WTF?? I ... Miss Japan?? 🤯

Delivered to us with a bag of presents. 

Here is a link to 78 Japan pictures in a Google Photos album.
Believe me, it was amazingly hard for me and Anne to take 1000+ already-vetted pictures (by both of us) and choose only 78. The notes / info / lower left section of each should tell you a little about each photo.

Our story updated:

• Up to 2025, I never wanted to go to Japan.
• Before the trip, I worried about going to Japan.
• Multiple times on the trip, I regretted being in Japan.
• The longer I’ve been back in the U.S., the more I miss Japan. 
• At night, I literally dream about Japan.
• Now I want to go back to Japan.
• I am actively trying to figure out how to get back to Japan.**

This is utterly shocking to me. 

When I wrote the very first draft of my Japan trip report (pdf) a day after returning, I ended with, “I am glad we went. I won’t go back.” Anne convinced me to cut the last sentence (and change a fair amount of the write-up, tbh). 

A week after I finished that post, my sister asked Anne, “Would you go back?” Anne said, “Well, not right now.” 

When I heard that, I thought, “What are you talking about?” 

But the more I thought about it….

🤯

Two things are at work:

1. In my published write-up of our March-April 2026 trip, I mentioned that upon getting home, Tucson “felt sullen, aggressive, and angry.” This sense has persisted, adding in “trashy” (in multiple senses of the word). The huge pickups riding right on my bumper, the prideful ignorance, the loud rednecks, the louder music, the loudest engines.
   Japan was often an assault on my senses; the U.S. feels like an assault on my soul.
   (Also, it was far easier to avoid and not think about the news in Japan.)
   
   
2. Upon further reflection, I realized the lessons I took from this trip are all entirely actionable.
   If, eighteen months ago, I had known everything I know now, I would have planned a different trip. I would have mentally approached it differently. I could have the trip Anne experienced: “Incredible, magical, wonderful.”
   Not that I should have experienced my first trip differently. Just that, with the knowledge I could only learn by experiencing, I would have had a different experience. I could fully have that magical experience (which I did have a lot on this 2026 trip) if we went back.

**I’ve been trying to figure out how to go back to New Zealand even longer. But that will have to wait until Anne visits Ireland – her homeland and the country of her dual citizenship – as well as my spiritual home, Scotland. (For Scotch, not for the weather!  ;-)