2024 Japan Trip

[06/22/24 - 07/25/24]

Finally finishing this up over half a year after this trip (beyond messed up…)! Relying on the copious number of photos I took & saved google maps locations to write this, forgive my “historical inaccuracies”.

Travel Map

For my visual learners, the path we took on this trip is shown below. Hover / click on a city to read my dump about it! Or keep scrolling to read in chronological order.

note: this unfortunately does not work on mobile…

Tokyo

06/22 - 06/29

Tokyo was probably my favorite city- plenty of transit, good food, and tons of activities to do. This does, in turn, translate to there being a ton of stuff listed here- thanks Cindy for doing so much planning <3

06/23

Michael and I started off super jetlagged- we landed at around dinner time, met up with Cindy and Sahil at our hotel, and crashed. We woke up at dawn and decided to go wait in line for over an hour at this place called Tsumugi, right next to a temple & the Tsukiji Fish Market. They had this 18 set dish meal based on something something 18 virtues of a monk.  Normally you’d have to make a reservation a long time in advance but because we got there so early, we ended up being 5th in line and getting to try it! It was nice, there was a good mix of savory, sweet, bitter, and we even got congee refills!

We then went to a coffee place nearby called Glitch Coffee- Michael of course was looking up shops and recommendations on Reddit because apparently the coffee game in Japan was “crazy”. To be fair- this was probably the best (but also most expensive) coffee I had. It was fun! We waited in line outside, and then when we got inside, the baristas had us smell some beans they thought we’d like and then made us drinks out of those. I got a flat white (the milk was super fatty & yum) and Michael got a pourover. They gave us these cool cards too that were like trading cards on where the beans were from HAHA

We then finally met up with Cindy & Sahil around noonish at the Tsukiji fish market nearby! It was super fun- there was this huge block that consisted of the market. Every shop sold some sort of seafood thing, usually fresh. I don’t have pictures of all of it, but we got loads and loads of sashimi, some fried octopus and fish cakes, fresh oysters, fresh scallops, and Cindy/Sahil even waited for super long for this giant fried rice cake with a shrimp in the middle!! Unfortunately I don’t think I have the photo for it so use your imagination. It looked something like this ( くコ:彡 )

After leaving the fish market we got a bit split up- Cindy and Sahil managed to get the last few tickets to a Kabuki show at the theater nearby (so jealous), and Michael and I ended up doing a shopping spree (#GUreps) before heading back to the hotel to sleep at like 7 PM lol.

06/24

Michael and I got up super early again because of jet lag. There wasn’t much open, so we decided to go try out this “fast food” gyudon chain called Matsuya for breakfast. It was so Japan-core, truly minimized for the least amount of social interaction as possible. You order at a ticket machine. Every single chair is a stool facing a partition of some sort. Your number is called/displayed on a screen when a worker puts your food out at the serving counter. You can get water/tea by yourself. You bus your plates yourself. We saw a lot of salarymen chilling alone eating their breakfasts, sitting as far apart as possible (like urinal theory?). Food wasn’t bad at all though, it was definitely greasy but there were a lot of sets / customization options, and there were tons of spices and sauces out. As we were finishing up, we saw the rush of salarymen walking past the doors to get to the nearby Kanda station. It was insane, I wish I got a video! A sea of white shirts and black slacks, the women I saw definitely had the best outfits without competition. Michael and I were both shocked at how many there were heading down that specific street, but when public transit is that well serviced I totally get it.

We then decided to head to Ueno Park around noon with Cindy and Sahil. Oh my god. It was so hot. Never go to Asia during the summer if you can avoid it… this wasn’t even the worst day, but we were dying. We walked through a temple by a lake, staying in the shade most of the time.

We then made our way down to Asakusa, where we got some super needed matcha shaved ice and stumbled into this shop called “kanna” with some AMAZING, yummy, fresh fish bowls. They had a fully Japanese set menu that changed daily, and they had sides that came with it like a salad that were sooo delicious. We couldn’t stay long though, because we last minute decided to take this ferry, and we needed to run to catch it. We took a quick detour through Senso-iji (super pretty! Way too many people taking pictures in the heat though), and managed to make it just in time.

While we were waiting in line for this stream-lined futuristic-looking ship (according to Cindy, the designer was this weird weeb of some sorts), we were blessed enough to see the Asahi beer hall building. We were all so convinced the golden thing on top was poop. The boat ride was chill, it was good to be out of the heat and see the sights from the river. We passed by some rainbow bridges, Michael and Sahil took naps while Cindy and I yapped. We docked at a shopping center after an hour or so, killed some time by roaming, and I got a bucket hat from The Freak Store. The bucket hat was so needed though- she will be a recurring character from here on out.

We finally made it to our Planet TeamLabs reservation at around 5! This is one of the things that almost everyone says to do in Japan, and I 100% agree. It’s a very interactive art museum of sorts, and there are a few different ones around. Some of them are fully outdoors. This one was one of the craziest ones- I think the intention was to make your senses experience such different things that you feel like you’re on different planets (hence the name). Sahil and I had to roll up our pants, since there were multiple parts where we were wading through water filled rooms or a ramp with water coming down it. If you didn’t think too much about how gross the water probably was, it was fun to just have no idea what was coming and see a bunch of whacky rooms. We spent a long time goofing around and taking lots of pictures! My favorite rooms were the orchid room where flowers lowered from the ceiling and the room with the reflective orbs on grass.

Almost immediately after that, Michael and I had a dinner appointment with one of his mom’s old college friends and his son who was going to Columbia for baseball. We went to an omakase place of sorts, it was way too bougie for what Michael and I showed up in, but it was fun to chat with them.

06/25

Another hot day- we stopped by a mostly self-serve coffee place for breakfast (so many places were like this with only one worker to maintain stuff! so crazy) before heading to the Imperial Palace. It’s a little jarring because the palace was very much in the middle of downtown- like we walked through the financial district and crossed a moat to get onto the grounds. We messed up a little bit since we thought we could actually go into the castle, but we had a nice time walking around the gardens and lakes there anyways. Lots of layered gardens, big walls, plaques on how they structurally maintained/rebuilt parts of walls.

After a little siesta, we made our way to Shimokitazawa to roam the streets. We heard this place was “less touristy” and had good places to thrift. There were tons of stores, but a lot of the clothing was both way more expensive than I thought it would be. Funnily enough, there were lots of America-core jerseys and vintage shirts. We also stopped by some book stores, record shops, before stopping by a super cool jazz bar!

It was quite literally underground, and it wasn’t super structured with set bands playing. There were a lot of local musicians coming in and out, singing up to play with their group or with new people they were just meeting. We were super out of place but the music was super fun to listen to! Ended the night on some nice vegetarian curry nearby, we were all lacking in fiber and trying to fix that.

Our final stop of the night was by Akihabara, where we went into an arcade until it closed at around 11 PM (earlier than I would’ve expected it to close). There were so many rows of claw machines (with a lot of anime girls inside them). Lots of fun retro games, Michael found a train game, we played some classic Mario games, but my favorites were definitely the rhythm games. Cindy and I played a taiko drumming game, and then Michael and I played a DJ / guitar hero game of sorts- it was fun and silly!

06/26 pt. 1

Started the day off slow, enjoying a nice breakfast at a coffee shop near the station. We then caught a few trains to take us all the way down to a nearby hot spring town, Hakone, to spend the night!

To read in chronological order, see the Hakone section.

06/27 pt. 2

Read the beginning in the Hakone section.

We returned from Hakone around dinner time and checked into our hotel in Shibuya >:) We didn’t end up booking one of those pod hotels- it would’ve been fun to try but I don’t think any of us wanted to deal with people coming in and out for two nights. It was then a bit of a split- Michael and I went and got some super yummy katsu for dinner and Cindy / Sahil went shopping in the area. There were some fun stores in the area, like a Studio Ghibli store and a huge Nintendo store.

06/28

We started the day off with a 25 course omakase lunch at Tokyo Ten, at the Shinjuku station! Cindy and I were doing rankings / writing down our thoughts as we tried each thing. 25 was a lot but it was a good mix of fish and other things! We were all so full towards the end (except Michael, somehow smh). Here’s my final ranking (you can tell I like fatty fish):

Slight aside- apparently real estate companies will invest in transit and buy out tons of land to lease out around train stations. So, a ton of big department stores, malls, and good restaurants will end up being around or even inside the station, which incentivizes people to take transit to stations and visit these places. That just makes sense to me- it’s a good incentive to get people to take transit if there’s an end location or fun thing to do there! I feel like in the US I’d never go to a sushi place at a train station because most of the places at train stations / airports end up being far removed, overpriced, and a little sketchy.

