Ten days alone in Japan, one plate at a time

My first proper meal in Japan was eaten standing up, alone, in front of a vending machine that also happened to be the restaurant’s cashier. I fed it some yen, got a ticket, handed it to a cook through a curtain, and twelve minutes later I was slurping tonkotsu ramen next to six strangers who were all doing exactly the same thing in exactly the same silence. Nobody talked. Nobody needed to. I remember thinking: I could get used to this.

Why Japan, why alone

Japan had been sitting on my list for years, in that slightly dangerous way where a trip becomes so big in your head that you keep postponing it until it’s “the right moment.” At some point I stopped waiting for the right moment and just booked the flight — 17 to 27 October, ten days, Tokyo, Kyoto, and one day carved out for Osaka. Nobody else could make those dates work, and instead of seeing that as a problem, I saw it as the excuse I needed to finally travel properly alone.