IM SO SORRY GUYS. I am a fail. As soon as I got back from this trip, I had all intentions of finishing up the last 5 or so blog entries I had to do. But then I was jetlagged, and so comfortable being home, then I started doing other stuff since I was back...it snowballed and now I'm just sitting on hundreds of awesome photos I want to share real badly. I had so much fun the last few days in Japan trekking around Kyoto and Gifu in shrines and temples; I want to do both it and my Japanese friends justice :) The editing and collaging will take days and then I'll have to write everything down and catalogue it but I PROMISE THIS TIME that it will be done and I can wrap up this trip with a pretty little bow :) I will finish it at leasr before I leave for my second trip to Korea on March 5! (This one I'm paying for entirely by myself y'all, before you all jump up and stone me for getting to go back already haha.) Many of my friends have already expressed a desire to stow away in my luggage/punch me/steal my identity/etc...
0 Comments
Okay here's another long one! Sorry for the massive delay, I have no idea how I kept up with these so regularly in Korea but it's probably because I never let them build up on me like I did in Japan (since I had less time there and spent more running around -.-). Anyways! On to one of my more epic days in Tokyo, which included the famous GHIBLI MUSEUM!!! Which I've pretty much been dreaming of going to since I was a wee little Asian baby and saw my first Miyazaki film. And watched every single one ever made at least 20 times since then. No really. They are magical and extraordinarily addicting! If you do not watch them, I highly recommend them. (And secretly judge you for having never watched one...SERIOUSLY?!?!). I got new earrings in Harajuku the other day, which were a cute Alice in Wonderland throwback with the white rabbit and club symbol. And no Mom those are not real safety pins lol, they are earrings too. I met Julia for an early lunch at Kichijoji to go eat tsukemen, something I had wanted to try for ages. She took me to her favorite place, which was a small shop located near the subway. It was tiny but SUPER popular and famous apparently. It had been in all sorts of magazines and articles and there was this gigantic line snaking out from the front. People are seriously willing to wait for days to get in apparently lol. We arrived before it had even opened so we joined the line and waited a bit until we could go in and order with the coin machine :) OMG IT WAS SO EPIC. It's hard to believe because of all the fantastically delicious food I've had here in Japan, but this tsukemen may have just replaced all others as my new favorite Japanese food. Even over udon and salmon sashimi...WHICH MEANS ITS INTENSE. Like my friend Takara said, there's just no real words for describing how ridiculously delicious this food is; it just makes your stomach light up with fireworks and do the freaking samba up in there. Also ironic was that I ate this tsukemen on Thanksgiving Day, and this was probably the closest thing I could get in the Japanese food range to turkey and gravy :D I dipped my pork slices in the savoryomgdelicious broth/gravy (it was somewhere between, too thick for a broth but too thin for a gravy). After you eat all your noodles and have some broth/gravy left, you poor in some broth base from the metal containers pictured above and then sip it like a soup. THEN it is really a broth :) After our early lunch we headed to the place of my childhood dreams...THE GHIBLI MUSEUM!! It was everything I had expected it to be AND MORE. No seriously, I was practically having spasms I was so excited. Poor Julia had to deal with me hyperventilating as soon as we entered hahah. We got our tickets and cool ticket passes for our free short film screening. They all had different photo stills from Ponyo it looked like. Or at least mine was, I recognized the boy and girl. We couldn't figure out what Julia's was from lol, it was just like a foot and the bottom of a dress... The inside of the museum was just awesome in design and so whimsical and otherworld-looking. We weren't supposed to take pictures once inside but I mean, I couldn't resist. This is a once in a lifetime experience for me and something I've been anticipating for so long! I'm halfway across the world from my home and I wanted something more than a fleeting memory to take back with me about this wonderful place. So I formally apologize to the Ghibli Museum and staff for breaking their rules, but I have no regrets lol. Everytime I look at them I feel happy inside :D ![]() Top photos: The left are pages from his hand-drawn and colored stills from Kiki's Delivery Service and the right is a page from the giant booklets that composed the entire movie of Howl's Moving Castle. I read that entire one, Howl's is my absolute favorite next to Spirited Away. There are their dialogue lines written in on the right of each frame, along with how many seconds each frame is to be shown for and other scene specifications. - Bottom photos: Adorable door and wallpaper and the ceiling of the short film movie theater we sat in. It's styled like the big baby's room in Spirited Away!!! I was so excited hahah, it was like sitting in an actual scene from the movie. Just moving around throughout the levels of the museum (there were like four I think, plus you could walk out on a balcony and take another stairset up to the roof where there was more stuff!) was so much fun and unique. There were narrow birdcage-looking staircases that wound up for several floors, glass space-age looking elevators with Miyazaki movie accents, and mini child-sized archways to duck through like a jungle gym :) There was one floor entirely dedicated to Miyazaki's desks where he actually penned out the movies and painted in colors for sample stills. I was just like in shock, gaping open-mouthed at the messy overflowing desks and actual hand-drawn movie frames. It was too much lol. I REVERE Hayao Miyazaki and bow down to my favorite films of his, so this was like meeting an old friend and seeing my favorite characters being born, simultaenously. Like I mentioned, there was a spiraling staircase to take up to the top of the museum out in the open. There is lots of greenery and plants, in accordance with Miyazaki's great love of nature and focus on the environment. The design and architecture of the whole area was really quirky as well, with bright colors and unique building designs. On top there were statues of prominent Castle in the Sky figures that I fangirl-ed all over before composing myself for pictures haha. They were so real and HERE; it was like physically touching something that you only thought existed in your imagination. It was magical. I can't even imagine how mind-boggling this would have been for me if I was still a kid and couldn't comprehend how this was happening haha. We made a stop in the gift shop where I happily absorbed all the Miyazaki movie stuff all around me. I bought some embroidered hand cloths (Totoro and Kiki's), a Totoro keychain and pin, and some stickers and postcards with scenes from my favorite movies. We took a different way in so we didn't see Totoro in the ticket office until we exited the museum :) How awesome is he. I really liked the atmosphere the museum grounds gave off, almost like you were half in a dream and anything could happen at any time. In the above photo, its all solid, classical built, and bright on the left then slowly morphs into a more disorganized and mystical kind of environment on the right. We took a donut break at Mister Donut before heading to what is known as The Loft. It had a bunch of stores and a GIANT arcade underground. Dude. Japanese arcades KICK THE BUTTS of our American arcades. Our wimpy little things don't deserve to be called arcades. This was MASSIVE. Crane game machines twice as tall as me and just as wide, rows and rows of racing, shooting, singing, and dancing games, and a huge area set aside for extremely high-tech purikura booths, with music blasting and lights flashing everywhere. It was so awesome o.o My inner gaming nerd was screaming running around with fistfuls of change already. This was my first experience with purikura myself, but I had seen purikura pictures before. In America, they are usually tiny little grainy photos with weird graphics and stuff. Here in Japan, the machines are so ridiculously high-tech and fancy that it's essentially a modeling booth. There are lines on the floor for where to stand and a green screen behind you. You walk out of the booth to a separate area attached to the booth to draw, write, design, and pick backgrounds/stickers for your photos too. It was so much fun!!! I had never done it before so I didn't really know what to do besides smile, but I tapped into my inner Asian and it worked out fine :D This particular machine was even new for Julia and it compiled a bunch of our full-body pictures into a magazine-cover looking photo along with separate full-body pictures of us. We didn't even know what it was doing until the very end when it flashed on screen with all the photos, it takes these pictures at RAPID-FIRE SPEED. Like we just see the countdown and have about 2 seconds to smile/pose/move (x.x) After purikura was dinner and drinks with Hatsue joining us!! We went to another izakaya, a fancier one than last time. We took off our shoes and placed them in cool lockers, then entered our own private little room to be served in. I officially LOVE izakayas in Japan, there is the hugest menu EVER of all sorts of delicious foods and drinks (Seriously. Anything you can think of, it's there, dead cheap, and probably comes in 3 different flavors). Everything on izakaya menus is generally one cheap price with a few exceptions. Here everything was 280 yen I think (about $3.40), for food and drinks. We LOADED UP. We had different sashimis, grilled beef and scallop dishes, sweet miso tofu sticks, omurice with noodles inside, shoyu-fried onigiri, potato cheese balls, fried fish roe potato cake things, tempura-ed edamame, and so much more. -Side note: Japan seriously has the best toilets ever. They are so smart. I already wrote about the sinks on them, auto flushing, warming seats, and streams of water that wash you but this toilet at the izakaya was so smart, IT OPENED IT'S LID FOR ME WHEN I ENTERED THE STALL. I just stared at it open-mouthed like it had just sprouted heads or something before I regained my senses. It's like the toilets are alive and gonna start chatting to me about my day while I take a pee... The drinks were so delicious they almost topped the food (they only lost out to the food because we ate so many more dishes compared to drinks...which we still got through a fair amount haha). I love the attitude towards drinking in Korea and Japan. It's more social and relaxed than any kind in the US. The drinks aren't very strong (unless you order more straight hard alcohol kind of stuff obviously), so it's all a communal kind of thing, drinking. The drinks are so pretty and appetizing looking too, it's an art in itself. I lost track of all the drinks I had but I know they included a mango milk with fresh sliced mango, a sparkling strawberry drink with crushed strawberries, a mango calpis sour with iced mango pieces, and a strawberry milk with diced strawberries (do you see a pattern in my favorite drink flavors here? Haha the fresh fruit in them was a dessert in itself!). We talked and ate and drank until late, before I returned full and sleepy to my hotel for the night :)