Unfortunately it was raining pretty much the rest of the day… Cindy wanted to finish up some shopping, so we split for the afternoon. Michael and I went to another crazy café- it was Alice in Wonderland themed. I had a latte with amazing cinnamon / orange flavors, and we also had a sponge cake that was super highly recommended. It was a very cozy place to be on a rainy day! The afternoon passed by in a food coma haze- I think we kept trying to meet up with Cindy / Sahil but there kept being things like running to lost and founds, bad service, etc. Michael and I ended up going to an art museum near Harajuku. It was super cool and there was even an English pamphlet with all the plaques! It was fun seeing what more contemporary / modern Japanese art looked like. Some of my favorites were some very surreal ones, especially one that played with surrealism against a very traditional still life landscape.

Harajuku was more disappointing than I expected, but to be fair it was rainy and dreary out. We got there pretty late too, so lots of places were shutting down and there weren’t that many people around. Michael and I ended up just walking through, grabbing some food, before heading back to the hotel to get ready. We ended up walking by some funny things, such as an alcohol museum inside a convenience store… we love Japan’s alcoholism <3

We finally rallied together to all make it to a club! When we did our initial (reddit) research, we decided we wanted to go to WOMB because it was close to a lot of other things & played EDM / techno music. We left the hotel at around 1 AM after some convenience store seltzers and soju. Shibuya was very lively still, we walked by a ton of clubs with long lines and lots of yummy greasy street food stalls. It kind of seemed like this was when a lot of people were starting to show up… we ended up waiting for around 30 minutes to get in. Half the line got cut by a big group of white Europeans who reeked of smoked… they were blasted and rude as fuck. Boo.

The club otherwise was pretty fun! It was techno night (wish it was EDM </3), and we saw two different DJ sets from on top of this block near the front. Laser lights going crazy. Best part of the night was when we went downstairs to a smaller room where an older Japanese guy was DJ-ing. He was absolutely killing it but absolutely stone-faced the entire time. Nonchalant king. I think we ended up leaving sometime around or after 3 because Sahil had a flight the next day </3

Overall a super fun time! Except it smelled so much like smoke everywhere. Everyone smokes so damn much in Japan. My hair and clothes smelled so narsty the next day.

06/29

Bye bye Cindy and Sahil :(

It was hard getting up this morning. Michael and I struggled to find a locker at the train station to leave our bags, but we managed, got breakfast at a coffee shop, and then made our way towards the Meiji Shrine (dedicated to the Emperor Meiji) to walk around the park and see the sights. It was really pretty- there was so much forest just in the middle of the city, and there was a good spread of interesting things spread along the road (like imperial sake barrels, etc). We spent a while reading plaques and checking out the silly things people wrote on their prayer charms (?).

We then made our way out to a neighborhood called Setagaya, where Michael had a Studio Ghibli themed bakery saved (ShiroHige’s Cream Puffs). Allegedly, Hayao Miyazaki’s daughter is the one who created/runs the bakery- so there were many Studio Ghibli themed things! The café itself was on the second floor in a cute circular wooden house (the first floor had the kitchen / to go store front) filled with Studio Ghibli décor- it gave me major tree house vibes. Their main baked good was the Totoro shaped cream puffs. We got two kinds, strawberry and matcha, and of course, more coffee. It was good! Not anything life changing, but it was a super cute place to sit and chat for a bit.

After that, we took a quick stroll through the neighborhood. It was much more residential and compact, but we walked by some parks and even a local art street fair with pop ups and food booths. Then we had to run back to Shibuya, grab our bags, and get on a train to get to Sendai for the night!

To continue reading chronologically, go to the Sendai Section.

Hakone

06/26 - 06/27

A mountainous, hot spring town close to Tokyo!

06/26 pt. 2

Read the beginning in the Tokyo Section.

We took a few train transfers to get to Hakone from Tokyo, which took up most of our afternoon. Our final transfer was onto this Hakone area specific train, where we passed through valleys, many of which were lined with hydrangeas. The train also had to go through MULTIPLE of these intense switchbacks where the train had to basically do a 180 and reverse onto another pair of tracks to make a super sharp turn. There were also tons of people with crazy cameras at the ends of the track trying to take a shot of the train pulling in. Hakone is a very tourist oriented destination, but I was still surprised it was so well connected by train/bus because the town was functionally in the middle of the mountains.

We managed to check into our hotel, drop off our bags, and then ran to a bus to try and catch the last few trams across the mountain (Mount Komagatake) nearby in Hakone Gora, where the trams would take us across the peaks and then towards Lake Ashinoko. We caught one of the last trams up the mountain rail, and then took three sky trams across a few peaks, where we saw a bunch of old sulfur mines / hot spring areas. There were some famous sulfur / preserved eggs at the top of one of the peaks that allegedly increases your life span by 7 years if you eat it! Unfortunately despite us literally running across each station, the onsen egg store closed early and we missed it by just a few minutes… rip. Another L was that allegedly on the clearer days, you can see Mt. Fuji from the tram! Unfortunately it was just cloudy enough that we could barely see its outline in the distance.

On the upside, we did manage to get off the trams just in time to get onto one of the boats that toured around the lake! I think they were French/British themed which was a little odd… but it was cute! The lake was gorgeous, and kind of wild to see the super tall mountains right next to it. We roamed around the small town near the other side of the lake for a little before taking a bus back to our hotel. We weren’t even back that late, but at around 6 PM, all the restaurants (like 3 total) within a 30 minute walking distance of our hotel were closed! Thankfully a small 7/11 was still open, and we bought a lot of ramen and other frozen food. It wouldn’t be Japan if there wasn’t also a beer vending machine right next to the convenience store. We got some Kirin grapefruit and lemon highballs, so yum.

Our hotel was a traditional Japanese style place (called Ryokans)- so we had dinner, set up our futons on the tatami mat, and then got to go use the hotel’s private outdoor onsen! It was a crisp night so it felt nice to soak, but the natural hot spring water was 50 (FIFTY!) degrees Celsius (122 degrees F…). Even mixed with some cold water, I couldn’t stay in for that long. Still, a great way to end the night!

06/27 pt. 1

We checked out of our hotel early morning, but decided we still wanted to check out some other parts of Hakone before we headed back to Tokyo. This meant Michael and I were lugging around our 40 lb backpacks around all day through the hills </3

We made our way back down to Lake Ashinoko, where we did a little loop of the Torii gates and mountain shrines around the area. There was one particularly gorgeous one that was in the lake by a bunch of tall pine trees. There must have been a 50+ person line waiting to take pictures in front of it… I managed to snag a cool picture of it still from a higher viewpoint. For lunch, we stopped by a shop for some handmade soba.

There were a few trails in the area, some connecting attractions and the Great Highway that used to run through Hakone. This was the path that the local lords / daimyo used to make their yearly pilgrimage to Tokyo to pay their respects to the Emperor. It’s crazy that they had these long roads even cut through the mountains and not go around, but I guess then they’d have a hard time building any roads in Japan period. The “roads” were pretty wide and paved with these big rocks (we thought it was meant more for horse drawn carriages at first but it was so hilly that that didn’t make much sense), so it wasn’t exactly the easiest to walk on. We ended up taking the Great Highway around the area almost parallel to the main road, taking a short detour to go to this mountain top tea house where we got to try some sweets and some sweet fermented tea, I was a fan! The trees lining the road had been there since the road was built, so it was also nicely shaded and pretty to walk through. We ended up taking a big loop and ending up pretty close to where we started.

That marked the end of our Hakone side quest, so mid-afternoon, we got back on a train to head back to Tokyo for a few more nights!

Return to the Tokyo Section to read the rest of the day.

Sendai

06/29 - 07/01

This next leg of the trip is sponsored by Japan’s high speed rail (shinkansen) and rail passes. Michael and I love public transportation so much <3

Michael and I didn’t end up exploring the actual city of Sendai much- it served more as an inbetween city for us to take some day trips and not have to take the whole day to get all the way to Hokkaido.

Yamagata

06/30

Mountain shrine day trip! We took a train further west / inland to get to the Yamadera mountain shrine in Yamagata. Lots of yama’s… It may not surprise you that yama means mountain. This shrine is famous for having 1000 steps you need to take to reach it (I think the actual number is closer to 1600). I had my knee brace strapped and ready. It was super pretty all the way up, lots of switch backs, stone lantern things lining the path. As we got near the top, it was super gorgeous seeing the tall gates poke out from the trees. I almost wish we got to come here during fall so we could’ve done the walk/hike up with different colored leaves. Either way, super fun / pretty shrine, and the view from the top was amazing.

