Today was the main day of our game jam! It was super fun to finally get to work with our teammates face to face and make some key decisions about our project.
There’s not too much for me to talk about today – we basically just sat in a room for 12 hours and worked on computers (something my body is very gracious of, as I desperately needed a break) to produce something of sufficient quality to present to everyone tomorrow. While I won’t give any spoilers on what Team 3’s game is, I can say that my main job was working on the art assets and I made nearly 30 assets in total! Combined with Esther’s assets, Liam’s localization and SFX, and Naoki, Ryuki, and Tamura’s planning and coding, if everything comes together I think we’ll have a pretty sweet product for having less than 24 hours to work on it!!
Tomorrow we’ll finish out the game jam and then have some free time for our last day in Kyoto. I REALLY want to go to Nara to visit the deer park, so I’m hoping that we can manage to get into the otter cafe early and maybe head there or Osaka for dinner depending on the park’s schedule. Fingers crossed!! To end I’ll share some of the assets I made for our game 😉
Today was about as busy as I expected it to be, but boy I did not think it would physically affect my body as much as it did.
Today was finally our free day!! Which meant that me, Megan, and Chloe were up early in the morning to head to Kiyomizu-dera and rent kimonos for the morning! The store was certainly not prepared for a very tall American woman to walk in, so the kimono itself was a little tight and the shoes were a bit too small, but it was still fun to walk around and take lots of photos!! My feet were dying after three hours of waddling through thick crowds and cute stores trying to find some good spots to take pictures. But we did get a lot of really good shots!
After we finally peeled our kimonos off, we made the walk to the Kyoto Pokemon Center to see if it would be as busy as it was on Wednesday. To our surprise, there was no line or crowd at all! I was able to buy a couple small things, like another Made in Japan charm with Eevee on it and an adorable sleeping Eevee plush (Can you tell I like Eevee?). I really wanted a coin purse, but they were out of the medium size which was the only one that I wanted so my search for the perfect coin purse continues (and at this rate will likely continue until a day or two before we leave, with my luck).
Our other plan for today before we head back to the hotel to meet with KCG was to visit the Loutre Otter Cafe, which was one of the big wishlist items that we wanted to do, but unfortunately they were too busy. Hopefully we can go back on Friday and play with the otters!
Hanging out with KCG at getting to meet our teammates for the first time was super fun! They ordered lots of pizza and other sides (though there was only 1 pizza without a bunch of toppings that I don’t like that was swiftly devoured) and brought a lot of snacks and candy for us to try. There was also a small group of boys that were repeatedly eating wasabi, for reasons that will always elude me. Everyone from my team was super nice and I am looking forward to working with them for the game jam!
To end the night, a majority of our group hung out in Brody and Vincent’s room and played Jackbox party games and Mariokart 8 Deluxe while “drinking” (aka we bought some random stuff from the stores, sipped a little, and then forgot that we were drinking because we were very into the game). It was really nice to get to hang out with everyone because we’d been trying to do it for a while but had always come back to the hotel too exhausted to do anything. I’m a bit nervous for the game jam tomorrow, but I’m definitely looking forward to getting to sit down for a majority of the day!
I thought that today’s blog post would be super chill all the way through — we’re never that lucky, right? (Or unlucky, in my opinion!)
Today we took the Shinkansen to Hiroshima, the site of the first nuclear bomb dropped on Japan in the final days of WWII. While I was looking forward to a better look into the city’s history, I certainly didn’t think that I would be as affected emotionally as I was by this trip. After brunch, we first stopped at the A-bomb Dome, which is a building that was close to the hypocenter of the nuclear explosion that remained partially intact, miraculously. There was a man standing outside who was sharing information about his mother, who at 105 is currently the oldest survivor of the Hiroshima bomb alive today. He told us the story of how his mother developed bladder cancer twice due to the radiation caused by the blast, but that she made a full recovery and is still alive and healthy today. This was my first bitter taste of the overwhelming impact of this event.