Located within Harajuku is Meiji Jingu Shrine, which is encompassed by a massive park rife with history and a special garden set deep within. These gardens required a 500 yen (~$6) donation to enter for upkeep of the gardens. There was a side area once you walked far enough into the park where there was a restaurant, gift shop, treasure annex, and wedding chapel area (not actually a chapel since this is Japan not America, but the Japanese equivalent of our chapel lol). I wanted to go into the treasure annex but it was closed off that day for what looked like a businessmen tour of some kind...maybe some Japanese politicians were in the midst of some deal and this was one of the places they were showing the foreign businessmen they were hosting? Anyway, they rudely kicked me out when I tried to enter so I figured it was something important. There were cameras and stuff everywhere outside too. Meiji Jingu itself was extremely large and densely wooded. As soon as you enter (at least from the entrance I used), there was an immense stretch of gravel road going deep into the park as far as you could see. You could easily fit 30 people standing side by side across this thing. It was wonderful walking along the wide gravel path, deeply breathing in the woody fresh scents, and hearing an orchestra of bird calls around me. It was such an abrupt change from the busy street teeming with people, shops, cars, buses, and restaurants that I just stepped off of that it was breathtaking. I truly loved it! Like a little patch of purity in a developed and highly civilized city. Every so often there would be displays along the sides of the forested pathway. The two above are barrels of wine and sake, donated by various benefactors to the park. I took pictures of the signs too, so it's like you are walking around the park reading and seeing everything with me :) The foliage was GORGEOUS within the gardens. There were splashes of deep red, orange, and yellow amidst all the green that made for some lovely scenery to walk around in. Many of the wooded pathways are narrow and you are surrounded by dense trees and plants on both sides, so it gives you the impression you are walking solo in a giant forest...it's very peaceful. There were also more open areas and an area by the lake where the Queen used to fish! I also walked along the Queen's famous Iris Garden but since it is winter, the irises have all retreated into bulb form and there was nothing to see :( I sat by the lake for quite awhile though, just contemplating life and all that good stuff. It was definitely the kind of place that induces those sort of things, if you know what I mean... I got hopelessly lost inside the park because of how giant it was haha. Typical me. I ended up offroading for awhile too and was wondering among the greenery for a good 10 minutes trying to find the right way to the exit. I finally found the gravel road again though :D The maps they gave me at the entrance were TOTALLY USELESS. They were like vague shapes with numbers on them for certain supposed landmarks...but they weren't any landmarks I could recognize, like Gardens or Treasure Annex, they were other labeled things I had no idea existed -.- I came upon a row of stalls with potted flowers and some GORGEOUS bonsai plants too!! I happen to really love bonsai, the whole art of it and for their instrinisic beauty and peacefulness. I always feel like each bonsai has it's own kind of personality it exudes, depending on how it has been shaped and decorated :) Back outside the park the sun was setting (read: it's going to get SUB-ZERO as soon as the sun peaces out from the sky) so I double-timed it back to Shinjuku via the nearby Harajuku station outside Meiji Jingu. Along the streets most trees have already begun their autumn color change so it's truly enjoyable strolling around in the crisp evening air with leaves falling all around you in the light of the sunset...
Today I explored Harajuku, one of the places I had most wanted to go to while here in Japan! It's is one of the most widely known places because of it's use in pop culture, and definitely a hub for a younger crowd who like to express their unique tastes. It was EXACTLY like I had imagined it would be! All bright, colorful, bustling, and fun, like walking straight into an anime. It was packed, although Hatsue had told me that this was downtime compared to weekends (especially Sunday, which I explain below). I must have just had this expression of incredulous delight on my face the entire time I meandered down the main street of Harajuku. It was so much to take in and yet, never overwhelming. There were shops of all kinds of different styles, from gothica to pop-electric, from old-fashioned to trendy. There was also the occasional food place, with the WONDROUS-SMELLING crepe place located smack in the middle of both ends of the main street. My mouth was watering just looking at the offerings of this place and smelling the air around it. I didn't buy one because I wasn't particularly hungry and they were a bit pricey, but I have resolved to do so sometime before I leave this country. They looked way too good to leave without trying!! ![]() Top left: JUSTINE!!! And anyone else who lives in the valley haha, I found the original real Gyu-Kaku!! Same font and everything, they really kept it real when they came over to America...; Top right: Side English boba menu, since Harajuku is frequented by foreigners :) ; Bottom left: Harajuku Station exit by Meiji Jingu Shrine ; Bottom right: FLUFFY PANDA JACKET OMG
Background info on Harajuku: Harajuku is an area located between Shinjuku and Shibuya. Every Sunday, young people dressed in a variety of styles including gothic lolita, visual kei, and decora, as well as cosplayers spend the day in Harajuku socializing. The fashion styles of these youths rarely conform to one particular style and are usually a mesh of many. Harajuku is a fashion capital of the world, renowned for its unique street fashion. Harajuku street style is often promoted in Japanese and international publications; therefore many prominent designers and fashion ideas have sprung from Harajuku and incorporated themselves into other fashions throughout the world. Harajuku is also a large shopping district that includes international brands, its own brands, and shops selling clothes young people can afford. After wandering up and down Harajuku I stopped for lunch at a place on the way to Meiji Jingu Shrine and Park, also located in the Harajuku area. I have no idea what it was called because I can't remember the spelling (something that started with a B or a D? Julia? Do you know?). It was a noodle dish like ramen, but with thin noodles. The broth was a lot creamier and had more substance that ramen broth too. I chose one from the fourth column which had a garlic element to it and selected the marinated pork chunks noodle bowl. They were playing kpop in the restaurant while I got to people-watch from my elevated window seat above the street, so I was having a nice little Seoul-nostalgia moment...while eating my delicious Japanese garlic marinated pork noodle dish thing with onions, green onions, and nori, which kind of confused me a little for a moment. Best of both worlds?!?! Earlier today Hatsue had taken me to the Tokyo Tochou building (Metropolitan Government Building, or something along those lines), which is a famous landmark. They have lots of maps and guidebooks here in various languages, which I wanted for when I went around Shinkuku and Shibuya (which Harajuku is part of). You can also ride an elevator a whopping 45 floors to the top to look out around the city of Tokyo for free! The entire elevator ride is less than 55 seconds O.O My ears popped AT LEAST 6 times on the way up, it was unbelievable lol. Although it was gray and cloudy today, the views were incredible! We were up so high and everything below looked so tiny. Hatsue and I were laughing about how the cars below looked like Matchbox cars and the people dressed in their dark winter coats looked like ants :D Hatsue said that one a clear day you can see Fuji-san (Mount Fuji) from the top of the building, but alas, it was not possible today. Maybe next time. It was plenty entertaining enough to look at all the colorful rooftops of the outrageous amount of houses and buildings in the area. It really gives you a new perspective on how packed and desnely populated these Asian cities really are. Numbers and statistics are one thing, actually SEEING it in person right in front of your nose is another...
