Chatting with my friend Fangy about the trip this year!
#vtuber #indievtuber #japan #food #travel
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Fangy
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N Just do mine manually I just have like looping until I ah there we go I was wondering what was going to happen oh also I need to fix myself a little bit I was testing some stuff and it’s like oh um yeah anyway hey everyone welcome welcome how’s it going I’m seeing some
New faces in the chat today Fang’s here Fang is with me hello hello everybody also welcome uh Ariel and Mr yaco welcome guys welcome how’s it going everyone Ariel and Mr yaco are two of my mods ah I see I see all right thanks for dropping by uh also I uh let
Me just introduce myself first before we get started and I will also introduce uh fangy actually let’s introduce fangy first cuz you’re the guest here so uh introduce yourself please sure hello everybody I’m FY uh I’m a comfy crypted YouTuber over on uh twitch it’s twitch.tv fangy uh I mostly stream games
But uh I I found Ruka kind of via the Japanese stuff the Japan uh videos and things like that and uh I was going to Japan the same time he was so we got to meet up and I discuss that stuff a bit Yeah I also kind of want talk about um
With other people in Japan stuff I just don’t shut up about it in most cases if I in general so it’s nice to actually get a different perspective here uh well and honestly like I was planning my trip for a long time too so I was just like I
Was eating up all the Japan content I could find so I see the fact that you talked about that stuff was uh helpful yeah I I I I do enjoy talking about it just because I’ve done it so much anyway uh let me me introduce myself real quick
Uh my name is Ruka for anyone who hasn’t haven’t met me yet um I basically well I used to stream a lot more games here but am transitioning my content on the channel to more Japan uh related stuff either language stories games that have like culture related stuff but you know it’s still
Kind of hard to get away from some of the games I do like I want to stream so that’s why tevy is still on on on this channel at least so but anyway uh today we are basically just having a chat uh with fangy about our recent trip and getting First
Impressions and maybe even sharing some pictures so I brought you here today to ISO beach in yakushima that’s what the background is right now yakushima is a island far far south in uh cuu not not as far as okanawa this is a little bit above okanawa but still
Uh a nice place if you like uh hiking and stuff like that the beaches also are pretty pretty nice at least see we we went in opposite direction so I went North I also kind of cool seeing some stuff South I also went North uh dur you
Went everywhere I I yeah kind of basically the first part of my trip I went South first um and then I went North the same time you guys went North and also uh probably we should probably say this mention this right now we both got sick during that
Time uh when we when we went North so I don’t it it it it just made it a little bit more difficult to to get around it it was it was bad it was bad um but hopefully despite that uh your trip wasn’t too too bad
No I had I still had a a wonderful time and since you had gotten like sick like right before I did I managed to like steal your knowledge about Japanese medicine oh yeah I I did I did I did tell you about that the thing is I was
Actually just looking up re I didn’t even know what to what to look for because and that was the first time I’ve ever gotten sick in Japan so it kind of sucked a lot Bas I basically just looked up really quick uh articles what the heck do I get for this
Cold which apparently might not have been a cold it might have been like Co version number 300 or something like that I don’t know cuz I took a covid test and it didn’t come back positive for me I mean I guess I could have taken multiple but was was it the newer test
That you took I don’t I don’t know yeah cuz I’m pretty sure if you use the older test it may not pick it up but if it was a newer one it may pick it up but that’s also still questionable but if it was just a
Really bad cold then it’s it was just a really bad cold which is I I’ll take that also but also no it sucked oh it sucked anyway enough about that so um I I guess let’s just start from the top um First Impressions Japan what uh
What what did you think about it when uh this past trip I feel like you know I already went into it knowing some stuff just from like reading Japan travel subreddits and stuff like that and just being a Weeoo and watching Japanese TV um so like I knew like oh everyone’s really polite
It’s a really clean place but like you get there and you’re still surprised by it yes yes I guess like like wow everything really is so clean and like I was just like for me the the biggest like culture shock was like restrooms the restrooms what about the restrooms
Oh my God I’m not disgusted to use a public bathroom oh yeah yeah true and like everything works like when I get back like immediately like when we got to like the American airport on the way home it’s like oh okay so the like blow dryer the hand Dryer’s broken and one of
The Stalls is closed and stuff like that I everything was just it’s just nice over there yeah I think I think coming back from Japan I know we’re skipping like a lot of stuff doing that but coming back was also a different culture I was oh yeah I live
Here I live yeah you’re just like I feel like you go to Japan and then you’re like oh I didn’t know things could be this nice yeah like when people care about uh I guess their surroundings I mean to be fair I’ve also been in a few um nasty Japanese toilet
But they and but they’re far and few between um yeah yeah I’m sure there’s like I’m sure there’s bad areas everywhere but like to be in Tokyo and like not see litter and stuff it’s like that wouldn’t happen in New York City well if from what I hear um what is it I
I don’t typically go by Shibuya unless it’s like doing souvenir shopping but I hear Shibuya during the Halloween thing also gets pretty messy but they do also they do clean we were both there during Halloween yeah well no I was actually I was I in Tokyo during Halloween
I was arriving in Tokyo during Halloween but I didn’t do anything there no um yeah me neither I mean the government like said like don’t go to shabuya I think people did anyway but like I don’t really like huge crowds and stuff like that so I was like sure thing I’ll not
Go to shabuya I think they went to kabukuru at least that’s what um Tori another another friend of ours that um we met up over there I think they said kabuko was another place that um they were gathering at yeah they had like a big uh cosplay event there for Halloween
Yeah but yeah I mean restrooms in general pretty nice for the most part I think the the ones that are get a little bit iffy are the ones in the public parks I’m not sure if you’ve tried a restroom in the public park no we didn’t
We didn’t uh do that yeah so public parks definitely stinks um okay definitely stinks and I the one restroom I I know in at least society that not counting the parks um that was kind of sketchy is the one of the restrooms in donkey in ibukuro I remember that from
2019 oh that the the Beday was broken on that one oh I don’t ter how terrible I’m I’m pretty sure they fixed it by now but still um just I would think so four years later we’ll see anyway uh the other the other like big impression like
Upon first game there like cuz we we flew into Hana airport oh yeah and so we took um like public transit to get to our hotel and just like the public transit’s so good okay it’s just so easy it actually is but uh so let’s let’s let’s start from when you got
There how was how was actually getting through the airport and actually transitioning from the airport to the public transit for you was that overwhelming because I know for first time people it’s like they just kind of want to get to the hotel really quick but no you still have a other things you
Need to do you have to get your cash exchange or withdraw money from the ATM and all that stuff how how did you feel about that so yeah so actually what we did was we got um we exchanged the money ahead of time with our bank oh really so
We actually we brought some young with us we brought like you know like a uh uh 10,000 okay with us just so that we’d have something to like put on our sua cards when we got there um so that part was easy uh like once we got into the
Airport going through everything was fine honestly like it was kind of shocking like coming from America where like it’s all like TSA take everything out your bags get padded down and it’s just like way more L Fair in Japan in the airport at least for us maybe we got
Lucky I don’t know um I’m not sure if you got lucky but I I know at least the first couple of times I went through at think through Narita I used to go through Narita and then this trip is a first time through Hana uh but in Hana
Not not not in Narita it was also not bad I did get my bag search a couple of times but after those first two visits I never got my bag searched again so yeah we didn’t get our bag search like coming or going yeah I guess they just I don’t
Know if I want to say that they trust you or that you were accurate in your uh paperwork and stuff like that but generally I feel like it’s a random search one and two if um if it’s your first time they’ll probably search you but if you didn’t get search then I
Guess it’s just random and you just got Lu yeah like I was nervous like I made sure like I have all my prescription medications and their original containers and whatnot cuz I know that’s like a big thing that’s a big thing they’re like yeah but they didn’t ask to see
Anything okay all right navigating the airport and uh going through public transport that wasn’t you were fine with that yeah I mean it’s a little bit overwhelming when you first get some place and like nobody speaks not many people speak English but it’s just like when you’re in Tokyo there’s a lot of
English signage anyway yeah there is so you know we we took a little while we definitely took longer than um someone who’s already been there before would but you know we eventually found like oh here’s the sua machine so we can put some money on our cards and and we go to
This shuttle to go there and it wasn’t bad I would just say like when it’s your first time add extra time I guess like make sure like it was supposed to take like you know like a half an hour or whatever to go from the airport to our
Hotel and it definitely took us longer because we’re like putting around as firsttime Travelers oh yeah I mean even even as um uh someone who’s been there A lot of times it still takes a while to get to the hotel just because it’s like okay where where is the train and also
To how do I get from the train station at the actual place to the hotel I for me this trip I couldn’t even find the hotel cuz it was like the sign was hard to hard to see and Google Maps brought me the Google Maps brought me to the
Hotel I was supposed to be at but it was like at the other side of a fence so I had to find my way to oh no so I had to find my way to like like the proper side of the fence it’s like oh okay it it
Wasn’t too difficult you I just had to like turn a corner but you know little little stuff like that and and the only thing that like kind of like went wrong when we first got there was like when we first got on um the train and we were
Going to the hotel we didn’t quite understand like when to get off we were using Google Maps trying to understand it and like we didn’t quite get it at first so we kept getting off early okay I think we we were like scared of like overshooting it so we’ get off and then
We’d look at the phone be like oh wait wait wait we’re supposed to get back on yeah it it’s it’s nice that you can just get back on I’m I’m not sure if that’s how it works also in New York um I’m because it’s the only place I know that
Does Subways around here um but it’s it’s pretty easy to get back on you just might have to wait a little bit for the for the right train so yeah yeah and after like that first day we didn’t have any issues navigating with like the subway and whatnot or the
Trains yeah it’s it’s not too bad as long as you have Google Maps with you it’s not too bad if you didn’t have Google Maps with you it could be a little bit more dicey yeah yeah I saw some people saying like oh yeah Google Maps isn’t the greatest
For Japan but it was sufficient for us honestly yeah it it it didn’t used to be honestly uh but this trip I use pretty much only Google Maps and it was fine it was fine uh before Navi time travel would be the number one uh app to use
Use and it probably still is if um you use the the rail pass so the the JR Rail passes um they don’t have a filter on that on Google Maps but there is on Navi time so if you just wanted to use your Rail Pass and not have to pay uh on non
Jr lines and you would probably use Navi time but with the JR Rail Pass so expensive now it’s it’s uh probably going to be less of an issue to yeah that was actually one of the things I wanted to bring up for first time travelers yeah yeah yeah um a lot of
People buy the the the JR Rail Pass um thinking that like that’s what you need to like get around Tokyo and places and that’s not what it’s for no it’s not um they’re it’s more for like going to different cities and prefectures yeah so I frequently hear people getting it
Their first time and then not actually like using it and especially since the price just increased it’s it’s it’s it’s pretty pricey right now it’s actually hard to make it worth it unless you’re like going from like Tokyo down to like down south and then coming back up you
Know yeah even then you barely you you barely break even with that because you have to do in a short short amount of time before before uh you can just get like a a 7-Day Rail Pass and go from Tokyo to Kyoto and basically come out ahead you can’t do
That anymore no we ended up getting like a two we pass and it ends up being it ended up being kind of pricey um even though we did it before the price increased yeah but that’s cuz we were going like from different prefectures during our trip yeah if you’re if you’re
Going to a lot of places in a short amount of time then the rail pass still might make sense but not I don’t I don’t think it makes that much sense anymore and there’s calculators online too yeah the calculator’s online just make sure you check before you buy that yeah
Always check before you buy the real pass I uh these days I would say it’s really not worth it unless you go all the way down south and all the way oh wrong thing change something it’s not really worth it unless you go like all
The way down south and back up or north and then back down that kind of thing uh if you have to travel far honestly if you have to travel far from um let’s say anywhere 4 hours greater than 4 hours on the shin conent I would just use a domestic uh Air
Airlines to be honest that’s what that’s what we did um this past trip and it worked out really well that’s what my friend did too cuz they stayed in Tokyo and then went up to um Hokkaido for the snow Festival they took a flight for it
Yeah yeah for anyone who doesn’t know uh from Tokyo to Hokkaido let’s just say Haku because that’s the first major city that you go to before you get to saporo that’s about I want to say five hours by Shen Cen from Tokyo to hakodate and then another
Three hours from hakodate to saporo so that you’re looking at about eight hours total meanwhile if you do domestic uh air travel that’s like one and a half hours from Tokyo maybe factor in another hour for just getting to the airport and getting all that stuff ready and
Security like that and security is super easy in domestic super easy so no hassle whatsoever basically yeah I will say since it was our first time like we really want conon cuz like it’s a bullet train we’ve never been on one before I want to see how
Fast it is it’s it’s always fun the bullet Train’s always ni in the future I would definitely consider just like taking a flight to alore instead of riding the shansen I think uh depending on the season the shin conen might still be nice to do and also amori from Tokyo
Not that that far I think you’re looking about 3 hours yeah that one wasn’t so bad it’s interesting cuz like we went to gefu which looks much closer to Tokyo but because it goes through mountains it takes like five hours yeah it’s kind of funny like that yeah I haven’t been to
Gfu before but I I do know around the middle part of Japan there’s like a bunch of mountains to just go through and it’s it’s not it’s not as short as you uh it’s not as short as a travel as you think it might be
So but I feel like as an American like the fact that I can get on a train in Tokyo and go to the very tip top of the country in like three or four hours that’s pretty wild yeah I I mean I think it in for most for the most part um if
You go even if you go from yeah if you go from Hokkaido all the way down south I think that’s still like barely 3 hours still so it’s I know it’s like it’s not Japan’s a smaller country m so it makes sense but like even though it’s smaller
You still get like a really wide variety of like um like different like temperatures and environments and whatnot so much variety so much variety it’s like everything is you can go you can go to the mountains you can like go down to the beach you can like you can
Go everywhere within a couple hours it’s kind of cool yeah and also if anyone goes to Japan in the summer I which there’s there’s a lot of stuff that happens in the summer but it’s also probably the worst weather to go just because it’s so hot and humid
Um I would recommend going to Hokkaido un unless you go to like you know okanawa and do the the beach stuff or you know just anywhere else but if you want somewhere cool in the summer Hokkaido and uh tohoku nice place to be at like yeah we were in Tokyo right like
During the beginning of November oh yeah there was there were some days where it was like almost 80 degrees still it’s so imagine what it’s like during the summer there it’s also very humid like honestly it’s it’s weird this this past trip where like Tokyo is like between 70 and
80 super hot and humid but if you go down south you would think it’s be it’d be hotter down there right actually not uh yakushima which is like this island off the coast of the Mainland you would think it’d be hot because it’s like down
South but it’s it was like not 50s by around 60s and like really nice breeze is that just from being near the ocean you think I don’t know if it’s the ocean itself but definitely there’s like mountains and I think I’ve read uh the mountain the mountains help with the air
Circulation and whatnot but yeah it’s it’s much cooler there than it is in Tokyo much even even Fukuoka okay even Fukuoka which is also like a a city with um like cement and stuff like that they they’re even they’re cooler than Tokyo but Tokyo is also more dense so Tokyo’s
More dense and Def definitely the the cement and pavement and all that stuff bounces and bounces the heat a lot more uh so that doesn’t help it doesn’t help but yeah so I mean okay I’m I’m glad that you made it through the airport just fine and navigated just
Fine yeah one thing I will say like going through the airport and all that fine the flight itself sucks it does uh yeah like I’m not sure where you’re coming from but I think you’re also you’re also Eastern time zone right so I know for me going to
Japan was like a 13-hour trip generally it’s about generally it’s about that that long even when I was uh even even when I came from Central uh it’s still about that time yeah I’ve never been on a plane that long before and like my legs really
Hurt by the end of it you kind of have to walk around being cramped in there yeah you kind of have to walk around though so yeah that’s a lesson learned for me yeah also unless you really really just want the the window seats uh I do recommend the the aisles like try
To get try to get an aisle seat or something just that way it’s easier to to go in and out I always give my husband the aisle seat cuz I cuz I like him but you can still take it for definely seems nicer you can still take it you
Don’t have to give it to him no he’s not longer legs he needs it okay fine but yeah it’s uh yeah it’s um it’s it’s just something you have to deal with if you if you had to go to Europe um it you would still have to do
The same thing it’s at least 8 hours to at least the UK you know so I feel like so it’s like you can you just have to deal with a long flight one way or another yeah well now I know get up and walk around otherwise your legs going to
Like feel like jelly when you finally stand up yeah uh I don’t know if you if you keep your shoes on I usually take my shoes off in in the plane for when when I’m when I’m like flying for that long it just helps me relax a bit more I was
