The Fast and the Furious - Tokyo Drift

Well, it's 5:15 AM Calgary time, Bronwyn and Fintan have just polished off some MacDonald's fries in the supercharged Shibuya district of Tokyo.

The journey over was a pretty long one. The flight was about 10:45, which honestly was pretty manageable given the 1:00 pm departure time from Calgary. Of course for those in first class (read Stacey and Bronwyn), the flight couldn't be long enough! I had a few expired upgrade certs that I thought I would take a shot at using, amazingly they worked! So the girls were given the treat of first class by the boys. The best part is, the agent didn't take the certificates from me, so maybe Fin and I will get the bump up on the way home!

The customs line when we arrived was possibly the longest line I have ever been a part of in my life. I am pretty sure when all was said and done we were in that line for over an hour and a half. After the the formality of customs (we weren't asked one question), we activated our train passes and departed for our 90 min train ride to Tokyo.

We arrived at the Shibuya Station around 6:15 local time on Sunday night. For those of you that have been to Times Square in NY, all I can say is Shibuya is like Times Square on steroids. Talk about visually stimulating. I was so amazed by all of the colour, people and lights that all I could muster was a weird giddy laughter.

In true guy form, I led the family the wrong way for about 15 mins (pulling our suitcases) before Stacey forced me to ask someone for directions. Astonishingly, the dude I asked pulled little pieces of paper with maps of the area drawn on them out of his pocket. It was a lot easier to find the hotel with a map and directions....

After we checked into the hotel, we had to force the kids to get off of the beds so we could go for a walk in our new hood. We weren't quite ready to dive into the local cuisine, so we split a couple of orders of fries from MacDonald's, then we hit the Starbucks for desert. How sad are we?

All in all the trip has started out brilliantly. We can't wait to start exploring the city tomorrow morning.

Shibuya at Night

Shibuya crossing at 8:00 on a Sunday night.

How sweet is this? A soccer field on top of a department store in Shibuya.

A restaurant displays replicas of its menu items in the store front - Plastic eel anyone?

We had heard of the legendary vending machines. They do catch your eye!

Having An Open Mind to Explore

And so it begins. Our journey to explore a new land, a land that until 4 months ago we had not even considered exploring.

When we made the decision to make Japan the destination for our annual spring break trip, I have to admit I questioned my judgement. Had I really given it enough thought before I pressed "confirm purchase" on Air Canada's website?

Over the weeks following our ticket purchase, I shared our destination decision with several people. To my delight I kept hearing consistent responses: "Oh Man, was there 10 years ago. Amazing country, best trip ever", "My brother lived there for 2 years, absolutely loved it", "We have been 3 times, we can't get enough"....and on and on it went. All of a sudden, I felt like we had stumbled on to something really good.

Over the past few months I have spent several hours researching the country and planning out our journey. Needless to say, we are ready!

During my research I came across the following Japanese proverb:

井の中の蛙大海を知らず (i no naka no kawazu taikai wo shirazu) - which literally translates to a frog in a well does not know of the great sea. In other words, some people stay in their hometown all of their lives, and never see what the world has to offer outside of their city walls.

On March 27th we will begin our journey to experience first hand all of the wonderful places that are hidden in and around such great cities as Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto and Hiroshima.

If you are interested, please follow us on The Frog in the Well blog. We will post stories and pictures as our adventure unfolds.