For details on our onsen visit/ryokan stay and Kitsune Mura.

ALSO I'M GOING TO TOKYO DISNEY TOMORROW EEEEEEEEEE

So, I thought when someone who wasn't me wrote in this thing, it would say who the post was by. But it doesn't. So from now on, we'll sign each post with who wrote it, and, on a whim, I have decided that in the event any of us want to go back and edit old posts with personal commentary, we'll do it in a designated text color so it's apparent it wasn't a part of the original post. Obviously, my color will be pink. Matt's will be [you guys, choose a color,] , and John's will be [and edit it in!].

- Mie out

So, Mie invited me to write in this during the first week of our visit and I completely forgot about it.

I think we've all been so busy running around that we haven't really taken the time to stop and write anything. It's understandable since we want to keep our energy up to do yet more cool stuff, but also kind of sad since I know it's a lot easier to retain good memories when you actually take the time to write them down.

Let's hit the past few days in a quick summary.

Wednesday, September 23rd - Odaiba
Mie and I went to Odaiba, an artificial island turned massive shopping district. I became a bit ill in the food court of the Diver City shopping mall, but I got over it, and we wandered around, took in the sights, took some pictures, checked out the massive Gundam replica, then rode the giant ferris wheel after nightfall.

Thursday, September 24th - Shinjuku & Harajuku
We tried to go back to the costume museum in Shinjuku, but it was closed again for some unknown reason even though Silver Week was over. Frustrated, we decided to visit Harajuku again since we didn't really get to explore it adequately on our first visit. John found an incredibly cool leather jacket in a second hand fashion store, I found a pair of comfy shorts, and we capped the day off by having the best pancakes of our entire lives at Mee's Pancakes.

Friday, September 25th - Ueno
With our mini trip-within-a-trip approaching, we decided to visit Ameyoko St. in Ueno to try to find a backpack. It was rainy, but we found an indoor shopping area (kind of like a flea market but a little nicer) filled with lots of mom & pop type small shops, many of which sold luggage. We bought a bright red backpack for Mie (completely utilitarian -- all the cooler looking stuff was pricey) then decided on a whim to go visit the Tokyo National Museum. Mie was bored, but John and I enjoyed it.

John and Mie found a painting that reminded them of the ending of The Tale of Princess Kaguya and were made immediately upset. You'd have to see the movie to get why.

Saturday, September 26th - Sumida
The day wherein we did nothing. Knowing that we'd be walking a whole lot over the next few days, we opted to just take it easy. I can't really remember what we did this day, but I'm pretty sure it involved watching a lot of Steven Universe.

Sunday, September 27th - Karuizawa & Nagano
We stuffed our backpacks and set out on our mini-trip. We took the Ginza line from Asakusa to Ueno, then rode the Shinkansen to Karuizawa. Or that was the plan, anyway. Mie was feeling very unwell this day, so she fell asleep on the train, and John and I both had headphones in, so we ended up going three or four stops too far north. We managed to get on the Shinkansen heading south, though, and arrived in Karuizawa as planned.

Once there, we ate at an odd little chicken and pizza restaurant, then walked down some beautiful, empty country roads through the forest, by various large, nice homes. Some of them looked abandoned, but most were well maintained. The area had a damp climate -- it looked like people were intentionally keeping moss instead of grass lawns, and mushrooms were growing all over the place.

We eventually came upon Kumoba Pond, the largest pond in Japan. (We had a lot of discussion about what decides the difference between a large pond and a small lake. Apparently, at least for the purpose of this particular context, a pond is a body of water shallow enough for plants to grow from the bottom at any point.)

It was fascinating -- clustered all along the pond's shore and all over the small plank bridge were artists with their easels and palettes, painting away. I'm not sure if this was some sort of special day or if it's just always like this, but there had to have been at least twenty or more artists in total, and from what I saw, they were all great. Granted, I tried not to go snooping over all their shoulders as we passed by, but it was hard not to take a peek.

After visiting the pond, we walked back to station and took the Shinkansen to Nagano (this time with no mishaps) and had our second faux Italian meal of the day at a bustling restaurant just down the street from the Smile Hotel. I wish I could remember the name of it -- it was unexpectedly good, with free beverage refills (unheard of in Japan), good food, and reasonably priced desserts. John and I each had two desserts because why not.