Actually confused because like when we got on the plane they gave us like little packages of like goodies uhhuh one of which was like slippers yeah and I was like what are these for but now I know yeah I mean you can keep them that you can keep them uh but they’re they’re
For you to relax in the plane and uh walk around uh I’m guessing you didn’t take an American Airline going there cuz you that’s a J J uh Japan Airline kind of thing like either Japan uh no we we took Delta oh really and they gave that to
You yeah yeah I’m surprised not the first flight not like the first like just you flight no no no no I’m talking about from uh from the US to Japan yeah Delta really uhhuh H I didn’t know they that okay I I I know we had like we had like
One starus that was like this American lady with like a Southern accent and then the other stus like half the stes were like American and the other half were like Japanese it seemed like interesting huh okay now that I know and I know when I did um was it
United a few times I I flew United by accident going and coming from Japan I never got slippers from them it’s a disappointing but okay oh I was so jealous when you were posting pictur you posted pictures of your food on the plane right uh yeah you had like Ramen
Or something yeah the Delta food was like super lame well I I also I I also had the uh the business class so that was that you had what business class yeah oh okay that’s why you had nice stuff yeah yeah that that’s that’s why that’s why the flation
Apparently so expensive and like the upgrades seemed like very intimidating but in hindsight I’m like kind of wish we paid a little bit for the extra leg room like that yeah I don’t think I’ll be able to do business class next time just because availability I do have the
Points for it but I the availability is like really tight so if I had to pick a seat i’ definitely if if you could get the at least the premium economy I think that’s worth it for that long of a flight yeah we really should but you
Know I was just like it’s my first time I’m very stubborn I’m like no I’m G to save money and then you know you make them you do it once and you’re like okay my legs need more room yep yep uh speaking of money though how how how did you feel like the
Budgeting was uh for the trip was it more expensive or less expensive than you expected and the plane’s always going to be expensive regardless what you do yeah actually I made a spreadsheet with the cost let me pull that up real quick you got to do the spreadsheet I know people don’t think
About it but you got to do the spreadsheet well because I get very curious cuz like we want to go again so I wanted to like look and see like how much did we spend how much it could actually be cut down mhm yeah I think when I do the
Spreadsheets I do the accommodations and the transportation cuz that’s the two things that’s going to eat up most of the most of the money yep yep yep and then souvenirs and food is actually not bad it really isn’t food is so cheap in Japan ridiculous shocking to me how
Cheap it was well there’s also the there’s also the current exchange rate but even if the if the even if the exchange rate was still like 100 to one like 100 yen to $1 it’s still not bad mhm that’s true yeah like think about how much the rate is so favorable right
Now it’s just like insane how cheap food is like think about how uh how much your regular lunch would cost in the US Pro let’s a Subway sandwich let’s just say uh for for comparison Subway sandwich dinky little sandwich for maybe 10 15 bucks I don’t know what what it cost
These days but about that much you take that same amount of money and you get like um this gigantic plate of curry with a bunch of small little sides or something like that it’s ridiculous yeah I mean like the curry that we were getting was usually it was about like a
Thousand Yan I say usually um because I would get like you know some stuff on it but that was usually yeah like a thousand yen which you know if it was 100 to one it’d be 10 bucks 10 bucks but it’s it was even cheaper than that but
Even if it was 10 bucks that’s still like six or seven doar cheaper than when I get cat to curry in the US yep yep yes I got my spreadsheet oh my go like a third of the cost was the flights for us since there two of us
Um another third was probably the like hotels and accommodations and uh like the rail pass and then most of other stuff was just like shopping like maybe maybe like an eighth of the cost was food but that was it yeah it’s it’s very minor very minor and even if you get like
Convenience uh convenience store food which is like more expensive if you think about it it’s still not bad no our first night like we got there and you know we got dinner real quick somewhere and we wanted like something in the evening before we went to bed so we went
To like 7-Eleven and my husband grabbed you know like an Assi and I grabbed like some little convenience store puddings and whatnot and like we got like a beer a soda and I got like three puddings or something because I want to try each one
That’s a lot of PD and it was it was like it was like six bucks yep that that would probably like push you to almost 20 bucks around here the beer especially right yeah the beer by itself is g to be quite a bit I think
What I think what a can of beer is maybe about 200ish Yen or two to 300 I’m not sure yeah it was very yeah I thought those places would be more expensive but they’re they’re cheap I mean you could also get the one one cup sake which is like 100 yen and
Tastes terrible absolutely terrible and also the strong zero strong Z zero um is on the cheap side I think too but no food food is ridiculously cheap guys if you like I said the the most expensive thing is going to be your Transportation uh going to Japan and
Within Japan like those trains are not cheap but they’re also not I guess not too expensive but they depending it depends on how far you go yeah I would say if you’re staying in Tokyo Transit is actually pretty cheap pretty cheap like we we spend maybe like I don’t know
Like five bucks a day with the train maybe yeah it depends on also it also depends on how many places you go in one day that’s true yeah we usually just stuck to like when I like this is the shabuya day this is the Eek buuk
Day and you stayed in where’ you stay in uh Tokyo we stayed in um Cana so right near akih Habra okay yeah because or we we have the most stuff to do inra makes sense yeah was was akaba uh was Akiba all that you expect uh all you expected to be I
Guess uh and more and more and more really okay there were quite a few things that surprised me um like obviously I know there’s arcades and stuff there would be intersections where you’d stand there and you could see like four or five different arcades just from like one spot yeah I
Think uh wild I think AA has the most arcades just because I’m not sure if it’s because um you know that’s where most of the anime stuff is and get also a lot of visitors but I mean arcades are pretty common in Tokyo for the most part
Though the bigger game centers are going to be in bigger areas like you’re not going to find them in small neighborhoods or anything like that um yeah yeah but yeah I think in Akiba the only arcade there that’s the hasn’t gone away cuz uh for anyone who doesn’t know
Sega arcade is no longer around uh well it got bought it’s now gigo gigo it’s like what the heck is gigo apparently gigo stands for something some of them actually still have some of the Sega branding inside there was one we went to that still had like uh like pictures of
Sonic and stuff really yeah it was kind of funny most of them most of them like redecorated but there was one that was like this is Sega still is still Sega is that the one by uh by the train station God I don’t remember we went to
So many okay I the the anyway the the one the one arcade that’s been there since the first time I went to Japan in 2015 uh was the the Tio the tial arcade um down the street along the side of um the train station on that side we
Definitely went to some Tio arcades yeah so probably that one yeah I’m not I’m not I don’t think I’ve actually gone through the arcades themselves too much I mean I’ve I go to title every once in a while just because that’s the first one I went to so I don’t know what the
Sega ones have other than crane games you know yeah so a lot of the arcades were well one thing that surprised it makes sense it makes sense in hindsight um everything is so vertical in Japan yes at least when you’re in the cities so everything is multiple floors MH um
So like there were arcad it’ll be like seven floors and it’ be like first two floors cran games third floor is like fighting games fourth floor is rhythm games fifth floor is retro games or or coin games or whatever um did you do have other stuff
Did you do the uh the picture the picture thing the picture thing like the like Photo Booth yeah photo booth no I didn’t okay there they did have them at some of the places I I’ve never been in one cuz I can’t be in
One I don’t know I don’t know if oh yeah they don’t they don’t let single men right yeah I don’t if you I don’t know if you saw this or if anyone knows this but if you go to the area with the photo booths that’s generally seen as um as a
Girl thing so guys aren’t allowed without a female escort which is I don’t are they afraid that like someone’s going to like attack people in the photo booth or what’s the concern I guess uh I I guess it’s more like harass I I suppose I mean you you it’s it’s
Probably a hold over from ye olden days of Japan I don’t know how often it happens still but you know CH Chon is still a thing you know what Chon is okay so yeah yeah yeah so that’s still kind of sort of a thing so maybe the same
Thing in the photo booth might happen so you know they they kind of keep an eye on that um it’s funny though that that’s that’s that’s happened though I’m I’m going to bring up one thing you might not know know about akba if you haven’t been into these shops for everyone also
Uh there are two adult shops in akba Mr FY made me go in one I was so embarrassed cuz like there’s like some of the buildings will have floors where they say like only women or only men oh yeah yeah but others don’t and there’d
Be like times where I’d go on a floor where it’s all guys I just feel like I’m sexually harassing them like when I’m a girl and it’s all guys looking at at like Arrow gay and stuff and like I feel like they’re going to be uncomfortable
Cuz I’m there they are yes I just feel out so bad well here’s the thing so there’s two there’s two adult shops that I know of um very easy to spot from the akba station one is right next to Akiba station right behind the old Sega arcade and another one is across the
Street like that Main Street in akba like right there out in the open right next to an electronic store and well even just even just regular anime stores would usually have like a floor that’s like 18 plus yes but I mean we’re talking about full on 18
Plus stores not not just the 18 plus section yeah I me and in like a bunch of anime shops there’s going to be an 18 plus section it like clearly Mark you’re not if you’re a minor you don’t go here kind of thing but you know guys and
Girls go can go in there that’s no problem in the adult stores uh there at least in the one across the street across the Main Street uh there are there’s the the top floors there no women allowed whatsoever uh yes okay so we went to the same one yeah yeah one
Time uh I was it it wasn’t this trip it was a trip before one time there was a uh a lady a foreigner lady that went up there and they got approached by staff that they said that that they told them they weren’t supposed to be there so
Just because you know UNC combless as private guide plays kind of kind of thing yeah yeah I mean I kind of I kind of get it yeah and also I do I do understand you you want to go in there because you’re curious it kind of sucks though like if
You’re if you’re a gay girl and they’re like no you can’t come up here it’s like but maybe that’s where I want to shop I I mean there there are places you can do that the the one next to one those places were not gender segregated no mo
Most of them are not I think that one in particular is though uh the one next to the station um that one that one is like uh what do you call you can go anywhere you can go but it’s also much smaller it’s a lot tighter I don’t like going to
That one yes I admit it I go into those places but just to look there were a lot of stores that was a thing that um I had a hard time with in akba actually because there’s so many stores and small real estate yeah things are very cramped in general in general
In Tokyo a lot of things are cramped yeah yeah I nowi that like with even restaurants and stuff but like a lot of times where it be like I’m in an aisle looking at something and there’s no room for someone to like walk around you no
You’re just like I feel bad like I’m trying to like look at stuff but like and also if you’re like me I I have social anxiety so it’s really hard for me to like like if I see someone in the way I’ll try and find a different way
Around places because I don’t want to say like excuse me I I think in I think in general that I would uh in general that’s just more polite but if you have to go through someone that the suim just has to come out yeah so it’s definitely like you’re
Going to have to do that to get through some of those buildings yeah yeah I mean that’s just kind of how it is but yeah uh I mean in in It’s just in Tokyo in general everything’s so crap but if you go outside of Tokyo did you how did you
Feel how did you feel when you got outside of Tokyo uh much more relaxed um so I’ve never lived in a big city or anything so that’s not an environment I’m very familiar like comfortable with oh yeah so like everything in Tokyo is like busy
Busy busy got to keep moving if you stop moving you’re in someone’s way yeah um I never lik that about Tokyo I I’ll I’ll I I’ll say it again I’ve said this many times uh on my on my chatting stuff I hate Tokyo I hate Tokyo I know that sounds weird
For someone who likes Japan so much and visits Japan so much but you got you got to keep this in mind Tokyo is very cramped well not very cramped but there’s a lot of places where there’s like so many people you get so you get feel so squished and well that was
Actually something I wanted to bring up too yeah our Tokyo hotel room was a business Hotel oh that’s even smaller it was so small that’s small so claustrophobic yeah that these are things you learned the first time don’t go to a business Hotel unless you absolutely have to like we had to put
Our luggage under the bed because there was no room for it otherwise I’m surprised they even had room under the bed yeah well thankfully have you tried yeah and then as soon as you get out of Tokyo it’s like oh my hotel room has like tripled in size well it’s it’s there’s also
Places like that in Tokyo um but probably costs more money it’s it’s not that bad to be honest is really no no what didn’t you do like did you do like airbnbs and stuff I did one it’s not really an I did one kind of Airbnb but
Um that was a smallish apartment I it’s uh I probably wouldn’t I probably wouldn’t do that particular place again or that style cuz there are actually apartment Hotel types that are kind of like run by like a hotel but it’s like apartments and they’re not actually too
Bad in price I I’m going to have to double check but business hotels in general I think they charge like around $40 to $50 per person per night have you noticed that that they usually charge per person whenever well yeah almost everything in Japan was like
That I think unless you’re going to like a Western Hotel yeah yeah something to make sure you account for in budgeting yeah so you you’ll be looking on websites and be like oh okay it’s you know 150 a night that seems reasonable but then you got realize okay it’s going to be double
That if you’re going with someone yeah so just keep in mind guys when you whenever you book your hotels uh for Japan a lot of stuff is per person but however you can also find a lot of stuff for cheap like generally you want to shoot around 40 maybe up to $60 per
Person if you’re on a budget uh for a hotel uh in general that’s going to be pretty decent like and also hostiles are good if you if you can find a hostel they’re not they’re they’re nice for the budget may maybe I mean you can also get
Private rooms in hostels I didn’t do a hostel this time around the hostels I actually like to go to they were out of business I think so was it the K’s house yeah not the K house um I didn’t look I didn’t look them out but they probably
Also went out of business when Co hit too so yeah because originally I was looking at them when we were planning our 2020 trip but then uh after Co like after pandemic yeah yeah yeah so K so K house uh I’m I’m guessing went out of business I haven’t
Checked them out uh Kyan um I think technically didn’t go out of business but a lot of their hostiles were shut down for whatever reason and they do they’re kind of sort of still around but I’m not sure what the the setup is um this time around uh for the first
Couple of days I I stayed in a capsule hotel but it’s not like a super old capsule Hotel the capsule Hotel wasn’t bad but you have to be a lot more quiet in there than you would have to be in a hostel I feel like well so capsule Hotel
So that’s got to be really small right it actually wasn’t uh have have you seen my pictures of the capsule that I I don’t think I have okay let me just find it really quick and I’m going to show it to everyone here too just so you guys
Know what what you could expect now keep in mind not all capsule hotels are the same but also I I hear the capsule hotels are getting up in price a little bit which I’m kind of um surprised at but I think it’s just demand but here is my capsule so this
Is this is like um the one side of the sleeping area and then the other end of the well that doesn’t really show the death this shows more the death this one yeah you kind of have to see this look at the stream for that one I’m sorry yeah
Yeah but it’s it’s actually quite roomy I I think if you have I can fit two of me in there two of me in there also they have like a luggage area outside the sleeping place so you can keep your luggage there um it has all the
Amenities that that you could need as far as uh restrooms and bath is concerned um this particular capsule also had a floor for like asento so they had like a public yeah I saw um some hotels do that yeah there’s another there’s another like recent chain I’m trying to remember what the
Name is of it but um they always have like little like sento kind of like fake onson type areas in their hotels dormy in uh dormy that’s what it is yeah dormy in is really good about that they’re on the pricier side but they’re so worth it
Honestly they’re so heard they have like pretty cool buffets uh I haven’t I didn’t try the buffet in the one I I had cuz I was in a hurry but um the C the cental areas are nice super nice actually the the the night we the night we met uh the day we
Met I I was actually staying at a dormy in in ukur I oh okay I think that ran me about $120 okay so yeah that’s definitely more expensive than like the business Hotel it’s definitely more expensive than business Hotel but what you get for the $120 is really nice the you get the
Cento um you get a really nice room they also give you a lot of amenities which is kind of ridiculous um that was something I noticed with hotels in Japan I don’t know if you experienced this in all the places too but like all the places we went to were like here’s a
Toothbrush and whatnot they gave you everything yeah so in MO in if you’re not staying in a Airbnb or stuff like that um most of the time you don’t even have to bring your toothbrush to be honest you you don’t even have to bring pajamas sometimes yeah I think all
Of the hotels that we stayed at had pajamas I think yes this uh I didn’t really notice it before it might have been a thing I just never did it but this time around I didn’t even have to use my uh my house clothes for the most
Part uh I just used whatever the hotel had which was nice cuz I didn’t have to think about that laundry just the underwear yeah yeah I feel like I feel like as a first- time traveler you bring stuff and then you find out you don’t actually need it
There yeah I mean I would still bring like a tooth toothbrush or your special tooth toothpaste and whatnot just you know in case you had to use it but in general yeah I brought CU I use like sadine yeah like sensitive teeth so I brought my own their their toothpaste
Are also I think good for sensitive teeth but they give you really they’re also like they also give you like these really really tiny little squeeze bottle so it’s it’s not a whole lot it’s probably good they’re pretty funny when you see it the first time it is funny I
