Recently, Can & Ran & I reunited across three different continents for a whirlwind adventure in Japan. We spent a week riding the bullet train between five different cities: Tokyo, Osaka, Nara, Kyoto, Hakone, and Tokyo again!
We took the N700 from city to city. I can appreciate the punctuality of the shinkansen, even though once we were literally sprinting through the station (with luggage) to make our train. Usually I was pretty exhausted and promptly fell asleep during the train ride. But when I was awake, it was beautiful. Japan is full of lush forests and mountains.
And I got to try the ekiben! Ekiben stands for “eki” (train station) and “bento” (boxed lunch). The shop was full of people and so many different bentos, but I carefully pored over the rows in search of the perfect ekiben. In the end, I found a double-decker bento that seemed to be one of the more popular ones because there was barely any left. And it was so good! There was so much variety in one bento.
Japan is beautiful – beautiful shrines, forest, cities. We definitely didn’t have enough time in each city, but I'm glad we got to sample it all.
