Lack of traveling

The business trip to Osaka went well. I wasn’t able to see much besides the manufacturing facility and my hotel, but that was expected on such a short trip. Hopefully next time I’ll get to spend longer and see the cities of Osaka or Nara. If not, I’ll take a separate trip there at some point.

My amount of traveling has certainly decreased since I got here. Japan has a great public transportation network but it’s not cheap if you want to travel a long distance.

To take a 275  mile trip (about the distance from Charlotte to Atlanta) it costs about $126 one way and takes three hours. It might be something I do once a month, but any more often than that and it gets too expensive – especially just for a weekend.

Shorter trips are more reasonable; it takes me about $7.80 to get to Tokyo, one way. The city center is only 22 miles away from my apartment, but it takes about an hour by train. Honestly, there’s not a lot about Tokyo in winter that interests me – I’m more of an outdoor-type person. I’ve been a couple of times so far and seen some good sights, but I’d rather travel away from big cities (and the crowds). The amount of trees in Tokyo is about equal to how many Japanese words I know. An exaggeration, but you get the idea.

I’ll be going on a ski trip with some coworkers to Nagano next weekend – February 22nd and 23rd. We’re leaving at 6:30 am on Saturday morning and spending one night in a hotel. There’s about 12 of us going so it should be a good time. Hopefully the language barrier isn’t too big of an issue.

I’m looking forward to spring with the days getting (slightly) longer and things looking more vibrant. I hope to travel more whenever that happens.