Don’t have a picture of it but they’re kind of funny I still have a few of them actually I de baited I de baited taking them I was like we can use these and we travel well well the thing is they they encourage you to take as many as you as
You need or want so if you if you really wanted to you can take like a handful that’s that’s I actually noticed when we didn’t use stuff yeah or like they would like throw it out and put new stuff down yeah they they do so I was
Like oh this is a little wasteful and it’s it’s part of the service right the service is just so different over there compared to what you’re used to anywhere else really it’s like it’s like the best part as a traveler the service is just that good even even the convenience store
People service is just ridiculous yeah everyone’s super nice I was shocked actually something with uh the convenience stores going there the first time yeah like when I got the puddings mhm they gave me a spoon oh yeah here a spoon here’s your wet wipe they do and
I’m like what this is so nice yeah the thing is you don’t you don’t have to like find a spoon or anything uh they give you everything you need unless you tell them yeah I I don’t actually need this that kind of thing like you get the the
Microwavable uh let’s say you get the microwavable or codon from them they’ll microwave it for you at at the at the convenience store and you know I didn’t know that but will it kind of makes sense that’s good to know for the future they’ll do that uh but you can tell them
That you that you don’t want to they’ll they’ll basically ask you I forgot what the Japanese for it is but they’ll basically ask you if uh you want to have it heated you can tell them no but uh if you tell them yes they will heat it uh at the checkout for
You and you’ll and you’ll bring it hot yeah that’s super cool and they’ll also give you a a chopstick or spoon for it too yeah we ended up mostly doing convenience stores for like snacks or like breakfast type stuff yeah we didn’t actually end up like eating any of like
The like Entre there mhm down are not bad uh in a pinch um there’s yeah I imagine they’re cheaper sometimes yeah there’s there’s definitely better places if you can find a the one the one I saw in previous trips but didn’t do until this one uh
Hototo is a Bento store like a store just for bentos basically and I had to do that a few times when I was in yakushima because everything closes so darn early like most places unless you’re in iseka they close down by like five or six actually we experienced that too um
When we were in gefu there’s a town called shago that we visited yeah uh everything there closes by like 3 or 4 three or four and we we had yeah we hadn’t made reservations for like a like a lunch or dinner type thing so it was
Like every place we tried to go to was full and then everything’s shutting down and I was like okay uh I guess we’re gonna eat when we get back yeah so other place yeah so keep that in mind as especially if you go into more remote
Areas or at least like like further out from the City uh get a reservation for some restaurants or at least ask if they need a reservation I’ve been turned away a couple of times because I didn’t have one sometimes they’ll they’ll let you in if uh you know they they have an
Allowance for how many people they let in in a night without reservations but it’s not it’s not more than a few seats typically and if it’s a really definitely noticed a lot of places fill up and need reservations like not if you’re doing like a like um I guess
People call it junk food they call it Curry and ramen junk food but if you’re going to like a nicer establishment you might need a reservation I mean the funny thing is there was one soba place I I tried to get into soba okay soba’s not fancy yeah in
Hakodate but by the time I got there they asked me if I had a reservation and it’s like oh crap I don’t and it’s like I just had to like walk away um slowly and embarrassed because I didn’t have it must have been like a very well-known
Place I guess it was it was I didn’t know it at the time I was just looking for like a random local shop found the place on Google Maps thought oh hey I’ll just drop by here for lunch and found out oh hey U this actually is pretty
Famous according to the people in line that do have reservations it’s like oh okay I should have come sooner yeah oops we we kind of realized like to try and eat at different times like unusual times yeah uh just cuz like a lot of um a lot of the little tiny restaurants
Only fit like five people at like the little at the little bar yeah so yeah the the titin little restaurants here’s the funny thing about them if they’re not um if they’re not like separate like shops like in a in a shopping district or something like that they’re usually
Attached to someone’s house like literally attached to someone’s house so they don’t have a lot of space there and because of that you know very few seats but it’s also kind of it’s kind of neat that you can do that imagine having a a shop attached to your
To your to your place yeah I feel like there’s a lot of small businesses yeah I think I read small restaurants I think I uh watched a YouTube video about this not too long ago because of zoning laws as long as they meet certain criteria you can like
Have mixed mixed use of of the land so you can have let’s say you have a two-story house as long as uh it meets um as as long as your bottom floor meets the requirements um you can have a shop down there you can be a restaurant you can be
Like a um a different a kind of store so you do let’s you do what do you call it you do the the convention stuff right and you do you sell stuff me yeah no I don’t oh okay okay you just you just uh just do physen I I
Buy stuff okay but let’s say let’s say you let’s say you sold your merch down there on the bottom floor you could do that and yeah so yeah I think that’s nice if it means that smaller businesses can survive I mean it’s neat but also a lot of places in Japan are walkable
Except for hak except for Hokkaido Hokkaido is not walkable I will say this right now Hokkaido is basically America as far as the the size and distance of everything it’s does it still have nice Transit at least Transit uh transit in Hokkaido or at least hakodate hakodate
Has two main transits the tram and the bus the bus takes forever and a half but you have a lot of buses so that’s not too bad but for the most part I mostly use the tram and the tram is okay I feel like a lot of people in Haku drove though that
That was my general feeling yeah I think there’s just like certain areas that are more rural that are like that yeah more rural you go the more driving you’re going to expect I don’t like if let in definitely in gefu and shikao I’m they’re probably smaller well it shirao it’s probably a smaller
Town to begin with so there’s not a whole lot of places to go to and you can walk everywhere right but uh let’s say you go somewhere somewhere a little bit further out uh definitely driving is the way and you you might think Japan public transportation great and all that yes it
Is in the cities in in the countryside um walking can be a pain in the butt but sometimes you you know I mean the train stations do go to a lot of the countryside places but at a certain point if you’re going to be in a certain area you’re going to
Have to drive like I had to drive in yakushima because the bus is there um infrequent so I had to drive there how does that work driving in Japan um like legally I mean legally you have to get a international driver’s license and you have the only place you can get that in
The US is a AAA and that’s that’s really easy to do as long as you have a valid driver’s license you can get an international driver’s license I see cuz I when we were like originally planning I kept looking at um like onon real Cam that would be like in the mountains oh
Yeah and then a lot of times I would look it up and it’s like okay this is an hour away from a train station okay for those oh okay so you need to drive to get there no you don’t no it it depends but for the most part my experience is
You actually don’t uh I’ll tell you why um I went to a rokan in alore prefecture um new onen was the area and from the train station there is a bus to go to the rokan place uh to the to the to the to the onson town um it’s
Really the only way to get there if you don’t have a car and it wasn’t bad it wasn’t bad okay but from there uh usually I say this usually there’s uh each rokan has like a pickup service where they’ll pick you up from where the
Bus stop is and take you to their place so you could do that but again it depends on the place new to onon will the new to onon area will do that hakone will do that um most major Rokon places will do that like they’ll actually pick
You up it’s part yeah the we stayed at like a an onson Hotel it’s not a Rio count exactly okay um it’s like one of the hos Resorts yeah that’s where we stayed in alore and they had like a shuttle that like got us at the um like
The train station yeah most of them will do that I think the one time I didn’t have to uh that didn’t do that was um there was a Rokon that I went to in yufu yufu in um near beu this this trip uh yufu is pretty small it’s pretty walkable so you
Could for the most part walk to most of the rokons over there so that’s what that’s what I did anyway um gotcha but in but there are there were also some places that will actually pick you up from the the train station or the bus stop wherever it is but up if
It’s up in the mountains let’s say new to onen new to onen for the from the most part if they haven’t changed this will pick you up and there’s also a bus that goes to you to Onsen from the train station because I want I want like those
Mountain views when I’m in when I’m in an ons I want like look around at nature yeah uh defin yeah with the on that you went to this time did they have like a outdoor bath or something like that uh it had a waterfall waterfall that’s nice
I can show you a picture real quick if you want sure sure uh should I should I put it up on on screen yeah yeah yeah I’ll show you one I like showing it off because it was like my dream to go to this this one hot spring okay can I show
The Discord share right now or do do you want me yeah go for it okay okay yeah up we have the the fangy in the airplane plane right here so oh that’s nice yeah this is the there’s the there’s the waterfall yeah there’s the waterfall on the back waterfall and the outdoor onon
Wow yeah and the water was like slightly self first so it’s got like that really pretty blue tint and this one was like a private reservation one yeah so we reserved it so we had it all to ourselves for an hour yes so normally you can’t take a picture in the on sin
Uh especially if there people around but if you’re sneaky like me you could probably do it when people aren’t there yet but you know don’t don’t do that I I did the same thing cuz our other Hotel had um like indoor ones as well yeah they had like
Private ones that you could use and they said even though it’s private don’t bring any phones in yeah but I was like I really want to get a picture yeah I I I think they’re pretty I think in general well at least at least uh the one place um I
Mean if it’s private it should be okay it should be okay you would think but they still have a sign so I wasn’t so sure it should be okay should be okay but and the the one the one time you really shouldn’t bring one in there is like if there are people
Around that just gets awkward for everyone you know well yeah you’re going to get arrested maybe not arrested but it’s going to be awkward for everyone but you could get arrested probably possibly possibly just play it safe I don’t want to get banned from
Japan I mean I I I I will say the one time I did have a uh not this trip uh another trip um there was there were two other guys with me both Japanese by the way they were taking pictures of onson too I just asked I just asked for permission to
Take a picture of the onson we were cool with it we were cool with it but it was also a really small uh place so it’s different yeah yeah I did go to a a public Cento a gigantic public Cento in hakodate and I would not dare to take a camera in there
Because there’s like a lot of people yeah no no no um did I tell you about this uh this this Cento where there’s like mildew on the ceiling you did yeah yeah I I can’t I don’t have any pictures of it so um yeah it’s any pictures I show would
Have to be on um like whatever they have in Google some people have taken pictures cuz it was empty but I can’t imagine that place ever being empty no but it’s fun though the On’s fun it’s nice did you get how to get used to like
Um you know using the onson because I know a lot of people first time are well cuz I’m like such a Weeoo and I watch so many like Japan travel videos like I know everything ahead of time like oh make sure you shower and everything ahead of time don’t let your
Hair get in the water stuff like that um I did use like one of the public onen uhhuh and the one thing I was pleasantly surprised by cuz you know I always hear like oh you only get like a little washcloth to like cover yourself with when you’re like walking between the
Baths yeah I was picturing like an American washcloth but it’s not the one that at least at the hotels I went to it was like a very long one uh they usually they’re usually that long yeah okay so like cuz as a girl like for a guy it’s
Fine if it’s a regular washcloth but like as a girl it’s like you have to choose like what do I want to cover up so the fact that they had like long on I was like oh okay this is not as bad as I thought yeah they they usually they
Usually like that um which gets a little hard to manage sometimes just cuz you have to like roll it up and stuff like that um right cuz you’re not supposed to like let it get in the water or anything you’re not supposed to but it’s kind of
Hard sometimes yeah um but yeah it’s I I think what a lot of people do with that once they’re actually in the bath is they like fold it up and put it on your head so I don’t have a good balance so I just put it on like a rock well I mean
It’s it’s not hard to balance it just kind of like sits there just kind of sits there don’t underestimate my clumsiness okay okay but the the thing is it the people put it on their head and I didn’t get it until I tried it uh to not get so hot in
The onon it actually cools your head putting that cloth on top oh that’s true yeah you could like soak it in cold water first you don’t you don’t even have to do that just uh just actually just put it on your head and you know the the thing will soak because it’s so
Humid in in the in the bath itself but things you learn a little bit the bath that the on that you or the sento that you went to did they have a cold bath I yeah I think they did but it wasn’t in the same area as the as the
Place I I was at let me just look up the a picture really quick cuz it’s it was a really nice place it’s technically an onen it’s a a municipal on Sendo um so that means like owned by the government or something it’s owned by
The city gotcha uh let’s see so and but it’s it’s owned by the city but there’s not a like you know a hotel room attached attached to it it’s just it’s just a public bath it’s just a bath but it’s a public bath why could I not find
It anyway uh but you didn’t have any issues with like um you know I know a lot of people aren’t used or not well I don’t think most people outside of Japan are used to used to it anyway but like being naked around other people um I was
Definitely nervous like Mr F you had to like talk me into it because the one that I went to it was on the roof of the hotel which I was like pumped about cuz like oh you get to sit in the hot water and look up at the stars I was like kind
Of excited about it but I was also nervous but eventually Mr F was like just go just do it you’re gonna be upset if you don’t yeah I mean you have to try it you have to try I’m like you know like I’m walking towards the door of our
Hotel room I’m like looking back and he’s like keep going So eventually I made my way up there by myself okay yeah it was it was fine I went late at night so it wasn’t like super packed or anything yeah there was like there were like you know like maybe three
Other girls there I think I think most of the time I go into an on S there’s like hardly anyone or no one in there because I probably go too early or too late if we go around like 8 900 p.m. usually there’s a lot of people or yeah
In dormy Inn um the one in N kukuro there was a lot of people there but there was also yeah I I I think yeah there one there were a lot of people there and also um I think at the time there was like a what was it a sports uh High School
Sports team was over there too from oh okay what I could tell anyway anyway on the on the screen right now is the onen in hakodate it is called yiga public hot spring it’s so big it’s huge you see how many stalls there are there those are stalls oh my
Gosh on the uh let me let me increase the size a little bit on the on the walls there are stalls there you see how many stalls are on the walls what what is in the stall that’s where you that’s where you shower oh okay that’s a lot yeah and that’s just
Like one side of it too there’s still a whole other side to it that’s wild and this is I think this might be the the guy side the the women’s side should be identical yeah so yeah this is this is the this is the city hot springs that I
Went to and the water here is like blazing hot I think it’s way above 40° uh cels normally hot uh Onsen water they try to keep it around 40 sometimes 38 would be the low end of being hot but this was I feel like at least 42 or 44
It was blazing hot but it felt so good I like it hot so yeah also depends I live I could live in hot water it also depends on uh what kind of water it is you know some ons in water it gets like uh super opaque and
You can’t see you can’t see anything once you actually get in it some of them are clear so it’s it’s all based on what minerals are in there it depends on the minerals I think this one is mostly iron I think so it was everything every uh cloth I had uh had a
Reddish Tint by the time I got out of here I think my skin the sufur ones sulfur is also nice like obvious L you get the smell which is unfortunate but if it’s outdoors it’s not so bad no and the color is so pretty sulfur is really
Nice as for for a hot spring I know a lot of people associate that with rotten eggs but it’s like so good though it’s so good on your skin it’s good for your skin I always hear that that like make sure after you like leave the onson don’t shower afterwards to keep the
Minerals on your skin don’t don’t shower I mean just pat yourself dry cuz you kind of have to but no don’t don’t shower I know like almost every on sign like on their websites will list like here are the different benefits and like here’s the Springs you should go to for
Like Beauty if you’re a girl this one will make your skin softer yeah I I think all of them do make your skin softer but I mean the more the slightly more acidic ones even more so for obvious reasons yeah that makes sense for obvious reasons but um it’s
Like exfoliating I guess it’s exfoliating it’s a mild exfoliating oh man I feel the I feel the on and water water right now I’m not even in hot water right now I I’m just imagining it like being you’re back you’re back there in your head I’m I’m I’m imagine being neck neck
Down in the water and just like soaking up all the Heat and then there’s a bunch of old dudes around because a lot of old people use to on sin they really do they really do it’s like you you know you watch all those anime and games and stuff like that it’s like
Sexy time the on no it’s it’s hardly that it’s hardly that it’s it’s it’s uh obachan and O sounds yeah it’s it’s it’s awkward but in a different way but you get used to it you have to get used to it I definitely want to do more when we
Go back oh yeah I I I think I think I went through more on sin and sentos in this trip and I ever had before just because I missed it so much since the lockdown yeah I mean there are some hot springs in the US oh there are but there yeah
Yeah yeah certain states have quite a few Colorado is a big one oh really but it’s very different from the Japanese ones obviously you probably have to wear a swimsuit or something in there yeah you usually have to wear swimsuit a lot of them like uh you know chlorinate the
Water um they don’t really keep like the natural setting all the time some of them do but others are like it’s a jacuzzi and it’s like oh you like lose that natural relaxing atmosphere I guess I mean to be fair some Onsen do have like jacuzzi baths so you you do yeah so
So you do get that but yes um it’s it’s a bit it’s a lot different I want to say it’s a bit different but no it’s a lot different though I hear the ones in um what is it Switzerland or Sweden which one has the on which one has a hot