Next, we headed to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, a museum close to the A-bomb Dome that houses many artifacts and personal accounts of how citizens were affected by the Hiroshima bombing. While I wasn’t prepared for this visit to be a particularly joyful one, I also didn’t think that I would find myself in tears twice while walking through the museum. Many pieces of children’s clothing that they were wearing when the blast occurred, as well as personal letters sent from parents to children and vice versa before and after the bombing detailing the devastation caused by the event were extremely difficult for me to read; as much as we are taught about the nuclear bombings in Japan and how much destruction they caused, reading from and listening to the accounts of children orphaned or severely physically damaged by the nuclear explosion makes everything feel a bit more real and all the more horrific.
To cool off after a pretty emotionally stifling experience, we decided to visit a nearby castle that also housed a shrine. We weren’t able to enter the castle itself due to the crowds, but we were able to walk through the gates and visit the shrine. The castle and the surrounding walls and buildings were incredibly beautiful (though not what you might have thought of when i said ‘castle’), and there was a river/moat with some koi fish and turtles in it that were very fun to look at! I personally didn’t pick up any mementos from this shrine, but there were some very cute carp figurines that held a fortune in their mouth that you could open, sort of like a more preservable (more expensive) omikuji!
For dinner, we headed to a local restaurant for some okonomiyaki, which was sort of like a noodle / egg / sauced up pancake that also included cabbage (and onions? i think?) that you could get a bunch of other toppings / fillings with. I only got pork added to mine, but Fabian and Skylar added seafood to theirs and said it was pretty good! Overall I liked it, but I didn’t like how the noodles on the edge were still somewhat raw and crunchy.
The original plan for post-dinner was to head back to the Shinkansen station and shop in that area for an hour and a half until we could jump on a train. I, of course, wasn’t happy with knowing that we had the opportunity to visit another Pokemon Center (yes, there is one in Hiroshima) and didn’t take it, so me and 7 others (Vincent, Brody, Esther, Chloe, Megan, Skylar, and Liam) decided to take taxis to the SOGO shopping center and press our luck. I had learned earlier that day that a TCG promotion had begun yesterday, which was why we were unable to get into the Pokemon Center in Kyoto yesterday, so I was worried that we would meet the same fate here. Thankfully, we made it to the Pokemon Center with plenty of time to spare and NO LINE!! So worth it!
The only problem with making this detour was that now we had to make it back to the train station with almost no time to spare. We wanted to take another taxi, but we realized that it would likely take too long, and finding the subway was a complete nightmare in the basement of Hiroshima. That left us with one option: to walk (or, more accurately, aggressively speed walk) for 30 minutes to make it to the station and avoid missing our train. And we did! And my legs were on fire. We technically made it there 2 minutes late, but that’s only because we made a wrong turn when trying to get into the station itself, which I think is pretty passable given that we were originally going to be 5 minutes late by Google Maps’ calculations.
Personally, it was 100% worth it. There ended up being a ticket issue last minute anyways, so we could have spared a couple of extra minutes, but I’m very proud of myself for taking the risk and making the trip a little bit more interesting (and expensive). The train rides back home were pretty uneventful, and I’m ready to just crash into my bed and wake up early tomorrow morning for another super busy day!
Today was a nice blend of traditional Japanese cultural experiences in the morning and free exploration in the afternoon. We visited two temples in the morning, and participated in two special activities to immerse ourselves in the culture more thoroughly.
The first place we visited was the Shōrin-ji temple, a sub-temple where meditation known as zazen is performed and taught by a single monk. We got the chance to do this meditation for two fifteen minute intervals, though it personally wasn’t very relaxing. We had to keep our backs straight the entire time, fold our feet into a criss cross position and breathe as you count to ten over and over again. If you began to find it difficult to focus or get sleepy, you can bow over and have the monk smack your back with a wooden stick to refocus you. While the whole experience was a bit more exhausting than relaxing for me, it was really cool to get a glimpse into the deeper workings of Japanese religion. I couldn’t imagine doing zazen for six to eight hours a day like the monks do.
The second temple we visited was the Rengeo-in temple, home to a national treasure of Japan. Within the main building of the temple are a thousand statues of Buddha (and a few other statues of various Buddhist gods). We were not allowed to take pictures of the inside of the temple, but there was a beautiful garden and some gates that we were allowed to take photos of.
