Japan

The plan was simple: fly Boston to Tokyo, spend a week exploring Japan. The reality was anything but.

My flight got diverted to Hong Kong. I sat on the plane at Tokyo’s airport for 90 minutes with the door open and the jet bridge connected — they let a new crew board, but they wouldn’t let me off. When we finally landed in Hong Kong, I watched from Gate 3 as my connecting flight to Tokyo pushed back from Gate 2. The only 24-hour food option at HKG was McDonald’s, and it was the only place that wouldn’t accept my airline meal vouchers.

Twenty-one hours after leaving Boston, I was in a hotel room in Hong Kong wondering how everything had gone so sideways. But I negotiated my way into a business class upgrade for the rebooking, and two days later I was riding the Shinkansen from Tokyo to Kyoto with a window seat and a much better attitude.

Kyoto was stunning but freezing — just as cold as Boston. I layered a light hoodie under a heavy hoodie and shot everything on both my iPhone and my Fuji camera. The temples, the food, the quiet backstreets of Gion at dusk. Then on to Osaka and Nara, where the deer were exactly as bold as advertised.

It was one of those trips where the disaster at the beginning made everything that came after feel like a gift.