Springs over there I know one of them I know Iceland has Hot Springs yeah I mean you also have to wear a swimsuit over there but I think they also get pretty hot and they’re actually Outdoors I’ve seen something I’m not sure yeah I mean almost all the ones I
Went to I think all the ones I went to in Colorado were Outdoors as well Roars what’s this about Roars oh whenever I um uh he’s trying to catch me in a lie uh sometimes I roar loudly when I’ve been awake for a long time no she hasn’t done that yet nope I
Have caffeine caffeine oh you roar when you get sleepy no no that’s not it oh I’m never sleepy okay okay um all right but yeah uh the On’s nice would recommend would recommend especially if you want to um you’re not the most onon you go to is
Not going to be like this the one I have on screen right now I think this is special this is definitely special I I’ve never seen a sento like this ever or even you know in the Rokon you’re not going to get anything like this this yeah that scale is just
Massive it’s massive if you ever if you ever are curious about this one go to hakodate please go to hakodate um this is an very easy place to get to and I do recommend if you you ever go here bring your own towel bring your own soap and shampoo because
They’ll charge you for that and oh really they will they don’t they don’t I guess that makes sense since it’s a public bath well whereas with the hotels will provide it it depends uh I’ve gone to a couple of public basss that they do at least have
Um uh soap and shampoo how but not all them give the the towel the towel is usually a rental because they they clean that um but for this one in particular they give you nothing they they you basically buy a ticket for the entrance which I think is
About 4 or 500 yen and then the towels another 300 and then if you they have options also for like if you don’t bring anything and you want everything um that’s another 6 7 800 I forget how much it is but you can also get just soap and that’s another 300 so
It can get upwards of 1,000 yen if you don’t bring anything uh which which I think ends up as like was that like seven bucks seven bucks or seven bucks uh it’s which is pricey for an for a sento sento should not cost that much that I mean it generally should just be
Admission cost which is anywhere from 300 to 500 for comparison though when I went to to the American Hot Springs those were usually like 20 to 30 bucks to go to yeah so you can pay that price in Japan but it’s it depends on the place in
Haneda I’m not sure if you’ve seen this in I heard they do have they have bats there I I went to it twice actually how was it there it was it’s not as um for me personally I didn’t feel it was as nice for the price compared to like a
Rokon or even this well it’s it’s never going to be the same as this sento but cuz it’s kind of expensive it’s actually on the on the pricey side like I think it’s almost 5,000 yen per person which I mean they’re charging for the convenience in that case they right at
The hotel the airport I mean yeah the the the what they do offer with that money is um they have they do have a natural hot spring there which I think has iodine and uh sodium iodine sodium so the iodine makes it you know uh a bit
Dark oh okay and a little bit salty I I didn’t do it on purpose but you know I got into my mouth a couple of times um I mean some places will have drinking fountains with Onsen water yeah I I think the first time I’ve seen that was
In beu and I tried drinking that for 10 Yen and it I could not yeah I I I just cannot it’s too it’s too much for me but I actually I grew up on well water yeah um my family had well and it was like iron based so I’m like
Used to the flavor of like minerals I guess yeah but this is like super concentrated minerals also hot by the way 80 like not 80° no probably actually 80° C so it’s kind of like your coffee but salty yeah yeah but anyway this uh the one in haneda airport does have um
Actually uh natural uh Onsen water but it also has um what is what carbonated carbonated uh a bath a carbonated bath where there’s like little bubbles that show yeah yeah show up on your skin that’s kind of fun uh I’ve heard of those you know I don’t
Really hear about them at like on or like ran as much but at sento I I hear about them they’re kind of like a gimmick to be honest I don’t know what they’re good for but they they’re fun did you use it I did I did but they they
Also run cooler cuz if you run them hotter then the the bubbles don’t form as much I feel like oh okay okay yeah so they they run around 38 I think like and let’s just remind everyone since uh hot bath water is around 40 typically 40
Celsius uh the but the really nice thing about them uh about that place is they did have the jacuzzi thing well it’s not really a Jacuzzi it’s more like um a jet a really really strong Jet and I was in there at least 30 minutes just using that thing it’s super
Relaxing they also have the the saunas uh they have a lot of uh sauna rooms over there that you can just like so there’s the regular sauna which goes up to basically almost 100° Cel which just almost boiling by the way super hot but that’s normally how they do it I I can’t
Stay in there for longer than 5 minutes it’s it’s too much for me I’ve never been in a sauna cuz for me it’s like why would I be in hot air when I could be in hot water well it’s also I thing in in like Sweden and all those places they
Like their saunas over there so Pro probably because of that it it made it sway to Japan too I mean it must have some kind of health benefit or something some reason people do it uh circulation I guess that’s about it really but otherwise it um for me the air is a
Little hard to breathe but it’s also like super hot but the that’s the the regular sauna I can be in they also had like a uh herbal sauna where there’s a pot in the Middle with like um that steaming of you know like your herbal aroma therapy oh
Yeah that sounds nice it sounds nice but I cannot breathe the air in there I also cannot stay in there for longer than two seconds cuz is it is the smell so strong the smell is so strong and it feels hotter than a regular sauna somehow I
Don’t think it is but the smell is so strong and the air is so thick because of that um because of the herbs so some people I heard some people have like stayed in there I don’t know how they do it I’ve heard of some places doing like
Oranges that could be nice not too strong it it could be nice but that that was not the case here I don’t know what they had in there but it was super strong probably probably they did have like uh lower Heats on us at like around 37° 38° uh Fahrenheit those ones um
Were what do you call um mixed gender so but you also at that point we like wearing the the bathrobe that they uh that you get from the entrance fee so you wear the bathrobe you get a towel put down the towel on the on the floor and basically just uh lie down
There relax that that’s that’s um that’s what they have over there in uh the H airport but it costs a lot for personally I feel like it C it’s expensive but it’s a convenient thing to do it’s probably the idea of like Japanese businessmen coming back from overseas and then they can
Afford to use it probably you you do get the the onon for free if you stay in the hotel uh but and the hotel is not actually not too expensive I think it’s about 100 no actually no it’s more expensive than that never mind it’s it’s
Expensive um but you do get to use the onson for free if you stay at their hotels but if you were just there for the uh for the facilities it’s almost 5,000 yen which is roughly about 35 bucks which doesn’t sound bad but if you if
You are in Japan that’s quite a bit to pay for for that there used to be a onen park in OA oh oo yeah but but they they closed down I don’t know how long ago I think they’re just renovating or something but it’s a very long
Renovation yeah if you want to do onon a lot of the times you have to like go outside of Tokyo yep outside Tokyo um the the one hot tourist area for onen would be hakone because it’s close yeah and there’s like views of Mount Fuji Mount Fuji I don’t I didn’t
Get any views of Mount Fuji though the first uh when I went there um also I didn’t I just got the cheapest uh on uh rokan that I could find at the time did not a whole lot of research and the the on the Rokon itself was like ancient BAS
Basically it sounds nice but it’s like super rustic and uh the the baths were tiny which was not what I expected basically the food was really good though that that’s about the only nice thing I could say about that place I mean that’s a big deal with the Ron
Right oh yeah the food is a huge that’s like half of what you’re paying for it is so basically just okay for just just as um reference for anyone who’s um wanting to stay in a Rokon but uh don’t know how much it cost a Rokon a mid-range Rokon is probably
Going to cost you upwards of two uh 20 to 30,000 yen per person that works out let’s say 30,000 yen they don’t usually cost that much but let’s let’s say they did that roughly works out to about $200 per person now that sounds expensive but what do you get for that
$200 dollars you get a really fancy dinner and a really good breakfast and also just being able to use the the onen relax all that stuff and you really only stay there for one night that’s it yeah it’s more like a relaxing thing it’s not
Like I’m in Japan for a week I’m gonna stay here the whole time no you would go broke very very fast it’s like a special treat it’s a very special treat but it’s still a very nice street so yeah would recommend if you can fit it in in your itinerary and would
Recommend doing that near the end of your trip yeah cuz you’ll want those like the relaxation to like recover from the rest of the trip from all the walking and everything oh yeah you definitely would want that definitely want that uh I mean you walk a lot in Japan to begin with if
I think the average steps I’ve done was around 10 to 12,000 a day from what I from what I’ve seen I didn’t do any tracking but it was definitely a lot and I want to say um for your first time to Japan if you don’t have really nice
Walking shoes you should probably get some and make sure they’re like properly fitting yep cuz I see a lot of people on like the Japan travel sub rdit who say like oh my gosh I’ve been here three days and my feet are covered in blisters and that won’t happen if you have good
Shoes good shoes no sneakers you’ve already worn before yeah uh flat shoes probably not the the best thing to use uh you will be walking a lot yeah my husband normally Wears Like exclusively Vans um and I was like no you’re not wearing those to Japan you got to get
Sneakers we’re taking you to the shoe store you’re going to get sneakers you could you could possibly also use uh Crocs but why basically you want something with cushioning yeah you could use Crocs like I said but you really don’t want to I know there’s a lot of this is sorry I’m
A Crocs hater and I’ve gotten in trouble because there was like one time where I was at like a family event with my spouse and um I was just trash talking Crocs I don’t even know how it came up and then I looked down at my mother-in-law’s wearing Crocs oh no
While I’m trash talking them oh my god oh no I have like Crocs trauma I’m like afraid to say anything bad about them how did that go I I hate them how did that go it was awkward okay I was just curious uh I mean let’s just let’s just
Be honest Crocs look weird but the people who do wear them seem to like like how comfortable they are that’s what I hear yeah yeah I’m I’m I’m just saying though for anyone who likes to wear sandals sandal type things or like high heels or any like Fancy Shoes don’t do
That don’t do that in Japan uh your feet will hate you yeah like I so I have this thing where like I like wearing in these Kitty Mary Janes like even my model has them on her yeah if you ever see the full body so I’m I’m always like oh if I
Meeting up with people I want to wear my kitty shoes is is it on your thing right now um I don’t know if this one is let me see let me see let me bring it up oh it kind of shows is it on this one uh
Some some artists will draw it and others won’t kind of see a little kind of it’s kind of yeah but they’re they’re based on real shoes that I own okay so like they’re kind of like my um like signature clothing article so I always want to like wear them when I meet up
With people but I was like I can’t bring these Japan you could I’ll destroy my feet or destroy them I you you could but you wouldn’t be using it all the time no no yeah and also it would like take up way too much space in the in the luggage
Yep yeah oh yeah that was something I wanted to mention um you should check ahead of time if you’re going to be in Japan for a while like I know I was there for two weeks Ruku was there for even longer um check your accommodations and see if
They have like washers and dryers oh yeah like just cuz you’re just cuz you’re going to be there for multiple weeks doesn’t mean you need multiple weeks of clothes you know you don’t a lot of hotels will have stuff there to clean yeah generally even on a longer
Trip I did almost one month um I did and you generally you do want to do laundry you don’t want to like take one month’s worth of clothes that’s just physically probably not the best idea anyway uh one week one week of clothes is probably the most you should ever
Bring that’s what we did we brought one week and then we washed it yeah uh I will say though even if even if you don’t have uh washers and dryers in your accommodation you should be able to find like a a coin laundry uh aeromat in in
Japan or at least in the in the area unless you’re like super out there the boonies even in yakushima there was a Corin laundry area and it was pretty good it was pretty good I mean it makes sense like if people are in small apartments they might not have washers
And dryers in them uh so in apartments in Japan most will have a washer but almost no one has a dryer the I see the so have you noticed when you were going through Tokyo or just walking around that people had clothes hanging out everywhere I didn’t notice that in Tokyo
But I I did notice that like in the countryside okay that’s not because they do it it’s not it’s not because that’s their preferred method it’s because they don’t use a dryer so they they have to hang it it’s still better for your clothes at the end of the
Day but that’s because both peoples don’t don’t use a dryer gotcha gotcha yeah so the only places I know I’ve seen dryers are laundromats and I think most people who do that is you know Travelers who need to get stuff dried quickly uh or in general if you just need to get things
Dried quickly people would use that but it’s in the laundromat now quick laundromat tip if anyone needs to use a aeromat I think also in accommodations this is a thing unless otherwise noted you don’t have to buy detergent for the most part in some places you the detergent is separate but
They’ll usually provide it uh but in aat typically you don’t have to bring any detergent uh the detergent is dispensed automatically in the washer itself oh that’s cool yeah the first time I did that uh in Hiroshima I was kind of confused if I had to like bring anything
With me but after some fumbling around it’s like okay I kind of figured out the the the laundry mats did everything and I didn’t have to worry about it so that’s nice uh the yeah it kind of feels like everything you need is GNA be there
Already for a lot of stuff Japan is very convenient that way super convenient it’s ridiculous how much convenience there is it’s like does it stop anywhere it I I assume it does in some places but for the most part it they make it very easy to just travel basically super easy the
Hotels the the convenience stores the the trains the laundromats and if you had to get assistance with reservations anything you could ask your accommodation to help you with that cuz you know you’re not going to have a phone number or a way to call for the most part
So yeah so easy to travel even Alone by the way even alone and even if you don’t know Japanese even if you don’t know Japanese though you know it’s still recommended to at least learn some Basics and if you want to take a step further um definitely do some do some studying of
Some sort either self yeah like I I wasn’t able to like learn much Japanese like the language before going yeah but even just learning like the alphabet like learning haragana and Katakana helps because it’ be like okay I’m looking for a restaurant called um Maru and it’s
Like okay which of these buildings is it oh well now I can recognize some of the letters basically yeah I mean Google Maps will help you get there but sometimes Google Maps isn’t that great on pointing you where the actual uh place you’re trying to get to
Is well and also when stuff is vertical in Japan yeah like Google Maps can take you to a building it won’t necessarily tell you like which floor to go to no it it won’t it won’t so yeah Google Maps is still useful but it for actually finding the
Place you you have kind of have to do your own thing um however the one thing I did find very useful is if you find yourself in a let’s say a restaurant and this has happen quite a bit in a restaurant that doesn’t have an English menu Google Lens
Lens oh yeah it’s a lifesaver it’s a lifesaver uh the only time I had trouble with it was like with uh like handwritten stuff oh yeah that’s that’s Terri anything that was printed it worked great have I actually run into any handprinted stuff I think I think the
Only place I’ve seen handprinted stuff is like some some restaurants will have their menu on the wall yeah like specials written or something yeah and then that’s um that one is where all the handwritten stuff and you can’t use Google lens on the wall because Google Lens cannot read that yeah like some
Stuff will be on the wall but not on the menu like one time I went to a local restaurant and I was asking for an alod ice and I didn’t think about at the time but they asked they followed up in Japanese did you want a set with that
And I without thinking about it yes and then off they went they they they they made the they gave me the Alor rice set but when I looked at the menu again there’s no Alor rice set on the menu it’s like wait where did the set come
From why do I have so much food on my on my on my table I’ve seen that happen I’ve seen that happen at restaurants in the US too I think sometimes it’s like we added something to the menu but we don’t want to reprint all everything yeah I guess but and then I
Looked at the wall it’s like oh wait that’s where the set came from I didn’t even know this came in a set and I have all this food I have to finish off on the table and I don’t feel that hungry but I did it anyway yeah and there were a couple
Restaurants we went to where like it was say on the menu that if you didn’t eat all your food you get like charged extra oh I didn’t see that I saw that a couple places what kind of plac is um it was at to Tori kizoku I think called okay
The Yaki Tor place that we went to have something like that cuz I went a second time with Mr fangy uhhuh and I ordered a bunch again and then Mr F was like why did you do that when it’s two of us and not eight people and then I was like crying while
Like eating Yakitori I’m like I’m so full yeah so FYI in Japan you’re kind of mostly expected to finish off like 90% of the food that you have or or all of it basically uh so don’t order more than than you can eat because you can’t take
That stuff with you like in the US and Canada it’s very common to have like doggy bags right you take the take the food that’s not a thing there at all yeah I think some places in Tokyo are starting to do that but in general they
Don’t because it’s kind of gross to them also it’s just not part of the culture well and I think also like a lot of places that aren’t like you know like yakit to where you order a bunch of different things yeah but places where you’re just ordering a meal like you’re
Just getting curer or something like it’s it’s portioned appropriately it’s portioned appropriately but like in the US you take have to take stuff home because it’s big yeah that’s also true I I did I did notice um that us portions are usually good enough for two or three
People but a lot of people order it just for themselves yeah I was scared in Japan because like I kept reading online like oh Japanese portions are so small so I was like well what if I order something and I’m not you know I’m still
Hungry so I was kind of scared but they really weren’t that small they were not that small I I mean I don’t know where they small small than they’re smaller than American portions but that doesn’t mean they’re small no they’re not actually uh the meals bring you up to full pretty
Easily now if you go to neeka where you like order a lot of small stuff sure okay you can paste yourself and those are going to be small but they’re meant to be like not really bite-sized but you know it’s a smaller dish right like the the Yakitori you get two skewers two