There was also an old lookout / watch tower that we climbed up, and we got a super nice view of the valley and villages nearby. I took a few film photos (camera courtesy of Lucy <3). Michael and I both got a little turtle charm with a bell to add to our bags, chugged some water, and then started heading back down to the little town at the base of the shrine. We took a slightly different path and passed by a bunch of hydrangeas. Views on views on views. We even got some fortunes- I got great luck and Michael got extra great luck. I lowkey did think they only gave out good ones to tourists until I watched someone else pull a bad fortune lol.

We also had some of the “local” Yamagata regional food. At the temple, we tried some very firm and chewy balls on a skewer called tama konnyaku that came with wasabi. I’d liken the texture to a what I imagine biting into an orbeez (in a slightly negative way). For our lunch, we had soba noodles with mountain yam. I thought the flavor was nice, but chopped up mountain yam is oddly slimy. A little too close to baby food for me, I fear.

Then it was back on transit to get back to Sendai. We decided to take a bus that would take a detour to the Akiyu Craft Village. The area was pretty hilly so we didn’t end up getting there until later afternoon, when some of the stores had already started shutting down. We still managed to get in- there was a lot of wooden craft stores that had handmade things from traditional dolls to to furniture. There was this specific kind of doll that apparently originated from this area, and one store was filled with them. We ended up getting some chopsticks, chopsticks rests, and Michael got a doll block with a painted face on it. It was fun! I think if we could’ve known / planned it better, it would’ve been better to get to the craft village first and do a workshop of sorts in advance to make your own thing.

We finally got back to Sendai at night, and decided to go out and try some more local food. Apparently beef tongue is really popular, so we went to a yakitori store of sorts and got some. I thought it was pretty solid, but a little chewy.

Tashirojima

07/01

We checked out of our hotel in the morning and got back on a train further north. We (a little last minute) decided to head to a port city to catch a ferry to a cat island called Tashirojima. The town itself was quite cute- we didn’t quite catch the full reason but it seemed like some famous / classic manga series had been set or started there. There were lots of murals and statues of characters around on the streets. It was like a little scavenger hunt seeing them around. After wandering around for a bit, we luckily managed to catch the last ferry out to the cat island that wouldn’t force us to spend the night on one of the expensive island hotels.

The ferry wasn’t too big, but it went fast. We got splashed a few times on the top deck as the boat sped across the choppy sea. Still, the ferry ride was pretty long and it took us about an hour to get to the first island. Since the boat apparently took a big loop around to a few other islands nearby before coming back, we decided to take the ferry one more stop to the other side of the island and walk back to the first stop. The island itself was very similar to what I’ve heard about most cat islands: sparsely populated and old old buildings. The town used to be a pretty major fishing town, and many of them kept cats to help with rats / other pests. But industrialization / changes in fishing practices pretty much decimated that job market, so people moved out, left their cats, and the abandoned buildings began crumbling. Aside from the tourists that got off the ferry with Michael and I, we only saw a few people cleaning up some cut down bushes. There weren’t really any shops or anything near the dock, it was all residential, abandoned or not.

There was a path that cut through the mountain back to the first port that we decided to go on. There were a lot of cats along the way! Some were super friendly and even followed us for a bit, while some looked super rough. Close to the end we came across this café / souvenir shop that had probably over 30 cats loitering around the entrance. Apparently the shop owner there feeds them pretty often, and if you get to the island early enough you can watch him do it. I sat down outside for a little bit and this cat crawled into my lap with no prompting and then started to sleep. SO so cute. Who gaf about cat allergies- it was so worth the itchy throat I got after.

The rest of the walk went by pretty fast since we wanted to make sure we caught the last ferry. We passed by a cat shrine and some bamboo, and made it to the docks about 10 or so minutes before the ferry pulled back up. We picked up some curry and barely got back on the train (running half a mile carrying food is not fun) to keep going North. We made a quick pit stop in Matsushima to try and go to a teahouse by the water, but since it was a weekday, it had closed early and we just missed it. We decided to go cut through the city up to this viewpoint where we could see the water instead. We ate our curry at the top (yummy and well spiced), and then got back on one last train to take us to our hotel in Hachinohe.

Hachinohe

07/02 pt. 1

We were only in our Hachinohe hotel for the night, but we wanted to spend the day exploring the area before heading up to Hokkaido. There was a specific bus that ran a loop around the shoreline by Hachinohe, so we picked a few places we wanted to go and just got on and off the bus. We stopped by a nice café for breakfast, it was run by this one older guy and the walls were absolutely covered in instruments. We tried to have a little bit of a broken google-translated conversation, and he even gave us some cookies to eat with our coffee.

Our first stop after that was a seagull shrine atop a big rock by the ocean called Kabushima Jinja. I’m not sure if the seagulls came first or the shrine came first, but either way, the place was COVERED in seagulls. I think they were mostly black-tipped gulls, and they were all over the steps, on top of the gates, and hovering in the wind currents around the rock. As you can imagine, this means the shrine was covered in white poop. The view from the top of the shrine was nice though if you could ignore all the bird sounds!

Then, we took a stop by a combination information center and museum which was next to a park. We had a nice time reading the plaques and walking around the park. Michael briefly left me to chill in the sun and said he saw a bunch of people swimming in the ocean collecting seaweed. We then found a shop nearby and had some seafood and uni rice bowls, since Hachinohe was pretty close to the ocean and famous for having good seafood. Fresh and yum! I love seafood.

We then got back on the high speed rail (final one for now since the rail doesn’t currently extend all the way up) to get to Hakodate, our first city in Hokkaido.

Hakodate

07/02 - 07/04

First city in Hokkaido!

07/02 pt. 2

Read the beginning of this day in the Hachinohe Section!

We checked into our hotel in a cute downtown area of Hakodate. The highlight of it all was absolutely the fact that the room had a lifted section with a bed that was flush with the ground and a seated table area by some windows. Elite combo, I love floor bed. Since we got there earlier than we expected, we decided to walk around and take the cable car up the nearby mountain to get a birds eye view of the city. Funny enough, the whole thing was Detective Conan themed, there were ads/theme songs playing everywhere…. I’ve never seen the show but apparently there’s a new movie based in Hokkaido. Super silly- our cable car tickets had Conan on them and everything. The view from the top was very pretty, you could see some green, the city, and the ocean. We decided to stay at the top past the sunset so we could see the view at night too. Gorg. Surprisingly a lot of Chinese tourists in Hokkaido- I was hearing Mandarin everywhere when I barely heard any in Tokyo.

We got back down from the cable car around 8 PM or so and we were starving. Unfortunately, so many places in Japan close super early, so we only had a few options to eat at nearby. One ramen shop sounded delicious but it was packed full, with a family of 6 (all 4 of their kids were probably under 5) waiting outside and being super loud. My personal hell. But as we were leaving, I heard one of the kids sitting on the sidewalk say “mom, I think I’m experiencing a new emotion- anxiety,” which is objectively hilarious. We ended up going to a generic izakaya of sorts but got to try lots of good greasy food- takoyaki (octopus ballz), okonomiyaki (fried pancake of sorts).

07/03

We started the day slow, walk around, and explore the neighborhood we were in. We found this café that was fully vegetarian and bought some coffee and a set meal- which ended up being super good. The fiber is always a plus too. The café owner was super sweet- she knew a little bit of English so we were chatting and she told us about why she started a vegetarian café and all about the baked goods her friends made that she was selling. There was also an older couple in the store, and they were apparently from Sapporo (where we were going to in a few days!). We got a few recommendations of things to do from them but they seemed kind of surprised we were even going.

For the afternoon, we went to Goryokaku, which is a fort shaped like a star with a star shaped moat and a star shaped tower. The only real lore I can remember about the place is that it was built & invaded in the Tokugawa period, and the fighting there was only about a week. Either way, it was nice to walk through the park and read the plaques! The lawn was sloped up so you could walk up the sides of the walls and get a higher vantage point. The walls weren’t as fortified or as crazy as the imperial palace in Tokyo, but the shape of the fort made the moats and all the walls very interesting.

It started to get a little rainy in the late afternoon, so we decided to head over to an art museum nearby. There was a statue just out front of the museum that Michael saw and went, “wow, her toes are crazy looking”. I looked at the plaque and told him that it was Sappho, and Michael had the audacity to ask me who that was?!? Mind you this man is not straight either… this is either a singular instance of a gay homophobe or a wider example of men not believing lesbians exist. Because bitch that’s Sappho??

The inside of the museum was pretty small but cool. We got there probably only about an hour before closing so we only went through one of the galleries- it was their main one on Hakodate culture with some highlights in calligraphy. There was also a bookstore / giftshop / café that we stopped by before leaving. I got some more stamps, and then we went back to our hotel.