Okay guys, as much as I'd like to stay in order and post all the pictures I've got from the gorgeous temples and shrines/ yummy food I ate in Gifu and Kyoto, fact is there are like hundreds of photos from there and I can't condense them all with the time I have now. So I'm going to have to skip those and post them later; I'm thinking I can work on them on my 13 hour plane flight back to the States. For now, I'm getting even more backed up because my current posts are stuck behind the gigantic Gifu & Kyoto ones so I'm going to go ahead and start my Shinjuku ones! So I came in from Kyoto on Monday night and Julia met me at Shinjuku Station. Shinjuku Station is the mot heavily used station IN THE WORLD, with about 4 million people passing through it everyday. It has THIRTY-FIVE platforms (most smaller station I go in and out of have just a handful...some only have 2-3) and over TWO HUNDRED exits. It is seriously massive. Just walking around inside it is a wonder in itself, with all the thousands of overhead signs directing you to various lines and colors and arrows and the masses of people walking left, right, forward, behind you, criss-crossing. Mind-blowing. Anyway Julia took me to my new hotel, which is actually an apartment building, not a hotel. Hatsue had done the booking for me so I didn't know until now. After we settled my stuff in my room with a minor hiccup regarding the smokiness of the room (there are often no smoking/non-smoking rooms in apartment buildings and some hotels in Japan, because smoking is quite prevalent), we headed out to get some late dinner! We settled on a ramen shop located near my apartment, and since I finally had someone who could READ all the darn buttons I had a blast choosing what speciality bowl of ramen I wanted. I ended up with a bowl of menma ramen, with pork, bean sprouts, and nori in a shoyu base. So. Epicly. Good. By the way menma is bamboo shoots, but treated specially to prepare it as a ramen condiment. I have no idea what they do to it but it's bomb. My apartment is awesome! It's got a fantastic city street view from my balcony, a nice kitchenette, huge fridge (for Japanese standards as well as any hotel/apartment), a big freezer, hot water maker, big bed, bathroom, cool multi-button toilet, and a WASHING MACHINE. It also has all sorts of buttons on the wall, there are seriously so many I can't remember what each does and I kind of just randomly hit buttons until I get the lights on that I want lol. My apartment building is pretty new as it was only constructed 4 years ago, so that contributes to how nice, modern, and clean this place is. There's a bunch of water control buttons on a wall box too for how hot you want the water to get, as well as another knob you can use to control the water temperature in the shower. I guess the first is just to make sure you never get surprised by water so hot you are blistering...which I know has happened to everyone so I happen to like this gadget lol. There's like three different fan buttons in this apartment for seperate fans, but there's one big wall gadget near the bathroom that has several different buttons on it. They are for the regular fan, a cooler (for those summer nights when you step out of the shower only to start sweating so heavily immediately that you want to take another shower. Those of you who live in any sort of valley- I KNOW YOU'VE FELT THIS PAIN), a heater, and a dryer. It appears Japanese people never use dryers, since there are always drying lines outside of apartments and on balconies. My own apartment has a drying line on my balcony. But for the winter like now, when it probably won't get dry outside because it's too cold, apparently I'm supposed to dry them on the curtain rod in the bathroom and turn the dryer on (the fan button). I tried it out when I washed my clothes and it works like a charm!! Talk about space efficient and really fast :) The apartment does not come with towels or bedding, but Julia had lent me a comforter and Hatsue had given me some hand towels, along with a bunch of other stuff like shampoo, soap, chopsticks, etc. Thank you both so much!! Hatsue seriously thinks of everything haha, she even gave me laundry detergent!! Which was clutch, because the first thing I wanted to do when I saw that washing machine was wash a TON of my clothes lol. I've been having to wash them all in the shower until now. The one thing I was missing though was a pillow. I slept on some clothes the first night but I really needed an actual pillow. The next I went down to a convenience store across the street for some breakfast and things to eat later. I hauled my usual basketful of yummy goodies to the counter and was surprised when the girl held out a drawing basket (the kind where you stick your hand in and pull out a card where you may or may not get a prize) and told me to pick 4. Apparently I'd spent enough to deserve 4 lol. I pulled them out and found I'd won candy, a bag of yummy chips, and LO AND BEHOLD. I also won A FLUFFY WHITE PILLOW AND A CERAMIC MUG. FOR FREE. Dear Japanese gods: I owe you one. And I love you. SERIOUSLY?!?! I was lol-ing in my head the entire way home loaded down with my food and winnings. Talk about lucky!! My fortune back at the Narita Shrine in Gifu DID say I'd have luck when on traveling abroad... After a restful sleep on my new free pillow, I went out for my green tea latte (I figured I'd just change "went out for coffee" to "went out for my green tea latte" by now -.- My obsession is of EPIC PROPORTIONS by now. I'm not even trying to fight it at this point). I chose a place called Tully's Coffee down the street from my apartment. It was multi-level, like most Asian coffeehouses and I went upstairs to read and sip my Matcha Cream Swirkle. There are usually closed off glass areas of coffeehouses that are smoking areas, again because of the prevalence of smokers. I'm sure this is to accomodate the businessmen who often smoke but also often frequent coffeehouses. I think it's nice that if there has to be a smoking section, it is airproof-ed off by a sliding glass door to keep the smoke from the rest of us :) After my Swirkle (lol, I love this word its so fun to say. Go on, try it!!) I jumped on a train to Kichijoji where I remembered seeing a Daiso while I was walking around with Julia last week. I had solved my pillow crisis but I still needed a bath towel and other necessities and Daiso is the place to go for a great variety of stuff at a good price. Just like in Korea, where Daiso was my place of choice for almost everything I could ever need :) While the price is more expensive obviously because of the dollars weakness in Japan, it is still way cheaper than other stores in Japan and I found everything I needed...and more. Seriously BEER PRETZ?! What. WHAT. I had to buy some just for the heck of it. Justin if you are reading this I also bought you a package, because for some reason as soon as I saw the "Beer" in the title I had this insta-flashback of us playing beer pong at your house with our dads HAHA. Good times. ![]() Top left: my neatly packaged McDonald's grocery sized bag lol; Top right: mandarins and what look like persimmons from Obaachan thay Hatsue brought to Tokyo for me! Yum :) ; Bottom left: BEER PRETZ WHAT. ; Bottom right: the flusher on most toilets here in Japan have two settings, large and small. Luckily of the Japanese kanji I retained, those were among them so I had no problems when I first arrived. I just like the idea and know it's not widespread in America. The new toilets in the Rec Cen at UCSB had them, but it was a tip up or tip down with your foot thing if you wanted a small or big flush, since we have foot pedals.
- I don't have a picture of it, but a lot of toilets here have faucets of water located directly behind your back when sitting on top of the toilet (where usually there is a liftable lid over the back of toilet?). This is to wash your hands after to save the need for a seperate sink to wash at. SO COOL. Just when I thought they couldn't get any more space-efficient, they throw me a curve ball haha. I admit I did NOT see that one coming, the sink attached to the toilet??? I can't remember if I mentioned this already too but they sometimes have seat warmers on the toilets. Which is HIGHLY pleasant, especially since it's so cold out. Like I could sit on that thing all day in perfect happiness hahah and don't understand why all the good citizens of Japan are ever not constantly attached to these amazing seat warming toilets. Now a note on McDonald's here. If you recall, I had said I'd expand on the McDonald's here in Japan later after I had it in my Osaka post.
Osaka They seem to treat foreigners extra well or they only hire suuuuuper friendy people. The first time I went I didn't even have to stress about them calling my number or having to watch for the right order in case they don't call numbers here like Korea. The sweet girl who helped me was really nice about my retarded blank looks to everything she said and she even went back and personally mad my order so she could come back out, wave to get my attention, and hand it to me. Talk about service. The quality of the food here is also abnormally good. I next to never eat McDonalds at home except for when I crave their iced coffees (I swear there's crack in them, they are so addicting). But here they make the burgers so carefully that the buns are puffy and fresh, the chopped grilled onions remind me of In-n-Out onions (extremely tough to beat), and they are NOT GREASY. This is unprecedented in my entire lifetime of McDonalds experiences. Do you hear that America. THERE IS A WAY to make McDs not disgustingly fattening. Lets make moves. On a totally irrelevant note to anyone but me, the selections of soft drinks are much better than America's too. They have grape Fanta for one (grape is my favorite OF ALL TIME in case you missed it in any of my other posts and its rarely found anywhere in America in candy or drinks) and there are no diet sodas to seen on any soft drink menus. I LOVE IT. If you don't want the calories of a soft drink, ice always thought you should just drink iced tea or water. Don't lower your standards and drink some disgusting excuse for a soft drink. Find a replacement that's untainted and still plenty delicious. Besides, they cause cancer! Kichijoji The second time I went I got it to go this time and the girl was again super nice and friendly and made sure to get my order down correctly (for all who don't know, I can't stand pickled or any kind of sauce- mustard, mayo, and ESPECIALLY KETCHUP). They know in these McDonald's that as soon as they hear English, they whip out a laminated menu and have us point to what we want so the order goes very quickly and painlessly (unlike my ordering at Burger King in Korea lol. Ouch). The service was so ridiculously fast for my order that I had JUST finished paying and was in the process of walking to the side to pick up my food when another girl was already there smiling at me and holding my order out, with my drink, fries, and burger all nicely packaged in individual bags then all sitting in one larger handled paper bag. HOW DO THEY MOVE SO FAST?!? I just ordered for goodness sakes haha, I am so so so impressed. It's like they take extra care of foreigners in here or something, because there were plenty of people before me and after me both