Japan – Day 11

For my first full day back on Honshu, we set out for a quick convenience store breakfast and then headed to the train station. We were off to Nara Park. After sorting out which train and rushing around to make sure we caught it, it turned out we had a few minutes to read all of the stops on the electronic display, which led to us choosing to take a different express train with fewer stops. Still feeling burned from my poor train-taking track record, I was a little apprehensive, but it worked out perfectly. A lovely French family was seated nearby, and I struck up a conversation with them. My French is not great, but it’s always a delight to find out I can still remember enough to have a basic conversation. They were from a small suburb of Paris and had been visiting Japan for the last couple of weeks. We talked about how hot summers in Paris had become and commiserated that cities around the world kept setting new hottest-day records. We also talked about how getting by with French in…