For our late dinner, we went out to another izakaya restaurant, but one that served curry. We got two different ones, but the highlight was definitely the one made with squid ink. Dark & mysterious & delicious.

07/04 pt. 1

Last day in Hakodate! I said bye bye to our floor bed and we checked out of our hotel early in the morning.

We had to catch a train at around noon, so we had some time to kill and decided to spend a little bit at Hakodate’s fish market (which was luckily also near the station). We got some fresh uni (SO rich), fresh oysters (probably the best I’ve ever had), and also had some very delicious, sweet, fresh cantaloupe (grown nearby in Hokkaido). There was this giant tank in the middle of the fish market that had live squid you could catch, and they’d take the one you caught clean and cut it up for you to eat. I wanted to do that SO bad but unfortunately the line was over an hour long and we didn’t have that much time. That may seem a little crazy but Hakodate is historically very well known for squid fishing, so we really tried to find some fresh squid to eat. Unfortunately we had to just settle for squid sashimi and some dried squid snacks. Still good though!

We decided to get off briefly at Lake Onuma, which was just a short ride North of Hakodate. We rented some e-bikes and decided to bike about 14 km / 8.5 miles around the lake to see some of the sights. It was a little cloudy, but it was pretty and calming! Towards the end of the bike ride we stopped by this chain of islands connected with these very arched bridges. There were lots of other cool areas further away that would’ve been super fun to bike to, but we didn’t have enough time. We got a quick lunch with noodles, a lamb sandwich, squid ink / red wine soft serve (I promise it was actually pretty good / not too strong), and a beer for the train, and then it was back on the road for us.

This split is a little awkward (I made the city roadmaps before I wrote anything / remembered what happened on each day), but read the rest of this day just below in the Noboribetsu Section.

Noboribetsu

07/04 pt. 2

Read the beginning of the day in the Hakodate Section.

After a 3 hour or so train ride, we made it to Noboribetsu, a place known for its hot springs. We didn’t actually have time to go to any of the hot springs, but we did take a bus to the sulfury source of all the hot springs in the area: Jigokudani / Hell Valley. The naming is a little dramatic, but they really played it up by having giant demons / oni statues in the touristy town right by the valley.

The valley itself was so beautiful! Even though the strong smell of sulfur and heat coming up from the water was NOT fun in combination with the already humid and cloudy day, it was super cool to walk along the board walk and see the different bands of colors from all the minerals coming out from the water and ground.

We spent a little longer around the town, looking at gift shops and seeing if there were any fun regional snacks. But since we weren’t staying in the area, we had to hop back on a bus and train to get to Sapporo.

Here’s another weird little split, read the rest of this day just below in the Sapporo Section.

Sapporo

07/04 - 07/06

Yes, the beer city!

07/04 pt. 3

Read the beginning of this day in the Hakodate Section or the Noboribetsu Section.

It took us about another 2 hours on the train to get to Sapporo- we were so wiped but also so hungry. We checked into our hotel fully remotely- it was more of an AirBnb situation and the room looked like an apartment. There was even an in-unit washer! It sucked and didn’t actually dry clothes though, even though it said it could… We dropped off our bags and ran to a nearby restaurant to get some food at around 8:30 PM- thankfully we made it just half an hour before pretty much everything closed.

Sapporo definitely had a different vibe compared to the other cities we’d been to at this point. It may have just been the area we were staying in, the roads were so much wider, the blocks were longer, and we saw way more cars around (the same is technically true in parts of Tokyo, but that doesn’t really count, it has literally everything). Michael and I suspect that because Sapporo is a relatively newer city compared to a lot of other cities in Japan, a lot more of the city was built to be more car centric.

07/05

After the looong travel day we had yesterday, we slept in hard and didn’t end up getting out of bed until around noon. Our first meal was at a nearby café, where I got a nice latte, Michael got two pour over coffees to compare the beans, and we split a cheesy rice dish and a cake.

We didn’t have a lot of set plans and just wanted to explore the city some more, so we walked a few blocks to Odori park to mill around. The park was nice and there were tons of people just hanging around- it reminded me of NY parks since it was in the middle of the city and just a block wide. There was a cool tower landmark and this beatboxer busking and absolutely killing it. There was also apparently a flower garden cultivating contest that had happened recently, because blocks of the park had these tiny lots with flowers and plaques! We spent a while walking around and looking at all of them, I’ll include some of my favorites here:

Later afternoon it started drizzling, so we decided to catch a bus and head over to the Sapporo Beer Museum. Entry was free- it had a lot of giant barrels, old and new beer-making equipment, and there was even a lot of translated pamphlets we could read! The museum also had the history of beer making in Hokkaido, how Sapporo beer came to be as popular as it is today, as well as some old Sapporo beer ads. A fun fact I remember is that a big reason why Sapporo beer (or more generally, beer made in Hokkaido) got the reputation it did was because they had the advantage of the factories being in the North and use ice in the beer making process. At the end of the museum exhibits, there was a gift shop / food court. Michael and I ended up getting a tasting flight of the Sapporo beers over the years.

There was:

(1) Black Label - Sapporo’s best-selling product since 1977
(2) Classic - made from 10% malt, more beery
(3) Kaitakushi Beer - original recipe from the Kaitakushi brewery with only malt, hops, yeast, and water

Three beers from most modern to oldest! To be honest, splitting 3 full beers on nearly empty stomachs kind of got to us- I don’t really remember which one I liked the most, but I definitely did like all of them. Just different levels of hop-iness.

It was still rainy outside, so Michael and I really wanted to eat ramen for dinner. We got to a sort of ramen alley, and decided we wanted to try this pretty famous miso ramen place called Sumire. We got there within minutes of it opening (at 6 PM), but there was already a line of 20+ people waiting at the door… Luckily the line went by pretty fast, especially since you could order at the door from a vending ticket machine. I thought it was super delicious, and I really loved the umami flavor! Food in Hokkaido just has such a higher base level of good.

Otaru

07/06

Otaru is a cute sea-side city West from Sapporo (although tbf, most cities are sea-side on an island). We wanted to take a day trip out here before heading on to our next area!

Our first stop was Mt. Tengu, a mountain / ski resort near Otaru. We took a cable car up to the mountain, and even though it was cloudy and misting slightly, we got to see a nice view of Otaru and walk along some of the trails at the top. The namesake of the mountain was Tengus, a type of demon (literally translated to sky dog, the Chinese char has the same meaning and the pronunciation is “tian gou”- u can see where it comes from). They had a bunch of statues and collectible stamps around depicting these tengus. Michael’s favorite was this giant one that had the paint rubbed off its nose.

There was also a museum at the top which we decided to walk through before heading out. It started off innocently enough, with a few rooms on the history of skiing in the area, showcasing old skis, old uniforms, old pictures of competitions, etc. But then towards the back, the last few rooms took a weird turn… Tengu masks started popping up everywhere, until finally, the last room had the masks with the long noses covering almost all the walls. Weird, but not too out of the blue. The masks are supposed to protect you from evil spirits and such, and there was a wide variety of designs that was cool to look at. A video was playing in the middle of the room. Just playing some calming music. Some boats sailed by and some old men walked across the screen, with scrolls and curtains cutting across the screen every now and then to transition across scenes. A tengu wearing official robes in a default CGI pose rises up from the bottom. A bear and a dear fade in on either side of it. Nothing moves.

Then the beat drops.

The tengu starts to do the aggressively do the gangnam style dance while the bear and deer start head banging. I am in awe. There is no one else in the room but me. I shout for Michael to run in and see the video, but it stops and fades away seconds before he makes it. I incoherently try to tell him what I just saw, but the serene music is back on the screen and I genuinely seem like I’ve gone crazy. I force Michael to wait and watch the whole video cycle again so he can see it. It is the longest 5 minutes of my life. But, I did manage to record it so now, so text me if you too want to experience this. I am not uploading a video to github for this blog, that’s too silly.

There was nothing else on the mountain that could top that, so we headed back down via cable car and into the city.

Otaru itself was pretty touristy, and historically produces a lot of artisanal glass items from cups to lamps to music boxes! We got some seafood rice bowls for lunch (super fresh and delicious), and then just walked around in a bunch of the stores, looking at what was being sold and enjoying the shapes & colors. There were also Miffy, Snoopy, and Hello Kitty specific themed stores, which I thought was hilarious.

At some point on our walk through town, we came across this cut-out of this green mascot with a bulge in its pants. Apparently, its name is marimokkochi, marimo for the round moss balls found in some of Japan’s lakes and mokkochi which means bulge. Hilarious and super memorable, they did a good job.