As a minor note, the restaurant had a grape soda called Qoo. It was strangely flavorful but also had disconcerting undertones of toothpaste and bubblegum. I'm not sure if I would drink it again. I probably would, but then I would ask myself why I was drinking it. It's just that kind of drink.

After our meal, we turned in for the night in our tiny rooms at the Smile Hotel. Funny note: You have to insert your key in a slot in the wall to turn on the electricity to the room while you're inside. It took us a while to figure this out.

I'll write more about the following days soon, and later, I'll go back and try to edit in some relevant photos, too.

Thursday rained a lot. Thankfully, those who had come before (previous tenants of the apartment) left a smattering of umbrellas here for us to use. Apparently, it rains so much here, they sell clear plastic umbrellas in the hundred yen store. Unfortunately, these puny Japanese umbrellas were no match for Matt's huge American shoulders, and he wound up getting pretty much completely soaked that day. Heck, even I did, and I fit under my umbrella pretty neatly. By the time we'd simply walked down the street to Mos Burger for breakfast (brunch???), my pants were soaked through to my knees, my canvas chucks made squishing sounds every time I took a step, and my backpack (which is thankfully, a Jansport, and reasonably water resistant, took a beating for my back, which would have been getting all the runoff from my umbrella. I didn't really take any pictures that day because really expensive DSLRs+rain= sad Mie.

So after taking a second unintentional shower for the day, we returned to the apartment to figure out what we wanted to do. We kinda just chilled for a while, but eventually decided to go to the Edo-Tokyo Museum. John wanted to stay behind.

Now, the museum wasn't a terribly far walk from the apartment, we still didn't actually get inside for a good hour. Why? In Tokyo, you're not supposed to take your dripping wet umbrellas inside places, so there are racks for you to leave them outside the door. Most places, it's an honors system, and pretty easy to walk away for free umbrellas if you're deviously inclined, but this place had actual locking slots. Which we could not for the life of us figure out how to work. No one really seems inclined to offer help when they see the dumb foreigners struggling with their weird contraptions, either, so we were kinda stuck. We actually almost gave up and left, because of those stupid things, but eventually, we figured it out, and went inside. The permanent exhibit is pretty cool, and we were able to get English audio guides for commentary on some of the items. It started out around the birth of the new capital , and went forward through to about 1970s with a really rushed single wall of stuff that happened between then and now.

The old Edo section of the museum was pretty cool, had a lot of interactive displays, painstakingly built scale models, and dioramas that lit up and played music every few minutes, but the new Tokyo section of the museum felt very much like an exhibit on WWII and how it tragically and drastically changed the lives of every Japanese. Even the English translations felt worded in such a way as to sort of not-so-subtly point an accusative finger at America. It's a perspective I haven't really gotten to see before, but it made me suuuuuuper uncomfortable, even though I personally had nothing to do with it.

So, yeah, we left there, walked home in the rain, and stopped off at Lawson (another hundred yen store chain), and then at Summit to buy stuff for dinner, which John made, while I passed out on the couch. I don't know if it was the kind of rice we bought, or the rice cooker itself, but it's honestly the best rice I've ever had in my life.

So yesterday, Friday, we hopped the metro into Akihabara, the nerd/electronics capital of Japan, and set about exploring. Still on the hunt for more clothes for Matt, we got off the train, and went into UNIQLO, a chain store equivalent maybe to Target or Kohl's, and managed to find another shirt for him. From there, we went exploring the tightly packed, crowded alleyways leading into hobby shops, comic book stores, pachinko parlors, and anime merchandise shops. It's all pretty overwhelming, and probably the closest I've come to being uncomfortable in Japan, but only because of how many times we almost accidentally wandered into porn sections, which are not as clearly demarcated by signs and words (as opposed to pictures of compromised fifteen year old animated school girls) as I would have liked. We wandered around for some time looking for something to eat, and eventually decided we were curious enough to see what a Japanese Denny's is like.

The answer is: Not even remotely like an American Denny's, even a little bit. For one thing, they still have smoking and non-smoking sections. For another, the service is excellent. They have this little, call button thing on the table, and we needed to get an extra set of hashi (they brought Matt a fork) and some shouyu, and our server was like, across the room, so we pushed it, and this little bell chimed, and a number 57 lit up on a big board in the middle of the room, and she like, booked it over to us. So I had oyakodon with tofu salad and miso soup, and it was super good. Matt had some kind of hamburg demi-glace plate with rice, and We still don't really know what John got. He just pointed to a picture, and said, "kore kudasai." It was some kind of cold, not-soba noodle soup.

