A Trip to Japan (and meeting Matz)
Around March, my friend and I were casually chatting about travelling to new places, attending tech conferences, and expanding our understanding of the world. During our discussion I happened to recollect vaguely that there was a conference, namely, RubyKaigi, that was supposed to be happening in Okinawa, Japan in the coming months. We discussed the possibility of attending the conference briefly and went on with our days. In the days that followed, the idea started to take a real hold over us. Two more of my friends also thought it would be wonderful to travel to Japan. The idea of visiting an entirely new country, with its rich and charming culture was beyond exciting to say the least. The plan was afoot, and for the next few months, we banded together and huddled over many calls, planned, collated a nauseating amount of documents for getting our Visas, booked our flight/train (shinkansen) tickets, scoured the pages of AirBnb to book our stay, and exchanged countless number of Whatsapp messages to plan our itinerary.
Getting the Visa was not as simple as I’d hoped it would be. The Visa office only accepted my documents on my third try. The first time, my documents were rejected because of an address mismatch. The second time, the signature on my Visa application form and the signature on my passport were not identical, and they ridiculously did not even give me time to fill out another form. And by the third time, my frustration had settled at the valley of hopelessness. The day of travel was soon approaching, and for some reason I was messing up the Visa application. As they say, third time’s the charm. My application got through, and I got to picking out clothes for my travel.
I was travelling from Bangalore with my friend to Okinawa. The flight was, as usual in my other travels, unremarkably boring and tiring. But just as soon as the flight touched ground in Okinawa, an almost uncontrollable feeling of excitement took over of my senses. We deplaned, and were making our way to immigration. And on the way, we were in awe of the charming unfamiliarity of the place. We hadn’t even gotten out of the Airport yet!
We finised our immigration, picked our things from the baggage counter, and made our way to the Okinawa airport’s monorail (metro) station. On our way we stopped to get a portable Wifi box, and grabbed a couple of snacks and photos and were on our way to our Hotel. We got down at Asahibashi Station, which was close to our hotel, NaHaNa.
View from NaHaNa Hotel
Ticket from Airport to Asahibashi station
I breathed a sigh of safisfactory relief as I freshened up at the hotel room. We dropped by a 7-eleven (first of many) to get something to eat, and then made our way to downtown, Okinawa. The roads, the buildings, the people, and the walkways on our way to downtown all invited me further into the consciousness of the city. Everything we laid eyes on was new, and fresh. My thoughts whirred as novel sights flashed over my eyes. I saw countless souvenir stores, anime/manga stores, Izakayas, Ramen bars, and of course, Karaoke bars. There was too little time to get into everything that caught my attention. Eventually, after walking around the downtown area for a bit, we decided to head back to our hotel room to get some sleep.
The next day, I woke up a bit late, and missed the first talk of the conference. We walked all the way to the Naha Cultural Arts Theatre where the conference was being held, and picked up our badges. I attended a couple of talks I found interesting, and skipped some. Many of the talks was delivered in Japanese, we had to get a translation radio device, where a real-time translator was broadcasting live english translations of the talks. From years of watching Anime, it’s not surprising that I would take a liking to the Japanese language. I’d never really attempted to learn the langauge, but I knew a couple of cliche phrases. But listening to someone speak in Japanese about the programming language which helped me in my career was new. I decided to learn at least some basic phrases in my time in Japan before leaving.
The next few days of the conference, though it went as predictably as I’d expected it to, the charm of the city never showed any signs of relenting. I wished I’d gotten to stay in Okinawa for a few more days. In the final day of the conference, I got a chance to meet Matz. We spoke briefly about his time as a graduate student, and his motivations behind writing Ruby.
Conference Hall
Conference Venue
Meeting Matz with Sreeram
The next day, we had to catch a flight to Osaka in the afternoon. And since we were busy attending the conference, we did not have much time to look around the city except maybe the downtown area, and a Book-off store where we went hunting for old Nintendo games/consoles. So in the morning of the next day, we decided to stop by a traditional shrine that was close by to Naha. One of the many shrines we visited in our trip. It sort of became a thing during a trip, where each of us would decide to drop by a shrine and collect stamps. We arrived at the shire before it was even open. While waiting, we saw a tour bus pull up, and a bunch of tourists got out of the bus. We entered the premises of the shrine, and just outisde the actual shrine we respectfully witnessed the rituals being performed. I bought some souvenirs and then we made our way to the airport.
Shrine in Okinawa
We arrived at the Osaka airport, and had to take a JR Rail train to the city center, and then we had to walk to the main railway station where we had to catch a train which was headed to Kyoto. And from the Kyoto station we had to walk a couple of miles where we got something to eat and drink, and then finally took a cab to the AirBnb where we were to meet up with my two other friends. That day was long, tiring and full of many memories and conversations. I cherish that day for how it turned out to be.
Walk to Osaka's Railway station
JR Train Ticket in Osaka
Over the next one week or so, we had many adventures in Kyoto, and Tokyo. And walked many, many miles. Visted many shrines, collected stamps from Kyoto and Tokyo railway stations, Climbed Mount Inari (all the way to the top!), visited the Kyoto Bamboo forest, navigated the complex metro system of Tokyo, had amazing Ramen, cycled around Kawaguchiko lake near Mount Fuji and so much more. Just thinking about all the things that transpired in that week makes me want to visit Japan again. This entry would become too long to contain all the details of that week. And I’m weary from reminiscing about my time in Japan, perhaps I will save writing about the time I spent in Kyoto and Tokyo some other time.
Mount Inari Shrine
Pagoda Kyoto
Luffy model in Tokyo
Pagoda Kyoto
Mount Fuji from Kawaguchiko Lake