Some other misc. highlights: super cool looking Tiffany lamps and this specific glass cut in cups that you can only get from Otaru. It was so pretty but sooo expensive. There was also this steampunk-y clock tower that played that typical tune you’d here (called Westminster Quarters from my google search) with these crazy looking steam pipes. I wish we could’ve bought some more souvenirs, but we only had our backpacks and a dream.

As it got later in the afternoon, the sun started peaking out of the clouds! Michael and I decided to walk back to the train station along this canal, and we stopped by this coffee shop called Chaff to grab a bev and a snack. Super good call- it was a very cute place run by a couple with cool books, records, paintings, and roasting equipment. We got a nice fudge cake, and I got this purple mountain yam coffee that Michael kept trying to take more of. It made me immediately open beli and log it.

Then it was time to catch some buses and trains- approximately 4 hours to Asahikawa!

Asahikawa

07/06 - 07/09

We arrived in Asahikawa pretty late from Otaru- we actually only spent one night in the city proper so I don’t have too much of an opinion on it. It felt like Sapporo but even a little more car-centric.

Furano

07/07 pt. 1

Woke up early, checked out of our hotel with our giant backpacks, and grabbed some convenience store breakfast and got another train! Pretty brutal tbh, I was already kind of getting tired of changing hotels and cities in such a time crunch at this point. Next trip I’d plan it a little slower. But, we were getting on a special train, the Lavender Express, from Asahikawa out to Furano! This was a pretty cool thing that Japan rail did- Furano itself is very remote and mostly flower and lavender farms. The only reason it is connected by bus/rail at all is for tourism purposes. So, they charged more for riding that route, the train ran at very specific times, and it was designed differently from the typical train. It was open to the air, had wooden seats with tables, and had lavender colors everywhere! We even got a special post card when we got on board. It was nice, Michael and I ate our breakfasts as we slowly made our way to Furano.

We ended up going to Farm Tomita, which was the closest to one of the train stations. I was kind of skeptical of it all because it was cloudy and I thought it was going to be way too touristy, but I did think it was really cute. Yes, there was a bajillion tourists taking a bunch of pictures of flowers, but I also love taking a bunch of pictures of flowers. Real recognizes real. There also weren’t just lavender fields- there were fields representing “seasons”, or showing off a color gradient, etc. There were a bunch of shops selling lavender themed souvenirs, cafes, flower shops, ice cream stands, and even a place where they were showing off the machines they used to turn lavender flowers into oil! It smelled very nice. All the workers were also wearing lavender aprons and bandanas, and I saw a few on these lavender mopeds… I was so so jealous.

Michael and I walked around all the fields and took a bunch of silly pictures. We got some soft serve ice cream at one of the many ice cream shops around, split honeydew and lavender! The farm even grew the melons nearby, we walked past a bunch of fields by the train station. Michael directed this sick shot that matched the ice cream to the fields- I was so shocked/impressed until he told me he saw it on instagram the night before lol.

After seeing all the fields, we decided to visit the small museum they had upstairs in the main building. It was super cute! There was a brief history of the farm, including a lot of the struggles to stay afloat. Lavender farms used to be everywhere in Hokkaido, but at a certain point, I believe it was no longer as profitable because of faster cultivation elsewhere / oils mattering more. The reason Tomita farm was able to stay afloat was because the husband really wanted to keep it open for his wife, so they sacrificed a lot and came up with new ways to market lavender by making potpourris and perfumes. I think the current farm owner has been appointed some sort of Lavender Minister/Marshall a few times in the annual lavender festivals in France. There was also an area where you could get scented bookmarks of the different types of lavender they grew at the farm, along with explanations of what each type of lavender was used for. Some were more used for oils in perfume, while some were more for cooking or general smell.

We kept going past the farm to the downtown area of Furano, where we walked around for a little bit and had a late lunch where we got some “regional dishes” like wagyu rice bowl & hot pot.

Then, it was time to take the long trip to Sounkyo. Read the rest of the day here.

Sounkyo

07/07 - 07/09

Sounkyo is a hot spring town near Mt. Daisetsuzen to the East of Asahikawa. We stayed right in the valley for a few nights. The “town” was really small- it was pretty much just a few hotels in the area, two convenience stores, and a few restaurants that were closed most of the time.

07/07 pt. 2

Read the beginning of the day in the Furano Section.

From Furano, it probably took us around 3-4 hours to get there via train and then bus. Honestly, I was kind of surprised that there was even a bus that went all the way out (and even fairly frequently, once an hour). Our hotel was pretty cool- it was right next to a river and had both an indoor and an outdoor hot spring (where they made you wear these specific brown cover ups) that you could access pretty much at any time.

Unfortunately, since I had booked us for one of the rooms with a tatami mat area and those were only in the smoking section (which they didn’t specify very clearly), we accidentally got booked into a “smoking room” and couldn’t get swapped out for both nights. Probably the worst part- the hallway that we had to walk down reeked so badly of smoke that I was either holding my breath or holding a towel up to my face. It was still nice though! Michael and I ended up spending some time in the hot springs, getting some convenience store dinner, and knocked out early.

07/08

A slow and rainy day. We woke up just in time to go to the hotel buffet breakfast. It was pretty much this or a convenience store. I thought the food was just okay- I’ve definitely had worse at some “continental breakfasts”, but Michael thought this was one of the worst meals we had HAHA.

There were a lot of scenic spots and waterfalls that were in the area, so once the rain died down a little bit we hiked out a ways to the Ryusei-Ginga falls. They’re a pair of twin waterfalls that flowed off of the same mountain. A pamphlet we saw called them the “married” falls, and it was also VERY gendered. I don’t remember the exact words but it was something like “the male waterfall has a thick and powerful flow” while “the female waterfall has a feminine flow like delicate thread”. Mostly weird, a little funny, and very Japan Civ core.

You could see the waterfalls pretty well from the entrance to the “park”, but we decided to also hike up to a little viewpoint to see them both at once. East coast style hike: stairs on stairs on stairs. It started pouring rain again at the top, so we got down ASAP and ducked into one of the little gift / grocery shops there. I got a little bag charm of the marimokkochi in a cow suit (#me) as well as some fresh melon and plums!

We decided to not walk back in the rain and took a bus back. We then lazed around town, got some noodle soup at one of the restaurants, and then went back to our hotel. We went back out to the outside onsen while it was slightly misty- I loved having my face be a little chilly while I soaked in warm water. The rest of the day was filled with rest. I scrapbooked a little too (which is code for sorting through the stamps / random paper things I collected).

07/09

It was foggy but it wasn’t raining, so we decided to do what we came all the way out to Sounkyo for and take the cable cars up to Mt. Daisetsuzan!

We had another middling buffet breakfast and checked out of our hotel. Luckily, we could leave our bags by the front desk, so we didn’t have to go hiking with our giant bags. Honestly, it was crazy to me that they even managed to build cable cars up the bit where they did- it was so steep. The view was super nice! We got up about halfway up the mountain and then decided to hike to the top. Since it had rained so much in the past few days the trail conditions were ROUGH… I felt like I was doing a parkour course (negative) for so long. It was cloudy most of the time too and we could barely see anything up or down… I was worried that we would’ve done the whole hike for nothing.

Luckily, pretty much right as we got to the top, the clouds parted a little! We got to see a sick view of the nearby mountain ranges against a pretty blue sky. We lounged a little up there, enjoying the view and the sun. There were a lot of cool plants & weird looking bugs up there too. There was also a hut a ways away and a few more peaks that would’ve been fun to hike to if we were camping / had more time. Heading back down was also kind of rough, we had to go so slow because it was so muddy and we didn’t want to slip and die.

After getting to the cable cars, we got some food at a little lodge. There was a very sweet guy doing live wood carvings of animals that you can spot on the mountain, like snow foxes, birds, bears, and such. Michael got one as a tiny bag charm!

It was getting into the late afternoon at this point, so we took the cable cars back down and got on a long bus ride all the way back to the Sapporo area. We spent the night in Chitose, near the airport, to fly to Osaka the next day!

Osaka

07/10 - 07/14

First city in the Kansai region! So unbelievably hot & schweaty though…

07/10

We landed and took a while to get from the international airport (so far from the city center omg) up to the Namba district, the entertainment district / downtown of Osaka, where we were staying for two nights. We got there in the early afternoon and unfortunately stumbled into a coffee shop with the most burnt coffee I’ve ever tasted. Speaking as someone who has had Panera coffee and enjoys gambling on Dunkin’ coffee… it was bad. The deserts were fine though, but man it actually pissed me off so bad I almost left a google review. I decided to contain the haterism only to Beli though.