times I entered a McDonalds, but my order was always given priority and even taken care of personally by my cashier in Osaka. Definitely the most impressed I've been with the service given to me this entire Asia trip, and it was in a McDonalds. Unnnnnnnbelievable. There is some serious ninja maneuvering going on here. Today is the day of travel! I rose super early and got myself together. There are so many Shinkansen trains all departing at different times, going to different places, and leaving from different station ports. I also can't ride some of them because my Foreign Japan Railpass doesn't allow passage on the Mizumi or Nozomi lines (I think it's those) for some reason. I don't know how they tell though, because once you are through the ticket gate (flash your pass) they don't know which train you hop on...I was careful though and stuck to the Hikari line trains, which along with the Nozomi line seems to be the most prominent. The Shinkansen is DOPE. It travels so fast, it's exhilarating!! You look out the window and everything is just speeding past you fast, way too fast. The view point is like a car but the speed is like an airplane flying on the ground! Since my pass is already paid for and allows unlimited passage on the specified JR (Japan Rail) trains until my days are up, I am planning on just riding these Shinkansen trains all over for the fun of it haha. Regular tickets on the Shinkansen are very very expensive, often around $100 for one way. So I might as well milk my pass for all it's worth and have some fun while doing it :) (~CORRECTION: it's $100 to get halfway there (Nagoya), but a whopping $200 to go one-way from Tokyo to Osaka o.0...so it's $400 just to go to Osaka and back. Holy criminy, now I'm wondering how come the Shinkansen was so packed lol. There's tons of trains leaving at all times but somehow with all the stops between Tokyo & Osaka, it somehow gets filled up...especially at Kyoto and Nagoya). It was also fascinating seeing the raised roads, mini-truck cars, open fields, rivers, and buildings that I've only seen in Hayao Miyazaki movies, now on real life. The movies had always seemed so magical to me, like they were from a different world because of the different building structures and scenery and stuff. Seeing them in reality makes it seem like the magical movies have come to life! I also feel rather silly because these are regular everyday things that Japanese people are used to. I guess it's something like seeing the Hollywood sign on the hills...you see it in movies and stuff so it's widely recognized but LA residents don't even bat an eye or try to search for it because its just part of the usual scenery at home. Whatever. I'm just avidly staring out my window for ages while my seat mates are passed out lol. So, I have a problem here. Because I have just adjusted to walking on the left side of the road, like a proper Japanese person (well not quite yet; I still frequently obstruct foot traffic when I walk on the wrong side of road, but I'm learning okay?!?) I was simultaneously dismayed and delighted to find that some places in Osaka WALK ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE ROAD. Note the arrows in the picture above. WHY JAPAN. You are seriously messing with my brainwaves. Hard core. I also spotted some trains that have doors labeled only for women to occupy those cars? Since I am female I appreciate this, but have no idea what purpose it serves other than to royally piss off the men. Which it absolutely must. And which, incidently, I am also all for so this speculation is pointless 0:) It took me several wrong directions from 3 different station attendants to finally get to the correct tourist information booth (the first couple of attendants all pointed me to various station information booths, not tourist, even when what i was asking for was a tourist map -.-). They were all very nice and helpful though, which I always appreciate when lost, confused, and frustrated. ![]() Bottom: their supermarkets here are unreal. Fresh foods EVERYWHERE, in all forms, just spilling over from baskets, loaded up on shelves, piled upon each other on stands. It was a feast just walking around and staring at everything haha. Also the bottom right photo is from the walkway on the Namba Walk, which led to restaurants and shops underground! I struggled and agonized over my tiny and complicated map that I finally got (Mom you should've imparted your excellent map reading skills to me before I left) for a good 15 minutes, walking here and there in the giant station (theres 3 levels and separate JR line, Shinkansen, and subway terminals with different entrances and exits @.@ I eventually gave up and waited in a long line to ask a station attendant by the entrance turnstiles for help. He solved my problem of how to get to Namba JR station in about 2.5 seconds -.- He even gave me a helpful little pre-printed paper with a rough map on it. I used this to get to Universal Studios Japan as well as Namba Station and other notable places in Osaka! I took a break for lunch and coffee eventually. I had been trying to find an okonomiyaki place, since Osaka is famous for it, but it was pouring rain outside, I was freezing, and was completely exhausted from searching for hours. I just went back down into a subway entrance and found a McDonalds to eat at; awesome rainy day comfort food. I will write more about this McDonalds experience in a later post when I have it a second time in Shinjuku. I followed this with one of my favorite Marron Marron Lattes and dried off a little inside the coffeeshop before heading back out! ![]() The few photos I got when it paused in the downpour while I was walking around! Also a photo of the central middle loops of subway trains in Osaka. It's a small area but packed with places. Note the subway lines, not only the amount of them but that they don't always stop at all the same stations and some break off and go in weird directions. This confused me to no end lol, I spent a good hour probably just getting back on track and taking trains back or forward a few stations because my previous train had missed the station I was aiming for. Despite the dreary weather I was so excited to be roaming around Osaka!! Thanks to my experience in Korea, I was able to navigate the many many subway transfers and lines to get all over the city relatively easily at first. As I tooled around at my leisure I encounters a blip in my smooth sailing. I was utterly surprised when I arrived at a station that was past where I wanted to go...but I was positive I had been paying attention and we hadn't passed the station I wanted yet. Upon closer inspection of the map I noticed not all rail lines stopped at all the stations on the Loop. So I had to get off at some and backtrack to get to the station I wanted. Gotta pay better attention to the color of the train I'm boarding lol. When evening fell and I was all tired out, I boarded the Shinkansen and took it to Nagoya where I transferred to another JR train that would take me to Gifu. Hatsue picked me up from the station and we drove back to Seki Gifu where her house was! It was wonderful getting to see her again and talk :) Their house is so beautiful! It is styled elegantly outside with a traditional Japanese look, and the first floor is all tatami mats, sliding wooden doors, and wood flooring. It was GORGEOUS, I couldn't stop staring haha. The second floor is more modern and has bedrooms and a bathroom. Although we arrived rather late in the evening, Obaachan (Grandma in Japanese) and Ojiichan (Grandpa in Japanese) were still awake to greet me and sit with me and Hatsue while I ate a late dinner of some seriously delicious pork that Obaachan had made, a pot of oden that Obaachan had made, smoked salmon and mackerel sashimi that Obaachan had sliced, and drank tea that Obaachan had cut, dried, and boiled herself. Seriously is there nothing Obaachan can't do? :) She could take over the world in my opinion hahah. I love them both! They are so funny and congenial even though they can't speak English :)
I'm sorry guys! I haven't been able to update for a full week because it's been so packed. It takes several hours to upload, edit, & organize photos, then choose which ones to photo collage with each other, upload them to the blog, caption them, and write about my day. I haven't been able to throw down long enough to do it all until now @.@ A week's worth of Japanese adventures coming your way! Today I met Julia for lunch at a sushi place she had wanted to take me by her house! It was a HUGE place, with rows and rows of booths and several long revolving sushi counter-things. I say counter-things because they were like 3 stories high with 2 tiers of revolving belts and the top level had toy machines. It was awesome. I had a blast just staring at the sushi as it passed and trying to figure out what they were based on my 4 years of serving sushi at the sushi place in Isla Vista. I also tried a whole bunch of stuff I hadn't before, like some sort of egg custard-like soup with shrimp in it and cilantro on top and TORO SALMON. I've only had tuna toro before and it was insanely expensive and utterly delicious. This was no exception except it was dead cheap at $1.25. Every dish here was $1.25 except for bigger stuff like tempura and stuff which was a whopping $2.50 -.- Why do I not live in Japan again? More specifically, why do I not live in THIS SUSHI PLACE in Japan?? Sushi is so expensive in America and not nearly as good-quality, authentic, or delicious. Or fun. See below. 1. The Asians have it right. Instead of having to flag down irritated and hassled waiters for more water, they always give you either a pitcher of iced water of your own on your table or a way of getting water yourself like here. They had cups available on the third level of the sushi conveyor belt thingie and a place to get cold water. They also had a tap directly on our table with hot water, because to one-up America once again, they give you free green tea here EVERYWHERE. And not the nasty green tea. Legit matcha powder that you mix yourself. 