Helloooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I started writing this blog from Tokyo, Japan! Our first difficulty for this trip was getting seats on the airplane to Hong Kong, our layover. The airline, Cathay Pacific, had changed the type of plane we were flying on, and they also changed our middle-of-the-airplane seats to the last-stinky-row-next-to-the-bathroom seats. Aba had to sort it out, but we still ended up getting those seats. I finished a book that Gina had given me and started on another one, Wild by Cheryl Strayed, and I noticed that the movie of the book was on the airplane movie list! I’ll watch it next time. On our flight to Japan I mostly slept, and we landed at four or five in the morning. It was cold! Seriously! We were wearing long pants, a t-shirt, a thermal long sleeve shirt, a fleece long sleeve shirt, and a jacket, and it still felt like our chilly early mornings of trekking in Nepal! We took a taxi to our hotel to drop off our luggage because our rooms weren’t ready yet, and started walking around Tokyo. However, it was still five am so no one was awake=no stores were open=we were bored and cold. We found a place to drink some delicious soup (our first meal in Japan!) and after learning to use the large, complicated metro station and buying metro cards, we finally found an open coffee shop to take a break from our aimless bountiless meanderings through closed streets. During this time, we had also gone to a temple acclaimed as one of the best things to do in Tokyo, but I wouldn’t recommend it. The temple looked new and there was nothing interesting to do or see. After our reprieve at the cafe, we went to the finally opened-at-11 o’clock Cat Cafe that Troy had been looking forward to seeing. Let’s just say that it wasn’t what we expected and it was disappointing. We had expected a quaint little cafe with food and drinks and with cats just milling around, but what we got was very different. As soon as we registered for the cafe, a woman printed out a time card for us, therefore starting our ten-minute cat timer. After sterilizing and taking off our shoes and putting our bags and jackets in lockers we were let in to see the cats. Don’t get me wrong, they were beautiful cats, but they weren’t very playful and didn’t seem to like people. We basically just sat there and watched them because they didn’t let us pet them. We left exactly on time because, as their menu specifies, if you even go one minute over the time limit you have to pay for an extra ten minutes. As we left we noticed a small station with a coffee vending machine; their ‘cafe’. Oh! I forgot to mention; if you do decide to drink coffee, you have to finish it within your allotted time with the cats! It wasn’t for me.
We went to a really amazing (but really expensive) store with really amazing wares but a horrible name, Kiddyland, but didn’t buy anything because it was so expensive. The architecture in Tokyo is marveled, so we toured some of the most outrageous buildings (such as the Prada store). We went to our hotel rooms and met up with our cousin Imri from Israel. Again! Yay! His layover had been in Moscow, so his luggage had been ‘forgotten’ in the check-in process. The airport says they’ll deliver it on the next flight. However, he is amazing because he managed to bring us Crembo from Israel! After doing some homework, we all toured the Imperial Hotel designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, probably Aba’s favorite architect. It was beautiful.
After buying some new jackets at Uniqlo, we ate a dinner of 100% sushi.
Asher and I had never had sushi before. I actually didn’t mind it, but Asher hated the soy sauce and I think it might’ve ruined it for him. We took our first hot showers in weeks and went to sleep. 1 18-6-26 26-24-6 7-6-9… Asher and I woke early in the morning, careful not to wake Imri, and did homework. At ten am we left for breakfast, but all the restaurants were closed preparing for lunch! We rode the metro after buying tickets for a BULLET TRAIN to Kyoto and on the way an old woman sat next to me. I didn’t expect her to know English, so I was surprised when, in a very very soft voice, she started talking to me. She asked if I was a student here and who the men were whom I was traveling with and I introduced her to Asher, though he was shy. She told me I have a beautiful face, which I thought was very sweet of her.
We walked for a while once we got off at our stop, then made our way toward a digital art museum. However, Troy was navigating and he lead us to a power plant an hour away from the museum so we had to take the metro again. Troy!!! We arrived at the museum, but first, we stopped at a car showing. There were many highly futuristic-looking cars as well as fancy Segways and one seat motorbike cars. We also saw robots such as Toyota’s Kirobo Mini!, a talking, responsive, Japanese robot! Asher, Imri, and I also each tried a virtual reality simulation showing the newest safety features in Toyota cars, but we tried it because of its incredibly high resolution! It was amazing! However, it was disorienting to look down because where I expected my body to be there was only air; *shudder*.
