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 :)