Sapporo and Osaka

So my Japan blog failed. I guess making a blog during a holiday is really hard! After my last post things were super crazy busy. We only had a couple of days at some places before moving into the next one, and when it finally all calmed down I wanted to relax before making a post, then I forgot about it. So I'll do a bit of a summary here.

I realise I left out some details in the last post. So as mentioned, in Akita we went to a place called Round One. I want to give this more attention: It turns out this is all over Japan. The one we went to here was the best we saw however. It's several stories of fun things! I can't find a website to reference for the Japan branches, but it looks like they're in America too. The bottom 2 floors are full of skill testers so we started here. I think the next floor was full of bowling so we skipped that, then the 3 floors above that are full of LOTS of things: bowling, shooting, basketball, archery, mini golf, segways etc. It was something like $20 for unlimited access to everything until 5am, so we did that, and that was our Akita experience! If you travel to Akita, I recommend planning what day to go on better than I did, as I thought there would be dog related stuff everywhere but that's only on certain days, and also check out Round One.

As you know, we went to Niseko after this. I don't have a lot more to say on that one. I think honestly a good summary of Niseko was that I found a small jar of Vegemite (like novelty size) for about $20. ... Yeah.

After Niseko, we got a plane to Sapporo! At this time the ice sculptures were still being made, so we got to see that process plus the final results! It was really cool! We also saw snow sculptures and skiing and boarding events (on a giant ramp set up in the park!). There was so much amazing talent. I'm really happy to have got to experience that.

Besides this, we also went to this bunny bar in Sapporo. The bar had a translator who talked to us, along with one of the bunny girls. They asked if they can drink with us, which I later realized meant 'will you buy us drinks?'. Oops. But whatever they were fun to talk to anyway. That was fun as an experience of something different.

Next stop was Osaka. I had some delicious food in Osaka. I had Coco Ichibanya of course, but also takoyaki and ramen! All my favourite Japanese foods!

It's such a big, busy city! It was awesome! There was a rock climbing wall on the outside of this building (pictured below) which would have been pretty awesome to climb, but it was much too cold weather for it I think, plus I suck at climbing anyway.

 
We went to the aquarium which was huge and really awesome! What I remember most about this is the big tank which has the spiralling path around it so you get to walk to deeper parts of it, the really giant crabs, and the smooth slimy feeling of the eels.

We also went to Universal in Osaka. I was really scared to go on the Jurassic Park ride but it was so much fun! If you get the chance to try this ride, do not miss it!
We also went on a Spiderman ride where you wear 3d glasses and the are screens everywhere to give the effect that your cart that you are sitting in is flying through the city. That was good fun. Stan Lee cameo made me sad though because it still felt like his death was very recent. But only for a moment!
The Harry Potter section was cool too, but the lines for actual attractions were too long! I wanted to buy a wand but they were way too expensive for my budget. Instead, I got a snitch key charm.

We also went to the Ishiya Chocolate Factory. As seen in the link, the factory tour was closed, but the rest of the factory was open which was cool. Their chocolate is AMAZING! I wish I got more. Definitely try the hot chocolate from the vending machines outside. My fingers felt like they would fall off in the cold when I was getting my change out but it was worth it.
 

We didn't do a lot of nightlife stuff on this trip overall. Probably most of it was in Osaka. The best place was a goth bar called Farplane. Farplane has awesome goth decor. The first time my fiance and I went to Farplane, the bartender was very welcoming and chatty! When our friends joined us there he gave us more space. We ordered this for our friend, not telling him it was coming. It was a funny surprise, he loved it, and said it was delicious.





It's something like maybe Baileys? and a banana, and a cream on top. I think there was also chocolate.

This post is getting a bit long so I'll make a separate post for Kyoto, and one or two for Tokyo too.

Akita and Niseko

We are now up to day 15.

After the fox village we went to Akita. It turned out that the wasn't lot planned for this area but it turned out ok.

We went to Osaki Hachimangu Shrine for my Akita goshuin. The tori gate out front here was fucking huge!

So I got my goshuin there, then that night we went to Round 1. That was good fun. We paid around $25 to get access to all the to floor for a few hours, which included archery, trampolines, arcade games, baseball, mini golf, etc. It was very tiring, especially after walking half an hour to get to Round 1, but lots of fun.