The other cultural experience that we had today was the opportunity to take a class about tea ceremonies, and participate in one of our own. Formal tea ceremonies can last as long as four hours, but ours was only 40 minutes – a very nice woman gave some background information and a demonstration and then we were allowed to mix our own tea.
I personally have never had matcha before today and the matcha tea that we made was a bit too bitter for my tastes. On the other hand, the small jelly candies called “wagashi” that we ate before making the tea were positively delicious!
As we waited for the other half of the class to participate in their own tea ceremony, we had the chance to explore some more of the area around the Kiyomizu-dera shrine that I mentioned yesterday. We were able to find some really nice photo ops, visit a shrine that featured some colorful decorations to celebrate the monkey deities, and my first (and possibly only) Pokemon manhole cover in Japan. There are many of them spread throughout the country, but we only have the chance to see 2 or maybe 3 at most with where we are visiting.
To finish our time with the tour guide that we’ve spent the last two days with (shout out to Yuko for being fantastic in every way), we were dropped off outside the Nishiki market, a very popular food market in Kyoto. While most of the food featured in the market is fish-related, I found an incredible beef skewer stand that I then convinced nearly half the class to buy rib skewers from (and nobody complained). We would pass by this market again later at night as we were heading back to the hotel, and seeing it deserted after being packed into the small street like sardines just hours before was a weird feeling.
A mostly deserted Nishiki Market, strongly contrasting its usual crowded appearance.
After a failed attempt at getting into the Pokemon Center Kyoto, we headed back to the hotel to recharge before a night of bowling with some KCG students at Round1 Stadium. While I wasn’t initially excited to go bowling (especially when I found out that Japan doesn’t have bumpers as an option— like what’s up with that??) I ended up doing a LOT better than expected and even won a game! We then stayed there a bit too late playing various rhythm games in the arcade section of the building, and didn’t make it back to the hotel until nearly 11 o’clock. Since we have to be up and at ‘em at 7 am tomorrow to jump on a train to Hiroshima, I’ll definitely be spending my commute catching some extra Z’s.
Today was exhausting, but full of cultural knowledge and a lot of great photo ops. We visited one shrine, two temples, and the famous bamboo forest. This blog will be lots of pictures, both because I don’t have much to talk about and because I’m falling asleep as I write this!
The first place we visited was the Kinkaku-ji temple, most well known for the golden temple that lay at the middle of its grounds. This temple was covered in gold leaf to make a statement about how wealthy the shogun was when he retired, but is not completely preserved in time as it has burned down twice since it’s construction. The most recent was in the 1950s, which is pretty close to us when you consider that this temple has been around since the late 14th century.
Next, we visited the Arashiyama Bamboo Grove, which was absolutely gorgeous. Being able to walk through something that I’ve seen so many videos of online was a really weird feeling. We did walk through a small portion of a nearby temple, but the bamboo forest was certainly the highlight. We were also able to get lunch in the surrounding shopping market, where we got some nice large chicken nuggets (listen, last night was a lot for me, i needed some comfort today) and a strawberry and vanilla ice cream cone. I was also able to snag a chocolate bun and some canned maple bread from the Miffy-themed bakery near the food court where we ate.
After that we visited one of the coolest parts of Tokyo in my opinion, which is the Kiyomizu-dera temple and the surrounding shopping district. The path leading up to the temple has preserved a traditional aesthetic, and even more modern stores like Starbucks still feel ancient compared to other things we’ve seen so far.
We are planning on returning here for our free day so that we can visit when it’s a bit less crowded, but the views from the temple are very pretty and we were able to get a group photo here that I’m sure will be in everyone’s post for today. I love the red and gold aesthetic of all of the shrines in Japan, and this one certainly did not disappoint while also having its own flair.
Finally, we visited the Fushimi Inari Shrine, which is the only Shinto shrine that we visited and also a very popular tourist spot. The sheer number of gates that we walked through is really cool – each gate was donated to the shrine by someone for anywhere from 300,000 yen ($2,000) to well over a million yen for a large one. There is a two hour hiking trail that I’m sure would be very fun, but after all of the walking we’ve done since getting here I don’t think my body would survive it.