Skewers doesn’t sound a lot but when you have two skewers times five that adds up in your stomach so it does but it’s so good it’s good just just make sure to you know not order too much otherwise yeah it it’s just kind of bad I think the food is one of the
Things I miss the most already it is also how cheap everything is yeah yeah and not having to tip is nice not having to tip I love like you can look at the menu and you’re like okay I know what everything’s going to cost me yep I
Don’t have to do math no you don’t also by the way I know uh cash was a huge thing in Japan before the pandemic it’s not so much a it’s still a huge thing now especially if you go to the countryside however that’s what I was
Going to say yeah too was fine mostly with card in the countryside we still needed cash for most of the restaurants yeah I mean always have some cash with you but if you’re in a city you have a lot more options now than they used than
You used to um credit cards before were limited to mostly visa and MasterCard if you have other uh credit cards you can possibly use them now uh I think they you take apple some places take Apple pay I don’t think they take Google pay yet um the one huge thing that was
Mainly just for convenience stores is that uh the sua the sua or whatever IC card you have you can use that as payment oh and vending machine like most vending machines will accept it uh yeah well some vending machines do there’s still a lot a lot that only take coins
But yeah if you if you don’t want to have to juggle the change and you will get a lot of change if you use put it on your sua put it on your sua I still like using cash because that’s what I was used to but um if if
It’s more convenient use use a use the better convenience just just for yourself because what ends up happening if if you use a lot of cash you have like a if uh you’re probably going to want to like bring a coin purse of some sort and that coin purse gets very very
Heavy with it does with 100 yen 500 yen 50 10 Yen 10 Yen and the Annoying one yen coins you can’t get rid of the one yen coins very easily no one takes those what’s G to cost one yen well you can you can use
That to like uh bring like bring it up to well nothing really cuz a lot a lot of uh menu items are rounded to like T yes we fed all of ours to the so machine yeah so the one yen coins if you have to get rid of them um the
Convenience stores have like donation boxes or speaking of donation boxes use that in the the shrines though shrines you typically want to use a whole five Yen coin oops what what what’ you do I just use random coins I didn’t know there’s a specific one no I mean it’s
It’s more of a tradition than an actual thing um but in general the five Yen coin is used for the donation boxes and usually you only just use five Yen coins but if you want to get yeah go ahead oh I was going well you can
Continue first okay so but if you really want to get rid of your one yen coins you could just drop all your one yen coins in in the donation box I don’t know if that’s looked down on but you could um I’ve also sometimes used like
100 yen coins in the donation box if was if I was feeling particularly generous I hear most people don’t do that I think most people just do up to 10 Yen coins at most but 10 Yen coins are at least usable in vending machines one yen coins and five Yen coins are
Not so did you go to did you like go to shrines yeah I I I do it once in a while yeah especially if we want oh sorry no it’s like especially if it’s like a remote area and I know I’m not going to going to be there for I like maybe ever
Um like let’s say there’s a shrine that carved out in the middle in the side of the mountain and it took me like an age and a half to hike over there I will visit the shrine because holy crap I made it there you know and yeah it’s like I’m kind of
Thankful I made it there so I will drop I will drop coins there and like you know thank you thank you kind of thing yeah so we went to a couple shrines and I was like very anxious at first like the proper behavior and I kept trying to Google it in like
Different sites would say different things and like how many times you clap and stuff like that so my husband was like let’s just watch the people yeah that were going up and they all did different things too it’s actually a little different from from one place to
Another I think the general thing is uh when you’re at the shrine itself you all most of the time you there’s like a uh like a fountain of some sort where you wash yeah and you wash your hands wash your hands and supposed to like touch
Touch the mouth also um and then once you actually I think people stopped doing that a bit because of Co probably yeah um but that that’s that that was definitely more common before Co but and the actual donation box itself um most people I think they toss
The coin first yeah I think they usually toss the coin first and then the procedure is in general from what I’ve seen clap twice bow once clap again I think there I’m think I’m missing a a bow somewhere but you can see where the confusion is and why PE
Some people do it a little bit differently yes also uh at one of the one of the shrines we went to um I bonked my head on like the roof of for the thing I don’t know like the little was it small was small Shrine huh was that a small Shrine I
Guess so wa a minut how did you where did you Bonk your head again it was like after I put the coin in i i puted my head back up I bonked it on something and an old Japanese man laughed at me there shouldn’t be anything to Bonk
Though I got bonked you got bonked by the shrine bed wow wow I didn’t think it was possible the only thing I can think of that you could probably be bonked by is the the Rope maybe it was the handwashing area I’m not sure I’ll I’ll see if I can find
Pictures of it well let me okay let let me just show you guys a example of a shrine the the the donation part of the shrine so this is the one that I went to on the side of the mountain uh and the shrine the the donation box is right behind the the
Rope the Rope has like a bell attached to it typically and you toss your money in there do do your prayer well I think you toss the money in there ring the bell do your prayer and then leave but they kind I for even for this
Tiny Shrine I can’t see where you would hit yourself but not not all of them look like this generally though they kind of look like this so I’m not I’m still confused me too now I have just much fing what it was I bked my head on yeah I’m trying to
Find another picture of a shrine it was definitely it was at The Shrine in shirao though I bloned my head on something shirao I haven’t been to shirao so I’m not exactly sure what what it’s super pretty there I bet did uh did they did they have the
Fall colors already or was it still mostly green um there there was a little bit of fall colors but mostly green still I’d say which is funny though cuz then we went up north to alore and like all the leaves are gone almost what when in when did you go in
Alore we went to alore I think it was like November 11th is yeah I I mean this year was also weird as far as weather was concerned so not exactly sure if the leaves just died sooner here’s another Shrine a little bit bigger Shrine in Saga prefecture um even I’m I’m looking at
This I still don’t see anywhere you would Bonk yourself at except the the rope and the Rope is usually in front of you I think it must have been at the little handwashing area the hand washing area yeah the hand washing area typically has like a roof but unless the
Roof is like super unless the unless the thing is like super short which could happen which could happen um yeah it depends I guess it depends oh if you if you go back or when you go back I recommend uh visiting the eay shrine the which Shrine eay in uh yeah
Eay it’s it’s kind of far out there I think you have to go to Nagoya and then from Nagoya you take a local train or an Express train to get there uh but basically you it’s out there in the countryside it is the main Shinto Shrine in Japan and absolutely no pictures or
Photo or uh videos in the main part of the shrine absolutely none oh really they watch that they absolutely watch that but it is a very nice place to visit and also the the handwashing area isn’t your typical handwashing area you actually go to a river to do
That that’s kind of cool it’s it’s pretty nice it’s pretty nice uh it’s mostly nature out there though so like you that’s the good stuff that’s the good stuff that’s a good when people say you have to go outside Tokyo for the quote unquote real Japan they mean
Nature I think but also Tokyo is like super busy and if you like if you like the city life you’ll probably like Tokyo but even Kyoto and Osaka which is also City isn’t quite as it isn’t quite as um claustrophobic hot um busy as Tokyo they’re still busy in their own ride but
Not as bad as Tokyo it’s different I definitely felt uh relaxed once I got outside of Tokyo yeah like don’t get me wrong I had a ton of fun there I was I would go back to Tokyo to do more stuff there yeah you kind of have to for like
Long periods of time I definitely would prefer being in the countryside yes I I mean to Tokyo Tokyo is nice and all that there’s there’s places you can go to that you won’t see anywhere else um like you know there’s no Akiba outside of Tokyo Akiba is in Tokyo
But Tokyo is more than Akiba Shibuya all that all the stuff that you know about Tokyo basically now Tokyo does have some quiet areas but even those quiet areas and residential areas don’t feel quite the same as outside of Tokyo there was actually this one little
Shrine um near our hotel which is just like in the middle of Tokyo but it was like super peaceful and quiet around it oh yeah it I was kind of surprised it iten happens all the time it happens all the time a random Shrine in in the
Middle of all this on all these buildings oh yeah more likely than you think more likely than you think and it’s kind it’s just kind of nice to just go there and Escape everything um at least for a little bit at least for a little
Bit but yeah um I I am curious though I didn’t I I kind of wanted to ask this earlier but didn’t didn’t think of it but what made you want to go on uh for this trip in this season like did you were you’re looking for fall specifically
Or or or um uh yeah so basically uh didn’t want to do summer because I knew about the high humidity and heat which I’m really bad with I didn’t really want to do winter because um I hate ice I I’ve like tripped on Ice before and like broken uh bones and things from
That so I’m like very paranoid about ice okay and Mr Mr fny was like I don’t really want to bring like a big coat and stuff either so it was kind of between spring and fall and spring is expensive because it’s cherry blossom season okay
So fall is kind of the perfect season in my opinion for going spr at least for me Spring’s not bad I I think I went to Spring the first time just because that’s that was um the friend I was visiting at the time um was that was
When we could do it before he left Japan so Spring’s not bad but it’s yeah it’s um it’s busy it’s definitely busy I do not yeah for me it’s it’s mostly like concerned about the cost yeah cuz I think like hotels and things cost more
And the flights cost a bit more in that season well that was also that was also a long time ago so I don’t I don’t know how it’s scaled from then but fall in general is nice the only bad thing for me in fall is that the sun goes down so
Freaking early that’s that’s true that’s fair for us though because of the jet lag like we kind of went to bed early anyway so uh you’ll do that you’ll do that night people either so you’ll do that regardless whether it’s fall spring winter what have you um I do
Notice that at least for the first few days to a week I will sleep around 8 or 9 p.m. uh in Japan when I usually don’t do that here I mean look at the time right now it is almost 9: uh Eastern and we are still wide awake I by this time I
Would be in bed yeah honestly the first night we got in Japan I think I went to bed at like 7 because I could not sleep on the plane at all well I mean that’s fair that’s fair that that’s that’s a different situation uh I don’t think I just passed
Out yeah you you didn’t even have dinner that night we did have dinner because we got we got into Tokyo around like 2 and then we eventually got to our hotel you know like around like 4 or whatever okay after like doing airport stuff and trying to figure out how trains worked
And then we basically like walked to a curry place ate curry came back went to sun1 to get some dessert and then I was like passed out Fair like some people will plan to do stuff on the first day in Japan no you cannot I don’t think you
Should do that well I I okay I should say this you probably can if you’re coming from Asia but if you’re coming from the from uh Europe or the US I highly doubt it yeah I would say just like get dinner somewhere that’s like nearby that you
Can just walk to check out convenience stores don’t plan on like going shopping and stuff no like if you get there and you feel great then sure but don’t plan on it yeah my my my recommendation especially it doesn’t matter it’s a first time or 10th time or whatever um
Uh until you know your until you know how you deal with it I guess um your first day in Japan should be just to rest holy crap you had a long flight rest I know you tried to sleep on the airplane and if you did sleep great but
You still need to rest when you get there cuz I don’t know about you what after I get off the plane I even if I get like 5 hours of sleep let’s say which is what I normally get any anyway I’m I feel like the the the jet
Flag is going to hit you and you can’t think as straight so the only capacity my head has when at the airport is get all the business done that I need to do at the airport get to the get to the hotel get some food and rest at least
That’s how I am oh yeah I don’t know if it’s like this for you to but like after a long fight like that I think actually the first thing we did before we got food when we got to the hotel I was like like I’m hopping in the
Tub like after being on a plane for like 13 hours and in the airport for like 3 hours and whatnot I was like nope it’s bath time it’s bath time definitely use the bath if you can if you if your place is a bath if you’re in a if you’re in a
Hostel there’s probably not going to be a bath it’s yeah probably like a shower it’s it’s a shower but you know hot water helps but if you do have a bath go in that bath soak in there for as long as you can or you know if you
Know a place around your around uh where you’re staying like a public Cento go to that public Cento and soak there it’ll help you feel alive again after the huge flight yeah and the the I I just highly recommend public sentos in general regardless of the people you run
Into over there we we be it old people Yakuza whatever just just go there I mean every there everyone’s there to take a bath even the Yakuza Yakuza need baths too they actually do I’m kind of surprised I I think I ran not I think I saw two Yakuza
People in the public cental I went to in Tokyo this trip so it’s like okay they’re here too it’s cool just uh yeah we just we just we just don’t mess with them yeah it’s interesting cuz like you usually hear about how you’re not allowed in the baths if you have tattoos
It depends on the place really it depends if it’s if it’s like a a neighborhood sento I think they’re more open about it but if it’s like a rokan or some place where there’s going to be a lot of visitors I think it’s more like yeah we need to set some rules about
This or you know the rules that yeah some some places are okay some places are not just check but public sentos typically don’t care as much that’s interesting from what I could tell cuz I I was looking up like various ANS and stuff and I definitely saw people
Like complaining like Americans to be like I got turned away because I have a tattoo yeah I’m not Yakuza no but it’s like it’s it’s their rules it’s the rules if you go to a uh a rokan with an onen or like an Onsen in general always check if you
Have tattoos and they accept tattoos I think the ones in Neo onen they they’re okay with tattoos um some of them are okay if you like cover it up too yeah some will let you do that they’ll like let you put like a a sticky thing over it yeah I think in
Hakone in general they don’t allow it in from what I could tell I know in yufu in yufu in down uh down south and the one I went to um does not allow it you would have to get a private bath if you if you
Did that and you can you can reserve a private bath too so yeah and if you’re going like with a partner you might want to do a a private bath anyway yeah if if you if it’s a like a mix gender couple if it’s if it’s available if it’s
Available uh just know that if you do want to get a pivate private bath uh attached to your room which some rokons do have it is going to cost it’s expensive also a lot smaller but you know you might not care about that as much but expensive yeah it was really something
Like I looked into and I was like it’s a it’s a it’s 10,000 it’s at least 10,000 Yen more yeah so I do kind of want to try it one time just just because but I wouldn’t have anyone to share the bath with so it’s
Like okay you had do it for like a special occasion like treat yourself for like your birthday or something I I good I mean personally I just want to go back to that bath in hakodate that I I’ll go there anytime I would go there every day if I
Could but it’s a good 15 minutes minutes plus 5 minutes to walk from where I was at still that’s how I feel about the alore one we went to I just like really like that hotel and the Hot Spring hot spring water is nice right
Yeah I’m I’m I mean I know we don’t have the volcanoes and the the geothermal stuff around here to really have that but I wish we did but but yeah it’s just it’s it’s a couple of States like Colorado New Mexico I think maybe Arizona California places like that will have
Hot springs but even that even if they do have hot springs the culture just isn’t quite the same around no so no and like when some of the ones we went to like we get in there and it’s like Americans talking loudly while drinking alcohol I’m like this isn’t relaxing it
It really isn’t this isn’t what I wanted no it isn’t so I mean I know I know a lot of people are like but I want to talk I don’t I want to do that but most people are here just to relax so they tend to
Be quiet though I will say though at least in the in the guys bath um in the dormy Inn the the high schoolers I or I think they were high schoolers I couldn’t tell it’s really hard to tell sometimes I they’re either high schoolers but anyway they the sports
Team um not really being Rowdy or anything but they were definitely you know not not quiet either and students are going to student it’s not it’s not like you’re not allowed to talk in the bath but you know i’ because I’ve definitely seen people talk in the bath
People have talked to me in the bath and I’ve seen people Talk Amongst their friends in the outdoor bath too so it’s not like it’s not allowed is in general you’re there with a lot of strangers and it’s not America where you know people chat up strangers all the
Time they’re just kind of minding their own business so yeah they’re not really up to talk to people they don’t know they probably especially like foreign people yeah the only the only time that’s happened to me in the bath was this trip and that was because I had a
Towel from beu and they noticed it and oh and it’s like oh yeah that’s that that’s a tow from beu right in Japanese and it’s like and I couldn’t understand them so I was trying to play it off it’s like I what’ you say oh and then notice
I wasn’t Japanese so it’s like okay yeah I guess that’s my fear if someone tried to talk to me in the bath cuz like that’s the one time I don’t have my phone so like I would absolutely not be able to communicate if I didn’t understand yeah the the problem with me is
I Japanese will think I’m Japanese or at least think that I understand Japanese at least half the time right yeah it’s like I am I’m Asian but not your stereotypical Asian but it’s like I can I can look Asian I can look Mexican uhhuh so it’s like when I when I
Got that like ambiguity ambiguous look Ambiguously Brown that that that Trope but it’s a real thing so I actually experienced those not not being mistaken as being Japanese of course I’m I’m a a blonde white girl but um I was trying to like speak Japanese when I could because it seemed to me
Like I felt like that’s polite yeah yeah like oh I’m in Japan you know if I can try and not inconvenience people I should but I a couple times got into this problem where I would say something in Japanese uh and they would respond with Japanese I don’t know oh that’s the