Next stop was Niseko. We stayed at Niseko Youraku Hotel, which is quite far out from stuff so we had to get a taxi to get into town, but the owners were really cool. On the first night, the owner drove us to a shop to get food. And later in the to his wife drove me to a shrine to get goshuin. This time the shrine was Niseko Kaributo shrine.

I bought 5 days of ski hire from Rythm Niseko but ended up using 3 and refunding the last 2. Because of the way their pricing works this was a small refund though. Skiing was good fun as always, but Niseko in general is pretty overpriced.

Next we went to Sapporo for the snow festival. I'll make a separate post for that.

Zao fox village

Today is just our third day in Japan but we've already had a lot of fun!

We went to Cocos Curry as soon as possible of course. So far we have eaten Cocos 4 times! So good. Other food so far has been done Maccas, and the Japanese Maccas is very different; I had a 'Cheese cheese teriyaki' burger, and in Shiroishizao my fiancee and I tried their regional speciality: umen. Umen is Shiroishi's special noodles, so we had curry umen. It was really good! I wasn't sure if curry noodles would be good but it really was!

We barely slept on our first night here. We were in Tokyo so we did karaoke. That was fun but I got Soo tired, so we stopped in at the Shibuya Starbucks. The 'romantic coffee' was good, but I dunno what was in it. It was really sweet.

Browsing around Donqui I found this weird toothbrush. There's all sorts odd things there though.

We got the Shinkansen to Sendai for our first main stop. We are staying at Hotel Bel Air Sendai. This place is pretty good although we unfortunately got a smoking room. I don't think there were non smoking rooms left.

The was not a lot of time left on our first day here so we went to a nearby shrine refinedre by the Sendai train station staff: Osaki Hachimangu Shrine.

 I didn't take many photos as I think there was a funeral going on... But I did get a nice goshuin book from this temple.

 And I got my first goshuin stamp! The date is in the lower left corner but I'm not sure what the rest of it says.

On the next morning we went to the Zao fox village! We missed the shinkansen that we wanted to get so had to hang around at the train station for an hour for the next one. We just got some more Starbucks (they are everywhere!) and cheese tarts, and the hour flew by :)

From Shiroishizao we had to get a taxi. There is a shuttle bus but it's only on Tuesday and Friday. The taxi is 4000¥ so not too bad between 3 of us. I didn't actually realise this but to get there we had to drive up a windy mountain, which of course got more and more covered in snow as we went up. The driver went nice and slow over all the icy bits.

To enter the Zao Fox Village is 1000¥. In the first area the are foxes in cages. I couldn't understand enough of the signs to know what the deal was with these ones. In a section off to the right though, they have the breeding pen. As soon as we got in the we saw two going at it, making weird squeeky noises, then one other make fox picked a fight with the one who was currently mating. The female was trying to run away while these two fought over her. So that was interesting, but moving on...

The main area is a big outdoor area where the foxes run around freely. There are a bunch of rules to avoid getting bitten, but they seemed very shy. We took a ton of photos. A lot of the time as soon as they see us with a camera they look the other way haha. But really, there were some that came as close as sniffing my boots but as soon as I move they run off.  It was SO COLD. My lips were going numb.

Next we got to hold the foxes for 600¥. It was amazingly awesome! They were so fluffy and soft. The one I held was squirming around a lot so the staff calmed him down. At some point he nuzzled his nose into my arm. That was SO CUTE!

There are really a lot of photos so here are a few favorites.

 There were also a few goats and rabbits. I love the creepy goats eyes xD

Japan 2019

On Monday night I leave for another trip to Japan. This time I'll be traveling around more.

Starting with one night in Tokyo (at a manga cafe likely), we'll go to Sendai the next day, visit the fox village, then Akita, then Niseko for about a week, then Sapporo for the snow festival (for most of it), then to Osaka, then Kyoto, then back to Tokyo.

In Tokyo the plan is to get married (yay!), then celebrate this in Yuzawa shortly afterward. The rest of the trip (which still has about a month), is a honeymoon!

Some things I'm looking forward to are obviously the wedding!, but also getting dressed up as a geisha in Kyoto, seeing the snake cafe, trying more foods that I didn't have last time, karaoke, catching up with friends, and goshuin hunting! It's pretty convenient that it was in this trip that I found out about goshuin hunting since it's in this trip that I'll be traveling all over to places I've never been.

Anyway, I plan to keep a blog again during this trip, and fill it with photos too, so watch this space :)

Maid cafe

We have been to a maid cafe three times now. It is great because it's another way to get drunk cheap and the maids are super cute and energetic!