2. Touch screen on top to scroll through rolls and dishes you could want (they had everything, udon, tempura, soups, etc). If you don't see something you want on the never-ending packed sushi conveyor belt you just order it and it gets made then zipped along the second level of the sushi conveyer belt thing on another conveyor belt directly to your table. HOW FREAKING COOL IS THIS. I was practically bouncing in my seat at this point, I was so excited hahah. A little voice announces it is here and it beeps until you take the dish off. 3. There is a slim disposal chute for your empty sushi plates and it counts them as they go down. Once you hit 5 dishes, you get to play a game on the touch screen where if you are lucky, you get a prize in a plastic ball from one of the toy containers on the third level of the sushi conveyor belt thingies. Completely childish but I loved it. I make no apologies :D Julia told me that's why this place is really popular for families with kids. Because everything was stupid cheap and equally as stupidly delicious, we ate our way to something like 12 dishes and I got a prize both times we got to play! They were funny little character phone charms :) 4. Their soy sauce containers. Whilst we clueless Americans try to pour shoyu on our sushi, accidently tip too far or don't pull back in time and end up drowning our plate, the Japanese have solved this problem. There is a nub on the top that you have to push on as you tip or it won't pour out. And even then it doesn't waterfall out, it just drizzles so you have no problem controlling how much shoyu you want on your food. I should've just stolen one for home... After lunch Julia took me to her university to walk around! It was beautiful and so clean inside, especially with all the brilliant autumn leaves everywhere. It is a private university so it is smaller than universities I am used to. Miwa-chan was telling me about she can't sleep in her classes because they are too small and the teacher will notice. I told her about UCSB and how ridiculously gigantic classes like the intro Bio series and Gen Chem are. No problems sleeping in there but you unfortunately probably need to know everything you want to sleep through hahah. Julia took me to see one of her favorite teachers, who was a Thai professor from Los Angeles! He was very nice and quite an interesting person. He was a little quirky and stilted when I first was introduced to him, but the longer we talked the more he seemed to warm up. He was a lot of fun to talk to! After awhile we sat down and I noticed he had what looked like guitar music on his table. The next thing I noticed was that there were HAWAIIAN songs (ones I know from my childhood when my Dad would be singing them!) mixed in there. I asked about them and he brought out his ukelele, which he has been taking lessons in! We ended up having a mini sing-along with him playing various songs and me singing to the ones I knew. White Sandy Beaches is one of my Dad's personal favorite songs and truly a lovely piece. I highly recommend it to anyone who needs a spot of peaceful soothing music! It was fun finding all the same things I was used to being around at my university here, like the tennis courts and rows upon rows of bicycles. Not all campuses are bike campuses of course, even in the US, but this one was just like UCSB :) The desks are different here though, which Julia also noted with me since she had been to schools in the US. They are often just like primary schools with shared desks, while individual desks attached to chairs are more common in the US universities I've been to. ![]() Tiramisu dessert, photos on Julia's desk that have me!!! <3 :), and her amazingly silent heater that is a boss. It comes alive in like 0.8 seconds and is blazing hot in like 1.5 seconds, all without a single sound. Not. A. Sound. It's scary. It's so efficient, I could totally see myself forgetting to turn it off then bumping into it from behind because I thought it was off and burning the hell out of myself @.@ After touring the university and darkness had fallen, we collected Julia's friend Miwako from the library where she had been working on the same senior thesis paper Julia has. They are both graduating this Spring, which is when Japanese universities hold graduation :) We had planned to cook what they called a "hotpot", which was a soup of sorts with all sorts of vegetables, meats, tofu, and other Japanese foods that I don't know the official name of but I recognize by sight haha. We hit the grocery store and loaded up on ingredients before heading back to Julia's and getting to work. It was a lot of fun! It's been a while since I've cooked with friends, not since college was still in full effect and our final round of finals hadn't hit yet (finals week meals generally equal copious amounts of Subway sandwiches and lots of coffee. Not much else...). I am definitely going to try to recreate this "nabe" (is this correct Julia? I can't remember the exact term you told me) when I get home but I know it'll be next to impossible unless I make the trek to Marukai. Even the stock (of which there are TONS of different kinds) looked like it was solely Japanese, so I'm sure it'd be hard to find in the US, much less all the Japanese fresh foods we added to it. /sigh. Just another reason to come back lol. We ate it around Julia's warming table with assorted wine cooler drinks and some hard liquor that was somewhere between vodka and Korean soju. Tasted more like soju but it definitely had an aftertaste like vodka that the soju didn't have. However it is still sipped by itself like soju, not taken in shots or in mixed drinks. The coolers were SO GOOD, my favorite was an aloe yogurt spritzer one that was incredible. I'm getting all types of education out here, even alcoholic ones haha. For dessert Miwa-chan and I had tiramisu we had picked out and Julia had a blueberry "raw cheese" dessert, which tasted a lot like a cheesecake yogurt. Major yum. I stayed the night at Julia's apartment and the next morning we went out for coffee and breakfast! This was my first encounter with my latest coffeehouse obsession: what they call a Marron Marron Late. Marron means chestnut in Japanese, and this thing is SO GOOD. I have no idea what a Chestnut Latte is supposed to taste like, but this was slightly nutty, sweet and creamy and highly addicting. They also serve you your to-go cup with a sticker cover over the mouth either for sanitary purposes or to prevent any spillage. Or both, knowing Asians. They think of EVERYTHING :) We got brunch at her school cafeteria, giving me a minor case of deja vu since I went with Yeji back in Korea to her school's cafeteria too haha. I love how you can order in some places (mostly ramen shops) with a machine. You put in your money, select which meal you want and it spits out a token or ticket with your chosen meal on it. When I ordered mine though, I was surprised to find an extra slip had come out. I asked Julia what it was and she said I was super lucky because it said "Winner!" on it, and she had never seen someone get one before from the machines!! We showed it to the counter ladies and they said I could get a free dessert :) I excitedly chose a green tea mousse with anko (red beans) and cream. For my meal I got something that I forgot the name of but it was awesome. Slightly spicy delicious broth, noodles, a bed of greens, and ground beef with awesome seasonings and shopped onions/carrots. I've never had anything like it, but it was practically my ideal dish haha. Meat AND noodles AND salad AND soup. You'd think I'd be tired of drooling over the food by now but....yea, no. ![]() Dinner! You know how packages of food never actually look like they do on the front picture? JAPANESE RAMEN DEFEATS THIS STEREOTYPE. It is EXACTLY like they show on the picture. Every detail. They give you a package of noodles, a package of dry seasoning, a package of thick paste (which is more seasoning that gives it that extra flavor, think like miso paste), a package of dried greens and pork, and a package containing three sheets of nori. HOW COOL. I was totally floored when I opened them all up. I have never before seen such a real bowl of instant ramen lol. When I took this picture, the ball of spinach hadn't unraveled yet, but it did eventually. Best bowl of instant ramen EVER. I got back late to my hotel room in Machida and had a major panic attack. I had to pack all my belongings (which is a daunting chore, let me assure you. I have so much stuff after almost two months traveling abroad, it is unreal) and take them down to the nearest convenience store so the Yamato service they have here can hold them for me for the weekend while I travel to Osaka, Gifu, and Kyoto.
First, this Yamato service is AWESOME. Julia says foreigners are always surprised and impressed by this service, and rightly so. They will pick-up, hold, and deliver luggage for you for a minor fee. All you have to do is go to any convenience store, fill out a form telling where you want it delivered, what day, and what time, then drop off your luggage and pay. I had two giant very overweight suitcases and a super heavy loaded backpack that I dropped off to be held for two days and then taken to Shinjuku on Monday night, and I paid about $40 for them all! Unreal. So much stress and pain taken off my shoulders lol, you would not believe. Just having to think about lugging them all over Tokyo, having to find buses instead of subways, having to somehow get them on the Shinkansen and ride hours all over Japan, then bring them back to Tokyo, drag them all over Shinjuku to my hotel...nightmare. And wholly impossible. If there wasn't this Yamato service I would have just stayed in my hotel in Machida that's forsure haha. Anyway my schedule as of now is to wake up at 5am tomorrow, make my way to Machida Station to take a subway to Shin-Yokohama where I can catch a Shinkansen train to Osaka. With my bag of snacks for the 3-hour train ride and my backpack of stuff for my weekend at the Ono household (Julia's house, but she has to stay in Tokyo to work on her thesis and to study for a test on Tuesday). Hatsue, Julia's mother, will be my host:) I haven't gotten to see her for years!! This post is dedicated to some truly delicious things I have eaten in the past few days that I will be having serious withdrawals for when I return to the States. 1) The wide availability of authentic Japanese food The supermarkets here are a DREAM. Forget nasty hot dogs that are kept warm on metal rollers. I can just pick up a bento-box style plate from a convenience store and get all sorts of meats, veggies, rice, and sushi in it. It's AWESOME. I have recently become addicted to dango as well, after first buying it with Julia in Kichijoji. I've always wanted to try it and I was NOT disappointed :) Chewy and soft and oh so yummy, I could eat these things forever. Do these count as bad for you? It's essentially just rice powder from what I know...or nori or powdered barley or whatever other flavorings are on it. 2) The ridiculously large variety of ramen types you can buy Haaaaaaallelujah. Haaaaallelujah. Angels are singing. Doves are fluttering. A golden ray of light is shining down on my wondrous revelation...the. ramen. is. not. (all). spicy. here. WOOO! As much as I grew to like and tolerate the spiciness of Korean ramen, it made it difficult that I was coughing every other bite from accidentally inhaling some chili powder or something, and needing to drink milk with every bowl :D They have all sorts of ramen here including this little glass noodle looking type. This one pictured is egg ramen!! It tasted like a mix between egg drop soup and regular ramen. Yum! 3) The desserts They are adorable, delicious, and widely available. How are you people not all a thousand pounds?! They have all types of these little desserts that vary from store to store. My favorite so far is the almond jelly (it's a Chinese dessert Julia told me, I seem to recall my mom making almond milk that tastes just like this jelly. It is SUPERB. I can't stop eating it). My second favorite is the little custards they have with carmelized sugar at the bottom. Also highly difficult to restrain from eating constantly. I'm working on it @.@ Other desserts I've tried include mini-cheesecakes, pumpkin custard/pie (left on above picture), and a mango parfait thing (right on above picture). Pretty aren't they? 4) MOCHI Mochi mochi mochi everywhere!! I love it haha, there are so many different and unique flavors. I'm going to pull a Pokemon and try 'em all while I'm here! :) 5) The fabulous array of amazing drinks!
