Alternate titles:
Bouken De Wa Arimasen Deshita, Ne?
Bouken Deshou? Deshou?

The possible titles may or may not be grammatically correct; all of them mean something along the lines of "It was an adventure, ne?", with the ne character being rather imperfectly translatable except possibly as the expression "Eh?" or "Right?". Depending on how you write the characters and the context of the situation, the phrase could also hypothetically mean "That wasn't about maternal rights, right?" or "That was quite the autopsy, eh?". (The maternal rights one is only possible if you're willing to pronouncebouken slightly differently.)

However. None of that is really relevant to anything at all. (A phrase which could be accurately applied to most of my existence.) Hello again, it is a pleasure to be back among you all once again. I am, as the past tense conjugation of the title may have indicated, now back in the Western world. With that being said, I realize that I never really mentioned much about the content of my journey, so I will try to recount here the particulars of the trip for those of you who may be interested. (For those of you uninterested, may I recommend something significantly more interesting, such as comparison shopping for furniture polish.)
(As a side note, like all proper blocks of text which are exceptionally dull, this one comes with pictures for the viewing, should you be so inclined, though I've personally never been much one for travel photos.)
The overall flow of the trip was, for the sake of getting all the links over with at once, Kushiro to Hakodate to Sendai to Yokohama to Osaka to Himeji to Kyoto to Tokyo. I could probably remark on the trip and regale you with tales in a relatively chronological manner, but the pictures do that already, to some degree. In addition, it would probably be an exceptionally boring commentary. So, in lieu of such a summary, I will do what I usually do - make insipid insights about relatively bland events. (Whether or not this will be more or less uninteresting than a simple recounting of the journey is up to you.)

First off, the trains. Seeing as, with the exception of the very beginning and very end of my journey, all other long-distance travel was done via train, this is probably a good thing. There's something that feels terribly... civilized (for lack of a better word) about long train trips. Everything is calm and relaxed, if a little bumpy and loud on older trains, and it's a lovely way to see the scenery. (Admittedly, when they get within commuting distance of a major city, they transform in my mind to an arm of the local transit - transit being, either despite or due to my considerable time spent with it, one of the lower forms of vehicular travel.) And, of course, few trains epitomize this paradigm of travel like the Shinkansen. Sure, it's hardly exclusive to Japan - aside from the name, high-speed rail is all over Asia and Europe. Sure, you probably couldn't pay for the trip if you offered them your first-born child. Sure, it's still time spent sitting in a long metal tube getting from Point A to Point B. But it's a better way. With that being said, I only went on one Shinkansen, mainly due to the inhibitive cost, and noticed that most of the travelers were tired-looking middle-aged executives, again probably due to the price. The rest of the time was on local trains, which were far slower, less comfortable, and required more transfers... but I'd have to say that they were far more interesting from the standpoint of a passive cultural observer. ('Passive cultural observer' being a role I enjoy to a slightly excessive degree, and mainly involves people-watching.) One gets to see people when they're bored and trapped, and even though most of them behave in an uninterestingly similar manner (sit and stare ahead vacantly) one can still all aspects of the society. There is a thousand vignettes of any society one can get from their trains (or coach buses, presumably). In Japan one can see the common salaryman, tired and broken, his soul slowly being ground down by the steady realization that he's an anonymous and ultimately replaceable cog in the corporate machine. The office lady, on her way to work, frustrated at the lack of gender equality in her workplace - but hey, all her friends are either married or stuck with similarly menial jobs, so she endures. A girl of perhaps 17 gets on at a tiny backwater town stop, spends the entire hour and a half trip applying makeup, and gets off one stop from downtown Osaka. A kid, maybe 14, gets on at 1:42 on a Tuesday - it's not immediately apparent whether she's too cool for school or running away from bullying (an endemic problem in Japanese schools). She looks pale. Shortly thereafter, she vomits violently into a shopping bag, presumably carried for such an event. (Not everything is socially significant. Sometimes people are just sick.) In a nation that's as centred around the train system as Japan is, it's a great way to look at what people are like.
(With that being said, at the end of the day they're still people the same as anyone else. Just because the average worker runs long hours doesn't mean that they like working long hours. They might be used to working twelve-hour days, they might expect to work longer and harder, but they'll still be irate and tired and desperate for a break come closing time. Two of my bosses were workaholics; the other moved halfway across the island for the job, leaving behind his wife and child to work. It's not unusual in Japan for such things to happen, but they reacted much as anyone else would have - the workaholics were both hardened alcoholics, and the last one spent a lot of time missing his family. (He was also the only one of the three who was still happily married at the time, the other two having been divorced from her husband and separated from his wife respectively.)) As a side note, passing time on a train is also easy, with or without something to do. If you don't have a book or game console on you, you can always creepily peer over the shoulder of someone playing a DS (most of Japan has one, and when I was there, most of them were playing Dragon Quest IX on them), or engage in my preferred activity, Making Up Things About People. See that gent over there? The one with the old leather shoes? Yeah, him. What's he doing on the train? Why did he get on three stops ago, just on the outskirts of town? Why does(n't) he have luggage? Why is he so nervous-looking? Make up stories about people, the more ridiculously absurd the better. By all means, you could pick something pedestrian like "He's coming back from the outskirts because that's where his mistress is, he's nervous because he's new at this whole deceit business and he's not very good at it," but the bombast is what makes it interesting. I recommend trying it the next time you take public transit of any sort.

