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a bad travel blog post: japan

i told myself that i would have a better blog post about japan this time. i'm here to disappoint you, but mostly myself. i am also doing one draft and then posting it because i told nathan to shoot me in the head if i didn't post this today. i promise you, i like blogging i just happen to like procrastinating more.

what kind of lens do i use to reflect on a trip to a place that many people dream of going and i completely squander by being myself. japan feels like a difficult blog post to write. mostly because the more i go the more familiar it feels. i feel ungrateful thinking about how often i go and how i don't do anything "worth mentioning" whatever that loaded statement means. unfortunately i think i lack Insight and Foresight and the ability to reflect inward because i spontaneously bought the plane ticket, had no real agenda and also didn't plan the day until i woke up.

most of this are just expanded thoughts i wrote down in my notebook. so there is still, no cohesion to a blog post. i'm leaving out thoughts like "what happened to hotto motto" or "reggae punch chuhai surprisingly not very good". but "shower beer bf and bath chuhai gf" is a thought that does deserve its own space to be honest. so trust me, this post could be worse. no itinerary, just weird vibes somewhat chronologically. some pics. and a lot left out because its only enjoyable to me.

my first day i landed late in the evening. i am deeply impressed with the fact that i landed, deplaned (deboarded? unboarded?), did customs & immigration, and picked up my luggage and then got on the skyliner within 30 minutes!! which is an insane record-breaking time and if i did not have time logged chat history i also wouldn't believe it. i was staying the night somewhere near ueno since i was leaving to sendai in the morning. but because i got out so early i did contemplate going to the west side of the city to hang out with misaki. this was my singular allotted konbini dinner. mostly because everything near me was chinese food which i didn't really feel like eating, which is somewhat funny in retrospect because i barely ate japanese food this trip. i had a kombu onigiri and fami chiki. i regret not getting oden because i didn't see oden at all after this konbini. i wanted oden in sendai sooo badly. oden in the cold while loitering outside, that would've been amazing. but i just wanted to sleep.

i LOVE tokyo, do not get me wrong. but one of the best things you can do is leave. so far i've been to 13?/47 prefectures. i'm not pulling up a map and counting. i went to a love hotel so they could hold my suitcase because i didn't feel like carrying around nerds gummy clusters and trader joes goods to sendai for no good reason. love hotels seem nice... maybe next time.

matsushima|886 matsushima|887 matsushima 3|889

i went to matsushima and luckily i got the only available locker at the station. i'm not sure why sendai (and yamagata) had trains with doors that had door buttons. i'm assuming because of snow and weather, but i dont recall hokkaido having those. interesting. i also had the really dumb question of "why do so many areas have a namboku line" which didn't click until i just saw i saw 南北線 and 東西線. embarrassing. escalator etiquette in sendai is also different which is just standing there and not walking up, and don't get me wrong this is the case for a lot of other places. but it was oddly followed or i just happened to go on slower times that no one felt the need to save 10 seconds.

one of the main reasons i chose sendai is because of 3.11. i remember watching it live on tv.

japanese has a great use of passive tense. english also has this but the vibe is different. not in the japanese sakura-colored glasses way but in the american english 'passive voice is often frowned upon' way. but it's quite pleasant to read in japanese. to read about a tragedy in passive form makes it feel more somber. the nuance of indirect passive is hard to explain. but it sort of puts emotional emphasis on the affected. no one is really at fault for an earthquake and tsunami combo anyways. matsushima is nice. it reminded me of a place that i can't recall.

matsushima|859 egg sando|672

food photos are boring and i don't want to post this. but this was a life-ruiningly good egg sandwich. i would go back to matsushima for this sandwich again. i chose this over eating abalone which was another option but unfortunately i only have one stomach.

train|752 yamadera|770 yamadera|765

i will take a mirror pic in every fresnel lens and convex mirror i see.

sendai|777

i thought a lot about death this trip in a completely normal and non-worrying way. as a person with a normal amount of interest in the sengoku era i went to see masamune dates mausoleum. i probably know more than most, but not otaku level, and thats whay i mean by normal amount i suppose. i guess not really about death, but more about impermanence, or futility or how time will not stop. and about how people get memorialized when they die. i wanted to go to this elementary school 3.11 museum but it was a bit far out. between natural disasters and war a lot of japanese monuments are rebuilt. they're built upon the same foundation or buildings are moved between mountains like gassho-zukuri. so what makes something or someone important? how much is allowed to be changed before its not true to itself. if anyone has ever heard me complain about how people use the word tiramisu then you know what i mean (i'm just being silly, i'm not italian i don't really care about tiramisu).

sendai|781 sendai|742

the worst part about travelling alone is actually not being able to point at things and make jokes. being at 面白山 and i can't even been like "wow what an interesting mountain" painful. texting to the group chat is not the same. but i havent seen so many japanese truckers in a long time, i kind of forgot what a vibe they were. i should reread kafka on the shore but i lent all murakami books out 10 years ago, so i'll probably never get them back lol. i also need to stop describing something as 'a vibe' because english is my first language and i am capable of thought.

so things i did in sendai/yamagata:

tokyo somewhere|868

my first night back in tokyo i met up with abe-san for dinner. tokyo was dreary and rainy. as a 晴れ女 i was suffering, not because i dislike rain but because i expect life to be sunny. but we met up to have dinner at an izakaya.

abe-san and i actually talked about how when we were younger these cross-pacific trips used to be once in a lifetime and now i went twice within the same year, just because i could. i brought up to him that i realized i am the same age he was when we met up irl 10 years ago. i'm not sure what balls i had as a 21 year old to think of messaging a tumblr mutual that is 10 years older than me to just meet up in a foreign country for the first time. i also question my uncle who didn't say anything???? like literally いってきますed out of the apartment to meet up with a 31 year old guy and my uncle had absolutely no reaction when i told him. but the internet was a different time (at this point it was still a place). people felt a little less like bots. but now at 32 i sort of understand. tokyo doesn't feel like tokyo without him. i've said to him that he is a part of my tokyo experience and i can never imagine a tokyo without him. but its quite nice to be able to talk to a long distance friend who can easily see changes because of time and distance.

koenji|762grass|755

i got an airbnb for justin, misaki and i. misaki took the time off work and so she just stayed with us instead of coming from kyodo every day. i act like its far. but its just to maximize hanging out by avoiding didi and 終電. also, how else will we watch chiikawa or kpop music videos?

once i got to tokyo this is the start of eating non-japanese food. its not like we didnt eat japanese food but it began to be compoundingly funnier each non-japanese meal we had. japan does fusion well, okay!! but we ate vietnamese, pizza and korean food, also randys donuts was brand new in shinjuku station and we walked by and got some donuts. and it wasnt even good?? i'm counting that as american food.

so this is what i did in tokyo, rapid fire

so thats what i mean when i say my itinerary is horrible. you'd think i didn't spend $600 on a plane ticket to bullshit around, but i did and will probably continue to do so no matter where i go.

tonkatsu|711