My favorites thus far are their sparkling lemonade (a lot of lemonades in the US are too sickly sweet for me, but this one is fuzzy and just sweet enough), their Mitsuya Cider (they have a clear version of this cider I tried as well but I like the milky one better; less bubbly but more tasty), and my favorite melon soda (a different type than the kind we sold at the sushi place I used to work at though). One of things I've enjoyed the most while I've been abroad is simply going to the store to try out all sorts of new and sometimes unknown food and drinks. Everything is so attractively packaged, and there are so many things I've a) never seen before, b) they don't sell in the US, and/or c) they are rarely found in the US or very expensive. It's a learning experience, and one I enjoy thoroughly! :) I had made plans with my friend of 10 years today...Julia! We had met when we were young and she and her mother had come to California (they were friends of my Uncle Al). Ever since we had kept in touch as penpals (with good old-fashioned snail mail, somehow it's much more fun that way haha). In the past year or so we had finally evolved to email and facebook messaging, since I was planning to come to Japan and we needed a faster way to communicate and plan than letters for this. We planned to meet at Kichijoji to eat, shop, and catch up :) Kichijoji is about an hour from Machida, which I get to using the Yokohama and the Chuo line. While it's not far on the map, I've finally figured out why it takes longer using these trains than subways in Korea. The trains here stop at stations for longer than subways in Korea. This allows more people to make each train, since it pauses for longer! That's why it takes longer to get through the same amount of stops :) I was so confused the first day when I took the trains lol. ![]() Creepy empty train (never ever seen before lol, seriously) --- Central Entrance where I was supposed to meet Julia at Kichijoji Station except she had written the Japanese name in Romanji...so I couldn't read the Japanese kanji written here! All it says in English is Central Entrance haha so good thing she also wrote the Japanese for where she wanted to meet me; I just walked up to each exit, held up my phone, and compared the kanjis until I found the right one ^.^ --- MORE COOL BATHROOM STUFF. I know I'm obsessed...but these stalls were this cool thick wood and had awesome grooves in it and stuff. Also I LOVE this flushing system. It's automatic but situated to the side so you just wave your hand and it flushes. HOW MUCH MORE EFFICIENT IS THIS. Rather than foot flushers which break all the time so your stomping on it and it still wont flush or automatic flushers behind your butt that flush WHILE youre still on the toilet by accident, these only flush when you want it to AND it's no touch. I likey. America: take note. However, I had a minor moment of panic at Hashimoto while on the Yokohama line. I have NEVER been on a train or subway where I am completely the only person left on it. It felt eerie...like I was missing something, so I freaked out. BUT as you may have guessed, it turned out everyone who got off the train knew what they were doing. Like I mentioned in one of my early Korea posts, if you're in a foreign country and don't know what you're doing but all the locals are doing it...you'd sure as heck better move your butt and do it too! I realized the train had stopped for too long of a time for a regular station pause so I checked the signs around me. Just as I suspected, even though this was the same green Yokohama (they have like 5 green lines here so unlike Korea, the names are necessary) on my map, for some reason to continue further the same direction we had to disembark and board a different train for green line. Good thing I got off and checked around. I was headed to Hachioji where I would transfer to the orange Chuo Rapid line to get to Kichijoji, but the train I had taken from Machida stopped at Hashimoto and then went back towards Machida. Also, on this orange Chuo line there are some English announcements!! Hallelujah. I have never been so happy to hear English spoken lol, the lack of English signs and announcements had begun making me feel lonely and homesick, if that makes sense. I just can't read anything so I feel isolated all the time. Julia and I went to lunch and I got an udon and katsu set. They have so many options here! Like in the ramen houses, where they ask if you want your noodles firm, medium, or soft, and other little things about it (or they would if I spoke Japanese lol), here, they asked if I wanted udon or soba noodles, if I wanted it hot or cold, and if I wanted a big, medium, or small amount of rice (waste not, want not!). It was DELICIOUS. I really never adjusted to Korean food...I like it enough and I love Korean BBQ & street vendor food. It's just too spicy most of the time though, and I don't really like the taste of pickled vegetables. I'm sure I could develop a taste for it if I spent enough time there :) However, Japanese food is something that is both familiar and delicious to me! I make my own udon, katsu, and curry back home, I like it so much. So this was a welcome meal! After lunch we spent some time shopping; we went into one of her favorite stores called Lattice. It was awesome! They had purses, jewelry, and hair accessories mainly but all accessories were 315 yen (about $4). Purses were a little more expensive (around the 1,000-1,500 yen mark which is about $13-19), but I found the CUTEST satchel sidebag that was on sale for like $6! It was the only one, so I was very pleased with myself haha. I also got two pairs of earrings, two necklaces, and a leather cord necklace. ![]() Dango, mochi, and delicious things GALORE!!!! We picked up some dango and chestnut mochi, because it was interesting sounding lol. They also have the right attitude about coffee. There are numbers on the front of the instant coffee packets, indicating how strong the coffee was (ratio of coffee grains to sugar + creamer in it). So they had stuff labeled 1 for people like my Dad who drink it like water and stuff labeled 3 which is the (1/2) one Julia is pointing to for people like me who can't handle much coffee :) Excellent. --- They also have the right mindset about plastic bags. They also charge you for plastic bags in Korea (no more than 10 cents or less), but here they have them so you pick them up and pay for them yourselves! This is awesome. This is exactly what we need in America. The markets all try to encourage you to bring your own bags but were never EVER going to do it unless they kick us in the butt and force us to by charging for bags. This way they reduce waste and make money otherwise, while people get more responsible or pay for it. Almost as soon as I arrived in Japan, I had been longing for my favorite Jasmine tea. I don't know if it's actually Japanese but it's my favorite type of tea and all they gave you in Korea was barley tea (which is absolutely delicious and probably my second favorite type of tea, but I had spent a month and a half drinking it lol). So we set off looking for tea. We went into a cool legitimate tea shop with traditional Japanese teas and tried some samples. However we ended up just at a big supermarket called Seiyu. CAN I JUST SAY HOW EXCITED I AM FOR A REAL GIANT SUPERMARKET?? I hadn't been able to locate one bigger than a corner store in Korea (I know they are out there somewhere but I hadn't been able to find one -.-), so this was wonderful. I found my tea (as well as like 5 others I picked up lol) and other snacks and stuff I wanted. Julia took me on a tour of the store to explain various Japanese foods I had always wanted to know what looked like. In addition to my dry goods, I got some yummy looking chestnut mochi and some dango! So many delicious things in there, OMG @.@ ![]() Pretty holiday displays, a temple (closed though because it was night so we couldn't go in), and this unique Japanese way of bagging things. When they bag your purchase, they tape the middle opening closed with some matching store tape. I asked Julia and apparently they do this everywhere! So interesting haha, it's not something I've ever thought of. It's a nice touch :) After the market, Julia took me to Inokashira Park, a large park located in the area. Although it was pretty dark by then, I could tell how absolutely gorgeous the park was! It was airy and spacious, with giant trees shading wide dirt paths everywhere. There was a central lake (where you can rent paddle boats!) and a big bridge covering the middle of it. It was beautiful in design and very peaceful. I had fun trying to explain what I meant to Julia when I said I wanted to meditate here; I ended up just doing a Buddha be-at-one-with-thyself squat while still standing haha, I hope nobody was watching... After the park, we hit a Japanese pub! Well not exactly a pub; they call them いざかや (ee-zah-kah-yah). They are like pubs with with a wide menu of yummy food dishes AND drinks and are less expensive than bars. Sounds like my kind of place :) I had to try Japanese beer of course, and it was yummy! Light and crisp. We got two kinds of yakitori and a vegetable miso salad (or that's what it looked like). For our next round, I got a mango sour (or that's what it sounds like lol. This not being able to read a lot of the Japanese characters thing SUCKS). Now it was Julia's turn to have fun explaining what sours were to me, since we don't really have a separate category of drinks called sours. It turns out they are like mixed drinks but the carbonated variety, like ones made with sparkling soda or something. It was SO GOOD, really fresh and tasty. I could drink those forever, they had very little alcohol in them so they tasted great haha. Thank you so much for taking me out Julia! I had so much fun and I will see you in a few days again :) For the first time I had a person on the subway actually fall asleep on my shoulder haha. I've always been amazed how regular commenters can totally pass out, mouth open, drooling and all for fifteen stops then magically snap awake right before their stop and step off like nothing had happened. HOW DO THEY DO THAT. This was a younger guy though, probably a student. Poor guy haha. He totally was nodding off for ages then slowly plopped on my shoulder throughout the span of about 5 stops. I shifted in surprise to look at him and he shifted back up (totally still passed out by the way) and resumed sleeping, mouth wide open, head tilted up to the ceiling. LOL. It was only like 9 o clock...I'd even been drinking and I wasn't as tired as the poor kid was. I can't even fathom how difficult being a student in Asia is.../shiver. I salute you brave souls.