So we wandered around some more, and decided we were feeling kind of beat, so we took an unhurried, adventurous path home after we got off the subway, taking tons of pictures on the way. We got in, we unwound, watched some Steven Universe (because we're determined to make John watch it all), and decided we were finally going to try the curry downstairs at the Cafe Latino.

We went in, and, it's a tiny, tiny little restaurant; it seats maybe twelve. Tadarts-san told us to sit wherever we liked, and he brought us iced tea while we looked over the menu. I got the corned beef curry, Matt got the chicken curry, and John got the "dry curry" which is like, super reduced. Mine was amazing, and afterward, Tadarts-san brought us these... yogurt drink things? I don't know what it was, but it tasted somewhat like Calpis, just more sour. Once we finished dinner, thought, Tadarts-san invited us downstairs into his basement music studio, where he gives drum, percussion, and salsa lessons. Matt and John played around on the keyboard, drums, and piano, and Tadarts-san accompanied on the bongos. I did take pictures, but they somehow all got erased when I switched SD cards, but it okay, because he invited us to come back tonight, when hes going to have a jam session with other musicians!

More pictures later!

Day two: We picked a direction, and just started walking, taking meandering paths through the alleys and back streets in the little neighborhood we're staying in, gradually making our way over towards the Sky Tree. We wandered around the little shopping mall in there, got some lunch (we had beef curry, and John had some kind of seafood ramen), then we bought pencils and postcards to break large bills into hundred yen coins so we could get toys out of the little gashapon machines. We continued wandering, and found ourselves over in this huge open-air shopping arcade thing in Asakusa. We poked around, bought some souvenirs and snacks, and explored. I got this frozen custard pastry thing, and Matt sampled Japanese McNuggets and shakes, which are apparently exactly how they used to be in America before the recipes changed. We poked around some more, and eventually wandered our way back to the apartment, where I took a much-needed nap.

"Wake me up in an hour," I said. Two hours later, I peeled myself out of bed feeling horrible. But, after I had a drink, and took a trip to the grocery store with Matt to get some food, I felt much better. Unfortunately, we left our pocket wifi at home, so we had no internet, while we were there, and I couldn't read anything/had no means of looking up kanji, soooo... we just bought some melonpan and ready-made dinners, and decided we'd come back and try again today.

Also, rice is really friggin' expensive here. Who'd have thought, right?

I'm not gonna lie. I maybe probably teared up a little bit as the plane was coming down into Narita International yesterday. I've only been wanting to come here since I was 12. No big deal.

But really, I'm kind of amazed we made it here, and that everything turned out as okay as it did. Not to say everything's been going perfectly swimmingly. Not even a little.

Weeee forgot to pull our garbage can back from the curb, We didn't bring an umbrella, and the forecast shows a 100% chance of rain for the next two days. In the rush to hurry up and load the airport shuttle when it arrived, I left a half-eaten biscuit sandwich on the counter, which I'm sure will smell awesome when I get back, I brought packages with me to the airport with prepaid labels, thinking there was a post office I could drop them off with (there wasn't).The line for the security check point at the airport was so hideously long, we barely made our flight, despite arriving at the airport at 10:30 for a 1:15 departure. We literally just got through the recombobulation area (put your shoes and belt back on, and give us back our bins, please) when I caught sight of one of the ANA flight attendants wandering around, frantically calling, "ANA Passengers! ANA Passengers to me, please!"

"Shipe?" she tried to ask, when I approached, pronouncing it better than most native English speakers. "Yes," I responded. "Shipe and Fraser?"

She immediately got on her cellphone. "I found them," she told the person on the other line.

"Come with me, come with me!" she told us, embarking in the most impressive high-heeled speedwalk I've ever seen. She led us down the escalator, and to SeaTac's intra-terminal train, where we waited very patiently for the next arrival. She seemed perfectly calm. We rode for two stops in a packed train, and when the doors slid open at S Terminal, she squares her shoulders and says ominously, "OK, now we run."

What.