We entered the digital art museum and were delighted by what we found. Rooms filled with various interactive or just plain beautiful artwork kept us in a maze of wonder. Asher and I stuck together, and my favorite rooms were one circular one with moving painted waves on the walls and another room filled with water lilies. After a time, Asher decided he had had enough so we looked for the exit. It was very difficult to find, but we managed to leave the exhibit, expecting Aba to be there because he usually zooms through museums. However, it ended up being another hour before Troy and Imri thought to look for us. During that time we had asked two staff member to use their phones, which they declined, and were approached to ask if we were lost. We also saw many interesting things; two hippies with ragged clothes and dreadlocks, pink glittery sneakers, silver glittery sneakers, clown shoes, (many pairs of) platform heels, high heels, siblings wearing identical clothing, friends wearing identical clothing, parents and children wearing identical clothing, a man with a blonde afro, and a woman with the oddest hair: her hair was naturally black, but she had dyed half of her hair blonde from a straight line down here scalp so if one were to see her from one side she would look blonde and from another dark-haired. She was like Harvey two-hair! We regathered 4-13-9 1 10-3-26 21-13-6-20-11-14-4-1-13-4-7-14-22 12-4-9 4-26 4-7-4 4-13-9 23-3-7-7-6-9, and then we went to the hotel to do homework after eating half a bowl of soup.
Imri’s bag had been delivered, so we now had five packs (25 sticks) of kabanos, three packs (24 helpings) of Crembo, two packs of fortune cookies, one bag of chocolate-covered vaffels (wafers), and one bag of Pesek Zman. Woohoo! After eating a few of these sought-after treats we clamored outside and explored our neighborhood some more. We went into the red light district where all the strip bars and whore houses are and then toured again. Asher and I didn’t feel like sushi again, to Troy and Imri set off to find gluten-free food and Aba and Asher and I ate at an excellent Italian place with many locals. We took blissfully hot showers and slept. The next morning we woke up early again and did homework. We rode the subway and came up next to a Subway restaurant (get it?!) We walked to a shrine with many locals praying, some of the woman wearing kimonos, and also many tourists. Some monks were praying behind a fence while people threw money at them for good ‘fortune’ (another pun!) We strolled out of the touristy area and snacked along the way on snitchel, grilled rice, and grilled chicken. We even did a loop to get Aba another giant snitchel! We made our way back into the main area of Tokyo and entered many Japanese toy shops. I saw a couple of things I would’ve bought, but everything was so expensive!!!
It’s insane! We looked into a pet store with tiny puppies in the window and saw that they were being ill-treated. The price tag for one dog was 6500 USD. We then went to the Shibuya Crossing, the busiest intersection in the world. There were throngs and throngs of people crossing the street when the light turned green, and when the light was red it was like a bustling mob preparing to attack!
Next to the crossing, there was a statue of Hachikō the dog. Every day Hachikō’s owner went to work, and every day Hachikō would meet him on his return at the train station. One day, Hachikō’s owner had a heart attack and died at work, leaving Hachikō at the train station. Hachikō came back to the station every day for the next nine years, when he died, waiting for his friend. That is why he has his own statue.
We rode the metro back to our neighborhood and ate sushi for dinner. We went to the hotel, took showers, did homework, and slept. The next morning we boarded the metro to Tokyo station where we ate a baguette and climbed aboard a bullet train! I was really looking forward to the ride, but after the smooth acceleration of the first five minutes I became so tired that I fell asleep. However, I would like to mention that the train actually felt as if it were gliding, it was so smooth!
When we arrived one-and-a-half hours later in Kyoto, Asher and I were refreshed from our respective naps and we walked to our hotel. We had only brought backpacks, leaving our heavy duffel bags at our hotel in Tokyo, so it was an easy walk. I did homework for about half-an-hour and then we walked around Kyoto. Kyoto seemed to be more chic than Tokyo, less of a big city and more of a fancy suburb. It could be described as the Paris of Japan! There were small boutiques filled with hand-painted fans or hand made leather bags or custom made chopsticks for great quality, and a large sum. Everything was so expensive! There were also many street-food vendors selling rice cakes, roasted shrimp, candy, and tiny octopuses! The minuscule octopuses’ heads were stuffed with a single quail egg, don’t ask me how, but they were so cute even though they were dead! I could just imagine them swimming around in the ocean, but then I was jarred back into reality every time I realized (again) that they were dead.
There were also enormous apples. I mean, they were ENORMOUS apples. One apple was roughly the size of Trixie’s head, they were so big! We went to a temple where paper fortunes were being sold. I mention this because people tied their fortunes onto some frames draped with string, so it was a very creative and original way to preserve them while making art.