Sorry for the delay in my posts guys, I have less time here in Japan so I'm finding it harder to keep up my daily posts like in Korea haha. Today was my first day outside of Machida! I had located the Machida Station near my hotel and it turned out to be only a 5-7 minute walk or so. Once I got closer to it, I noticed the street had been closed down and there were tents and food and performers everywhere....it was a festival of some sorts!! I felt so lucky, this is the third time I've just stumbled upon a festival happening on my first day exploring there, when otherwise it'd just be a normal road any other day. There were lots of firefighters and people dressed in traditional costumes around, as well as plenty of children (I saw some running around in firefighter's clothes and it was ADORABLE. I was this close to snatching one and taking him home with me to America hahah). The parade going down the street had dancers doing a traditional dance with scarves and the wonderful part of it was that they were performers of all ages. There were the typical young women and men you see doing these performances but also some slightly younger ones that didn't quite have the dance down, and even an elderly gray-haired grandmother placed smack in the middle of the formation, dancing with heartfelt gusto. For some reason this performance was more touching than the others I've seen, because it WASN'T perfect and therefore more real and representative of Japan's citizens. It was definitely a fun start to my day! The first thing I noticed when I got to Machida Station was that there was no English on signs anywhere :( I only got to the correct line entrance by following signs with the JR symbol on them (there is another Metro line that comes out of Machida Station). I was undecided on whether I was just going to scope out the subway station today or actually go on one but in the end I decided to just do it. I was scared, had no idea where I was going or where TO go, and completely lost but...sometimes you just gotta go for it (channeling my Daddy here haha). I showed my JR Foreigner Railpass to the attendant in the side window as I had been instructed (Thanks Jen!) and was in with no problems. Luckily the signs inside had English romanization of station stop names so I could read them. They had numbers for the different sides going either way and 2-3 major station stops that each side would hit to let you know which way it was going. Being a Tokyo newbie, I had to consult my map at length to find each of the stations listed on the maps before deciding which way to go haha. Felt like my first days in Seoul all over again. I jumped on the correct train to head towards some junction I couldn't read the name of on my map (hoping the train would announce when the next stop had transfer lines available there, like Korea) where I could get on another line to get to Shinjuku. However, it wasn;t long before I realized there weren't any English announcements on train or electric signs on the subway walls announcing stops, like I was used to... oooo I am in troubleeee...It should have been the other way, since I can at least understand enough Korean to understand the announcements. Here though I can barely recognize the station stop names since they say it so quickly and my Japanese is still being resurrected from it's grave. May I also add that I almost DIED several times navigating this subway station haha. It will take some time to adjust to the opposite sides of walkway that people walk on. I almost stepped on the wrong side of the elevator several times, only stopped myself with my foot hovering in the air and then scurrying to the other side quickly. I keep walking up the right side of the stairs or on sidewalks just without thinking about it, but then I keep running into people and getting weird looks. I have to actually think about it and conciously tell myself to walk on the left, walk on the left, walk on the left, WALK ON THE LEFT. Shinjuku seemed relatively large in my map and I know it's a huge fashion, shopping, and tourist district, so I thought it'd be a good first destination. I had looked up some promising temples, gardens, and popular districts to visit during my first day staying here in Machida. However the train did not have announcements saying when there were transfer lines available at the next station so I just had to stand there and pay attention when the doors opened at each stop. There often weren't any signs saying what stop this was so I would sit there anxious, panic when I saw no signs, sit back down, and pray this stop wasn't the stop I had to get off at lol. I ended up getting off one stop too early, which I only realized after I consulted my map later in the safety and comfort of my room. Tired out from being stressed on the train though, I just stayed in Higashi-Kanagawa and explored around there instead :) Make something good out of a mistake! What made this a happy mistake was my discovery of another addition for my green tea obsession...GREEN TEA DONUTS. YEA. I ran into a mini-donut and bubble tea shop in the station. It smelled SO tantalizing I had to stop. The donuts were so cute; you could fit three in your palm lying next to each other! They had the coolest flavors too, Monte Blanc, Choco Banana, Green Tea, and other more normal flavors like Chocolate and Plain. I also got a green tea boba (of course). I've noticed they call boba something different in every country. I have NO idea where the term "boba" came from that we call it in America. I totally thought it was Japanese or Korean or something, but it's neither! In Korea they call it Bubble Tea everywhere, with no comprehension of any other term at all. It's the same in Japan. I tried bubble tea, boba, pearl tea, and all other terms for it I knew but the poor cashier didn't understand me. I finally noticed the word "Tapioca" on a sign, and tried "Tapioca Drink". ::LIGHT BULB:: A ha... It was freezing cold and had been threatening rain all day so I wrapped up my explorations at a yummy looking ramen shop in the general area of the station. It was bigger than the previous one I had tried, with booths and tables as well as a big bar. The poor young man who stepped forward to take my ramen ticket and direct me to a spot at the bar looked utterly stricken when I spoke English to him hahah. I felt terrible but it was almost comical how worried he looked. Most younger people I run into know some English or are at least okay with it so this took me by surprise. Guess he must be a math kinda person :) This Japanese ramen is so so filling. It's the kind of full that makes you think omg how am I going to walk out of here and to my (insert method of transportation) without ROLLING? Which was exactly what my thoughts were as I finished my bowl. Holy cow. I hope they don't think any less of me for straight up waddling out of their restaurant... After my train ride back home I noted it had started pouring, so I bought a cool clear umbrella from a convenience stand outside the station. I had refrained from buying an umbrella any of the previous times it had rained in Korea because I would soon be moving from wherever I was staying and would be unable to take my umbrella with me (the cheaper ones aren't collapsible). So I had just sucked it up and put my hood on or borrowed one my hotel or from the cleaning lady (as was the case in Myeongdong lol). I'll be here for a few weeks though, it was forecasted to rain tomorrow as well, and my hotel isn't located DIRECTLY next to a subway entrance like it had been in Gangnam and Myeongdong, so I just went ahead and bought one. I enjoyed a nice walk home in the rain :)
This evening I did the NUMBER ONE thing I wanted to do when I came to Japan...EAT AT A RAMEN HOUSE :) Like a legit one, with a bar. Due to it being stupid windy (it only got worse from the daytime) I chose the ramen place I had noticed right near my hotel the other night. Most ramen shops here seem to be open from 11am - 3am. When I entered, I was so confused at first. One of the counter guys directed me towards a token machine to the right with no names, just colored strips over prices. What the heck? Seeming to sense my absolute dumbfoundedness within about 2 seconds, another nice counter guy came all the way around and tried to help me by miming and speaking Japanese (only some of which I understood). I finally got the gist of it and ordered a small beef shoyu ramen (I think). I remember the kanji characters for small, medium, and big anyway. The ramen was SO-HEAVENLY-DELICIOUS-AMAZING-OMG. I always knew the ramen we got in the US couldn't be close to the real deal...I was so right. The noodles were thicker than what I was expecting and perfectly chewy. The broth was super rich and filling, not even really a broth. It came with nori, green onions, a slice of beef, and some sort of spinach or leafy green. I had no idea how I was supposed to eat this properly so I just made so and ate it my way haha. The bar went around in a U shape so I coudn't really spy on the other patrons to see how they were eating it...plus that's creepy. Lol but I really enjoyed my bowl of ramen at the bar, like I had always wanted!! My childhood dream come true, ever since I read my first Naruto manga :D My bowl had cost 700 yen, which is a little less than $9. Pricier than I was expecting, but it DEFINITELY filled me up; it was a giant bowl. They call this a small?! What are you Japanese people made of?? And I'm no tiny eater myself @.@ ![]() Green tea ice cream IN A PREPACKAGED CONE that I wrote about before. So. Cool. Also the rest of my goodies I've bought today and views from my window. I seem to be in a fairly residential area with plenty of shops, stores, and food places. I found one particular long long long street that seemed to be a market street of some kind because it was packed and lined with craft, goods, and clothes stores on either side.
Unlike in Korea, people here seem to know right away that I am completely foreign. It's SUCH A WEIRD EXPERIENCE lol, I can't explain. It's just not what I'm used to now, I'm used to having to struggle through it myself to figure it out or have to have a lengthy conversation about how I am NOT in fact Korean, OR Japanese, OR Chinese; I am American. At the grocery stores, the home goods store, and now at the ramen shop, without me even saying a word (with my terrible American-accented Japanese) they seem to instinctively know I'm not from here and help me out right away...it's kind of nice. I have been treated kindly and very well everywhere I've been so far, with everyone being very understanding! These vending machines are EVERYWHERE. I am talking EVERYWHERE. Like every 10 steps there's another one and if you stand on a street corner you can probably see 5 or 6 without even moving just from that standpoint. I remember reading about how safe Japan was in terms of vandalism since they have vending machiens everywhere and they stay clean, new-looking, and in working order for pretty much forever. Amazing. In America, that's be graffiti-ed and robbed before it hit it's first birthday. After dinner I got a bottled tea and a hot chocolate from two separate vending machines just to do it (they're so cute and bright haha it's like a bug to a light, I'm just drawn to them). The hot chocolate came out in a can and it was HOT!! For some reason I wasn't expecting this lol, the only machines I've seen that give hot drinks are the open paper cup kind. This is SO FREAKING COOL. I was drinking hot chocolate warm. Out of a can. Why is Asia SO AWESOME. I get flustered when paying at counters especially, because unlike Korea (GOD HOW I MISS KOREAN MONEY) the majority of small purchases are made with coins. That is because the smallest bill in Japanese yen is 1,000 which translates to a little over $12. The next bill is 2,000 which is about $25, 5,000 yen is about $62, and 10,000 yen is $126. My brain almost imploded when I first calculated these changes on the flight over to Japan. Seriously. I was used to Korea, where 1,000 won is LESS than a dollar. And frankly I like it that way lol. Therefore, there are tons of coins being used, from 500 to 100 to 50 to 10 to 1. As the 500 won coin is still worth over $6, you clearly need to be careful with your coin purse -.- I'm still kind of shellshocked right now to be honest, and it's the end of the 2nd day already.