Once we were done with the bus tour, we were dropped off at KCG’s main building for an anime movie showing. We watched Demon Slayer -Kimetsu no Yaiba- The Movie: Mugen Train (long name, I know – those are pretty common for animated Japanese movies) and I honestly really enjoyed it. The animation style and quality of the movie is fantastic, and this might have convinced me to finally watch the anime.
To finish the day, we got food at a local mall’s food court. I got some pork dumplings, while Jessica, Chloe and Skylar got the biggest naan we’ve ever seen. We have to be up super early tomorrow for a meditation and tea ceremony, so expect some more traditional cultural vibes tomorrow!
As part of our trip, we have been tasked with hatching “Dots” (small creatures from Niantic’s new app Peridot) and letting them travel with us while we are in Japan. We were supposed to hatch our first Dots today, BUT I may have cheated and spawned mine early. So I thought I would take this opportunity to introduce the two Dots that I already have since they’ll be traveling with me for this leg of the trip.
My first Dot was named North, a spacey little guy whose personality went from a total teenage rebel to a court jester (fitting, given his horns). He’s also wearing a party hat because it was given out by the app for free for new users (which is also part of the reason I got the app early, as I was worried the promotion would end before we got to hatch our first Dot by the school’s schedule. He will always hold a sentimental place in my heart, and I’m really happy that I was able to hatch him right when I got to Tokyo and let him grow up beside me as I learned more about the new culture I found myself in.
My second Dot, creatively named North Jr., was the first offspring of North and my personal favorite of the two (shhhh, our little secret). I’m a sucker for black and blue combos, and I’m really happy that he kept the jester horns although his personality is that he’s a crooner. I didn’t know what that was until two minutes ago, but it seems like he’s a sentimental little fella who likes to sing.
I may shell out $3 so that I can hatch a new Dot tomorrow to continue to care for, but I am so exhausted that I can barely keep my eyes open and I don’t think tomorrow will be much better. While it was against the wishes of our professors, I am happy that I was able to start early and get a feel for the game before being thrown into the deep end. I think the concept is really cute and it has a lot of potential.
While today started as a chill hangout with our entire group together for the first full day, it ended with a LOT of “waku waku” (the Japanese onomatopoeia for the sound of your heart beating intensely).
Megan, Jessica, Jasmine, Skylar, Liam and I started the day by heading to a local cafe and bakery for breakfast called City Bakery Shinagawa. I ordered the french toast which was a TOTAL score (the bacon on top was the real king of the meal), and also got a small table roll because I enjoy eating bread by itself.
After breakfast, we had a couple hours to kill before we boarded the train to Kyoto, so we decided to visit the aquarium that was connected to our hotel. Quick aside: I cannot stress enough how insane our hotel was. Connected to it was two pools (one of which was heated), an aquarium, an 80-lane bowling alley, four practice golf range simulations, 11 movie theaters (one of which was an IMAX theater), and more, not including the food court or other restaurants just around its perimeter. I wish that we had been able to stay longer to capitalize on it, because it was kind of incredible how much could be fit into one hotel complex.
I digress, back to the aquarium! I am definitely spoiled by the Georgia Aquarium, but this aquarium had a lot of really cool (albeit much too small) exhibits and some animals that I don’t think I would have seen anywhere else! Namely was the capybaras, which were SUPER cute but gave us some mean glares as we took pictures of them. We also got to watch an otter performance that was very cute!! My favorite part was when he grabbed the mic and yelled into it, because I too would do the same thing if given that power. Thankfully Jessica got a video of it as my phone was on the verge of overheating.
Otter yelling, my favorite kind of yelling.
There was also an assistant robot who could do the Ievan Polkka dance (there were a lot of popular English/TikTok songs too, but who cares about those?) and a tube where the fish could swim over you that housed a massive manta ray. A large portion of our group also went on this giant swinging ship that was right at the entrance to the aquarium, which was fun to watch!