The traveling took a toll on us, so after some light roaming, we ended up just calling it an early night and heading to our hotel. It was crazy how the streets went from giant clams and crabs on signs with bright lights to quieter residential streets just within a few blocks. I was kind of shocked our hotel was even a ryokan, especially so close to all the bright modern shops. We ate dinner at this Chinese shop right across the street from our hotel- I think the owners said they were from Cheng Du? The food was really good and they had some real chunky Shiba Inus just chilling about behind a baby pen- classic.

07/11

Somehow, we didn’t end up getting 7/11 convenience store food on 7/11. National tragedy quite frankly. But, we did start off the day with some fire egg rice bowls set meals. One of them was called oyakodon, which translates to “father and son” because the rice bowl includes chicken and egg HAHA.

We started our afternoon off by walking around the Osaka Castle Park- there were lots of pretty views of the castle, some temples nearby, and a performer playing some drums and this comically long horn. We didn’t end up going inside the castle unfortunately because the line to get in was so so long and we had other plans in the afternoon. A bummer, but we ended up walking across the whole park instead, and there were still some super cool views of the city you could see.

Then it was Osaka Aquarium time! Super cute place. Definitely one of the best aquariums I’ve ever been to- either tied with Monterey Bay Aquarium or honestly even a little better (don’t tell Michael I said that he’d fight me on it). They took a polaroid picture of us with this paper mache whale shark out front which was really cute. I’ll try not to yap too much about the aquarium, but my highlights were definitely the otters, puffins, giant river fish (arrowanas & such they’re just so insane), and the whale sharks!!! They had a massive deep ocean tank that had tons of sharks, rays, fish, and actually spanned 2 or 3 stories with a ramp that wound around and down so you could gradually see everything. So so so cool. Put me in there coach I’d have such a good time swimming with those fishes. God I love aquariums.

We went back to Namba / Dotonbori for dinner (I don’t remember what it was since I didn’t take a picture… maybe train station ramen?), and did some souvenir shopping at the Ghibli store and others. We also walked by the running guy with his arms up that everyone loves posing by! To be honest I don’t really know why it’s popular but it is fun to see people copying the pose.

We decided to end the night by going to this place called bar Nayuta, which to no one’s surprise, Michael got as a rec off of Reddit. Fortunately the redditors actually really ate with this recommendation- it was hidden out of the way by a karaoke bar, and you had to duck under one of those split doors covered in graffiti to get inside. The actual vibe was pretty fancy though- they handed us some warm towels and we got to sit up at the bar and watch the bartenders go crazy. There wasn’t a set menu, so they just asked us what we liked in our cocktails and they’d make something for us. I don’t really remember what Michael got, but it was probably something with whiskey. For my first drink I asked for something with gin, yuzu, and other sweet fruity flavors (which some random European couple next to us asked the bartender to make for them as well, yeah I’m a #influencer). My second drink I asked for something milky and spiced, and they ended up making me a Japanese chai drink with rum, ginger, cloves, and some other spices I didn’t quite catch. Actually SO fire, I still think of her to this day.

07/12

Time to move again! We packed up our things and took our backpacks with us to the Osaka Living History museum to spend our morning / early afternoon. They had a huge rendition of old Osaka streets, with populated street fronts, stores you could go in and out of, and even a simulated day-night cycle with fireworks at night! It was super creative and cool to go on a little scavenger hunt inbetween all these shops and see what things they would’ve displayed / been selling on the festival day the city was modeled on. There was even this large communal bathhouse that played a video explaining a lot of the history of things every half hour or so. You could even see the whole “town” from above on another floor of the museum. The rest of the museum was a little more typical, but there were cool historical dioramas that moved and had sound. Honestly would recommend stopping here if you’re looking for things to do!

Then it was off to another part of Osaka! We headed towards the bay/ocean to a neighborhood called Kitakagaya, an old industrial / manufacturing district that has recently had a bunch of artists take up residency. We were staying in this massive house / airbnb of sorts that had multiple rooms, so we met and chatted with this Czech couple for a bit while we waited for the host (who was actually working next door at the coffee shop there) to come check us in. Our room this time was a traditional tatami floor room, but with a tea table set up and access to the backyard! It was gorgeous, even if there were some weird antiques like armor and swords set up in our room. Since it was so hot, we ended up taking it easy for the rest of the day, walking around a little and eating dinner at a nearby izakaya before calling it a night.

07/13

Kitakagaya exploration day! We started the day off going to this café to grab some coffee and breakfast- it was super delicious and the café ended up also being part art gallery, selling a lot of stuff from local artists from paintings to pins to jackets! We ended up chatting with the owner for a little while, he was so sweet and was showing us all of the art things that his friends had made. He also gave us a map guide of the neighborhood that was made by his friend, with all of the street murals and art pieces starred as well as some other local art galleries and shops! Michael and I decided to use this as a scavenger hunt guide and find all the art installations. There were over 40 so it took us the better part of the afternoon. Some of my favorites included: the giant 15 foot tall girl statue, the dog mural with a grass man in front, and some funny stretched out faces on rocks. I’ll try to include a few that I took pictures of:

On our scavenger hunt, we ended up roaming all the way to the pier, where there was a music festival going on! Tons of people in insane drip. We had a nice time walking around and listening to the rock songs that were playing. In the late afternoon, after finding the last few street art pieces, we ended up in another café / art gallery. This one was inside this cool two story building with open wood and high walkways. We got some coffee and some sweet yuzu ice cream dessert at the , and then walked around. Upstairs, there were a bunch of artists office / studio spaces and an archive room of old Japanese plays (some of them were really random), so we watched a few with the TV and VHS player in the room. There were also two art galleries, one was upstairs and hidden behind a series of falling apart doors and pin holes. It was super interactive and silly- a lot of figurines dipped in white goop that you couldn’t see unless you peeked through a wall. The more normal gallery was downstairs, and it was focused on loss and war and letters through a lot of cool mixed media depictions.

For dinner, we decided to stop by this curry place (that was also recommended from the map guide). And guess what- there was also an art gallery upstairs! Who could’ve guessed HAHA. It was a really cool and artsy place; the walls were super colorful and there were records and other trinkets everywhere. There was a guy making little stickers to promote his art / photography on Instagram in the corner, we ended up picking up a few of them from the art gallery upstairs (some of his photos were up there too)! After dinner, we went back to our hotel and took a little rest before heading out to club daphnia for some electronic music! From the bar, we stepped through some big sliding door to the dance floor / rooms / garage hidden in the back. There were two DJs that were both incredibly locked in. Michael and I stayed and danced and had a good time for a few hours before calling it a night!

07/14 pt. 1

Last day in Osaka! We had a nice slow morning in Kitakagaya, walked around and tried to find a few shops, and had breakfast at this coffee shop. It was very homey and cute with a lot of older couples also having their morning meals there, and the owners/workers came out and gave Michael and I a pack of noodles as we were checking out?? They were so sweet even though we weren’t even chatting with them before that. I really loved Kitagakaya, it was so cute and everyone was so friendly.

We made our way back down to the city center of Osaka so we could catch a train to Kobe! But we did have a slow lunch and had some fun crispy crepe dessert at the station before heading out.

Read the rest in the Kobe Section.

Kobe

07/14 - 07/16

Yes like the beef, but not that beef.

07/14 pt. 2

Read the beginning in the Osaka Section.

Since we still had a while before we could check in to our next hotel, I thought it would be a cute idea to go to a sake / pickle museum, since it was just a few stops earlier than our hotel on the train, and Kobe is apparently known for a lot of sake preserving! Unfortunately I did misunderstand- I thought it would be a joint sake museum and pickle museum, but it was actually a museum of things that were pickled in sake. Apparently this is called kasuzuke, this was a way that people used the leftover product in sake making (sake lees), by preserving/pickling other vegetables in it. Pretty cool! It was unfortunately, so so hot and so so much further from the train station than I thought. Michael and I were truly lugging our giant packs only to end up at a museum with no AC. We literally left our backpacks on the ground and walked around the museum out to the connected garden, but we didn’t get robbed so that was nice! There was also a shop right next door that sold pickled vegetables / fish in the sake brine alongside some other things, so Michael and I bought some fish and vegetables to eat with some rice as a lazy breakfast. I’ll spare you the only picture I took since it just looks kind of lame, go look up sake pickles if you’re curious. Overall, cool learning experience, but definitely not what we were expecting.

After the sake pickle fiasco, we finally made it to our hotel, where we both showered and just collapsed for a little bit. We ended up making it out super late (like 9:30 PM) for some dinner, where we got some really good grilled meat and fried food.