We also saw a large dotted pumpkin sculpture inspired by Yayoi Kusama’s pumpkin sketches. She is a mentally ill artist living in a Tokyo mental hospital by her own choice, but every day she creates art at her studio across the street. She is now a very famous and influential artist.
Throughout our time in Tokyo, we have noticed that every restaurant has models of their food made of resin, so when we saw a fake food store sign inside a mall we had to check it out. Even though I collect glass animals, I also love anything miniature and/or realistic, so I loved these fake foods (they also had realistic fake food keychains).
On the way to an Irish Pub for dinner, Asher bought some shrimp and Imri ate some sweet potatoes. We did homework and went to sleep. After homework the next morning, we rode the public bus to a beautiful temple called the golden temple. As its name states, the temple is indeed golden. However, it also does much more. In the middle of a small pond surround by serene bonsai trees, the atmosphere created by its scenic background blends perfectly with the rich, but somehow still modest, temple.
We stayed at the temple for a time and then boarded the metro and rode to another, more famous temple; the Fushimi Inari Shrine. You may not recognize its name, but you’ve probably seen pictures of this touristic temple. It is the one with the hundreds of orange gates! That’s right, but there are many many many more tourists in real life than in the pictures! We couldn’t even see five feet in front of us! However, we succeeded in climbing to the top through a bamboo forest and what we thought were small cemeteries.
We descended using a back exit so, so we accidentally walked through a residential neighborhood. However, our was a nice turn off events because we got to see some really cool architecture and signs. For example, I saw a ‘Beware of Dog’ sign in Japanese!
For dinner, Troy had planned on taking us to a well-reviewed ramen place, but when we got to the restaurant we saw that every single dish had pork in it! Therefore, Asher kicked out and we ended up eating at a phenomenal hamburger place called J.S Hamburgers. The hamburgers were delicious! The next morning, after another round of homework, we went to a garden villa that had to be the royal villa in the time of dynasties. The buildings were cool, I really liked how the poles were made of trees with the bark still attached, but the garden was truly amazing. Wonderful stone bridges connected the garden over a massive pound that used to be connected to the river and snack bonsai trees littered the property. There were rock paths throughout the garden and I even learned what they are called! Paths made solely of cut blocks are called formal, pays made from unshaped rocks are called informal, and paths made of partly formal and partly informal rocks are called semi-formal!
After the wonderful tour of the villa (by our VERY enthusiastic guide) (that was sarcasm, by the way), Imri took us to a comic museum. This was cool because there are many different manga styles of cartooning and we got to see many of them. They also had many different exhibits. I bought a cool looking Godzilla fan, but it ended up being bad quality. It was $16 USD.
Imri went off to look at some more temples alone and we did a bit of homework and then walked around Kyoto again and saw some great streets. I also sent a postcard to my friend, Una. We had planned to eat in a sushi place next to the hotel that Troy had found, but apparently, it wasn’t a sushi place… As it turned out, it was a national holiday and most local shops were closed, including restaurants, so we had to eat at a touristy sushi place. We did homework and slept. I remembered what Troy had said the night before, that “Japan is the Switzerland of Asia”, an interesting quote, when, the next morning we went to the metro after doing homework and took a train to Kyoto station. There, before boarding a bullet train, we realized that Imri had lost his passport. We called our hotel and they said that they had it, so we exchanged Imri’s ticket and he left to get his passport. On the train, I didn’t sleep, so I got to see a lot of the scenery. My favorite landscape on a bullet train so far is going over a body of water, it just looks wonderful. I read on the train and blogged, and then we arrived in Tokyo once again. We ate at the noodle restaurant next to our old hotel and then went to our new hotel and did homework.
