Heading to Japan -- a lifetime bucket list trip

The flights have been booked. My wife and I are are still working on the hotel and in-country itinerary. We're headed on a two-week lifetime bucket-list trip to Japan.

My interest in Japan goes back to the fall of 1969, when my parents travelled there. I was only six years old and not invited on the trip. I stayed at home with Granny. She's my father's mother and a significant influence in my love of trains.

One of the souvenirs the parents brought back for me was a fold-out pamphlet for Japan National Railways' Shinkansen. I looked at that and at some point it fell apart from having been folded and unfolded. At that time, I didn't know much else about trains in Japan.

Well, I did know that Japan was a major source of brass locomotives imported into the U.S. (At least that's what I learned from the back pages of the model railroad magazines.)

Fast forward to December 2021. At that time, I was recovering from rotator repair surgery (left side). With nothing else to do I started watching "Midnight Diner" and discovered Japanese trains. I plunged down the rabbit hole, when I discovered a massive library of Japanese train videos on YouTube.

While it was pretty difficult to work on model railroad projects being confined to a recliner, it was not hard to buy Japanese model railroad trains on the internet. You know where this is going.

You can't buy the trains and not run them. A small shelf layout is planned. It will be based on the Takadanobaba station on the JR East and Seibu lines in Tokyo. This will be largely a display layout and a test bed for many new approaches to modeling.

In November 2022, I turned 60 years old and decided to commemorate this milestone by giving myself a trip to Japan. The in-country travel details are still being worked out. Tokyo will be a stop and Takadanobaba is on my list.

The day of departure is approaching. More details to come.

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