life in japan | kyoto trip, daily life, cozy vlog 🇯🇵✨

life in japan | kyoto trip, daily life, cozy vlog 🇯🇵✨

It’s been almost 2 months since I flew back home to Japan. I filmed a few things recently and just wanted to share it with you along with just some random thoughts I’ve been having while being here. Just a note for those that are curious, I filmed everything on the Osmo Pocket 3 for this video. One of my favorite things about Japan is the transportation. I live in a pretty random town called Kakawa, and we’re not really known for anything, but this weekend, my uncle gave us tickets to a Kabuki show, so we can go to Kyoto. Thanks to a Shinkansen, we were able to get there in about an hour. And this one was Chopa themed from One Piece. So, how cute is that? It still blows my mind how many cities you can visit in Japan. I love that you can go from weekend trips to the countryside to cities filled with history like Kyoto to an intense city like Tokyo. My dream one day is to rent a camper van and just visit all the coastal surf towns around Japan with Jack and our baby. Anyway, it was a little overcast when we got to Kyoto. And usually I would recommend visiting all the main temples and shrines like King Kakuji, Kiomizer, and the super popular Inari Shrine. But I’ve done all of those in the past. Visited the bamboo forest, went to look at the monkeys, and this time I’m just chilling with my mom. And our goal was to eat good food. Which leads me to the biggest culture shock I had since coming back here is that nobody bats an eye at a pregnant lady eating raw sushi here. And my uncle is a doctor, my cousin is a doctor, and one of my other cousins husband is a doctor. And they were all like, “Oh, you can’t eat raw fish in America while pregnant. Why?” And I don’t know if it’s because they have fresher fish or stricter preparation methods here or if it’s a combination of both, but even the sushi chef was like, “Yeah, never heard of that before.” kind of vibe. But I would still say it’s probably smarter to limit high mercury fish like tuna. And I won’t be indulging on grocery store sushi here. And I definitely didn’t eat any raw fish when I was back in Hawaii. But this is hands down my favorite thing about being pregnant in Japan. So, we ate and walked as much as we can so we can eat again. [Music] What I found surprising talking to our taxi driver and some of the restaurant owners is they all said Kyto was super overrun by tourists about 2 years ago, but it’s not as bad these days. They said the peak season is during fall and it gets pretty hectic again during that time, but the off season seems pretty rough for them as the gap between the high season and the low season is huge. And I still saw a lot of people walking in the main streets, but I guess it’s still considered low season right now since we went in early September. Good morning. Today we’re going to go watch some Kabuki. I don’t think there’s a translation for kabuki. What is it? Traditional Japanese kabuki is kabuki theater. Kabuki. Kabuki is Kabuki. I’ve never seen Kabuki before, I think. Ever. Yeah. My uncle got us tickets and it’s in Kyoto. So that’s the whole reason for this trip is to go see Kabuki. And then to prepare, there’s like a huge movie right now that’s popular and it’s like on the theme of Kabuki. What is it called again? Kokuho. So, it was like a huge movie. We went to watch that last week. Such a beautiful movie. Like I haven’t seen like a Japanese movie in so long. Other than I watched like a perfect day, which I personally didn’t like that much, but this one was like so good. The acting was really good. It wasn’t overacting like usual. Like they let the performance scenes breathe a lot. Just been raining. Like yesterday when we arrived it was sunny but it got super overcast and it rained a little bit area we’re in Shijou area and usually when we come to Kyoto we’ll go to like temples and stuff but we’ve done that in the past already. So we’re just here to like eat and watch kabuki and then buy some omeiyaga and head back home. The show starts at 11 and I think it’s like 8:00 right now. So, we have some time to kill. Just don’t know what’s open. That’s the plan. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Another [Music] [Music] shot. Couldn’t [Music] film the praying part because it’s like prohibited to film at least some of these temples, but prayed for healthy baby, safe birth. So, I obviously couldn’t film the Kabuki, but it was interesting. It’s a mix of theater, dance, not quite singing, but they speak in a certain tone and a bit of like martial arts type of fighting danceish scenes. And I honestly could not understand most of what they were saying because it’s a very specific old Japanese, but even my mom said she couldn’t understand some parts. So yeah, I guess that’s just how it is. And that was it for Kyoto trip. [Music] I feel like one of the things that draws a lot of people to Japan is the culture and spirituality. It’s not something I know a lot about. It’s kind of just ingrained in daily life here. The summer brings oone season where we honor our ancestors. And now we’re heading into fall where we have the Akimati or fall festivals. Usually neighborhood shrines will have these big mikoshi or miniature shrines that men hold and like walk throughout the neighborhood to give thanks for the harvest and pray to the gods. And it’s almost that fall season, but we’re still in September. So, there was a lantern festival we decided to visit. We’re back from Kyoto and we’re in Takasago, which is like a neighboring city from my hometown. Um, and apparently they have like a lantern festival today and a family friend is having like a booth there. So, we’re just gonna go check it out. But we had to like park kind of far away and walk over. But I feel like it’s starting to cool down finally. So, it’s not too bad, honestly. There’s like a little bit of cool wind, a little bit of breeze. It’s probably like the same as Hawaii right now. [Music] [Applause] [Music] It’s funny because I feel like Japanese people aren’t super religious or anything, but everyone seems kind of just averageely spiritual and connected to their Shinto roots. It’s very common to visit shrines to pray when wishing for health or wealth or even passing your finals during high school. And there’s a bunch of matsudian festivals throughout the year. These mats are festivals often consist of food stalls, games, and I guess praying at the shrine. This specific festival had a lot of local food stalls and jazz musicians for some reason. This one shrine is actually where we keep my grandparents’ bones. And my grandma loved to ballroom dance. So, I hope she’s enjoying the music and dancing with grandpa right now. [Music] [Music] At this lantern festival, I was able to write out a wish on the candle, and you place it by the shrine, and they’ll bless it for you later. Of course, I wish for a safe birth and a healthy baby, because that’s my top priority at the moment. [Music] I hope during the time that I’m here, I’m able to connect with my spirituality and culture a little bit more since it’s kind of just all around me. So, other than that, I haven’t really been filming a whole lot this week. It’s finally starting to cool down. So, we’re taking more walks around the neighborhood towns and honestly just taking it slow. Pregnancy has been going steadily and doctor says I have no risk of pre-term labor and baby is growing right on track. Honestly, I don’t always have like a very specific plan when going into a video like this one. And I guess I just wanted to remind myself the reason why I started this channel, which was I wanted a space to share my thoughts, reflections, as well as like have a space that serves as a time capsule for me. So, I’m going to sprinkle these videos in here and there. And if you made it this far into the video, I appreciate you for being just like a part of this little corner of the internet with me. I guess I realize that I’ve been posting a lot of video tutorials and stuff because I think it’s what a lot of you guys want, but also I want to keep it balanced and you know, I don’t want my whole channel to be like video reviews either. So, I’ll try to balance the two a little bit. And I’m sure that messes up the algorithm in one way or the other, but that’s what I’ll just continue to do on this channel. Just a mix of thoughts, feelings, travel vlogs, and video tutorials. Uh, yeah. Sorry, it’s all over the place, but you can pick and choose what you want to watch, I guess. Well, that’s it for this video. Thanks for catching up with me, and I’ll see you in the next one. Bye-bye. [Music]

We’re doing a cozy japan vlog this week — just showing you my daily life in japan. We went on a mother-daughter trip to kyoto to watch kabuki for the first time and prayed for safe birth and baby at a local lantern festival.

I thought I’d film everything on a dji osmo pocket 3 today, testing out their night mode as well.

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🌱 CHAPTERS
⊹ intro 0:00
⊹ kyoto, sushi, and culture shock 0:18
⊹ matcha and kabuki 03:10
⊹ local lantern festival 06:20
⊹ let’s catch up 09:35

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