On a similar note, how many of you have done much travelling alone? As in really alone - no "I'll have a day all by myself and then head back to my aunt's place for a nice dinner," no "Let's split up and meet back later." Just you, some luggage, and a surprisingly large country filled with people. It's... Well, it's interesting. One certainly sees, does, and notices different things than one would do with other people. (Largest collection of nerds in the known world? Why yes, I think I will. Mysterious seafood remaining untouched at the conveyor-belt sushi place? May as well try it - if it kills me, I'll save myself the embarrasment of dying in front of a friend/relative.) One doesn't have to see things they don't want to, stay places that are higher or lower than one's typical accomodation standards, and generally can enjoy oneself without worrying about anyone else being unhappy due to the choices being boring/expensive/time-consuming. On the other hand, one is indeed alone, with the lack of companionship being anywhere from a non-issue to a complete deal-breaker, and there are significant benefits to going with someone. Some things are more fun with more people. Double rooms are both cheaper and easier to find. Someone might want to do something interesting that you would otherwise have missed. The right sort of friendly pressure can make you try some things you otherwise wouldn't (hopefully things like 'try the mystery seafood' or 'go see the life-sized Gundam even though it reflects poorly on your social station' as opposed to 'see what happens when you throw the pipe bomb into rush-hour traffic').
One thing I can't directly attest to but suspect nonetheless is that one meets more people when travelling alone. It seems like a group of people, even just a couple, is infinitely less approachable than a single individual. Obviously this isn't the sort of thing I've done comprehensive scientific testing on, but seeing as I'm less approachable than the undead, the fact that I managed to make numerous people's acquaintance and a small handful of friends during the trip is rather surprising. So I suppose if you're a more independent sort of person, or are really dedicated to getting a close look at wherever you're travelling, I'd offer a vote for going solo; if your desires run more towards community and having a bonding experience with others while seeing the sights and enjoying yourself, then it might be a shame to do anything but travel with at least one other person.

Overall, the trip was all in all quite in keeping with the location. Some things I was fascinated with, with others I was impressed, many confused me, a very few treated me as a second-class person, several shocked me in one way or another, and one or two I have seen and I cannot un-see despite my wishes. I shall no longer be surprised by the sight of young women dressed up as French maids to advertise stationary stores, or men dressed up as Mexican professional wrestlers to promote a political party, or men dressed up as French maids to advertise something I never got quite close enough to examine in detail. I will no longer be unfamiliar with the sensation of being a painfully visible minority, having someone approach me with the sole purpose of trying to be my friend, being treated abnormally well or poorly due to my race, being offered an umbrella by a complete stranger, being accosted by the authorities to see if my papers were in order, learning a new language the hard way, having people want to learn a language by speaking to me, or finding an eleven-storey building filled with people who all truly love their jobs. To sum it up, it was filled with the hyperbole of society that is characteristic of, if not unique to, Japan. And at the end of the day, all I can think to say about it is that I hope the place doesn't change too much until I can come again.

But now the travel is over. It's mostly good to be back, though there is still some lingering reverse culture shock, which feels really quite strange. Initial culture shock seems understandable - one goes somewhere new and different, unique experiences are had, new problems are overcome in novel ways, acclimatization happens. But feeling ill at ease after returning to a place you have been for many years seems odd, somehow. One doesn't really get that from a week or two of travel, but it was quite noticeable after my three months plus. I suppose it's nothing really strange - the same thing surely happens to people who move back in to live with their parents after an extended time away, or bachelor(ette)s who go back to single living after a divorce. Perhaps it's got something to do with the fact that you've changed but the old world hasn't - or, more depressingly, that the world has changed and you haven't. Maybe they both change, but in different ways so it becomes even harder to reconcile the two. In any case, it's something which occurs.

Andnowthatisalldonesoyoucanstopreadingbe causeI'vespentfartoolongmakingyoureadthisalread y. My apologies; I'm finally (slowly) starting to write again, getting working on a particular piece which is long overdue. Sorry for issuing forth this rather excessively long waste of your time. Despite imposing upon you altogether too much already, my curiosity requires that I ask the omnipresent random question - if you had a friend coming in from out of town and they wanted to know a good local restaurant, what would you recommend? What's the place like? (Assume that said friend likes all types of food equally.)

And that's it for one day. Take care, everyone, and Keep Deviating.

- Introcrat