I like to Knoll my stuff before I pack my bag so I can see everything all at once. This is everything I
packed.
Without further ado, Food! Clockwise from top left: the best ramen I've ever had, Domino's bento box, the
best sushi
I've ever had, an award winning "hamburger"
Left to right from the top: sushi so good you get two pictures of it, my favorite food in the whole wide
world: Shenzhen dumplings, potato croquette sandwich, airplane meal, spam and egg onogiri, Indian food that
you eat with chopsticks, Domino's bento box, ramen, that hamburger again
Sushi! This was at a sushi restaurant called 神田笹鮨 where we went with Cor's friend. Don't ask me how to
pronounce that!
We had flaming shots at a bar in Tokyo in honor of Ukraine
Cor holding a bottle of Cor rum from Okinawan. It was a little meh but drinkable.
And I only found coffee with my name on it. And it was even misspelled. I think Cor got the better
deal.
We found Shenzhen dumplings in Kyoto! They are my absolute favorite food. Cor was not impressed.
Some pretty good ramen near our place in Kyoto
Silken tofu
Premade rice. It was made better than any rice I've made.
Put it together with Japanes curry, and I cooked my first meal in Japan
We stayed at the Art Deco Hotel in Tokyo. Pretty small but close to everything.
They've got this great everything store called Don Quijote. They play this earworm of a song in the store sometimes.
I only got to see my cousin Ian for two days, but we played dodgeball on one of them
We hung out with Cor's old roomate and her friend at the ARIA Station Bar
We found a wonderful tourist trap in Tokyo called the Samurai Ninja Museum
Cor and I donned our samurai costumes and larped like the nerds we are
We got a genuine plastic throwing star as a souvenir
It was pretty cheesy, but there were some genuine antiques like this samurai armor
I love how they though thick mustaches were scary. If I went back in time to the Edo period, they'd be
terrified of me!
I was catching Pokemon all over Japan because - Japan!
We went to the Skytree tower, the
tallest
tower in the world
View of the Skytree tower from across the water. You can see the Asahi Flame, which is like a huge golden
sperm looking thing sitting on top of a black Borg-like building.
Another view of the Skytree tower
Yet another view of the Skytree tower. Look at that thing!
Looking at the peasants below while I enjoy a cocktail
Looking down we could see some students doing an intricate coordinated dance routine
This is the Art Deco hotel where we were staying
Off to Harijuku where I got this fabulous shirt
I found this amazing hat for $50, but then got found it on Temu and ordered it for $12
Cor took the best picure of me I've had taken in a long time. I love my new Koi fish themed Hawaiian print
from Harijuku!
Looking fashionable in front of the Shein store pretending I'm not old
Cor just chillin' in Harijuku. You can see the Skytree tower from everywhere in Tokyo
We went to another great tourist trap - a tea ceremony
She told us she studied tea ceremonies for years
Every move is calculated and precise
Powdered tea (macha) and a local sweet treat
She took a picture of us as we took a picture of her
Check us out in the snazzy kimonos! A man's kimoni is called a shijira.
Our house in Osaka
This is the view from the house in Osaka we rented. There was a temple across a river from us.
This is the view of the house from the temple.
The sign for the Mizumakannon Buddhist temple
As far as I could tell from Google Translate, the temple was founded by a monk who sought a cure for an
emperor and was given a Buddha statue by a guy who turned out to be a dragon
I went for a walk around the neighborhood and got close-up to a rice field
The white bags are trash, the black bags are my things. I generated twice as much trash in a week as I came
to Japan with.
Our amazing little house we rented in downtown Kyoto
The nameplate outside our rental house
This is one of the many advantages of traveling with Cor - he takes great pictures of me!
Enjoying a cocktail with Cor in the backyard of our Kyoto rental
The Deer Park in Nara
The deer just chill and hang out with people
Hanging out with a long horned deer
Hanging out with another deer at a temple
Cor hanging out with a deer
I thought this shot was poetic: old man with looking at an ancient rock with a young buck nearby
A gaggle of giggling Japanese schoolgirls hang out with a deer
The deer have been trained to bow when begging for food
This sign warns people that sometimes young deer are assholes
A young deer being a bit of an asshole demanding food from us
We drove around and checked out Chiba, which seemed like a cool little surfer town
This is a bike parking lot near a subway in Chiba
A panorama from the top floor of our hotel in Chiba
We went to this cool Live House (bar with live bands) in Chiba called Anga and found a great undergroud
scene where independent label Sen City was
putting on a show
This is singer/songwiter artist Umi Saito
Another cool band who's name I didn't catch
The Slow Wolves Club
Another great band who's name I can't remember
Bass Buster, a one-man band who plays a bunch of instruments at the same time
Me in front of a bunch of gashapon, or capsule toy machines. The balls are sometimes called gotcha-gotcha
balls.
Holding a pair of Torii gotcha-gotcha balls. Gashapon are all over Japan. A Torii is one of those gates in
front of a temple.
Inside these gotcha-gotcha balls are little Torii that you snap together with instructions
This gashapon gives you a random suprise where you don't know what you'll get!
This is an advertisement for... a rock? I dunno. Japanese love old rocks.
Look for this sign. It means you can translate it into English.
There is a bunch of over-sized stautes advertising stuff in Japan. This is the Jumbo Cook, rumored to be a
giant robot.
Love this beer drinking King Kong. Also Cor. Love him too.
I just love the simplicity and weirdness of this neon sign
Oh Torrey, your name pops up everywhere in Japan!
We were really excited about Expo 2025, but the more we looked into it, the more it just seemed like a
hassle and we didn't end up going
There's a lot of restrictions for going into Onsens (bath houses) in Japan. Can't be a gangster for one.
These chips actually did have a very special taste. Not like not good or bad, just kinda...
special.
Very complicated but suprisingly well designed laundry machine. It washed and dried in one machine and even
put in detergent for you.
Now were getting into unintentionally suggestive signage
I think her shirt was intentionally suggestive. It shows rabbits having sex.
They have an area for everything!
I mean, I do sometimes but it's impolite to talk about it in mixed company...
Why can't we have bullet trains? We suck at building stuff. I blame Jack Welch and Shareholder Supremacy
Capitalism.
With this card, you can ride any bus or train in Japan and also buy stuff from 7-11
We came up with a slogan to help us: "Drive on the left side of the road or die." Not very catchy, but it
worked.
This is what McDonalds and police cars look like in Japan. Similar, but different.
Gas is about the same price in Japan as California, maybe a little bit cheaper. This is like $16 for 4 about
gallons.
This is the dash board in the car. I have no idea what's going on here.
On our last day in Japan, I had an Old Fashioned overlooking the ocean and the ZOZO Stadium