Adventures in Japan!

We started out in the lively Shinjuku neighborhood in Tokyo.

Right off the main street were a network of alleyways filled with tiny restaurants. Many of them serve Yakitori- skewered grilled chicken bits- but you can get more exotic dishes too (one of our friends had eaten live frog here on a previous visit). The name of this area in Japanese translate to "Memory Lane," but is more often colloquially referred to as "Piss Alley."

The next day, we traveled to Kyoto on the Shinkansen- Japan's high speed rail. These trains can travel up to 200mph! It was a great way to travel around and see the country, and foreigners can get a really good deal on the tickets. This is a glimpse of Mt. Fugi we got from the train on the way.

Kyoto is famous for the prevalence of traditional Japanese architecture. We got to go to several temples that exemplified this style. The temples were very elaborate multi-building complexes open to the public, and are still used for religious purposes by those in the area. Pictured here is the outside gate into Kiyomizudera temple.

This is one of the shrines inside the complex.

We got a snack at the temple too! This is a traditional Japanese-style dining area- the tables are low to the ground and you sit on the floor without shoes on.

We stayed at a traditional Japanese-style home in Kyoto too. The room had limited furnishings and could be used for multiple purposes- there was a sitting area with light furniture that we could move out of the way easily when we wanted to roll out our sleeping mats at night.

We visited Nijo Castle, the home of some of the Shoguns of Japan from the 1600s-early 1900s. This is the outside archway to the castle.

We also visited Kinkakugi temple- a beautiful golden temple sitting on a lovely lake.

The next day, we traveled to Nara where we went to Todaiji temple. It was huge!

The temple has one of Japan's largest bronze Buddha statues.

There are deer that live around the temple, and you can buy crackers to feed them a snack!

Something pretty amazing about Japan is the large number of people who speak English. We found out firsthand that one of the ways kids learn English is by interacting with native English-speakers at popular tourist attractions! Pods of school kids on field trips would come up to us and ask us questions about ourselves. One of the worksheets a group was filling out was titled "HOW TO TALK TO FOREIGN PEOPLE" at the top with cartoons of black and white people along the sides, one of whom had a speech bubble saying "YOU CAN DO IT!" and giving the kids a big thumbs up.

The kids were pretty awesome. Sometimes they'd give us presents, like handmade bookmarks or origami animals. One group of college kids that were pretty far along in their studies hung out with us for a while and gave us a tour of one of the temples we were visiting to practice.

Next, we traveled to Nagoya to visit the university there. Off the main road, we took a walk and found a giant green Buddha nestled in a bamboo forest.

The next day we traveled back to Tokyo and spent a few days in the hip Shimokitazawa neighborhood. Tokyo isn't on a grid, so a lot of the neighborhoods like Shimokita are complicated webs of streets. Awesome for exploring and getting lost in the city, awful for navigating Japanese-speaking taxi drivers to Airbnbs.

In Shimokito, we got to go to an Izakaya, a restaurant that brings out a steady stream of small dishes to be shared by the table (similar to tapas). The spot we went to had the traditional Japanese dining style where we sat on the floor, but with pits for our feet. We saw a few girls building a fort out of their table next to us. We were a little too big to try that, but they looked like they were having fun!

Next, we tried our hand at the ancient traditional Japanese pastime of Karaoke. I thought it was funny that a lot of the songs we sang were accompanied by unrelated vistas of the United States.

We got into the costumes as well!

The next day, we got a few cocktails at the Park Hyatt- the hotel featured in the movie Lost in Translation. We got to watch a summer storm roll in to the city.

The view was tops!

After our classy evening, we shifted gears and hit up a late-night batting cage!

The next day, we took the Shinkansen to a small ski town with some Alpine villiage style architecture nestled in the mountains.

We hiked up one of the hills to a beautiful vista.

That night, we walked around Tokyo's Akihabara neighborhood, the so-called Electric City. This spot is famous for having a number of giant electronics store- we hit up the largest electronics store in the world- but also for its numerous "maid cafes" where the girls dress up as maids and entertain visitors, and large number of stores with anime-related items, many of which feature hyper-sexualized cartoon girls. A little bit much for us!!

Changing gears, we got out of the city for a beach trip! We flew in and out of Naha in Okinawa. Naha had a pretty heavy tourist scene mostly from other countries in Asia and a decent number of Americans since the US base there is pretty large. Naha wasn't a bad place to spend a night but the beach was tiny and under an overpass. Unlike the beach above- we took a ferry from Naha to a tiny island Zamami. Zamami was gorgeous and not built up. We stayed at a tiny international hostel and had a great time.

This is one of a few restaurants on the whole island- an outdoor patio wedged between two shipping containers. It was delicious!

We took a hike through the hills of the island before hitting the beach.

Back to Tokyo! This time we stayed near Ginza. This area has the Champs Elysees of Japan. One block had not one but two Louis Vuitton AND Tiffany stores within one block. Much different from Zamami!

We spent the afternoon exploring Tokyo's Roppongi neighborhood. Recognize this place? It's the Izakaya restaurant that inspired the set for the big fight scene in Kill Bill. One of our best meals of the trip!

Japan has tons of "cafes" where you can go and interact with different types of animals. We went to an Owl/Hedgehog cafe in Roppongi. They had a room with a whole bunch of owls that we got to pat!

Here are some of our new friends. This picture doesn't really do them justice- they were huge! And kind of scary!!!

Besties <3

At night we checked out Shibuya Crossing- a huge area with bright lights, restaurants, shops, bars, music... kind of like Tokyo's Times Square. Also where the final race scene in Tokyo Drift was filmed.

The next morning, we got up early and checked out the famous Tsukiji fish market. This is where the fresh catches are sold off both to restaurants and regular people. It was huge!

Tons of different kinds of sea life for sale.

Some of it was even still alive!!

We even got some samples before wrapping up our traveling.

Along the way, we learned the phrase "bikkuri shimashita" which means "I was surprised!" It was very fitting since Japan was chock full of surprises everywhere we turned. Here are a few of my favorites...

Most of the manhole covers were really elaborate. This is one we saw in Nara featuring the deer in the region.

Japan packs a lot of people in a relatively small geographic area. We saw a few creative ways of saving space, like this super skinny house we found while walking around in Kyoto.

We saw the whole spectrum of toilet luxury- from one end with toilets at our airbnbs and on the Shinkansen with whole panels of buttons and settings (they were in Japanese- it's hard to imagine what they all could have been for!!) to bathrooms in some of the smaller train stations that were not much more than a divet in the floor with running water that you had to crouch over.

A lot more exotic cuts of meat are on the menu in Japan compared to the US!

We found many people with clothing/accessories with English phrases that didn't quite seem to make much sense. If you look closely, the bag of the girl on the left says "Mystery Ailments, Toilet Runs, Funeral Attendance, Dinner at Home, Too Tired, Later."

American nostalgia from the 1940s/50s (think: Betty Boop, metal Coca Cola signs) is HUGE- we saw it all over the place. One spot was this shop on our Alpine hike that was full of USA nostalgia manned by a guy wearing a cowboy hat that didn't speak English at all.

The sidewalks and train stations all over the city have an interconnected network of pathways for the blind and visually impaired. Certain textures give messages about changes in terrain, obstacles, or, in this case, the entryways to the train.

Pizza hut scooter!

Amazing trip!! Thanks for reading!