07/15

I suppose we must’ve been feeling adventurous, because we had sake pickled breakfast with some convenience store rice / veggies :’) The fish ended up being super yummy, but the vegetables ended up tasting SO strongly of sake we didn’t finish it… Trying to eat sake tasting things that early in the morning is not fun even when you’re not hungover. It is definitely meant as a side dish, so kids, do not try at home.

We made our way to Rokko mountain, where we hiked up alongside the Nunobiki reservoir to see the Nunobiki waterfalls and make our way to the herb garden at the top. It was nice and shaded even though the weather was humid and hot, and we saw 5 waterfalls on our way up. We did actually end up taking a wrong turn at a bridge about 2/3 of the way up, and ended up getting to another random peak before finally admitting that we were probably not heading the same direction as the ropeway anymore, and backtracked. Lots of pretty view points along the way (along with it being beetle mating season on some of the trees or something), so it really wasn’t much of a loss. We finally made it to the top where there were some beautiful gardens, a giant greenhouse, some hammocks to lounge on, and even a perfume museum with scents made from the plants grown there! Michael really wanted to keep hiking to the next mountain peak (Mt. Maya), but it was intermittently raining and getting dark, so we decided to head down the mountain on the ropeway.

Since Kobe also has a pretty solid Chinatown, Michael and I went on a food crawl for dinner. Unfortunately, I was definitely way too focused on eating random to take pictures of everything. I remember having some highballs, some dumplings, and a lot of greasy meat and fried street food. Nothing super crazy that you couldn’t have gotten anywhere else, but it’s always fun to walk around and eat! We even walked past the train station on our way back and got some milk tea to wash the food down. Yum & refreshing.

07/16 pt. 1

Travel day again! We dropped our bags off at a locker in the train station and went to go kill some time. We stopped by a café for some breakfast and coffee and then made our way towards Sorauken, a zen garden. Super gorgeous park just smack dab in the middle of the city- there was even an old preserved house (that was European style & had some questionable origins… I think slaveowner of sorts…), a large koi pond, and a house boat! Very peaceful, but also very odd to see the tall skyscrapers in the skyline.

Then it was time to catch our bus to a hot spring town just north of Kobe for a rest day! Read the rest of the day in the Arima Onsen Section.

Arima Onsen

07/16 - 07/17

I think if I had truly thought through how hot it would be in the summer in Japan, I wouldn’t have booked us to go to so many hot spring towns. But honestly, it worked out great!

07/16 pt. 2

Read the beginning of the day in the Kobe Section.

We got to our hotel, which was a little bit of a trek up a narrow set of stairs in a smaller side street, but it was so nicely AC-ed and had a giant bath tub, so Michael and I were both stoked. We decided to go explore the tiny town before we called it a night and soaked in the tub. There was a river running through the center of the town where all the buses stopped. We walked along there for a little, and since most shops were closed, we ended up hiking up to the outskirts of town in order to go see the Tsuzumigataki park / waterfall. On the way, we walked past a giant fishing pond facility (where apparently you can fish up fish for them to cook for you), and saw a giant blue heron wading through the water and probably snatching a few fish. The waterfall was nice, we saw some snails, and climbed up a stone water aqueduct thing to get onto a higher path to head back.

We took a little winding route back through the town- it’s not very big and very tourist-oriented, so lots of things are clustered together. But, it’s also very hilly, so there’s a lot of interesting turns and you may end up having to go up and down some random streets to go straight. We stopped by a dessert place higher up to watch the sunset, grabbed some soba, and went back for a nice long soak in the bath tub with some bath bombs we bought in Furano!

07/17 pt. 1

We started off the day by getting breakfast at this Portuguese-themed cafe called Douka-tei. Normally this would be suspicious, but apparently the chef there studied abroad and learned how to cook there before she came back to Japan. We got the breakfast set meal, which was a bunch of well seasoned in-season veggies alongside some Spanish rice and a squash soup! So so good.

We then walked around, did some souvenir shopping, and got some fun street food sweets and chestnuts. In one of the shops we stumbled into, the top floor ended up being a salt and pepper shaker museum… we were so curious we bought tickets to go up and see. There were a lot of cute ones and a lot of crazy ones, I’ll include a collage because some of these are just indescribable.

Then it was time to take the bus out of town! Read the rest of the day in the Kyoto Section.

Kyoto

07/17 - 07/21

Tourist traps abound!

07/17 pt. 2

Read the beginning of the day in the Arima Onsen Section.

Got off the bus from Arima, checked into our hotel, had a little siesta, and headed out a little after the sun set in search of dinner. We stumbled upon this place called minaka, and it was an “obanzai” style restaurant run by a couple, which is a Kyoto “style of cooking” where at least half of its ingredients have to be produced/processed in Kyoto. Super cool! We were sat up at the bar too, so we watched the couple prepare all of our food in front of us. A really cute find and worth the wait!

07/18

The day started off a little frantic- we had to get to the Gion district (where the geisha and a lot of tea houses are) at a certain time for a tea ceremony / kimono rental, but I biffed it and got us on a bus the wrong way and didn’t notice for a few stops, so we ended up having to call a taxi and haul ass over. Luckily the taxi was fast, we made it with time to spare and got into our kimono rentals with a bit of time to spare before our tea ceremony. I picked out a pretty fun pattern for my kimono, but unfortunately for Michael and the male ones were pretty boring. Even more unfortunate- this was probably one of the HOTTEST days that we were in Japan for, and we were super layered up in the kimonos. We even had on the socks and sandals, which was fun for a little but quickly got super hard to walk in with all the steps and slopes in the Gion district.

Our tea ceremony was very cool, we got to learn a lot about the history, the importance of a lot of the elements in the room to set the ambience. We then all got to whisk our own tea at the end! It was cute and the matcha was very yummy.

We then decided to brave the hot sun and walked around the main street for a while. We got a nice cooling lunch with fish and cold soba noodles, and then made our way to Kodaiji Park to see the temples and museums in this area. There were some old historic homes amidst gardens, gorgeous temples, and even a small forested bamboo section where some random white guy dressed in samurai armor with some swords offered to take some pictures for us. There was also a small museum at the end of the park that we ducked into to cool down. We made it like 4 hours total in the kimono before we had to call it and changed back into our normal clothes.

We then did a little bit more shopping, got some iced matcha and some matcha tiramisu to cool down, and made our way towards Nishiki market to get some street food. We ended up crossing the Kamogawa River on our way, so we decided to stop and dip our feet in to cool down, and we saw a heron chilling in the waterway. Cute! For dinner, we actually ended up at a Chinese place specializing in duck- I think I was so hungry I actually ate without taking any pictures, so you’ll just have to believe me when I say it was delicious.

To continue reading chronologically, see the Nara Section.

07/20

Breakfast of champions at this random cafe near the train station- we both got a cute set breakfast with granola, cheesy bread, and I got a dirty matcha latte where I could actually taste everything and enjoyed it!

Then we headed over to the Arashiyama Park area to see the popular sights! We rented some bikes from a shop next to the train station to hit up the bamboo forest, a few temples nearby, and also see the views further along the river.

It was fun to bike, but it also would’ve been so much more fun if it wasn’t swelteringly hot. Oh my goodness I was sweating so so bad. Our second stop, the temple, ended up being up a hill… when we got off the bikes, covered in sweat does not begin to describe it. I sat down on a bench and tried to hunch over put my elbows on my knees, but couldn’t because they were covered in so much sweat my elbows kept slipping off! Evil! The temple was lovely though, we walked around a little and I sat and cooled off in the garden while Michael wandered about a little more.

We biked past a lot of pretty views through the forest and went along the river a bit of the ways before deciding to go return our bikes after a few hours of biking around. It turns out our bike rental also came with a free footbath… that was in the middle of the train platform? Amidst these kimono pattern poles that they had on exhibit? It was an interesting station for sure. It was clean though, and even though it was hot on a hot day it was nice to soak for a little.

For a very late lunch at like 3 PM, we stopped by this tofu shop and got their set meal, where over 3/4 of the food was tofu inspired or related. Actually so so yummy! There was chagaya again, some steamed egg, and some mochi and other veggies too. Nice and cooling after the long bike ride. We strolled around some of the shops before calling it and heading out to our next hotel! I had accidentally booked one less day on our Kyoto hotel because it was hard to plan around the time zones, so Michael got us a surprise airbnb. It had a cute little backyard and a giant tub, so we relaxed in the afternoon, then went out for a walk after sunset around the neighborhood and swung on some swings on a playground. We grabbed dinner at a random izakaya we walked past, and it was actually SO good!! We both got a bunch of highballs and we got a lot of fried pancakes (okonomiyaki) with tons of seafood and veggies. I love love greasy food.

