mind-blowing to experience the fandom of Harry Potter. It made me quite emotional, actually. Perhaps because my lifestyle of late has been somewhat solitary and lacking in community, perhaps because our world is increasingly socially fragmented; it was moving to see something bring people together with so much joy. Fiction and fantasy have such great power to connect us to each other. Real life magic, no spells necessary.

Having fulfilled our daily quota of cherry blossoms (is that even possible?), we made our way to the culinary peak of our trip, maybe my whole life? But before we got there, we stopped in a bar called Mr. Goodbar, to rest our weary legs and enjoy a frothy brew. We had the best time, chatting with the bartenders. It’s a hilarious experience, talking with very limited Japanese to people who know little or no English, using Google Translate as a mediator. It’s really fun, because you can communicate quite a lot with very limited vocabulary and hand gestures, but it’s also frustrating when you find out one of the bartenders is an accordion player and you can’t ask any of the enthusiastic questions you would normally ask, such as “Have you ever heard of the Danish folk band Dreamers’ Circus? They have an amazing accordion player! Is the accordion popular in Japan?Will you marry me?” Google Translate is good, but not that good. Surprisingly, the accordion-playing bartender, Hibiki, had an accordion with her and let me play it! I’m actually a huge fan of the accordion, but unfortunately that fandom does not correlate with skill. Yet! After I made a fool of myself, Hibiki played us a brief but beautiful song. It’s safe to say my eyes were heart-shaped accordions. Still, I decided proposing through Google Translate was not ideal, so we said our heartfelt arigato gozaimasu’s and headed to dinner.

Matt had booked us a Kaiseki dinner where each of the 6 courses included Kobe beef. If you don’t know, Kobe beef = very good beef (clearly I’m very knowledgable on the subject). I honestly didn’t really know what I was eating most of the time. I could read the words on our menu (it was in English) but the words didn’t equate with what my eyes told my brain they were seeing. It’s entirely possible I spent too much time eating tuna and beans in Tasmania and forgot what proper food is. Then there was the steak. Oh, what an experience. I don’t really have words to describe it adequately, except that it was the best steak I’ve ever had without a doubt. Wow. Meat magic, I swear it.

My journal entry for this day starts with the following: “So. Many. Wonderful. Trees.” Shocking, I know. However, this is not just hyperbole from my woody obsession. These wonderful trees were found in Meiji-Jingu and Shinjuku Goen National Garden. We got an early start as these are highly touristed areas (the nerve of some people!) and we wanted to enjoy the morning serenity while we could. Such majestic and shapely camphor trees! And the best cherry blossoms yet, clouds of pink and white and green. Over the course of this trip, we’ve encountered a recurring theme: whenever there is a picturesque, contemplative scene in a garden or shrine or temple, there will be, without fail, someone using a 2-stroke engine nearby. Usually a leaf blower. It’s honestly a bit jarring, as 2-stroke engines are not what I would describe as “soothing.” It is pretty entertaining though. Why they don’t use electric batteries in such a technologically advance culture is beyond me. Meiji-jingu and Shinjuku Goen National Garden were both so wonderful, no amount of internal combustion could ruin our bliss. Exhausted from so much beauty, we took a thoroughly enjoyable nap under a cherry tree, yet another experience of magic.

Later, we went to Shibuya Sky to watch the sunset over Tokyo. A note on this city: Tokyo is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts to Tokyo. Anyway. Shibuya Sky is an observation tower offering 360 degrees views over the city in all its concrete glory. If you’re lucky, the sky is clear enough to see Mt. Fuji in the distance. It would seem luck was on our side.

After having our minds blown by the grandeur of Tokyo and Mt. Fuji at sunset, we made our way through Shibuya Scramble just for the heck of it. Utter chaos, general ridiculousness, and obnoxious influencers abound. We wandered around the shopping centers, stopping in the Pokemon and Nintendo stores of course, enjoying the sheer volume of people moving around. My experience of Tokyo is that it is surprisingly quiet and calm much of the time. Shibuya is the exception. Massive crowds, neon lights, bars, restaurants, and stores everywhere you turn. It’s a beautiful, colorful circus. I couldn’t wait to get back to our quiet hotel. But first, we went to a rooftop bar to enjoy the city sights a bit more. Being Montana boys, the novelty of nocturnal city lights does not quickly lose its luster.

Our final day in Tokyo. We were knackered. We had seen many sights, eaten so much good food, and seriously pounded the Tokyo pavement. We hit 40,000 the previous day, not a bad haul. We had a slow morning, left our hotel, and stowed our luggage in a coin locker. We wandered around Shinjuku some more, ate our first ramen - delicious! - before heading to our train to Hakone. One of the fun parts of Tokyo is the hidden side streets and alleys with bars and food stands that can only fit about 5 people each. They’re literally everywhere and they’re all good. You can probably spend a lifetime in Tokyo and find new places to eat every day. If you enjoy city exploration using serendipity as your guide, Tokyo will not disappoint.