Worst but all the time and my husband was like you should just use English to begin with it’s like but I’m trying you know I’m trying not to be The Annoying Foreigner I I try that too and then when I give up it’s like uh so saying uh [ __ ] what kind
Of something like that something along those lines it’s like okay yeah like I I got like a tayak from someone and he was like asking what flavor I want I was like oh I want a Zuki and so I guess he thought I knew Japanese and then he kept
Trying to talk to me and like he was very enthusiastic I don’t know he’s saying the worst part I’m sorry the worst part is they they really really want to talk to you and you really want to reciprocate but you don’t have enough language skills to do it and and it
Becomes awkward for everyone yeah and actually only like three people talked to us our entire trip that weren’t like employees or like you know like restaurant staff and one of them the person who was like the most enthusiastic about having a conversation with us was this really older gentleman
Who had a hard time hearing so like I’m I’m using English and also I’m kind of a quiet person in person cuz I’m shy and like my voice doesn’t like carry as well so I’m trying to communicate with him and he’s like asking me to repeat stuff
And I was like oh my God I’m so sorry I will say though if you do get into a conversation and you can carry on a very basic conversation old people are great to talk to over there oh yeah I mean he was like super interested in like why we
Were there cuz this was in takama yeah and he was like why are you why are you here you know like why aren’t you in Tokyo and places what um I mean don’t don’t doesn’t takayama have like a lot of um foreign visitors or at least that
That you saw I feel like a lot of u i I mean it’s definitely not it’s definitely like not like Tokyo does but there are there were other foreigners like at our hotel yeah it was mostly Japanese people yeah I’d say but you know he was very curious about everything and like asking
Has questions about like where we were where we were going and stuff like that yeah I think a lot of um I I I think the further you go on the countryside and they can tell that you’re not from Japan they definitely get a lot they get
Curious I like why the heck are you all the way out here and Val well and also yeah like if you’re if they’re in the countryside like they probably see tourist L whereas like in Tokyo like they’re probably used to seeing uh foreigners whereas in the country they’re like oh this is something
Different yeah it is it is but honestly I think I feel I feel like at least for the people who go back to Japan multiple times and don’t like Tokyo they tend to go to the countryside more just because it’s quieter there it’s nicer there it’s pretty it’s pretty especially if you go
In the right Seasons it’s definit it’s pretty is that the best hot springs yes it does like I I don’t know when where most people generally go to have their hot spring experience I think hakone is the easiest place to get to yeah cuz it’s close to Tokyo it’s close to Tokyo yeah
But I think the the best hot springs you’re going to find are probably in to Hoku and Hokkaido further up North so not saying that Kushi doesn’t have any good hot springs beu is a Hot Spring Town by the way so be that’s like there there’s multiple towns like that where
Like that’s what they’re known for yeah that’s what they’re known for the thing about beu also um is that you can get hot spring water piped into your house there yeah I’ve heard that like you pay like a hot spring tax or something but you can have hot springs for your bath
Yes it is I’ve also heard this is another thing that’s really cool in some of those locations your driveway could be geothermic heated I don’t think I’ve heard about like for the winter to melt snow it it could be because I’ve I’ve seen the steam rise up in the from the vents that
Are on the ground and that’s that’s that that’s the hot springs right there I know about it because I I I have um like seasonal depression for like weather stuff so in the winter I get like really depressed yeah and so I start like always fantasizing about like moving
Somewhere yeah and I was like really interested in Japan for a while so I was looking at like all the abandoned houses like the AA I don’t know if you’ve ever done that I was like browsing those sites and I would find some that were
Like in be places yeah and it’ be like geothermally heated driveway I’m like I never snow again this is perfect we have to move here right now if if if I if you could you probably would and if I could I probably would too A lot of people I
Know you’ve thought about it a little bit right after the last trip I I thought about it a lot after this last trip enough that I want to well I was going to quit my job anyway uh when the contract was up but you know actually do it for real um
And you know take an extended trip I don’t think I’ll be able to ever live in Japan not because of the whole societal issues they have I mean that’s something you have to deal with regardless of where you are but it’s more like logistically speaking I don’t think I can support
Myself there like I don’t jobwise and being able to find a job I I guess that’s that’s the main thing yeah well so I feel like if you could work remotely it’d be fine but Japan doesn’t really have a Visa for that currently no they don’t but they’ve talked about it
Like I know like in the past year they’ve talked about doing like a digital Nomad type remote worker type Visa it it is in a step in the right direction to talk about I’m hoping they figure that out in the meantime if you really did want to get a change of pace
Uh Thailand next door does have a a remote uh what do you calls uh digital Nomad thing from what I hear I’ve heard like Estonia is really good for that too Estonia where is Estonia I think they’re kind of near um oh God uh is is it next to Russia I
Think so CU I remember like when like the current like conflict over there started I was like oh maybe we should not go to Estonia what is even in Estonia no it’s just it’s kind of nearby so I was like like you know maybe Russia’s G to
Like see you know start looking at other places too uh it’s it’s possible I know I know some people are also worried about North Korea when they visit Japan and it’s like no that’s that’s just that’s just North Korea being North Korea I mean Japan’s an island like I
Think the biggest concern for being in Japan is like natural disasters honestly yeah I think that’s your biggest worry yeah so I have actually been in Japan uh where there was a typhoon 2019 in October I think it was yeah October there uh 2019 there was a huge typhoon
Um that went that came by and actually grounded uh a whole Shin Consin station in Nagano Nago is like in a valley kind of sort of and somehow the typhoon reached far enough over there that at the whole place was like you know submerged a little bit oh wow yeah
And at that time I was coming from uh Bandai uh which has a lot of uh nature stuff also over there uh forgot where exactly where Bai is but it’s is is bai a mountain yeah there’s there’s B there’s Bai Mountain okay uh urabandai I
Think is the the the place I was at um it’s kind of far out there’s a bus station that connects the the town and the train station and it’s really known for its ponds over there as well as the hiking and stuff I only went to The Ponds uh
Cuz that’s all the time I had for and I was the only person basically staying at this um not really hostel but they call it a pension and it’s kind of like a kind of think about uh like a log not like a cabin that they multiple people
Multiple people can stay in I was the only person there at the time anyway uh long story short uh the her the typhoon was coming by and on the last day I was there I basically went from Bandai all the way to Tokyo and when I got to Tokyo all the train
Stations were shutting down and I managed to get on one train to a stop close to where I was going to stay for the night be originally I was going to supposed to go to Fukuoka or Hiroshima at the time but I couldn’t so quickly reserved a a place
It doesn’t matter which one it was I just reserved a place happened to be a capsule Hotel a really tiny dinky capsule Hotel uh but the train stations were so empty because people have evacuated basically it was going to be it was that strong of a storm but the next
Day it was as if nothing happened I mean I guess since natural disasters kind of happen so often there like they can respond quickly to stuff but the thing is Tokyo itself wasn’t hit that hard but the the the night was very blustery um def I mean it would blustery
Enough where all the train stations shut down as well as the buses taxis were still kind of out and about for a little bit and I did have to take a taxi to get there um but yeah it’s it’s kind of weird going from like super empty train
Stations because of the typhoon and then next day pretty much almost back to normal pretty much but uh there was also a tiny little earthquake at that time yeah I think earthquakes are kind of like one of the most common things there right yeah I I
Think the only Earth that was the first and only time I’ve been in an earthquake and it was like a three or something like I barely felt it shake when I was lying in the lying on the bed and I had to like confirm with the staff did that earthquake happened and
They said yeah there was an earthquake and they were very nonchalant about it I I thought my first earthquake would be like you know something really hard and shaky it didn’t it didn’t happen but I’m kind of wondering now what if it was would people panic
More I don’t know or are people just used to it I don’t know I don’t know I can say I’ve been in earthquake it wasn’t a strong one but it I mean earthquakes don’t happen all the time but I feel like some people worry about that when they visit it’s like oh no
What if an earthquake happens yeah I wasn’t really worried about it for like traveling but when I was going through my AA phase and I was like looking at Maps I was like looking at maps of Japan yeah where it’s like okay here’s the the fault lines or whatever with volcano so
These regions there could be an active volcano that could ER uped over here is where you have to worry about typhoons and like tsunamis over here there’s earthquakes I was like okay so uh cross off the city cross off this city okay this one region maybe we could live here
If if you go to H Ido yeah I don’t think Hokkaido gets typhoons or earthquakes as much but there are bears I’m not afraid of bears we got we got Bears up here too sometimes brown bears we had yeah we had a brown bear up here on my college campus once really
Yeah okay well if you if you’re used to it they used to it then yeah um and my my uh in-laws for Thanksgiving there have been times where we’ve like looked out the window and there’s been like a brown bear just like walking down their
Hill huh oh okay I ain’t afraid of no bears I guess you’ll be finding a kaido minus the the winter I know just got to get that geothermal driveway I don’t think they have geothermal driveways in pido but they do have a lot of on send so you’re halfway there
Yeah maybe I can be like a trend Setter of what the the driveway of geothermal driveways how how would you do do that uh I’ll get one installed and then all my neighbors will be like wow look at fy’s driveway there’s never any snow on it I I
Do I I don’t know if I don’t know if you can just do that I I I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anyone piping onen water in Hokkaido no you probably can’t I I think that’s I think that’s mainly a um a beoo thing beu and OA cuz that’s for some
Reason they have a lot of hot springs over there that’s like literally flowing out of the ground that’s where I need to go you do those are my people they are be is actually not bad um it’s very it’s a lot more hilly than I expected
Though I mean it’s hilly in Japan in general but I didn’t expect uh a place like that to be so hilly but I guess like I guess if you’re driving you’ll notice it more but if you’re on like a train it’ll probably be fine I assume uh OA doesn’t have um
Trains for public transport oh they have buses gotcha yeah I think in general you want to drive over there the buses are okay but I did have to wait 30 minutes or an hour for a bus to come by just because that’s that’s how what the schedule was um were
You anxious Driving in Japan like I feel like I would be so afraid of accidentally driving on the right side a little bit and did drive on the wrong side before uh not before uh at one point because I was distracted by something but I quickly switched back
And it it um crisis averted because cars were coming coming by uh anyway I yeah I would just I don’t trust myself uh but the thing is in yakushima you like I said you kind of have to drive because buses are infrequent and when I say infrequent I’m talking like 1 to three
Hours infrequent oh yeah yeah yeah so you can can walk uh around if you really really want to but you know there’s a lot of hills and mountains there and and you could drive around the whole island in 3 hours it’s that small but uh actual driving wasn’t too
Bad the only thing I hated about driving in yakushima is the main road is basically one road up one road down all the way around the island so that’s the that’s the highway basically but it’s not just the highway it’s also the main road right so to get
To most places it’ll take you 15 to 30 minutes one way and then going back is that much longer or twice depending on where you have to get to it’s not bad driving there though I did get a flat tire there um so it’s bad
If you do get a flat tire but the so the place is so small it they use usually respond pretty quickly so that’s that’s kind of nice uh the only thing that makes it a little hard for me personally to drive around is I’m so used to the
Cruise control there was no cruise control on the car so oh I’m not sure if that’s a normal thing or just for the models I’ve had um so yeah I wonder if it’s not a feature over there like maybe there’s a legal issue with it or something
Possibly also the the drive system was a little weird have I shown it to you no let me see if I can find the drive system but basically the drive system at least for the the one I had it was a Nissan note and the Nissan Note
Is have you do have you do you know what a Nissan uh kick looks like okay it’s a smaller car I mean a lot of cars in Japan are small to begin with I think they’re cute they are they are they are pretty cute um but I think
What most people think about the small small car is they’re thinking about the K cars the boxy cars that’s probably what most people have an idea of what um what the cars look like however the some of the actual cars in Japan still might look like regular cars
Here like if you look at this over here there this one the angle doesn’t really show it but it’s smaller than a full a full size sedan in the US okay yeah it looks pretty normal it looks pretty normal it’s it’s a bit narrower but the
Drive system on this one or at least the the stick look at that look at the stick that’s not a stick it’s basic it’s so little it’s little that’s weird this this this took a lot to get used to also they have some they have some options on
Here that I’ve never seen before cuz you know you have Drive reverse neutral here they have the park button is literally a button and then there’s the there’s a reverse and neutral but also I don’t think it shows here but the oh here’s the drive mode there’s a drive
Mode switch and the drive mode switch switches between economy uh Sport and normal most of the time I drove drove in normal that felt okay economy was weird because whenever you let let off the gas it just stops which why I I feel like that’s not a good design but it’s one of
The functions and I don’t know what sport was I could never figure out what what the heck that thing did um but yeah that stick was very hard to to work with um yeah I got used to it eventually but it’s it’s weird also the
GPS is a pain and about to use I still use the Google Maps because the GPS PS has this weird system where you either have to know the address or the phone number of a of the place you’re going to or at least a place near where you’re going to to use the
GPS and half the time I couldn’t even get anything to come up so that was a little frustrating um this particular car also had um a radar thing where if you get too close it beeps at you and that was too close to like another car or something or like
When you’re backing up generally backing up okay got back backing up or parking um the closer you are the the louder and faster it beeps and I hated it so much because it’s like I’m not even that close it’s already beeping at me I feel like eventually though after
To the flat tire um I did we did get a k car as a replacement we didn’t get to choose this is this just what we got so and this was a lot harder for me to drive cuz it didn’t have all the modern features that
The uh that the other car did uh but the stick at least um it’s further up it’s further up on the it’s like not like you know down below it’s kind of like where the air conditioning and the radio was so that was a little and at least it’s
It looks bigger at least it looks like a normal stick at least so that was that’s fine but it’s it definitely did not handle as well as the other one at least I only had to deal with this for one day but driving itself isn’t bad in yakushima at least it’s easy the
Speed limit generally is around 30 to 50 kilometers per hour which translates to 24 to 30 miles per hour that sounds okay so pretty slow that sounds slow and it is slow but the thing is because it was that slow you don’t get and if you get
Into an accident of some sort it’s not that serious like a flat tire so yeah uh but it was kind of tough trying to keep to that speed though uh um just cuz it’s like such a slow range yeah but the horsepower on the cars in general are not that strong anyway
So it’s not too bad and once you get up to speed like let’s say you’re going 40 or 50 kilm per hour it doesn’t feel that slow to be honest like you’re go you’re going 30 m per hour but it doesn’t feel that slow I feel like when you’re in a
Smaller car it feels faster or too probably maybe it’s just me probably but the thing is if you go 30 mes hour in in like even a normal sedan in the US it feels absolutely slow it does yeah but if you go with that speed in Japan or it
Doesn’t it’s not bad actually I I don’t know what I don’t know what it is that’s interesting I don’t know why I mean maybe Mr fangy could uh do the driving or do you drive I do as of right before Japan nice got my license like a week before Japan
Okay uh I think we would hand the keys over to Mr fangy but if you do want to drive if you do want to give driving a a shot both of you get a international driver’s license and find a Countryside somewhere where you might want to rent a car and practice
There I would not try to drive in a big city there’s just no need to oh God no there’s there’s no need to to begin with because you can use the trains or public transort easily yeah but if you’re going to Hokkaido or some places in kushu like
Further out in kushu that’s not uh a big city driving a car might be the best might be the better idea definitely yeah so recommended there at least well I notic that too for l l trips like driving is faster well I mean in Japan it’s not necessarily
Faster but it does get you to places where a bus or a train won’t and if you really want to visit those service stations you have to use a car I haven’t been to a service station yet but I kind of want to visit one just just for the heck of it you
Know and if you’re go if you’re visiting Hokkaido and traveling around Hokkaido in the in the cities I I imagine there’s a pretty decent public transport but if you want to go further away like away from saporo uh definitely a car would be better cuz away from saporo is where you find
All the national parks and where all the Bears are and all that stuff driving would be better in general um I think you can get a away not driving in hakodate I did but I still felt like I would have liked a car driving around there I feel like if
We go to Hokkaido at least the first time it would probably be like saporo cuz my friends went to the snow Festival there and that’s kind of what that’s what I would want to do yeah uh like go during the winter snow Festival do Hot Springs yeah what that’s February right
Uh uh I think janary February yeah yeah the snow Festival happens on the same time each year so just have to time that but also you got to reserve everything ahead of time because a lot of local tourists will be going there also I feel like yeah I think that’s
True for a lot of festivals if you ever want to do festivals in Japan yeah true you like book all your hotels way in advance they fill up man that that that that happened to me um when I wanted to go to the nebida Festival in