After the aquarium, we hurried back to the hotel to get our luggage and make it to the train station in time for our train to Kyoto. Getting on and off the train in a timely manner was the most stressful part, but I played Tears of the Kingdom for the entire ride and thoroughly enjoyed it (while also stopping periodically to take videos of the scenery passing by). Once we got to Kyoto, though, the real intensity began.
After a short walk to a VERY nice restaurant, we come to realize that we’ve just walked into a very nice, very expensive ten course dinner. For anyone who’s not familiar with me (first of all hi :D), I have always been a super picky eater and the food in Japan was my biggest concern when planning for this trip due to my limited palate. All of that was completely chucked out of the window tonight as I was sitting almost directly next to the director of our entire program who planned this dinner. I think that I tried more completely new food tonight than I have in the last year.
In its entirety, we ate: some weird little beef ball, a piece of red snapper, some mixed vegetables, a whole miniature squid covered in mustard, miso soup which contained a piece of fish and some vegetables that I could have mistaken for bricks of tasteless jelly, some sashimi that consisted of tuna, salmon, and tai (AKA Red sea bream? I think?), some professionally made sushi consisting of tuna, salmon, and rice, wasabi, the weirdest egg/jelly/bean drink that was expectedly disgusting, some bacon slices that we steeped in cooking broth in a process called “shabu shabu”, a set of fried shrimp tempura and fried lotus root, another soup of indistinguishable origins, and two small ice cream scoops that were vanilla and soy milk flavored respectively. Do you see where the “waku waku” was happening? I also treated myself to a peach fruit juice that was a nice palate cleanser from all of the horrors I put my body through during dinner.
Despite my obvious reservations with the menu we were served, I am proud to say that I at least tried every single thing that we were served. While some of them were hard to swallow (literally), I am surprised at how far I was willing to push myself out of my comfort zone; I think it’s the first of a few big milestones that I will reach while being here.
Tomorrow will be another incredibly packed day, as we’ll be on a bus tour of Kyoto for almost the entire morning and afternoon. While I am looking forward to seeing the sights that the city has to offer, I could really use an extra hour of sleep.
A picture of the manta ray from the aquarium. SO CUTE!!
Today was by far my most anticipated day of the entire trip, and I can confidently say that it was 100% worth the hype.
After taking a quick pit stop in Asakusa to visit a retro game store we had managed to miss yesterday, me and Megan headed to Nihombashi to meet up with Fabian and Pavel for our Pokemon Cafe reservation. After spending an embarrassing amount of time (and money) at the Pokemon Center Tokyo DX, which was connected to the Cafe, we were able to check in for our reservation at 12:30 and get seated.
Honestly, the food in my opinion was REALLY good. I got the Pikachu themed meal, which featured an omurice shaped like Pikachu’s head, with an egg tail, a pokeball topped mac and cheese, and a hamburger patty on the side. There was also a salad (which I didn’t try) and a fried shrimp (which I did try and really like), but I think my most favorite part was the mac n cheese. The shells were shaped like Pikachu although it was hard to tell under all of the cheese, but it was super cute!!
Pavel ordered the Eevee themed dish, which I believe was a bread bun with clam chowder and something else with shrimp in it. Megan opted for the Pikachu soufflé pancake, which I ordered later in the meal and fell in love with. Fabian decided to order one of the special sets, which was a Pikachu themed ramen bowl that came with this cute Pancham steamed bun. We also all got our own themed drinks, which included a latte with a picture of Rayquaza drawn on it, Sprigatito and Fuecoco soda floats (melon and apple themed respectively), hot chocolate, and this cute drink set where you mix your own chocolate milk. But the best part about the entire experience was hands down the show.
Right after making their last call for orders, a large Pikachu comes out from behind the kitchen and puts on a show for all of the diners. Typically he’s wearing Pokemon Cafe attire, but because of the special event he was wearing a Chinese-themed outfit that was still super cute. Remember how I said that the seats we had been given were important? We ended up being right next to a majority of the show, which meant that the experience was AWESOME and felt super personal for me.
After a lot of speaking in Japanese that I didn’t understand, a lot of cute running and dancing around the cafe, and a performance of ‘If You’re Happy and You Know It’ (a true classic), he scurried back to the staff room so we could finish eating and make our way to the ever-looming merchandise wall.
