Tokyo Trip part 7

Tokyo was amazing. I can see why Americans like it so much. Japanese culture seems a lot more accessible than Chinese culture, from an American perspective, at least. I'm not saying Japan is like the United States. They are very different places in a million different ways. But from what little I have seen, I think it would be far easier to be an American adapting to Japan than to be an American adapting to China. I would love to know how Chinese people feel about adapting to life in Japan, or about Japanese people in China.

Going to another country with Ryan, Lily and Kevin was more than interesting. I have gone to a few countries with Ryan, so there were no surprises there, but this was my first trip with Lily & Kevin. We have all known each other for a few years, but we never really thought about taking a vacation together until now. We talked about it, but not seriously.

Staying together in a hotel would have been interesting. We have all lived together, more or less, but a hotel is different from an apartment. Unfortunately, I can't say anything about that experience since we stayed in an apartment on this trip. It was not someone's actual apartment, but one of those apartments that travelers can rent for short stays. There's a name for it, but it escapes me right now.

The great thing about staying in an apartment is that you have a lot more room. We had two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room and a small kitchen. We could have had the same amount of space in a large suit at one of the better hotels, but that would have been far more expensive. Tokyo is not the cheapest city in the world. The apartment we rented was beyond reasonable. I think they charged less because most people don't know about it, unlike a national hotel chain that everyone knows about.