When Imri arrived, we wandered around Tokyo and discovered the antique super expensive hip clothing district. I actually really like the clothes and probably would’ve bought some if they weren’t so expensive. We ate sushi for dinner and slept. In the morning we did homework as usual. Then, we got on the metro to Disneyland, Tokyo! This year is its 35th anniversary, so everything at the park is super jacked up. Also, it’s Tokyo! It had to be good. Over the course of the day, in Tomorrowland we rode Space Mountain twice, Star Tours: The Adventures Continue twice, Buzz Lightyear’s Astro Blasters once, and Monsters, Inc. Ride & Go Seek! once. In Fantasyland, we rode “it’s a small world” once, Snow White’s Adventures once, Peter Pan’s Flight once, Pinocchio’s Daring Journey once, and the Haunted Mansion once. We rode Big Thunder Mountain once in Westernland and Pirates of the Caribbean once in Adventureland. We also ate very good ice cream sandwiches and popcorn and churros along with overloaded pizza (eggs, diced tomatoes, broccoli, meatballs, etc.) with a side of cheesy potatoes from Fantasyland’s Captain Hook’s Galley and Westernland’s Camp Woodchuck Kitchen’s smoked turkey legs. We saw a parade featuring dancers, a really cringy waving Belle from Beauty and the Beast, Mary Poppins from Mary Poppins, Hero and Baymax from Big Hero 6, and AERIAL-WIRE-FLYING Peter Pan and Wendy from Peter Pan. Hahahahahahaha!!!! Peter and Wendy were SO SO SO SO SO SO CRINGY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Now, some specifics about some of the rides; Space Mountain is amazing. That’s it. I know that many people feel nostalgia for this ride, I know, for example, that it was the first major roller coaster that Aba ever rode, but I just love it for what it is, an indoor roller coaster in the dark with incredibly sharp turns, wonderful design, and thousands of stars! Star Tours: The Adventures Continue had good prospects, but we went twice and saw the saw the same film both times. Maybe we were just unlucky, but why did they have to replace Darth Vader’s old scene with Kylo Ren?! Also, apparently Asher’s a stowaway that Kylo Ren is hunting (his face flashed up on the screen when they said a stowaway was in the ship, haha). Monsters, Inc. Ride & Go Seek! was a good ride, but I just have one question: in the second to last room (where Sully is giving a sleeping Boo her own Monsters, Inc helmet), how did they get Boo’s room to appear in the door?! It doesn’t look like a screen and that wouldn’t work anyway because of perspective, but it can’t have been built behind the door frame because there’s nothing there! I need to know! Though Aba says differently, in my memory I have never ridden “it’s a small world”. Troy also wanted to ride it and, though Aba and Asher hated it and Imri was neutral, I loved it! It was technically bad, but it was such a cutesy sweet and well-executed idea that how could someone not?! Also, that song rocks. We rode Snow White’s Adventures, Peter Pan’s Flight, and Pinocchio’s Daring Journey and I thought they were amazing. However, I have been on these rides before and noticed that they were missing rooms and, at least in Pinocchio, rooms were out of order. Before I spent half an hour talking in a Texan accent like an announcer from a ride, we rode the ride: Big Thunder Mountain. The announcer was actually trying to sound like a Coloradoan because that is where the ride is set, but the set and posters with the word ‘Colorado’ on it made me want to send my friends a picture and tell them that I’d come home early as a five-second prank, but then I got a teensy bit homesick (but not really that much). I’m at the age where I didn’t expect to have fun at Disneyland, but I’m happy we went. It really was a great day! As we left the park, a projected party was put on the walls to celebrate the anniversary.
Like the tourists we were that day, we went to the J.S Burgers located in Tokyo. We sat down at a large table with a hidden ‘Reserved’ sign that a staff member pointed out to us. She made us wait in a narrow alley until she finally pushed three tiny round coffee tables for us. When we left, there were two people sitting at the large, six-person table. Sigh… After homework, we slept. In the morning, we did homework and rode the metro to an area next to some famous gardens. There, we walked around looking at shops and such on the way there. We passed through a Japanese cemetery known for its abundance of cats, but we only saw two (even though they were both really fat, so let’s say four… Maybe they ate the other cats?). The gardens inside of the property were beautiful. After that, we wandered into a fish market and ate at a sushi place. The different thing about the sushi place was that all the sushi was on a conveyor belt! It was quite the experience. We went to (finally) the Imperial Palace next. Though we didn’t get to see the actual palace (because the royal family still lives there), the gardens surrounding the place were astounding. Cherry trees just blooming and small bonsai trees along with ponds and bridges and multiple teahouses came together to form a wonderful setting.
We ate a sweet confection along with Matcha Tea in the traditional manner in the palace’s tea house. Strangely, the tea smelled like seaweed!
Imri returned some clothes to Uniqlo, then we went to the hotel and did homework. Aba and Imri did Bikram yoga, and Troy, Asher, and I ate burgers for dinner again. I had a crepe on the way back. Then we did homework. Tonight is our last night in Asia for this year’s world trip, I really enjoyed it and am happy that we got to end it with Japan. Tomorrow we are flying to Buenos Aires, Argentina. Goodbye, Asia!
Ella
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These are funny product slogans and ads that we saw!