I am not ashamed to say that this was, and likely will always be, the most expensive day of my trip in terms of merchandise. While it wasn’t outrageous, I did purchase quite a handful of small goodies and trinkets that I certainly don’t need, but definitely wanted. The picture shown is not just of the Pokemon Cafe merchandise (the Pikachu ditto plate, the small chef pikachu keychain, and the gengar silverware), but also of some things I got from the Pokemon Center next door (gachapon figurines, a very fluffy pastel Rowlet, and a hefty hoard of charms and stickers). Some other small wins from today were a Korok keychain that I won from an LoZ ichiban kuji (a lottery with a set number of prizes) and a Mega Lucario keychain that I found on the ground very far from any Pokemon Center or other merchandise store. There’s also some small things that are not pictured because I had forgotten to include them, which are a canvas tote bag and a pair of wooden chopsticks themed after grass types in Paldea.
In a daze from the heaven that I had experienced for the first half of the day, Megan and I worked our way back to our hostel to pick up our lugggage and then turn around and jump on another train to head to the first planned event of our trip by the school at the Grand Price Hotel Shinagawa. By this point, my brain was in a fog and my feet were killing me, so after heading to exchange our JR rail passes and grabbing dinner as a group I was ready to crash. My inner child has been fully satisfied by this experience, and I am so grateful that I was able to live it with my friends and fulfill it to its fullest potential.
Tomorrow we will head to Kyoto to meet up with the KCG students that we’ll be doing the game jam with. I’m very nervous, but also pretty excited to see how different the vibe is in Kyoto compared to Tokyo. I think we are also going to the aquarium attached to our hotel tomorrow (if my feet can handle it). I am quite literally fighting the urge to nod off as I write this, but as always, I’ll end with some extra photos.
Ever stumbled into one of the largest festivals in the city you’re visiting by pure chance? It’s pretty incredible.
We started Day 3 with another visit to the Tokyo Skytree, both to visit a small coffee shop that we wanted to eat breakfast at and to clean up any loose ends we might have missed in the massive mall. After we had our fill of expensive boutiques and character stores, we decided to explore the other side of Japan: the traditional shrines.
Visiting the shrine was actually an afterthought to the ramen shop that we wanted to visit for dinner, a place that looked like a small local store that turned out to be full of tourists like us. But the food was good! As someone who’s never had real ramen before (and ordered a dipping ramen instead of the more traditional pre-mixed bowl out of a need for control) it was definitely an intimidating experience, but it really was delicious. As we were eating, we heard a group of men chanting outside as they slowly passed the shop… but we didn’t think anything of it.
To end the night, we decided to visit the Senso-Ji temple, a Buddhist temple that was sprawling and breathtaking. It wasn’t super busy because it was so late at night, but there was a drum performance happening which we stopped to watch amongst all of our picture taking. We did notice that there was a banner displaying the dates from May 19th to May 21st, and were surprised by the idea that we had managed to visit the shrine during a festival! We decided to go back tomorrow to see the shrine during the day, and look at what festivities they might have during this celebration.
We could never have been prepared for the gravity of what we had so luckily stumbled into, which turned out to be Asakusa Sanja Matsuri: one of the biggest and greatest festivals that Tokyo had to offer.
To say that there were a lot of people there was an understatement. Towards the beginning of the day (up until 11:30, maybe noon?) we were able to get up close to a lot of the main attraction, which was a parade of shrines being carried throughout various parts of the temple grounds with lots of chanting, deaf-inducing whistle blowing, and good atmosphere. But once we had left the main area and began to wander through the side streets, which were packed with stores and restaurants, the crowd became an ocean. The festival is said to attract over 1.8 million visitors in its 3 day runtime, and I truly believe it now that I’ve been in the middle of it.
Getting to see something so integral to the culture and religion of Japan was truly fascinating, and we are incredibly lucky to have accidentally walked into it on a whim. It was also fun to walk through an area that we had previously seen closed up and ghostly the night before, now alive with people and chock full of goodies to buy (which I obviously partook in). But eventually my social battery had reached its limit of being shoulder to shoulder with strangers, and we hurried back to our respective hotels to recharge as we had on days prior.