The deal is 500¥ entry with one order of food per person per hour, and the drinks are 1800¥ for two hours. We went for Michael's birthday and unfortunately didn't book otherwise the maids would have sung happy birthday. They did give him free bunny ears though :)  We did Russian Roulette takoyaki twice which included one takoyaki ball with Wasabi. Hayden got it bothh times! He didn't seem to react to it much though.

Photos of staff are not allowed, but we did get photos of our food! Here is a curry that I got for dinner:

They decorate all the food all cute like this! And then they do a little song thing for it.

At the end of the night the maids perform a few songs and dances. They have so much energy! I would definitely recommend Maidreamin for a very Japanese experience. We know the one in Shibuya has a lot of staff that speak English so that is where we kept going. 

Tokyo Dark Castle

Since getting back to Tokyo we have been pretty busy so I haven't had time to write about it. A few things we have done are: LOTS of Coco's curry, 6 hours of karaoke twice, lots of time in Akihabara, way too much shopping, went to a maid cafe, and Tokyo Dark Castle.

Tokyo Dark Castle was a lot of fun! People were dressed up very cool and there was heaps of cool music! Tim and I went with Hiroko, who we met at a previous Tokyo Dark Castle about 5 years ago. Her friend DJ Uraguchi was djing and put a lot of cool music on.

There was also a band on called Cracks who reminded me right away of an Aussie band called Zombie Ghost Train as they were dressed like zombies from the 80s and had a cello. Their sound was sort of similar with the cello and all, but heavier.

Probably the best act though was the band that the organiser of TDC is in called Auto-Mod. They have an opera singer who wore this cape that looked like it might have been latex and cool devil horns. The opera singing made their sound a bit more unique and sounded really good! They also had a guy dressed all in latex who wasn't playing instruments or singing but dancing. That was entertaining.

There was also a strange part of the night when the lights all went dark to focus on a projection on the stage curtains. The music was slow and the projection was of David Bowie's face. Then it went to all these videos of WWII. I'm not sure how long it actually went for, maybe 5 minutes. Then it ended with David Bowie again and his birth - death years as * started playing a David Bowie cover and the curtains were raised. I dunno what David Bowie has to do with WWII. I guess it was just to get everyone to calm down and feel sad for a minute? It was really weird, Hiroko said they don't usually do something like that.

I'll write about some of the other stuff in upcoming posts. :)

Yuzawa

So after being in this cast I realized it might be easier ti wear a poncho rather than draping a jacket over my shoulder. In the morning I asked the hotel staff if they knew where i could buy one. One staff member named Mariko-san who spoke English very well called a few places to ask them. She said nowhere in Yuzawa does but there's a shopping center in the next town who does. I thought about getting the train there but decided against it, but she said she has a poncho I could borrow while I am here! Very nice of her.  Here is me in the poncho listening to David Bowie:

So a I accepted this and a bit later was handing my key in to wander around town and find something to take photos of,  they pointed out that it is not good weather for photos. It was very foggy so you could barely even see the mountains. However Mariko-san asked if I would come to the shops with her. She ended up driving me half an hour out of Yuzawa to the place in the next town that she mentioned earlier! She said she was doing other things there too although ended up just getting a bento from the grocery store. I did not end up buying a poncho as they were really short so wouldn't really be so suitable but did buy a little hat thing with bear ears.

That night we had dinner at a restaurant across from the train station. I'm not sure of the name of it since it was in Japanese but most of the menu was vegetarian, locally grown, and healthy, and the guy who served us wad really nice and told us what was in all our meals. It was a nice experience. It was also very funny because Jake made a joke about himself being fat and this guy agreed with him and they kept joking about it!  ^.^ Jake was going on about how cool he was when we left so he obviously didn't mind.


The next day was much nicer weather! I spent the day taking lots of photos around town! Here are a couple:

On day 6 of Yuzawa it was very clear weather so I went back to Kogen with Tim, Jake and Hayden to take some mountain-top photos! This was a very fun day. Luckily for me the snow stopped so I could bring the camera out. This might not have been so lucky for the people skiing and boarding but they said that they had a good day!

Overall, even though i fractured a wrist and couldn't skii much this trip, Yuzawa was a lot of fun! We had a lot of yummy Japanese food from very traditional style restaurants, I got a bunch if cool photos, lots of fun all around.