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like everyone else in their 20s and 30s i also went to japan

i feel pressured to post this because i'm going back to japan in 10 days, and then the idea of writing about 3 japan trips honestly sounds like a terrible time to me. so this is from october 2023 and february 2025. i think the internet is reaching its quota on content about japan and when i was drafting this all the images were weird and compressed, and i joked that it was because there were too many posts about japan on the internet.

i have it sorted by prefecture, somewhat chronologically. but not really. there are plenty of ways i have thought about doing this post but at this point i need to just post something because i'll continue to find or make excuses. just know i'm not happy with it but whatever. i've been sitting on this for months but i cant seem to commit to posting.

i also need to find a better way post a gazillion pictures because this is a very image heavy post in a way that doesn't really add anything to the experience. they're also not even presented well. oh well. and theres more pictures i wanted to add but i've told myself to not do it because theres already a lot. if they don't load i dont know what to tell you other than please don't tell me because i'm going to rip my hair out, i already have one bald patch from doing it, i can make another.

kanagawa fuji fisher nathan i'm a kanagawa girlie forever. i'm not going to explain the reason why, because no one really cares and people probably wont go. if something had the name 富士見 you used to be able to see mt. fuji from that spot. my uncle lived near a park and i'd walk by it every day on the way to the station when i was there, see the signs that you can see mt. fuji on clear days. never fucking saw it. when i took the shinkansen i'd sit fuji side, and still never saw it. a lot of places in kanagawa you should be able to see mt. fuji peeking through. in enoshima i saw it for the first time!! odawara castle bird mariah make a post without a photo of a bird challenge: failed broken train because we were spending valentines day with misaki to go to the chiikawa bakery i rescheduled this onsen reservation, twice. nick and i got a private rotenburo. it was nice. i love hakone. because of distance to tokyo i would only recommend it if you want to do an over night trip to an onsen. but my uncle and his wife brought me when they had days off work so i think of this place really fondly. we had a fun broken train experience and stopped in odawara on the way back to tokyo. we also took the romance car there and back. i explained to nick that after some nights i would actually just take the romance car back home because i wanted a seat and a toilet lol.

osaka osaka airbnb train osaka dotonbori osaka was okay, this wasnt a place i ever had an interest in going but because it was basically everyones first time i planned it in. but i went to kyoto which i have always loved. but the thing i enjoyed most was actually hanging out with everyone, which is not necessarily good to be like "yeah osaka is great!!" but this is probably a skill issue. i shouldve planned better. in my defense, planning to translate and navigate for like 5 extra ppl is really hard.

kanazawa sunny bell coffee nick and i went to kanazawa earlier than the others. maybe i was bored in osaka (also nick will put up with whatever crazy thing i want to do most of the time) the bento i got for the thunderbird was sooo good i'm still thinking about it 2 years later. since nick and i went early we had a bit more time to walk around. bike at the market nyoom nyoom 2 i don't know why these are some of my favorite photos. just let me post them because i like them.

i did really like kanazawa and i want to come back. nick and i went to the garden because one of my fondest memories is going to a garden in hiroshima with my aunt and we sat around and talked and it has been one of my fondest memories in japan. i didn't really get to go to any of the museums either. kanazawa is defintiely a revisit for me. probably alone lol. i also had the experience of going to a belt sushi place but it was late so we had to write it on a paper. i never had 中尾内 until then but i think nick and i got like 5 plates of that. i don't know how justin, nathan and sean fared, because man i suck at writing kanji but at least i could.

shirakawa-go

mirror pic tanuki nathan eating his churro shirakawa go 1 truck i dont even remember taking this pic but i love it. nathan shirakawago gang gang from the bridge theres a very popular picture of this place in the winter. i saw it like 10+ years ago on tumblr and it's always been on my list, but its also kind of out of the way, but not this time. it was still kind of out of the way, but did i choose to go to kanazawa so this place was more convenient to reach? possibly. did i force everyone to go?? kind of.

okay all negative parts about this were all my fault. i never received the email tickets. but i had proof of payment. so i went the day before and it took like 10 minutes to sort it out. that part wasn't bad. also made it worse because connor was not feeling well this day, so after all the help the day before, the day of i had to say its for 5 people only instead of 6. and i couldn't think of a better word so i said ドタキャン which makes me cringe even now lol. what is most embarassing about this is that i had to reserve the bus ahead of time. and there was 6 of us. and the 5pm bus there was only 5 spots. so i did the 7pm bus. thinking we could do something?? there was absolutely nothing. its super fucking dark. no wonder they set a horror series here. and then connor bailed, so i could've just booked the 5pm bus... so we sat around for like 2 hours. in some dark ass village in the middle of the mountains. i needed to pee and there was a singular street light. nathan and i walked together and i think we were both scared. i can't remember if we used our phones for flashlights, and if we did i don't think it helped because it was so oppressingly dark... that was the scariest experience i had in japan

anyways, shirakawa-go is beautiful. i loved it. i want to see it in the snow now.