Alore oh not a so that happens in around August did you go not in alore because I couldn’t find a hotel room cuz that Festival seems so cool but the it is it is the thing is uh there’s a lot of local tourists that go to alore around that time it’s also a
Summer vacation so at least at least for schools um so there’s going to be a lot of people that will be looking forward to those festivals and they book these things ahead of time I think I think I booked it I think I tried look to look
For a place like six months ahead of time I couldn’t find anything I don’t know if they just don’t book that far out but generally I I like to try to book um three to six months out because I know especially for those big festivals I know I’m going to be
Competing with a with a local tourist too and nail I couldn’t find anything in uh alore itself instead I found this little town called mutsu near MSU yeah MSU near the tip of uh tohoku on the Eastern side and basically it was the end of the line for a train station
And it was the it was a really small town with one ramen shop that I could tell and a pretty nice hotel right next to the train station too so with a decent Buffet props props to them for that um it’s also near a town that is close to osot
Which is a Buddhist temple that kind of looks like the afterlife basically and I would highly recommend to go there if you could but it’s so out there uh I did you I did go there two times both by bus and I each time I keep wishing maybe I should have taken the
Taken a car instead because the the time the bus times just are not convenient going back and forth uh the the train station in that place so car recommended for that place to get there but it’s like so far out in in the middle of nowhere it’s very
Misty there uh at least oh I love Mist it’s most a couple of times I went there it’s Misty it was super Misty when we went to Shero like in the mountains oh yeah was how like it’s like so pretty when it’s Misty yeah yeah yeah let me
Like mist and fog and stuff like that yeah let me show you just uh a couple shots here this is this is uh the temple I think yeah Temple uh in yeah those Misty Mountains yeah it was the good stuff it was raining the first time I
Went there it wasn’t raining the second time I went there um oh I have a tip yes for firsttime travelers in Japan if it’s raining you might think oh I’ll get a big umbrella so that you know multiple people can f underneath it don’t do that if you’re in Tokyo because everyone else
Is have an umbrella and then your umbrellas are going to be fighting yeah don’t do that I had to try so hard like not to Bonk into people with the giant umbrella I’m like on my tippy toes trying to make sure like it doesn’t Collide With People yeah don’t do it get
The tiny one yeah if you have to get an umbrella get a tiny one um you can get that pretty easily for cheap and it’s also oh yeah it was like 700 Yen at 7-Eleven I think it’s also going to look weird that uh that the umbrella is clear
But actually be thankful for that because at least you can have have the umbrella right on top of your head and you can see through the umbrella yep yep but if you if you don’t want to deal with a house of an umbrella I do recommend like a waterproof jacket of
Some sort H that has a that has a hood that will cover your bases for the most part unless it’s like super heavy rain and then no one’s safe yeah in that case don’t worry about getting wet cuz everyone will be everyone will be wet just they can’t judge you just F just
FYI es I mean during the tyon an umbrella would not have helped me at all you would have just like floated away with it probably probably but this is blown away yeah but I recommend going to this place it’s like really really different in atmosphere compared to any other Shrine I’ve been to
And just the scenery around here is super nice super nice but I definitely would have wanted to spend a little bit more time here you can stay here overnight um I’m not sure how to reserve that room though but you can stay here overnight and would recomend I’ve heard of that like Buddhist
Temples there’s a Buddhist temple near Osaka too if you want to do that then that that one’s a huge that one’s a huge thing also as expensive as a Rokon so just keep that in mind I don’t know what the accommodations are like I haven’t
Done it wanted to do it got to figure out how I can do it were any of your accommodations in Japan were they futons oh yeah yeah like go to the ground yeah the the rokons especially uh that I went that I booked have all been futons just
Because I keep on getting the the Japanese Star Room yep yep like you can get a western style room and no and I’m not going to judge you for that because you know you have you have needs you have have once so not going to judge you
For that but just keep in mind uh at least you will most likely be in in a futon and if you’re not used to sleeping on the the ground uh it’s different it’s different I actually like now right now I like exclusively sit uh not sit uh
Sleep on a futon even in the US I have a bed I just don’t use it except to nap in yeah I had never used one before and then our business Hotel was like western style yeah but then the other two had like the futons on the ground um it was
Fine I thought it was fine I mean the I thought it was comfortable the the futons are I mean they’re they’re not going to be like as bouncy and probably as soft as what you’re used to on a bed but you know it’s it’s a futon it’s it’s
Going to be thin but it’s not like uncomfortable uncomfortable no I was scared it would be uncomfortable but it really wasn’t it really isn’t it really isn’t I was looking for another picture of that place in uh the other time I went to um this is the I
It’s not I I want to say it’s a lake in the San but it’s like kind of wide stuff yeah yeah it’s it’s really it’s a it’s a really nice place to just so you visit a lot of nice Scenic places I usually try to go to Nature stuff
Yes I if there if it’s like if I go to a city it’s like a really chill City that I try to go to or you know just not Tokyo I guess we’re lucky we caught you in Tokyo then well yeah I I was I was
There to drop off um uh the other person that was traveling with me so I was there for one day and I was going to be going to Hokkaido right afterwards so yes a rare Ruka sighting yeah I mean it’s rare to get that many people that
We could like meet up in one place in you know in just in general I know yeah I think it was four of us that came from overseas right and then three people that lived there yeah so it’s pretty wild yeah including uh Mr fangy I think there were like eight
People total oh yeah true so it’ be five people coming from overseas Mr fangy yeah so it’s it was It was kind of crazy I I wasn’t expecting a huge Gathering um no me neither so because it was it was very cool being able to meet YouTubers
In Japan it was originally just going to be me Tori and fangy but then we got more people added and it became uh this huge thing so yes this very lucky like nice coincidence that everyone was going at the same time yeah I I think uh well the
Picture was shared on online so I think we can just we can share that picture again oh the cell phones yeah the cell phone picture let me see if I can find it I can put it in the Google Doc if you want I I I have it I have it um okay
Cool yeah basically some people I’ve never seen before or met before but you might recognize a few people here yeah I only knew you and Tori but everyone was super nice it was fun yeah it was fun um I recognized like of course Toria and I recognized you I also
Recognized milky I also recognized Connie which everyone thought Connie was gone and the other two uh no contact with before but they were they were fine too so um but yeah it was it was a it was an experience it was an experience um I’m not I’m not used to like being in
A big group so that was something I had to to adjust to a little bit for that time and Al I didn’t think also toiki z uh that the chicken Place Tori kizoku I think yeah I think I think that’s I think that’s what it is um was going to
Be as small as it was I I know since we had a big group I thought we would have like sometimes they have like a a seating room like a a place oh okay yeah but it maybe that particular place didn’t have it I don’t know I was hoping
It was going to be that kind of setting but no we we were still in the same booth like most people are and it’s kind of hard to fit eight people in those booths yeah I’m glad that we able to find someplace that would see all of us
Though because like you know a lot of restaurants in Japan are too small to have like a group of that many yeah but isak in general though I see people like on red they’ll be like I’m doing a family trip and there’s 15 of us no what
Restaurants can I reserve stuff at I’m like uh I don’t think any I don’t think any you definely ran out an entire place I’m not sure if you ran into this but a lot of uh in parts of my trip I would run into specifically Chinese tourist okay where
Oh in large like tour groups in huge groups and not NE not necessarily tour groups just huge groups of like 10 or family trips yeah and it’s like holy crap you brought all these people how are you going to fit in this tiny Place yeah I see a lot of posts they’ll be
Like I’m bring uh you know my elderly grandparents and my kids and I’m like listen sounds so chaotic good luck I mean your elderly grandparents can come on the trip I feel like they’re not as active as the elderly grandparents that already live in Japan I’m just yeah I
Think Japan’s very stair heavy stair heavy it’s it’s a little tough and and the old people that do live in Japan already are used to those stairs people coming from outside are probably not used to those stairs I kind of think that’s why people in Japan like are
Healthy and live longer yes all the walking and like stairs they do yeah I don’t know if you I don’t know if you noticed uh when you came back but your the calves are rock hard you don’t after being in Japan super especially after climbing so oh not even climbing so many
Stairs just you know using St well you were going hiking and stuff I was I was but I mean even you probably no a little bit thought you your legs were a little bit um not leaner but tougher than it used to be it probably a little bit more
Endurance a little afterwards now have you done Fushimi andari before I have twice did you okay because that’s another like big climb right like big yeah big staircases yeah if you if you want a hiking experience that’s not out in the wilderness I recommend going to
Fushimi Inari not on a weekend though if you do on a weekend it’s still probably okay because most people won’t try to go all the way to the top it’s it’s a bit of a hike it’s at least yeah I hear most people like stop halfway through it’s at
Least uh I want to say two to three hours to go to the top initially when I was planning on going to Japan 2020 before the pandemic happened um I had planned on going to like Nara and Fushimi and nari but uh afterwards I like started having like um
Back issues cuz I have scoliosis uhuh so like for this trip I was like I’m a little too nervous I don’t know if I can make the climb I think you can I’m hoping I’m hoping that like next time I can like do more of my back uh like
Muscle exercises and get like ready for it yeah and go I don’t know if this will help you with your scoliosis I doubt it but for me I did have uh back issues uh at one point when I was sleeping in the bed and it it could be a bed issue
However I did notice that as when when I started sleeping on the floor like have a futon on the floor like just a thin mattress um my back issues are gone I have no back issues because of that it’s kind of weird how sometimes like a
Firmer bed or a firmer pillow ends up being more comfortable yeah I mean may feel like uncomfortable at first maybe but like it ends up like being better for you I guess if you’re if you’re not used to it you um if you’re not used to it feel award it’ll feel awkward but
Once you do it more often it’s not so bad and people still do that quite a lot in Japan though I mean there’s regular beds there too but in places where you don’t where you don’t have um space for all the regular beds you know futons are nice and
Compact yeah and if you don’t get if you if you’re in Japan you might have to use a futon so you just kind of have to get used to it but do if you do the same futon thing at home and you have back issues I feel like for most back issues
It will at least help you fix some of that um scoliosis that’s a different thing altogether I don’t think it’ll fix that no if it could that would be great but lower back issues it should at least help there at least it did for me
So give it a try try it for like a few a couple weeks or or longer and see if it helps but I mean if it doesn’t help it doesn’t help but a a a lot of times it it does help more more than you would think it
Does so I feel like in general I was like healthier in Japan it yeah like I got the exercise and whatnot and also like normally I have a sensitive tummy I didn’t like get Tummy a at all in Japan no no I’m not sure I don’t know if it’s
Like I don’t know if it’s like the food has less like preservatives or something I don’t know but well it was strange my my tummy was like better behaved well it depends on what you eat normally I do know if I eat too much sugar uh I start getting stomach egges um in
Japan yes you can have sweets there but even with the even with there sweets there I don’t feel like I got a stomach ache from that one um also I think the ex the the regular walking also probably helped a little bit Yeah possibly that’s true I was just surprised like normally
Like spicy stuff will upset my tell me oh really and even when we were in Japan I had like Curry that was like way Spicer than I’m used to I was like I feel fine super weird did you try the the ramen place in cond the the the Oni
Ramen no I didn’t do that one I did I I did do a Ramen place there I’m trying to remember what it was called though I don’t remember there’s a lot of ramen places I know I mean the one I went to was really good though yeah it’s the broth was just
Like super like mey kind like greasy kind of yeah which makes it delicious I I I feel like there’s a PE people think a lot that Japanese food is healthy and I guess but there’s also a lot of greasy stuff in Japan it’s just not the same kind of grease that
You’re probably used to in in the US I feel like it’s healthy grease if that’s a thing well I think part of it’s like like you can eat healthy in Japan or you can eat badly yeah like I ate badly in Japan I’ll admit I had Curry like every
Day I mean Curry’s not Curry and ramen no but like it’s not like eating something that’s more vegetables like it has some veggies in it but it’s mostly carbs it’s mostly carbs but the thing is when you’re walking around that much you do need those carbs that’s fair that’s
Fair the I will I do think uh protein is generally lacking it it definitely not not as much protein as in the US anyway if you yeah yeah that’s fair but the protein you do get if you do like fish or some meats and stuff like that is
Enough but yeah it’s it’s it’s not I found it oh what’d you find okay oh it was K Ramen wisu was the place I went to okay this website says the ramen uses kilos upon kilos of pork bone I believe it I believe it oh it was so
Good I I think I also on this trip I had the creamiest chicken ramen ever where was that was that if this was I think that shop itself is called Yokohama tradition oh that was in Tokyo it’s in Tokyo but it’s not actually in Yokohama it’s it was in Shaga
Advertising well I think it might have been like a chain not a chain but at least you know another shop but this oh okay I like how buffalo buffalo wings aren’t always in Buffalo yes uh but the the ramen was like super creamy this thing this is chicken ramen
He had this really thick noodles almost like udon and the look it’s a little quail egg quail egg yes oh that’s so cute qua Egg E it quail egg and regular egg and the um at least my bowl had three slices of chashu I think I’m not sure if that’s
Normal or there was like two for another option anyway the the the chicken it’s chicken broth I never had chicken broth that creamy it was like super fatty and heavy for chicken broth which I wasn’t expecting normally if it’s fatty and heavy it’s usually some sort of pork
Broth by yeah yeah I usually think of chicken is like leaner yeah yeah and this one also had for some reason a little bit of vegetables on the side I don’t know what that was about vegetables gross yeah you see that do you see the veggies right next to the
Eggs yeah mine have that too actually really I yeah I wasn’t sure what it was this is the first time I’ve seen it I still don’t know what it is it was the same exact one was in mine I wasn’t sure I was like is this like some kind of spinach or
Something maybe it’s the same exact thing maybe I I don’t know but that’s the first time I’ve seen it I’ve never seen that en Ramen before did you try the um oh did you try any P the pancake place I I mentioned I didn’t go to that place but I did go to
Like a su sule Pancake Place how was it how’ you like it I went to it in takama they’re fun it’s just fun to eat something like with that kind of texture it is it is I like like the flavor wasn’t like anything crazy but just like different mouth feels nice sometimes
It’s um it’s super not really squishy but it’s light Airy yeah super Airy and that I think that’s the main reason why people like it also you don’t treat it like you know regular breakfast pancakes that’s that’s not what this is this is like a dessert there’s a dessert
Pancake this is this is what you eat to to make yourself feel good sometimes like like that except this I think this is like a bit fancier maybe but the Sul pancake’s nice fluffy very fluffy I’m like that little kid from Despicable Me where it’s like it’s so
Fluffy and it really they’re very delicate super delicate like it I don’t know yeah the one I had I got like a caramel flavored one and I also um paid to get like extra like red bean on the side cuz I love red bean paste yeah it was so
Good and what what were your favorite meals during this trip by the way uh so we did do like one expensive meal when we in takayama cuz takayama has hog which is not it’s not like wagu or like coob beef it’s but um it’s also considered like pretty good yeah uh so
We got like the the it’s a local it’s a local beef right yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so I I splurged and got A5 and it’s very good but it’s also like very weird because like I would bite into it and it was like very juicy juice which like like
Obviously like steak can be juicy but this was like you bite into it and like now your mouth is full of juice which I like cuz I like juicy me I like like you know dripping with blood so it was like very weird experience very good but like wow this actually feels
Different so you had the you had you had the steak version right yeah the fan yeah yep yeah I don’t think I we got we got an A4 one and like an A5 one and compared them what was there a big was there a big difference was yeah yeah A4
Was like okay this is a nice you know tasty tender steak A5 was like okay I haven’t had any meat that was like this texture before super tender super soft yep probably probably also super not super oily but heavy from the fat oh yeah I I’m sure that’s what all the
Juice was when I bite into us just probably just like beef grease beef grease the good stuff oh but also okay more meals because I I like food okay do you want to show any pictures it’s hard to yeah actually I can show some pictures I I I’ve been
Showing a lot of pictures but I Haven but I haven’t seen much from you here okay yeah I can put some pictures and let me find some stuff real quick okay but yeah uh it’s just so different over there also you would think uh steak
Like an A5 steak meal is expensive it is but it’s it wouldn’t it’s not as expensive as it would be in the US I feel like I mean steak is probably going to run you over 10,000 Yen close to almost 1500 15,000 yen in Japan but even if you convert that that’s
Really not bad no it really isn’t especially with like the rate being so favorable right now yeah yeah so all the way at the top that was the buffet at the alore hotel let’s see let on that um you were also interested in going to alore so you
Might already know this but alore is like known for apples yes that’s where the fui Apple was like created oh was it um yeah so this hotel is all Apple themed okay um so like most of like the the food they serve there has like
Apples in it too so like you get like apple pie apple tarts apple pancakes and stuff like that how was the Apple even like even like the curry has apples in it well I think I think Curry and Japan generally has some sort of Apple in it
