I felt very much like Samwise Gamgee a few weeks ago. It had been around 6 hours into the 14 hour flight when I noticed the little digital plane icon drifting, bit by bit, to the very edge of North America.

“One more step,” Sam says to Frodo, “and I’ll have gone as far as I ever have out of the Shire.” Frodo gives him a weary laugh, and they move on. But that moment has always stuck with me from Fellowship of the Ring; a pause to consider just how far you’ve come. A pause to realize how much further you have before you.

This, more than anything, was how I felt on that plane ride across North America, above the Pacific Ocean, and finally landing at Haneda Airport in Tokyo, Japan.

Upon arriving, the country of Japan has a vested interest in getting you to where you need to be as quickly and efficiently as possible, and they have numerous, well-paid, energetic employees to help you do so. From the plane to our cab, it took maybe a half hour? As nutty as the airport felt, it never felt like no one knew what was going on. One of many visitors proceeding through customs and immigration, it wasn’t long before Cosette and I met our driver, a sweet dude named Yoko, and began to adjust to the humidity of downtown Tokyo, right on the ocean.

Our first destination was actually two days at Tokyo Disneyland and Disney Sea. Staying at the Toy Story Hotel, we chuckled at the TV (styled after a giant Etch-A-Sketch), practiced our rudimentary Japanese phrases (Arigato gozaimasu would be said another 4,000 times by us for the next 2 weeks), and began enjoying the delight of their on-site konbini (replete with delicious snacks and bites galore!).

The whole time, jet-lagged and exhausted as we were, my wife and I would every so often look at the other and go, “hey, remember how we’re in Japan?” That’s how surreal it felt, to finally be in a country we’d been planning on visiting for almost two years. And we were there! Our time was only getting started, and in a lot of ways, I was grateful we started at Disney. Having gone to a bunch with my wife, the energy, the friendliness, there was a lot of familiarity, even halfway across the world. And in a way, it made it a little easier to adjust to everything: the time, the heat, etc.

The parks were a real joy, and as we began to realize, just were a cut above anything in America: wider streets, more efficient lines, more staff, reasonable prices, and more. Our two days there flew by, with only a slight dip on day two; the heat (so brutal as to need a new word invented by the Japanese weather agency to say JUST how bad it was) really got to me, but thank god for a Minnie Mouse raspberry-peach pop, I survived.

From there, we grabbed a cab to the heart of downtown Tokyo, and the next few days would be us on our own, having adventures and soaking in the history, the electricity, the food, the temples, and sheer magnitude of Tokyo itself! AND, of course, the Ghibli Museum <3