Archive for August, 2016

August 3rd was another full day in Tokyo, and our first stop was Tokyo Tower. We weren’t there to go up the tower though. Our destination was the building at the base which houses many attractions… including Tokyo One Piece Tower! One Piece is a popular Anime worldwide, and I’m a big fan. When we entered, we were greeted by Chopper’s footprints and immediately knew to follow that.

If you’ve been following my Instagram, you’ll know that I started working on my next Tashigi cosplay. The full costume isn’t done, but I finished the shirt and wore it as a casual Tashigi outfit for the day 🙂

Entrance to Tokyo One Piece Tower

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Here’s the start of my Japan trip entries! I went with my husband and one of my closest friends, and we left for Japan on July 31st, but because of the large time zone difference, we landed in Tokyo in the afternoon on August 1st. There isn’t much to say about the first day since we just checked into our hotel in Shinjuku, had dinner at a katsu place, and then went to bed. Two years ago, we also started our trip in Shinjuku (and at the same hotel), so it was nice to have a familiar start.

The next morning, we found a 24-hour ramen place, Ichiran Ramen, and had ramen for breakfast. The place has an interesting concept where they minimize human interaction. You select what you want from a ticket vending machine and then choose a booth, which is walled off from the others (you can move the wall if you want though). In front of you is a window that is covered by a shade, and it’s only opened when they take your food tickets and when they give you food. We also got a form to fill out to customize our ramen, from its richness to the texture of the noodles. It was a tasty and hearty start to the day!

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I’m back from a 12 day trip in Japan! After almost two weeks, I’m behind on blogging, work, personal life – pretty much everything. I have a lot to talk about and photos to post from this trip, but I’ll be splitting it up into several entries, so that they’re easier to digest. I’ll spread them out this time too, so that I can stick other entries in between.

This was actually my second trip to Japan. Two years ago, I went to Tokyo, Kyoto, and Hakone, while also visiting nearby cities like Nara and Osaka. The Japan category on my blog has entries on those! This time, we stayed in Tokyo and Sendai, and we also visited nearby cities like Morioka, Shiogama, Matsushima, and Yokohama.

I normally don’t take vacation in the summer because it’s often crowded in places and really hot, but I wanted to hit the festival season in Japan. It also ended up coming at a good time. I was starting to really get tired out by work, and even blogging or updating my websites began feeling like a chore. Being away for two weeks was refreshing, and I’m ready to take on reality again.

In the mean time, I was updating my Instagram while in Japan, so you can kind of see a preview of what I was up to there. If you play Pokemon Go, I have a Facebook album with my thoughts on playing in Japan. Also, I went ahead and edited a bunch of food photos (cause they’re important, you know) and have queued them up on my food tumblr. (It’s set to post twice a day.)

I’m going to return blog comments and work on my first Japan entry soon! Here are some previews from my trip that you can expect a write-up on later 🙂

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