Fourteen Days in Japan
After living together for a few years in a small town not far from New York City, Yasuko and I had planned to get married on October 4th, 2008. So, in March of that year, we traveled to Japan for a couple of weeks to visit her parents and give them the opportunity to get to know me before we took such an important step together.
Visiting Japan had been a dream of mine, but I never would have imagined that my first trip there would be with my future wife!
During the fourteen days we were in Japan, we spent as much time as possible with her family, and they treated us to some of the best Japanese restaurants. We also took the opportunity to make a couple of getaways to visit some of the most beautiful places around Nagoya, her hometown.
This is the story of those exciting two weeks.
Fourteen Days in Japan · Sunday, March 16th, 2008
Day 1: Dinner with Family
We arrived in Nagoya in the late afternoon, quite exhausted after a 14-hour flight from New York to Tokyo and a connecting flight to Nagoya. Yasuko's parents welcomed us at the airport, and we all went together to the apartment we had rented. After dropping off our things, we all went out to dinner, together with Jutaro, Yasuko's brother, and his wife Rie.
Although I had already seen all of them many times on Skype, it was the very first time I met Yasuko's family in person. And for them, it was the first time they had seen Yasuko since she left Japan two years earlier, in the summer of 2006.
The dinner was simply amazing, especially for Yasuko and me. For her, it had been almost two years since her last meal in Japan. For me, it was my first opportunity to taste sashimi the way it is supposed to be. We also had some of the best tempura I had ever eaten.
We had had Japanese food before at various restaurants in New York, both on Long Island and in Manhattan, but from this first dinner it was already very clear, even to my untrained palate, that nothing in the US tasted even close to the way Japanese food tasted in Japan.
After dinner, we went to grab some sweets and a cup of coffee at the local Komeda. It was my very first time at a Komeda's, the largest coffee shop chain in the Tokai region. Of its 413 shops in Japan, 263 are in Aichi prefecture, so you absolutely can't miss them if you visit the city of Nagoya.
The interesting thing about the chain is that it stays true to the traditions of a coffee shop rather than a café, if you know what I mean. When you enter, there is an older, deeper atmosphere: the old-timers sitting and smoking, the coffee tickets, the pine wood decor, the magazine rack for those wanting to read in peace – all of it makes the place feel less like a café. There are fewer young groups and no high counter seating facing the window, and you are served at your table instead of standing and queuing up.