For dinner, we decided to head to an American-themed diner for a look at Japan’s perspective of our culture (and also, admittedly, for a bit of familiarity amongst a lot of exhaustion for new foreign food on my part). It felt like being tossed 30 years into the past, and the atmosphere was cozy and fun despite not being something I think I’d ever find in the U.S. today. I had a cheeseburger and fries which was a very enjoyable meal, and we exchanged a conversation with one of the waiters who was curious about why we were in Japan (and probably why we were choosing to eat American food in Japan when we certainly have enough of it back home).
We ended the night by walking along the Sumida River and taking a peek at a couple of smaller shrines, though we could only access one of them as the others were gated off due to the time. It’s nice to experience such a saturated area of culture and then contrast it with the ability to quietly experience the edges of it solo, without the fear of being judged for being unfamiliar with the details.
Tomorrow begins my daily blog posts, which I am praying I will be able to keep up with. I am visiting the Pokemon Cafe tomorrow, which is my most anticipated event, so I’m sure there will be lots of pictures! I’ll end with some more miscellaneous pictures from the festival (I could create a photo album of pictures just from today, seriously.)
My first two days of Japan mode have been quite the adventure! From spending 15 hours in a plane to walking four and a half miles today, it’s certainly been a lot of exploration and new experiences.
I first flew from Atlanta to Chicago, waking up at around 3:45 AM to give myself enough time at the airport for security (I sat in the airport for two hours because I got through security in fifteen minutes. Oh how I wish I had the extra hour of sleep!) Then, I met up with Jasmine and Cameron at the Chicago airport to take our 13 hour flight to Narita. While the flight was comfortable, sitting in one place for that period of time has never been good for anyone’s body, and it certainly did a number on mine. Once we were through immigration and customs in Japan, we met up with Megan and Esther to make our way to our hostel.
I’ve never stayed in a hostel before, but this is definitely a great introductory experience to them! Me and Megan are staying in a room with two twin beds (not a dormitory setting, my social battery definitely couldn’t handle it) and they are very comfortable for the price! We have a sink in our room for brushing our teeth and washing our hands, but toilets and showers are shared down the hall. The showers are very nice, but the heated toilet seats are a bit off-putting for me. Maybe with time I’d come to enjoy them…
I thoroughly enjoyed the Nintendo photo op in the visitors center at the Narita airport!
After going to bed at 8:30 PM with my brain stuck in 7:30 AM mode, I woke up at 5 AM today ready to take on the world. Megan, Jessica and I set out around 7:30 AM, excited to explore before it got too hot. While almost nothing was open, I was able to get a very delicious strawberry frappuccino from Starbucks and take in the sights while we waited for the Tokyo Skytree to open.
We spent the day shopping for cute merchandise and gifts for friends and family at the Skytree, visiting the Pokemon Store, the Kirby Cafe Store, and many other iconic character shops. Personally, I picked up a handful of stickers, a couple of blind bag figurines, and some assorted Pokemon-themed gifts. We ate lunch in the Food Marche (essentially just the most overwhelming food court I’ve ever experienced, that was also a grocery store?) where I got some chicken nuggets and a chicken skewer that had whole cloves of garlic on it, which I wasn’t aware of before buying it. As a picky eater, the food scene in Japan is somewhat terrifying, so I feel like I am justified in easing myself into it. For dessert (because how could we not get dessert with so many options) I got a strawberry skewer that was coated in sugar and some small butter castella balls. The strawberries here are delicious, and I would love to go back and get some more that aren’t lathered in sugar as it was a little overwhelming.
After a quick power nap at the hostel, we finished the day by heading back to the Skytree and going up the tower to “watch the sunset”. Unfortunately it was very overcast by the time that sunset arrived so we weren’t able to see anything, but it is a super pretty view at night! It was very crowded though.
Overall, my first 36 hours in Japan have been quite the ride! I’m constantly left in awe by how different the culture is, which I’ll likely cover in another post as I could write paragraphs about that alone and this is already a bit long. I’m exhausted by 8:30 PM once again, but so excited to wake up tomorrow and do it all over again!
