{"id":386,"date":"2026-07-20T13:21:52","date_gmt":"2026-07-20T13:21:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.petermcunningham.com\/blog\/?p=386"},"modified":"2026-07-20T13:21:55","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T13:21:55","slug":"japan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.petermcunningham.com\/blog\/japan\/","title":{"rendered":"My Trip to Japan"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Hello! I recently went to Japan for two weeks with my wife! It was a lot of fun, and I took a lot of pictures. Instead of a social media post, I thought I’d post them here and write a little about what I did and saw. (Although, if you follow my Instagram stories at all, a lot of this will look familiar to you.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I flew out of JFK Airport in New York City on July 3, 2026. It was the longest flight of my life so far, something like 14-plus hours. It also left in the morning, so I couldn’t get much sleep on the plane. I watched a lot of “Law and Order,” which is great for shutting off your brain, and arrived at Haneda Airport in Tokyo with a great deal of fatigue. From there, I took a local train to Shinjuku Station, a pretty big city hub, which was very large and confusing. On the final leg of the very long journey, I got on one of Japan’s famed bullet trains to Osaka, a large and important city, where Jules was already staying. I’d never been to Japan before, and I have no command of the language whatsoever, so the prospect of navigating myself from Tokyo to Osaka had been making me pretty anxious. But I managed okay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\"Baggage
So very, very tired<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Real
My first Japanese vending machine haul, of which there would be many<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Shinjuku
Shinjuku Station<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"train
Waiting for the train to Osaka<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Jules had been in Japan for about a week at that point, for work. My vacation overlapped with her business trip by a few days, which allowed me to stay in her hotel rooms and save us a little money on lodging. We could also hang out when she was finished working for the day. She came to pick me up at the train station in Osaka, and we took a cab back to the hotel, which was incredibly nice. Here was the view from the room: <\/p>\n\n\n\n