07/21 pt. 1

Last day in Kyoto! We woke up, packed our bags up to leave at a station locker as usual, and went to go see Fushimi Inari, the famous shrine with thousands of the red torii gates lining the paths. It was pretty but sooo hot and sunny. Every picture with my face in it looks like I’m wincing. We went about halfway up so we could get a little view, but decided it wasn’t worth going all the way to the top if we wanted to catch an earlier train out. So, we went back down and into the city nearby, where we got some really good and smooth ceremonial-grade matcha drinks and some lunch to go. Then it was high-speed rail time to go North up to Atami!

To continue reading chronologically, see the Atami Section.

Nara

07/19

We decided to take a day trip to Nara from Kyoto!

The day started off kind of off because I reserved us special tickets on a limited express train (that was purple themed and very pretty), but we didn’t realize it stopped at a completely separate train station until just before we were supposed to board and we still couldn’t see the train… We ended up missing it up but we did get the tickets transferred to another train which was nice. Such a bummer though, and second day we had a transit mishap. Also to be honest, I had already seen / fed wild deer in China before, so I was kind of worried it would be super touristy and it would just be kind of boring, but I actually had a really nice day!

It was sooo swelteringly hot when we got there, and there were deer absolutely everywhere in packs. The herd mentality was pretty crazy, we’d see them crossing the roads in giant groups, and there were a few times when a few of them got spooked and bolted, an entire block of deer would get up and bolt with them. We got a pack of deer crackers to feed some deer, and they actually bow to you after you feed them which is super funny! I guess they must’ve learned that from the people that would bow at them after giving them food. We wandered around for a good bit, mostly in the shade, and even saw a deer chilling in one of the tiny water canals on the side of the road to cool off. The park was so gorgeous, we took a stroll like halfway in before deciding to go see what else was up with the city.

We ended up walking to this restaurant that had a traditional Nara set meal for lunch! It had a lot of fresh veggies, tofu, and chagaya, which is like congee but with green tea instead of water. Really yummy! We kept walking around town, and stumbled into this cafe in some back street because we were so hot and wanted a nice drink. Turns out it was actually a joint foot bath and dessert cafe, which was super funny. You can get a drink and dessert, and then order a foot bath, and they would bring you a bucket filled with cool water, rocks, and flowers to dip your feet in as you ate. Super fun and nice actually! Michael and I both got some matcha, and for dessert we got some red bean pudding and a matcha frozen sweet.

For the rest of the afternoon, we wandered around on our way back towards the park. We walked through a historic house / museum with a garden in the middle, passed by a few temples, and stopped to chill at this lake with a bunch of turtles and fish chilling around. We got some persimmon leaf wrapped sushi for dinner, walked back through the park for a little, and then went to another nice cocktail place called the lamp bar. Many lamps, but not as many as I expected given the name. It was pretty similar to bar Nayuta, with no set menu, and a little bougier with nicer seats and complimentary bar snacks. Since the Kyoto area is apparently known for their local alcohol making too, Michael and I both got different drinks with some local gins. Michael’s also had this sake vermouth (which I didn’t know was possible! i thought vermouth was only wine) which was fun! The drinks were very yum but VERY strong. A nice way to end the day of walking and exploring.

That was the end of our day trip! We got on one of the last trains back to Kyoto and caught a gorgeous sunset out the window. To continue reading chronologically, return to the Kyoto Section.

Atami

07/21 - 07/22

Atami lore- it used to be a popular beach town destination since it’s close to Tokyo and TONS of funding was poured in, but something something financial collapse something something and now it’s mostly tourists and older people. We love dilapidated beach towns.

07/21 pt. 2

To read the beginning of the day, see the Kyoto Section.

Atami was a little random, but when we were planning what we wanted to do in Japan, we really wanted to have a beach day to relax. We also had hopes and dreams of going further down the peninsula where Atami is to go visit some wasabi farms and try some fresh wasabi, but that involves cars and other plans that we just didn’t want to deal with. The high-speed rail from Kyoto was pretty fast though, it only took us 3 or 4 hours to get up, and we were passing by Mt. Fuji! Unfortunately it was cloudy again… so we only saw her barely in the distance, but that’s okay! It was a gorgeous ride in.

Check in was kind of crazy, the house / airbnb I had booked (because it had a private hot spring!) was pretty tucked away up some hill, so it took us a while to find it. When we did, the check-in was super weird… There was no one actually at the house, and they wanted you to call them to check in, but we didn’t have an international number, just data. Luckily the worker trying to check me in was actually Chinese, so somehow I got their WeChat and called them there and had to do the whole check-in process while speaking Mandarin to her… It was soo trippy because I was filling out forms for us while on this phone call, and they were watching us in the “lobby” through a security camera. Weird, but we got in to our room and I just crashed for the night. Michael went on a brief side quest to explore town and brought us back some curry to eat, which was nice!

07/22

It was such a beautiful and sunny day out so Michael and I went down to the beach to swim in the ocean! There were even some floating platforms out and about so we swam out to those and laid in the sun for a good bit. After a bit, we grabbed some lunch from a nearby convenience store, before deciding to take a bus up the mountain to go to one of the museums up there. The bus stop we were supposed to get off at got skipped and the bus didn’t stop until way past a highway tunnel that we couldn’t walk through, so we got off and tried to catch another bus back. We started chatting with this other couple, and one guy was actually Japanese, so he had asked the bus driver earlier why the stop was skipped. Apparently you just had to explicitly ask the bus driver to stop at that station, or they wouldn’t bother even if you pulled the stop cord. Tbh so lucky that he was there. They were also heading up to the Atami Castle / Illusion museum that Michael and I wanted to go see, so we took the bus back with them and trekked up the rest of the way with them. Also… couple is a strong word to call them. The other guy was a Turkish student who was going to school in France but studying abroad for the semester, and the Japanese guy was apparently in his THIRTIES, so they were very casually seeing each other. Still, fun conversation and they were very sweet. I did slightly complain about how a group of French people cut us off in the line to get into WOMB when they asked if we had gone out in Shibuya, and the Turkish guy laughed and said they were probably his friends. He then proceeded to say that he almost got into a fight there because some American got pissed at him for smoking LMAO.

We got to the top and said bye to them because Michael and I wanted to eat our lunch before going to the museums. In the end we decided to just do the illusion museum because I was pretty meh on the castles at this point. We got a lot of funny pictures and a nice view of the castle from out front though.

We took a taxi back to our place and had a nice bath in the outdoor hot springs they had at our hotel/airbnb. Then for dinner, we basically just walked through town until we found an izakaya we liked the look of. We got some freshly caught fish, some meat skewers, some salmon, but the highlight was definitely the home-made plum wine they had. We had two glasses when we hadn’t even been planning on drinking lol. LEAGUES better than Choya plum wine, and I like Choya well enough.

Tokyo (v2)

07/23 - 07/24

We left ourselves one day in Tokyo to do some last minute shopping and take it chill before we flew out the next morning! Michael and I split up- I did a bunch of gift shopping and professional cloth shopping at GU (#sponsored, GU I am your biggest fan). I had one last famichiki with this CRAZY looking energy drink called lifeguard- it tasted just like the og monster (yuck). I also got a MOSburger (a Japanese version of Mcdonalds / Burger King), which honestly wasn’t too bad! After our shopping, we took a train out to our hotel that was pretty close to the Narita airport. It was kind of bougie- it had a few restaurants inside and a roof top bar (that we got to only just after it closer unfort), so we had dinner there and relaxed.

Unfortunately my night did not stay relaxing. Our flight out was through this Taiwanese airline called Starlux, so we had to layover in Taiwan before flying back to San Francisco. But… it was typhoon season. I got a few texts throughout the night that our flights were being delayed, but at like 2 AM I got a call that our flight from Taiwan to SFO got cancelled entirely, even though our first flight was still good. Fortunately we figured it out by showing up to the airport early and asking a flight worker really really nicely if they could put us on any other plane out, and he managed to get us swapped to a China Air flight that was leaving Taiwan a few hours earlier than our flight was originally supposed to. At risk of seeming too “nationalistic”, China #1 for REAL they get the work done. We got on our flight safely and landed earlier than we had even planned to. Yay! I even got to play landlord (the card game) on the flight since it was built into their tablets.

Successful trip!!! YAY!!!!!

Final Thoughts

tldr: I ate a lot of good food & lots of good coffee! I also learned that you can’t escape Europeans even in Japan

If you actually made it this far I love you & appreciate you! This was a lot of fun to make and set up, even if it took me a while. If you’ve taken any fun trips lately text / call / write me a letter about it!! I am looking forward to updating y’all with more silly long form content.

Love, Tiffany