Originally written December 2018
It’s our last day in Japan, and we couldn’t possibly leave without seeing the famous Mt Fuji.
We didn’t have enough time to see it up close, so we settled for viewing it from the observatory at the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building.
And I certainly wasn’t complaining.
Aside from Mt Fuji in the distance, we had an amazing view over Tokyo itself.
What a city. 
We came to Japan with two things in mind:
To see snow.
And to learn to ski.
During our first couple of days, both seemed increasingly unlikely.
Everybody kept telling us:
“It’s a warm winter this year.”
Snow wasn’t expected for another two weeks.
Our accommodation at the ski resort was cancelled.
My original skiing lesson was cancelled.
Even one of our Nagano tours was cancelled because of the unusually warm winter.
But somehow, things worked out.
Miracles happened.
And I managed to tick both things off my bucket list.
But the best thing that happened wasn’t actually either of those.
We fell in love with Japan.
With the country.
With the food.
With the people.
And somewhere along the way, we even made new friends.
We will definitely come back.
I arrived in Japan armed with about five Japanese words, a smile and a sense of adventure.
And perhaps that was just as well, because things certainly didn’t go smoothly. 
I lost my reading glasses on our first day.
Graeme’s glasses turned so dark outdoors that he could barely see properly.
Then the battery in his hearing aid went flat.
So between the two of us, we were wandering around Japan half blind, with Graeme also half deaf.
Excellent travelling team.
Then we left my iPad on a bus on the way to Nagano.
We missed our Disneyland tour.
Our ski-resort accommodation was cancelled.
My ski lesson was cancelled.
And our Nagano tour was cancelled because there wasn’t enough snow.
Looking back at the list, perhaps the trip should have been a disaster.
Instead, most of those things somehow worked in our favour.
Organising some activities ourselves actually saved us money.
Getting lost repeatedly forced us to learn how Japan’s transport system worked.
And I became much better at communicating with people despite hardly speaking Japanese.
I used my five Japanese words.
Sign language.
Translator apps that were almost accurate.
A smile.
And sometimes, simply listening with my heart.
Somehow, we managed.
By the end of the trip, we were even getting quite good at the trains.
Well…
compared with Day 1.
Stories Along the Way 