The time had come, and I got a ticket to ride, an expensive one that would allow me to go almost anywhere in Japan at 120-200 miles per hour, and in first class no less. The only real limitation was that I had only 14 days to use this golden ticket, and if I lost it there would be no way to replace it without paying again, which wasn’t going to happen. Now, going from an essentially leisurely existence filling my time going from one amazing ramen house to the next while enjoying the sprawling immensity of Tokyo, to having an unlimited ticket to ride anywhere in the country was a bit daunting.

I had honestly grown attached to the little area of Tokyo two blocks from Ueno Park where I was holed away inside a capsule hotel, surrounded by hard nosed Japanese businessmen whose conversational skills were a case study in minute facial fluctuations and nods of the head. Regardless, the time had come for me to leave my pod and explore the true gems of this ancient land beyond its millions of tons of concrete and plethora of distractions.