If you ask me to pin point the exact moment I fell in love with Japan..
It would be this.
A few years ago, I was sent to work in Tokyo for a few months.
At the time I was an engineer, and was stationed in the very west side of Tokyo, in a small suburb about an hour away from the main city center.
I would say I was in a one of the most local and far off places in Tokyo, as there were ZERO skyscrapers around that you would expect from a mega city like Tokyo.
It was your typical suburban family neighborhood.
After work, a few of my co-workers from the Japan team invited me for a Hanami at a local school yard park.
I had no idea what a Hanami was, I was told it was a picnic under the cherry blossoms.
We raided the local 711 convenience store, and got a stash of food and drinks...and went to the local park.
In the beginning I was quite puzzled at this.
How on Earth can this be fun?
I mean we were super far away from the "fun" side of downtown Tokyo, and we were merely going to a school yard park.
Furthermore, we just got convenience store food. How good can this be?
As we entered the playground area, it was dark and quiet.
What even surprised me, up ahead there was this giant concrete structure that was actually a children's slide!
We climbed up the structure and setup our picnic there.
We took out all of our items we bought from the convenience store and sat on top of the cold concrete to begin our Hanami.
Here's me from the view on top of the concrete slide:
Then the conversations suddenly just started flowing....
The sky was nice and clear.
The air was cool and crisp.
The beverages nice and cold.
Laughter ensued with my co-workers as the conversations flowed even more.
Everyone was having a good time just connecting.
And then I looked up, and this was what I saw:
And that was when I knew...
I had just fallen in love with Japan.
This kind of sums up how I think many people feel when they fall in love with Japan.
It's actually very hard to describe, because its so simple.
How a very simple thing like admiring the cherry blossoms around great friends in Japan can make things so enjoyable.
Nothing fancy...but amazing.
Did you have similar feelings too when you fell in love with Japan?
Quite fascinating right?
And that was how from that day forward, I knew that one day I would start something like Love Japan For Life.
And now we are here!
Cheers
Alec
Alex loved your story I fell in love with Japan in Okinawa a long time ago. I enjoy your page so very much.
Love this story. Love Japan. First fell in love when I got into the taxi in the airport. Clean white pretty doilies on the seat back. Driver wore clean white gloves. Doors popped open. I knew right then I had come from the Wild West into civilization.