No, but seriously. She booked it though a iceberg-thick crowd of confused, lost travelers, up not one, but two consecutive escalators. By this point, I'm starting to feel that I'm in a marathon. Every fifty or so meters, there is another flight attendant standing as if at a checkpoint, urging me on. "Hurry!" they yell. "Door is closing!" As we entered the plane, huffing, puffing, and sweaty (just how I love to start flights), Every attendant we pass bows, and goes, "Thank you for hurrying!" At last, we make it to our seats. Unfortunately, our equipment seems to have gotten swapped out, because what should have been a 787 Dreamliner, was in fact, merely a triple seven. Sad face. Oh, well. maybe for the return flight.

The flight itself was long, but still one of the best I've had. Omotenashi is like... the embodiment of the spirit of Japanese hospitality, and they take it very seriously. While it's applicable to any service-oriented job, it's probably not something you'll really experience buying books at Kinokuniya, or cream puffs at Beard Papa in International District. I got full on smacked in the face with it on our flight. They literally dote on you the entire flight, They brought oshibori (wet towels for cleaning hands before meals), then snacks, then drinks, then the best meal I've ever had on a plane (wish I'd thought to take a picture!) of cold soba, curried vegetables and rice, tsukemono, edamame, and fruit, then they brought a little individual sized cup of vanilla ice cream for dessert. Then they brought after meal tea and coffee, then they brought another round of drinks, and snacks, and so it went. Even when they weren't coming around giving out drinks or snacks, or oshibori,or collecting rubbish, there was an open galley, so at any time, you could just go get yourself an extra pack of that super-yummy senbei, or a banana, or an orange juice, or whatever. For "breakfast," you had a choice between chicken basquaise(???) or cheese ravioli.

So we land. We disembark. So... I've been casually studying Japanese on and off since I was probably eleven or twelve. No matter how good a grasp you think you have on basic language mechanics, it will never prepare you for how utterly helpless you will be, should you ever find yourself completely immersed in the culture. Between collecting our bags, getting some money exchanged, picking up rail passes, subway tickets, and our pocket wifi mobile hot spot, it took us about two hours to leave the airport. By the time we figured out which train we needed to be on, it was around sunset, which gave some really lovely views as we were leaving the airport. Eventually, we got confused about which train we were supposed to transfer to, and where we ere supposed to transfer, got off at the wrong stop, ending up taking four trains to get to Asakusa station, when it really only should have taken us two.

From Asakusa station, we walked to the little apartment we're renting from Air BnB. It's a little flat above a tiny curry restaurant called Cafe Latino, and it's adorable, When we arrived, our host Tadarts-san said he wasn't done cleaning it, so he had us come into the cafe, sit, and wait while he finished, but not before bringing us some iced coffee(!). So we went up, called bedsies, and settled in, exploring, and photographing our new temporary home (that's most of the day one pictures, sorry). Tadarts-san came back with a tooon of snacks and stuff; there was a carton of orange juice, a bunch of bananas, a package of croissants, and apple bundt, some pocky, some little ramen snacks (which are amazing, ugh, I hope I can get these in America), and a loaf of bread (for which there is a full complement of jams in the fridge). We were so surprised! He's such a great, thoughtful host, so I'm really, really glad I went through the trouble of lugging a cake to give as a host gift through the airports, and four train rides, and seven blocks while also juggling my luggage.

So after we settled in a little, we started feeling kind of hungry, and we needed more cash, so we hit up the local 7-eleven, got some incredible karaage chicken skewers, a beef korokke, and some drinks to keep in our fridge. Honestly, I feel like we're going to get so spoiled, being here. The service everywhere, even in convenience stores is just so astronomically better than in America.

The atmosphere is really foreign, too. We walked by ourselves in a strange country at like 9pm to a convenience store, several blocks away, and it felt totally, perfectly safe. The little side streets and alleys of Sumidaku are so cute and quaint, and old, and there really are vending machines EVERYWHERE. I love it here.

I passed out at like 10pm after eating; I think at that point, I'd been up over 24 straight hours, because... yeah, sleeping on the plane didn't happen. I was dead tired, but I woke up on my own at what turned out to be 2am, and couldn't get back to sleep, so here I commemorate, uploading pictures, and drinking apple tea, and eating Yokai Watch branded ramen snacks, while I dream up what adventures I'll have today...

Well, I'm a terrible blogger. I wrote down nothing, and we leave in less than a week. No one is surprised.

Hotels are booked, flights are arranged, we've moved, and tons of stuff has happened, but the point is

WHERE DOING THIS MAN WHERE MAKING THIS HAPPEN