nagano shibu onsen 1 shibu onsen 2 onsen time!!!!! it was my first time going to an onsen. since i was the only girl i was alone. even in the onsen itself there were no other women. nathan, justin, nick and i shared a room. connor and sean shared a room with a private onsen. connor has tattoos so it was needed. the dinner was so good, we still talk about that pudding. sean stayed in nagano to meet up with a friend while the rest of us went to the onsen. his portion of food we were pretty good at splitting and eating. but the pudding was actually so good i think we all wanted it but we decided to save it for sean. we should've ate it. nick and nathan i think this was just outside some bathroom that i stopped at. i'm refraining from posting about how much i like walking... but speaking of bathrooms i did go to one of the tokyo toilets from perfect days. i have no photo so i guess i'll just mention it here. american drug i also really love this photo, for no reason.

we actually didn't really spend time in nagano the city. we mostly went for the onsen. misaki was busy even though she was willing to drive to nagano from matsumoto. i kept trying to convince her to convince her bf that he should hang out with us.

tokyo

ついた、、、東京だ。in 2023, i did not feel relaxed until we got to tokyo. insane to feel relaxed in probably one of the most chaotic cities in the world. in 2015 i went to japan alone and i felt like i gained some type of independence. the first time i went was honestly quite a last minute decision. (although i did stay with my uncle and his now wife who lived a floor above or a floor below him. i don't remember who owned which anymore since i stayed in both) he said "you should come visit" and i kind of went "lol bet" and booked a plane ticket and then had to go to the passport agency to expedite my passport because i was leaving in 3 weeks. it was only for 10 days, i think i had $800 cash lol. even if i stayed with them, they were busy with work. i met up with an internet friend (which idk how i managed to convince my uncle was okay lol). and my japanese was quite bad then, but i could get around, but not nearly the level of fluency i have today, you know,,, 10 years later. i even went to kyoto alone. that time instilled probably an unjustified amount of confidence that i have regarding most travel only exacerbated by the fact i went back next summer and went to tokyo basically every day for a month. upon my return in 2023 i was able to realize how much that time shaped me. but no one cares about my own introspection, yall want pics sky tree ikinari sky tree porter concert this was the most confetti i have ever seen at a concert. okay. to be honest, nick and i went to the concert not knowing any porter robinson songs. but i love going to see any live music without expectations. i can't admit that on the internet because people will be like "you should leave tickets for real fans!!" like i'm buying tickets day of sometimes or going with someone else who knows that person. galileo galilei was the opener,,, who i love. who was great.
yuragi we all got separated for this concert... i was too short... abe-san i have decided that i wasn't going to link anything, but my friend kee is one of the coolest people i've ever met. he is a staple to my japan experiences just like family mart. breakfast glitch nick and i drink pourover at home every day. i wanted to try glitch, don't look up the price. i'm going to tell you its expensive. vacation money doesn't count. anyways, they gave us someone elses order on accident. i mean, we ended up drinking them all. grass or whatever this cafe was called posting to ask: is nathan drinking a cup of milk??? yuck!! just another mirror pic tempura place izakaya izakaya i love an izakaya. but the thought of needing to order for multiple people breaks me out into hives. thanks misaki. this was actually a bad experience!!!! i went at like 5pm to make a reservation for 6 of us. he asked me for my number and i said that i have an american phone number, other reservations i was doing online or through line. and he said like three separate times "make sure you come, okay" as he's tapping on the clipboard. i get there on time (early). and i have to wait.... like maybe 20 minutes. not terrible. so we go. the food is great though. dont get me wrong, i went here before which is why i wanted to come back because i also think was a better experience than some where you might be sitting outside on those shitty plastic chairs. and then they had a set menu and we added on some things. gotokuin a street another street

i really enjoy tokyo. one of my favorite cities in the world.

2023:

2025:

hokkaido start of the 2025 trip!!!! we landed in haneda and then immediately flew to sapporo. after landing i sent our luggage to the hotel and nick and i met up with nathan and sean in otaru. did we go to otaru because of love letters from shunji iwai? maybe. actually i'm a big fan of being like an hour away from the hotel whenever you land because it forces you to not go back to the hotel and rest and just kind of get over jet lag. nick and i did a glass blowing class. i made a cup he made a bowl. no pics, oops. bike mirror pic another mirror pic i looooove fresnel lens mirrors!!! i want one but it is very expensive. (watch me buy one and bring it back this next trip) nathan birthday cake on this day it genuinely was nathans birthday, as you can tell i forced him to do this. seans birthday was a different day but i think we were all too drunk at toriki for photos... ghengis khan snow festival food ice snowboarding sean picked out a place to go snowboarding. it was like $150 for everything. ski lift and all rentals including clothes. that would never happen in america. i did pretty good in my opinion. did i have bruises and was i hella sore? yes. but i enjoyed it and if snowboarding wasnt super expensive i would go snowboarding.

from nicks camera nathan again i really just wanted to vibe check hokkaido because when i miss japan and want to go its probably summer but i am not going to tokyo in the summer. one time is enough to put you off... however,, hokkaido??? maybe. hokkaido was really nice and i will be back.

justin was going to "surprise" everyone else showing up the next day or something. we joked that he was just going to show up while we were on the slopes. when messaging in discord trying to see where people were at, physically and with their appetite, justin was just like "i'll meet you there" or something. this guy was literally waiting in our hotel lobby. thanks justin, you're a real one.

some of the things to do, local to hokkaido of course

one day i'm going to redo this post to add all the other little pictures i want to, but until then i guess i'll suffer knowing that i hate this post. and when i get back from my next trip i wanna do a spending/budget breakdown. no promises, because i love to be a flake.