What if I woke up in Japan tomorrow?

I’m feeling full of a cold and struggling for inspiration tonight, but there are only four more posts to go before I complete NaBloPoMo, so I must keep going! I think about Japan pretty much 24/7 – at work, at home, everywhere – but this month I feel like I’ve devoted even more time to my favourite place than ever before. I’ve been living and breathing Japan, which has led me also to miss it more than ever. So tonight I got to thinking… what would I do first if I woke up tomorrow and found I was in Japan?

Of course, what I would do would depend entirely on where I woke up, but I think one of my first actions would be to take the train to Nagoya (名古屋), my old home.

JR Central 700 Series Shinkansen on the Tōkaidō Shinkansen between Kakegawa Station and Shizuoka Station

(Image source)

Ideally, before I got on the train I would make a stop at Starbucks for a Matcha Frappuccino. I crave these all the time, and there’s nothing quite the same here in the UK.

Before arriving in Nagoya Station I would, of course, get in touch with my friends in Nagoya and let them know I was coming! Hopefully then I could meet someone for lunch – which would have to be hitsumabushi (櫃まぶし) (grilled eel on rice, a speciality of Nagoya).

For the rest of the day, whether I was alone or with friends, I would be quite happy just to spend time in Nagoya revisiting my favourite places. I’d have to head up to Oasis 21, the spaceship-shaped shopping centre in town…

And by the time it was dark I would definitely return to Nagoya Station to check out the Christmas illuminations (which are usually lit from early November until January).

Just imagine how wonderful it would be to wake up and find you had been magically transported to another place! Getting home would be a bit of a problem though… I might just have to stay. 😉