Hello there,
It’s been almost a year since my last post. Time really does fly.
Jaron and I were spending time in Japan and something came up that made me want to write this.
I had found this video on social media about a pork tonkatsu place. This video featured a restaurant that served extra-thick tonkatsu (with at least three c’s). The restaurant is owned by a couple of former sumo wrestlers. The former wrestlers said they couldn’t find a katsu place that would have servings big enough to keep them full. So after retirement from wrestling, they opened one that would satisfy that need. When I saw the video, I just thought that looked really good, I needed to try that. We didn’t understand what we were getting ourselves into. I didn’t know this place had gone viral and many tourists such as ourselves seek out this place while in Japan. We had come fifteen minutes before opening because we were in the area and hungry. Even though we got there before open hour, there was already a line of about thirty people. We stood in line, thinking that it shouldn’t take that long. Once the restaurant opened, the first eight customers got seatings. We kept telling ourselves that it couldn’t take that long. About forty-five minutes had gone by and the first wave of customers were finishing up their dinner. We kept debating whether or not to give up for another thirty minutes. My thoughts include: “well this is a once in a lifetime chance to try something like this”, “the instagram post looked really good, I want to try it”, “we are already here, let’s just try it”. It took a total of two and a half hours when we finally got to sit down and order our food. I can’t really tell you honestly if the food was actually good or we were just really hungry, but I can tell you that we could’ve eaten at the other dozen katsu restaurants around the same area and would’ve been just as satisfied.
Don’t get me wrong. Do what makes you happy. But that was not for me. I wanted to write this to warn anyone that might feel worried that if they don’t try something they see online, they might feel missed out. I’ve learned my lesson. And you know the sad part? We found out this place has opened a pop up shop in a some random mall we were walking around. I’ve found it more fun to just walk around and if anything sparks my interest then take a pit stop.
My favorite way to travel is before I go visit a place, I will do research to get to know the country or city. Then I will look up the popular tourist destinations in that place, if a destination sparks my interest, I will make a note of it. Making notes meaning I would google tag it. Once we get to the country or city, we take a good day to just walk around. That’s it, just walk around for a whole day, no destinations. Then on the second or even third day, we will start walking towards the places I’ve tagged. One of my interests is to read up the history of the places we plan on visiting. I’m definitely not a history buff and will not be able to recite anything to anyone, but I would connect to a place better by knowing its origin.
My final hope is for you to find your own pace of travel because traveling to a new place is stressful enough, you don’t add more stress that’s not needed.
Taken in Kanagawa, Japan 2023.