It takes me a lot of time to count out the unfamiliar coins, because in Korea your purchases would all be in big denominations (e.g. 3,500 won or 12,000 won. Nothing less than 500 won would usually be seen when I bought stuff, which made it easy to use bills and big coins). Here though, my purchases end up being like 1, 271 yen or something. So I'm sitting here trying to count out my unfamiliar coins and have to apologize and ask the register lady to hold on a moment please. I remember at least that much Japanese. They all seem to find it really amusing thankfully lol, instead of being annoyed. Another different thing is that when ringing you up, they say aloud the price of each item as they scan it. Every. Single. One. As my first few trips to the grocery store were rather fruitful, it was kind of funny because they would be calling out prices as they scanned for a good couple minutes haha because my basket was so full. I wonder why they call out prices as they go...it's fun trying to keep up with their number counting though haha. I got really good at Korean numbers (both number sets) so switching now back to Japanese is hard. It's still so unbelievably frustrating for me, because at one point I had all of this and much more down pat! I would've been able to easily converse with the people here, instead of struggling so hard to remember the Japanese equivalent of the Korean word in my head that I look like I'm suffering some sort of mental collapse @.@ It's finally sunk in that I'm here in Japan! Today I did my usual, walked all over the neighborhood in all directions scoping out restaurants, shops, stores, etc. What was notably absent was a subway exit/entrance...in Korea, you can't walk 100 feet without seeing one. Chances are, if you look across the street from that point there will even be another one. Maybe it's just the area I'm in? Or the subway/train system is different here in Japan than Korea. Anyway, the first thing that hit me was that people walk on the wrong side of the road here lol. Just like we walk on the right side of the road (to allow people going the opposite direction to walk on the left), they do the opposite. I'm guessing this is because they drive on the opposite sides of the roads as we do? I'm telling you, I almost had a heart attack when I took my taxi from the bus station the other night. It just feels WRONG making a wide looping right turn onto a street, and seeing cars coming straight at me (on that street) in the passenger seat O.O Anyways, I was obstructing foot traffic for awhile when I was walking around until I realized I had to walk on the left side of the road, not the right haha. On a side note, the mannerisms and speech patterns are very different from both America and Korea here. It's a different country so it's to be expected, but you know I notice these things and fixate on them lol. Being used to Korean spoken all around me for awhile, Japanese now sounds much more...I don't know how to describe it. Like sit-up-straight kind of a tone, much more crisp, and more stress on sounds. Just take the Korean and Japanese words for "yes". In Korean, you just say "nehhhhh..." (which is already a soft sound) and kind of hold it then let it trail off. In Japanese, you say "HAI." Emphasis on the period there lol. That's what it all sounds like to me. It's really interesting to me, since before this I had heard much more Japanese than Korean in America; I never noticed these differences as much as I do now! ![]() Left: They love their games here in Japan! I saw several of these arcade-type places on my walk today just in my area. --- Right: Found a post office near my hotel! Excellent. - (Red prius) Hi Mom and Dad :) I'm in the birthplace of our cars! - Lots of stores like this too; the packaged dried smelly foods that my parents like...like dried squid and stuff ::wrinkles nose::
Also, the names of places are EXTREMELY DECEPTIVE. I wandered down one street and saw a big sign proclaiming itself to be Gourmet City. Fully expecting a food court, or a restaurant I walked in and found...a home goods store?? I was happy to have found one so close to my hotel (it will be my Japanese version of Daiso haha), but why is it called Gourmet City?! Another example was a place called "Book-Off Bazaar" (picture above) but it had no books lol, it was clothes inside?? I was so sad lol. Since things are expensive here in Japan I had resolved not to buy much in terms of material things. I did however pick up some cool sock shoe things (I couldn't resist haha) and another pair of inside slippers (due to lack of space, I had left my ones I used previously in Korea). They are relatively the same price as in Korea (around the $2-$3 mark), so it wasn't bad. ![]() I'm having so much fun trying all the different drinks they have here! Surprisingly it's much harder buying food here than in Korea because of LESS English used. I was expecting the opposite since Japan has been a tourist destination for quite a while now while Korea is relatively newer. I have to literally look, smell, poke, and guess at what things are before I decide to buy them lol. Luckily all my guesses so far have been correct or equally delicious incorrect guesses :D
After my lengthy walk, I stopped by my trusty 7-eleven (I think it IS a sub-store of our 7-eleven, because it has it's proper 7-eleven name on the sign outside). I picked up some drinks and cool dessert things I've always wanted to try. I don't know if it's because I'm Japanese and I'm more used to the flavors or what, but I haven't been shocked by or disliked even ONE of the Japanese snackfoods I've randomly tried so far. This is a radical difference from Korea where unfortunately I tried tons and was surprised by how different each tasted than I was expecting. For example, I bought what looked like garlic bagel chips, expecting it to be...well, garlicky. It was not to be. They were super sticky SWEET (???) and I couldn't even swallow the first one it was such a shock. I also tried what looked like Funyuns but they ended up being this these airy rings with like barley poweder on them. I did however find a brand of these onion ring chips that actually tasted like onions so I liked that one :) Alas, I couldn't eat most of the snacks in Korea... perhaps given time I would get used to it haha. Here though I've tried all sorts and LOVED them all! I was super apprehensive trying each one at first (given my experiences with snack foods in Korea), but the onion rings here are cheesy onion rings and awesome. I've also had nori (that's seaweed you non-Asian people) seasoned potato chips (DELICIOUS), some seriously perfect vanilla bean custard, and all manner of yummy instant pastas and bottled drinks. I have also found the BEST chocolate I've ever had in my life and it's sold in a convenience store. It's these little individually wrapped chocolate cubes called MeltyKiss. I got the one with green tea flavored chocolate in the middle. It's thick but soft, almost like a fudge, tastes like dark chocolate (my favorite, I can't stand milk chocolate), and is covered on the outside with a dusting of cocoa powder. I am FORSURE stocking up on these things to take home, I'll stuff them in my pockets if I have to to save room lol.
I finally hailed a rather grumpy cab driver who I gave the hotel address ( I asked an information desk worker at the airport to write the address in Japanese so the driver could understand it. I'm learning from my frustrating experiences in Korea lol). At my hotel, they lock the sliding doors after a certain hour and you need a code on your room card to enter. This is great because it makes it more safe. Unfortunately I HAVEN'T CHECKED IN YET. I was panicking, locked outside the hotel with all my stuff, late at night. Miraculously though, there was another gentleman inside already (I don't know how he got in still) and he opened the door for me. He was waiting to check in too, and because of him I assume, a desk attendant was already on his way down to the lobby! As terrible as traveling is for me, I really do catch some lucky breaks /phew. The hote manager spoke almost no English but he was very kind and tried his hardest to explain everything to me and make sure I was comfortable and understood everything. He even walked me to my room helping me with my stuff and explained/showed me how to work everything in my room. Very courteous! They give you shampoo and body wash here, just like in Gangnam. This sink is THE most complicated one I've encountered thus far, with three different knobs that turn both ways. I finally sorted out that one has temperature (in degrees), one is the force of the water, and the final one is to turn the water between the sink and shower. It's hard to manage though, I was fiddling with the temperature and force dials for awhile because it's so finicky. Also, MY ROOM HAS A MICROWAVE! First time! Also a scale (needed for when I want to leave and weigh my baggage!) and refrigerator with freezer. They give me dish soap by the main sink AND a sponge too! To wash my dishes :) And once again, my bed is big haha. It had been progressively shrinking during my stay in Korea from King in Gangnam, to Queen in Seorak Beach, to Double in Myeongdong. This place doesn't have daily room cleaning. They have what they call a linen rental service, so if you need bath towels, bath robes, hand towels (all provided in a big stack in my room already! Nice), there is a surcharge. However, since I am staying longer than a week it is all free for me! I just have to bring them to the front to exchange them when I want :) There is also a coin laundry in the back of the hotel, so I can properly wash my clothes for the first time all trip!! Washing in the shower is difficult and air-drying them is a pain with limited space lol. A side note: THIS LANGUAGE THING IS SO HARD. I'm instinctively replying in Korean and my brain is feeding me Korean words to everything, so I now draw a blank when I want to say simple things like yes, no, thank you, sorry, and excuse me @.@ It's awful, I feel like a retard because I can't even respond on English haha. I immediately start a Korean response then stop myself because I belatedly remember I'm in Japan now, then struggle to remember the Japanese equivalent all on like 2 seconds lol. So I just bow my head and smile for everything since I'm not fast enough -.- At least I'll be a polite retard. As I had barely anything to eat all day (the airplane food was cute but tiny), I desperately needed food and even more desperately, water. I left my hotel in search of a convenience store somewhere in my neighborhood. I found one a block down that I first thought was 7-eleven. Like I posted about before, they are HUGELY prevalent in Korea. Although it had the same colored stripes outside and the same EXACT 7, it was called 7&i and seemed like a mini-Albertsons. They had a ton of products that were their own brand, and seemed more like a true "supermarket" than any I've seen in Korea (although it was still a corner store by American standards lol). My mouth literally dropped when I got to the other side of the store and saw the wall sof pre-made refrigerated meals. THEY ALL LOOKED SO DELICIOUS! They had pastas, sushi, beef plates, katsus, curries, sandwiches, rice balls, seafood platters, mochi, salads, vegetable dishes, and more. It was unreal. Since they don't have street vendors here in Japan, I had been worried about what I'd eat in between eating-out meals...so THIS is why they don't have street vendors here in Japan haha. I had already loaded up on dry soups, noodle & pasta bowls to try, as well as some milk tea, green tea ice cream cones (SO COOL THEY HAVE GREEN TEA ICE CREAM CONES HERE. In America the flavor of choice for pre-made ice cream cones is generally vanilla [Drumsticks]) and frozen yogurt. I just got a shrimp pasta dish (which they heat up right there for you! It smelled DIVINE) and some footballs to eat as a midnight snack, when I knew I'd be hungry again. Belatedly I realized another cool part of my room. I had been sad about a lack of a vanity, where I usually set up my laptop and simultaneously get ready for the day. There was a weird double wood panel to the right of the desk set against one side of the wall. I pulled at it and it opened up into a mirror!!! Insta-mini vanity. Epic. I have no idea why this excited me so much, but I'm always excited by all the little things I find on my trip haha. They excite me more than the big things I think...they're all just so functional and cool and surprising and efficient!!
|
Japan. 日本.11.8 - 11.26 ArchivesCategories
All
|