japan 2024!!

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from October 1st - October 20th this year, my two closest friends and i went on our first overseas trip all together to Japan! we had been planning it for about a year prior, with the goal of staying for a few weeks and travelling between Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto, and checking off a bunch of stuff on our collective sightseeing bucket list.

we knew very little, basic Japanese despite the year of duolingo and wanikani practice, but vaguely confidently felt we could navigate and use our manners well enough. this page is dedicated to our trip & what we managed to get up to on our time abroad!

our first stop and the place we stayed the longest was Tokyo! ⭐ and I landed first and had a day to kill before 🌙 arrived the folowing day. it was horrendously hot & sunny when we arrived in Omori and we couldn't check into our hotel until 4pm, so we were left to wander around the streets and discover some shrines and temples in the area. there was a LOT of stumbling through social interactions, but we kind of got the hang of things (& the train system!) by the end of the day, just in time to collect 🌙 from the airport.

I think one of my best memories from that trip will always be the first dinner we had together that night at an izakaya place that we accidentally stumbled into. having everyone in the same place for the first time in so long was fantastic, the atmosphere of the place was so much fun - i tried all sorts of new foods (horse sashimi!!) and had a great night.

we spent about a day per place, exploring districts and areas we all wanted to see. we headed to Shibuya first to check out the pokemon center + nintendo stores, saw the big chaotic crosswalk, and went geocaching in Yoyogi Park. next, we checked out Ueno Koen! we spent the day between the Ueno zoo, the Tokyo national museum, and the art gallery. we spent another day in Shinegawa + checked out the Tokyo Skytree (which was doing some kind of jujitsu kaisen event at the time??) and the Ghibli store at the bottom of it. and on our last day in Tokyo, we got incredibly drunk at a really nice little food place called Commune and almost missed our train to Osaka, ofc

the shinkansen to osaka was such an awesome experience - we decided to say fuck it and get the green car, as we weren't sure what to do about our luggage otherwise. we did not regret it, it was an incredible way to travel. if this existed everywhere else, i would never touch a train again.

Osaka was very much go go go; we didn't have a lot of time here and we had a list of things we wanted to check off. it was wet and miserable when we arrived, but we still got out and checked out Osaka castle. I went geocaching with ⭐ until the rain forced us back indoors, then we regrouped and headed to Dotonbori to check out the hype and grab some dinner, and get some pics with the glaico guy (which i had literally never heard about before). second day was a little nicer, we spent the morning checking out some shrines and hunting down a steam deck, and i fell deeply in love with some mechanical pencils that i picked up there. we went to Kobe in the evening for an incredible dinner at a jazz bar!

we took a couple of day trips out of Osaka. ⭐ and I spent a day in Hiroshima, exploring the Peace Museum and park, as well as the castle and its grounds. i took my film camera with me since it looked like the weather was finally clearing up enough to use it, which I enjoyed! the museum was packed, meaning we had to shuffle through very slowly, but i did enjoy getting to read everything in there with no rush to get through.

the day after this, the three of us went to Universal Studios and spent the day there! i am an absolute roller coaster and thrill ride fiend, and fell deeply in love with the flying dino ride. we went mostly for super mario world, but i still enjoyed the rest of the rides and seeing Waterworld! i watched it at Universal in LA many years ago, so i was very excited to see it again.

last leg of the trip! i personally really liked Kyoto; i know a lot of people find it overrated and overrun with tourists, but I did everything early in the morning before the masses arrived and I barely ran into crowds. for most of our time in Kyoto, we sort of all went off and did our own things since we were getting pretty tired.

my favourite highlight was climbing fushimi-inari at 5 in the morning with ⭐! that was something that was first on my want-to-see list when i first wrote one up. i had the most fun with my film camera here, too. it's a beautiful place, and we were staying in this quiet, out of the way guesthouse that was super close to everything we wanted to walk to.

we did, of course, also do a half-day trip to Nara to check out the deer park and do a bit of souveneir shopping! there was some kind of market going when we were there, so we kind of accidentally wandered into the best possible place to look for gifts and souveneirs. the deer were delightful, it was super cool to watch them wait to cross the road.

we had a pretty sweet lunch here before we headed back, too. since this was our last night before we all headed home, we finished it off with some karaoke that left us pretty much unable to speak the next day. i had such a great trip here and learned so much - my favourite memories are 100% ones that came from accidentally stumbling into places unplanned. i definitely think i'd like to return to Japan, but next time, I really want to focus on out of the way rural places, and maybe some scenic train rides!