Some of them do yeah they like make it little sweet yeah how was the how was the how were the apples or at least can you tell very good very good and like you can see like um across from me Mr fing plate he has apple juice so like
They had apple juice for like all these different types of apples and like you could actually like they had it like arranged based on like sweetness and like the Fuji one’s like super sweet basically we consumed like a ton of apple stuff yeah this buffet was really tasty nice Um down below that one oh that’s that’s the um oh God what what is it called milky is it Milky Way which one the right one or the left one well I mean the restaurant I think it’s called Milky Way maybe um it’s like the only like themed like restaurant we
Went to cuz I’m not like I’m not like super into like a lot of the like the Final Fantasy or you know Dragon Quest or whatever so I didn’t like do any of those like uh themed cafes but this one’s all like Moon space themed that we did
Um you know it was one of the more expensive meals because it’s like the gimmicky right kind of trendy place but it was good didn’t you pretty it was very pretty didn’t you try uh what do you call this one of those toast ice
Cream things too oh I did yeah I did the honey toast let me put that in there as well didn’t you say it was like bigger than what you expected oh it’s huge yeah I could I could barely I could barely finish I don’t think I ever I didn’t I
Didn’t finish it really I don’t think I tried one of them yet cuz I I was thinking to myself how good can this be it’s just it’s just ice cream on uh yeah so it’s above that picture it’s just ice cream on toast how
Good can it be well it’s like a big cube of toast yeah it’s a big cube of toast but to me with the first time I saw it it was just bread you know yeah but imagine you’re eating like half a loaf basically with ice cream and
Whipped cream and all kinds of stuff on top of it yeah at the time I didn’t think about that yeah I didn’t until I made my own shoan and it’s like oh this is actually pretty big yeah this one was really good I got like a caramel one so there like caramel
Ice cream with like little caramel sugar caramel sausy pour on top of it it was good I enjoyed it Mr FY said it was weird cuz it’s like bread but to me it’s like kind like French toast I mean I don’t think it’s weird I think Mr fangy
And I are in the same wave length about this cuz it’s like it’s just bread but how about it taste it good though when you put lots of sugar and ice cream and stuff on it I think I think anything it tastes good anything can be good if it
Has a lot of sugar and ice cream on it I I just feel like that’s that that’s how it is uh down below that one after the cafe one uh is curry this is the only Curry picture even though I had Curry like five times because every other time
I would be so excited about the curry I’d start eating it and then halfway through I’d be like [ __ ] I didn’t take a picture and now the plate looks bad this was the only time where I remember take a picture and like you can even tell
Here that I started eating it a little bit did you try any of the um the the chain Curry restaurants or like cocoichi or GoGo Curry um I didn’t do any of those like big ones I did jotto Curry I think was the one I did which is also a chain I
Believe oh okay I haven’t heard and I think this one is one and AI but I don’t know that it’s a chain I think it was called like Alba Curry Alba C this one maybe oh I think someone recommended that one I didn’t it’s it’s kazawa style
Curry where like the sauce is like darker and then they have like cabbage on the side I see which is kind of weird but like you put curry sauce on it and it tastes good so the Cabbage the cabbage on the side um I don’t think
They do that in cocoichi but they do that in um goo Curry yeah yeah it’s like a regional thing yeah I’m not so I guess goo Curry does kind of zawa style then yeah I’m not also I have never had like cheese on Curry before it’s good
Really yeah it’s good I I wasn’t sure but no I mean I was unconvinced at at like before having it but then after having I was like okay yeah I like that I mean I guess they don’t really do that in Thai curry they don’t do that in
Indian curry but they do that a lot in I guess Japan listen they’re they’re innovating with their Curry over there I if you want if you want cheese overload you go to Korea to be honest they they they put that stuff in ridiculous places I love
So maybe I should do that um this picture was just uh like a revolving sushi place uhhuh I think the two big chains are like sushia and Kur Sushi Kura yes Kura Kura Sushi I want to go to Kura but um there weren’t any like nearby whereas this one was right in
Akih Habra so we went there which one is a sushia yeah the sushia one I’ve never been to sushia so it was fine um I don’t eat sushi so I had all like not I like ordered all the non Sushi things basically Sushi a lot of the desserts
They had like these candied sweet potatoes that were freaking delicious the thing is uh in in the fall in fall uh sweet potatoes and chestnuts are in season so you will get a lot of yeah yeah um what are they called Mt blancs uh I think it’s like a chestnut
Dessert yes yeah we saw that in a bunch of places they even give one to us like a cafe I don’t know if it was on purpose or an accident like we ordered like I ordered like a cremola Mr fangy ordered like a matcha thing and then they put a
Third thing on our plate that was a Mont Blanc and I had never had one before and it was good huh but I wasn’t sure if it was intentional yeah I was like a seasonal promotion going on like buy two things get one mon block free I don’t
Know I think there was a mon block uh on the menu in to koku zoku also but we never got it I don’t think we any of yeah we didn’t really we didn’t do any desserts there did we no we no we didn’t I think we were too full from the meat
This was the pancake I got you can’t really tell cuz there’s so much like whipped cream on it there that’s a ridiculous amount of whipped cream yeah but it’s one of the Soule pancakes and like the red bean on the side it was good and Mr F got like an apple pie okay
How do you feel about red bean after this trip I have to I love red bean I could eat I could honestly eat red bean stuff every day like literally every day I was like going to 7-Eleven and G like doraki you can have it you can have my
Red bean you don’t you you’re tired of it I don’t think I ever was a fan to begin with but after seeing red bean in almost every dessert I ran into even the fancy ones it’s like so good why but it’s genius they turned a vegetable into a dessert but red bean is
Sweet to begin with it’s so good I’m I’m just not a fan of red bean I’m I’m like one of those I’m a red bean hater I it’s fine I’ll I’ll eat your portions I will eat it but I will eat it begrudgingly yeah this was the ramen the
Uh Kaa Ramen wiu place oh that’s a like you can see you can see how like greasy it is that is a so that is a very curly very very curly Ramen very curly noodle yeah the also the weird vegetables why is that even in there yes it’s that same
Vegetable I don’t know what it is it’s green it tastes like green I mean it’s a vegetable I hope it’s green is there a vegetable that’s not green besides carrots besides carrots um Bel that we went to shabuya 109 which is like you know trendy Mall Place yeah
Which I had seen in like reality TV shows in Japan so I was like excited like oh my God here’s a sto he’s like a mall that I’ve seen before in shows wait isn’t the 109 going away or something is it I don’t know something is oh no wait
It was a Starbucks it was a Starbucks Starbucks oh yeah I think you’re right yeah but down in the basement they had like a little food court and they had like little cute macaron uh like smoothie things I just and I thought it was pretty good I just love the food
Courts in Japan because you can find them at the bottom of the the malls there yeah it’s always at the bottom of buildings there there also some at the top actually no at the bottom of the the malls generally you’ll find a small food court and a grocery
Store and then near the top is other restaurants and maybe a food court at least that’s how it I didn’t notice that yet it was usually restaurants up top and then food court on the bottom from the ones we went to did you go to a
Daer no okay nope I was about to say the uh divver City and aqua city is this that same layout so I think got around less than most people do okay um like when I looked at like rary versus like theary people post online like I
Definitely like went light on stuff um I think just cuz like we’re getting older well I mean it’s it’s fine it’s fine and we’re like more leisurely paced like I don’t want to rush around that that is perfectly Fair um I mean you do it at
Your own pace and if and that’s the pace that you want then that’s the pace you go at uh and then the next picture this was the alore hotel again but uh since I told you how like they’re big on apples yeah so for every every dinner they had
Apple pies so there’s like a little mure apple pie and then they have like this homemade like waffle cone that was super good it was like super cinnamony it looks really good and like custard wait how many days did you stay at this hotel but we did two days two days okay yep
Two nights I was about to say did you get tired of all the apples if you stayed longer than that it’s no honestly I could have I could have kept in there for more days I think cuz like some of the stuff was the same each day yeah but
They also like swapped out a lot of the stuff like the main Entre yeah it’s it’s ni they keep it fresh for the for this stay so yeah yeah but for dinner they had like these apple pies and the custard and we may have got we may have
Gone back a couple times for more of them the apple pie looks super flaky it is yeah you kind of like crack it open yeah and then inside there’s like the Apple goodness and then I would scoop the ice cream into it that’s the way to
Do it and then for breakfast they had like I I showed you like the first picture had like apple pancakes and little apple torts and stuff yes but they also had milk puddings which I didn’t get in the picture I don’t think and it was so good and
Creamy I definitely got multiple of those each day I mean I wish I could have taken them home you’re on vacation you take take as much as you want right right it’s it’s just so fun to try everything just because I think the I think the
Main thing is you don’t see that in general around here and if you do see it it’s it’s like super expensive yeah that’s true it’s like all the fun stuff is in Japan just maybe because we’re just not used to it I keep thinking about this is
It fun because we don’t see it all the time probably but it’s at the same time if you’re a local there I feel like it would still be fun just because I feel like also they are really really good about just making things marketable I guess for lack of a
Better word oh yeah I totally agree I mean like the food is always cute and like looks it’s like fun to look at and eat yeah lot like different textures and things or like um just like more seasonal flavors too seasonal flavors definitely we don’t have this here I I
Made we have pumpkin spice we have pumpkin spice it pumpkin spice eggnog maybe but most places don’t do eggnog stuff it’s mostly just pumpkin spice that we have what pumpkin you hear pumpkin spice season all the time but do you hear anything else outside pumpkin spice
Season yeah I don’t really feel like we do I don’t think we do either and like even when I do find something I like like sometimes Starbucks will do like like like one year did like a s’mores type drink for summer yeah but it never comes back like it’s been multiple
Summers and they haven’t done it again it’s like the McRib it comes every 3,000 years yeah but the McRib is like a isn’t really a seasonal thing it’s more like just a thing right whereas like with Japan it’s like every place had like a new M had like a Mont Blanc yeah
You could try because it’s fall yeah and it’s like almost almost everywhere in Japan will have its um what do you call has it standard seasonal thing like in Sakura season you have the Sakura stuff in Fall you have the sweet potatoes and chestnuts um and then if you have if
You’re more Regional like saying alore you have the apples and then cuu it’s going to be the Yuzu kabosu strawberries they have strawberries down there apparently um it’s just nice that a lot of places in Japan have their own little Specialties regardless on how normal it
Might seem to most people outside yeah I feel like it gives you something fun to look forward to for traveling different places or for just like for different seasons like I don’t know I get excited about seasonal stuff like oh it’s you know Christmas time so I can go get the
Eggnog and whatnot it’s like something to like look forward to I guess I guess I silly I guess in Christmas time or at least winter in general hot chocolate is more in season but you don’t hear anyone talk about it it’s just there yeah it is hot chocolate season in the
Winter though now that I think about it but I feel like most places just have hot chocolate all year round though they do they do like most like cafes they do but it’s but I think I feel like it’s more prominent around winter or maybe
It’s just a thing you get in Winter yeah I think probably you just notice it more in Winter cuz that’s when you want it true true cuz I I don’t feel like I get hot chocolate outside of winter rarely yeah you usually don’t want anything warm during summer
No this is making me hungry the pictures I want to go back I want to go back did you get any souvenirs I’m pretty sure you got some souvenirs oh yeah a bunch what’d you get well so for our family and friends we got different things than like for us um
Like from our family we got like more like Normie stuff of course like you know here’s your magnet of shabuya with Hao oh no like that like that you know things that they would like potentially recognize right uh for our friends it was mostly like little anime related things or
Video game related things for stuff that they liked so like uh I I got my one friend like a Pokemon like a Snorlax sleeping mask uh the other friends we got like little Monster Hunter keychains stuff like that fun um for ourselves most of the stuff I got was
Plushies I guess like souvenirs first it’s just shopping uhhuh I guess do you do you I guess differentiate not really no okay because like shopping wise I got like a bunch of um plushies and stuff like that and keychains I did a bunch of like gachaan okay that’s fair that was really fun
Getting all now I have like too many keyons I don’t know what to do with because like I was looking for like certain characters and then I kept going because I kept being the wrong ones and what do I do from from the gacha yeah
And then Tori scolded me cuz I told you guys like I have all the gacha balls and they they’re like no you don’t take them with you you can but they take up so much space why would you they do well yeah I didn’t I didn’t know that you had
Some place you could put them I be hon a bunch of gotta balls I actually honestly didn’t know the first time either until I saw someone uh around the same area put the the balls in a basket or some other thing it’s like oh they’re supposed to go
There well now I know for next time yeah uh I did get one thing from an arcade uh it took an embarrassing amount of money which I will not disclose okay what did you get um so it was like a mascot character from one of my favorite
Vocaloid producers uhhuh uh and like so you can only get it at the arcade you know like it’s a limited item either from the arcade or someone sold it to aming yeah which is g to cost you probably not as much as how much you spent on it probably not it’s just
Whether or not it shows up like I do browse through Gaia a lot for things on there but it not much shows up on there not everything does no um actually a lot of stuff that you would probably find in Radio K or where kbook and kbooks and
Amiami is probably is not going to show up on online that’s what my friend told me my friend spiky said there’s a lot of stuff in person that they don’t have on websites yeah you if you’re GNA find them online you’re probably going to
Find them in like um not Bay but the the the the Yahoo auctions or something like that yeah or like Mercury or whatever is that one of them merari I think yeah yeah but even then it’s kind of hard to find it there because you have to like
Find like get the specific words or something and right like you have to like know like the Japanese um for different things yeah or like I use I’ve been using suraya to buy a bunch of Wee stuff and they have an English site but it’s kind of like they Auto translate
Stuff and stuff doesn’t always get translated correctly yes so like it’ll be like an anime character’s name but instead of leaving it as their name they’ll translate it as a word so sometimes finding the stuff that you’re looking for can be difficult yes but honestly it was just as hard finding
Stuff in Japan like at Manda and places like uh it was very chaotic a lot of those places you kind of have to like it’s like here’s Just Bins of things you kind of have to like uh hop between shops just find we went like everywhere
Like I know but it’s like unless it’s like a major it’s not unless it’s like a big series that’s popular it’s hard to find stuff oh yeah definitely I mean I I know a lot of people will go to Radio Kon and that’s it because it’s convenient it’s right there but if you
Go to other shops that most people probably may not visit you might find something there that you didn’t expect to find or yeah we went to like five different surugaya and like hobby offs and book offs and places we just like every secondhand store we could find I went to
Yes and I still didn’t find stuff for like most of the series I like cuz I like like old retro stuff that no one liked if you like like old retro stuff then did you try Nako Broadway I did yep couldn’t find it there either no well I
Like I just the shows that I like didn’t become popular so fair it that that does happen yeah it whereas like if you wanted like osin noo or spy family it’s everywhere I feel like that’s M mainly in Akiba if you go to if you go to Nako
Broadway you’re not going to find that specifically cuz the n Broadways more when I say retro I don’t mean 20 years ago retro I guess vintage at this point holy crap is has it been that long yeah what if when I say retro what do you think retro
Is oh yeah we’ve had this discussion on my Discord before in terms of video games oh the did the did the sa picture come up did the what saai uh the the too character with green hair oh no I don’t know much too okay don’t worry don’t
Worry about it don’t worry about it uh to me PS3 is retro that hurts my soul trust me I’m I’m right there with you okay I can accept PS1 as retro but you say PS3 is retro not even PS2 my dude have you looked at PS2 Graphics they’re retro I have a
PS2 maybe you need to play it again I actually should because I got some games from eBay so um yeah the thing is a PS2 is also a PS1 so it it it it serves both purposes um but we went to Nao Broadway there are is it called mandarake or is
It mandre do you know mandarake don’t Mand that’s what I thought yeah I don’t I don’t think they call it mandre that that okay fig that’s definitely a American pronounce there’s like 50 goddamn mandake and kn Broadway and everyone is a different theme well the thing about mandake and Nako Broadway is
I think they own the entire building I don’t think they actually do but they basically did there FL that was like all M and it’s like here’s the Gundam one or the mech one here’s the American stuff one here’s the uh Sailor Moon retro magical girl one and this is the wild
This is the uh all manga one Yep this is the all shjo manga one and then the very top floor of Nako Broadway is the super super old and expensive 50s stuff but it’s a really nice we went to actually I think it was on E buaro there
Was a Mand that we went to as well that was underground do you know the one I’m talking about it’s like underground oh I’m not think I’m not thinking of the same one but did you go okay there’s one that’s underground and you’re like okay sure it’s underground whatever it’s in
The basement you walk down like seven flights of stairs like you just keep going deeper and deeper yeah I know I haven’t been to this one no and then you get down there it’s just this giant like cave almost of just like shelves and shelves of retro anime and manga and
Just all kind of stuff okay it was like a it was like a labyrinth I a weeaboo labyrinth and it’s like seven floors underground it’s crazy I haven’t been there but I kind of want to see it now the one I went to in ibukuro was not
That do you know what a Tomy road is yeah I think we went there cuz I got a bunch of boys love okay so the first time I went to Japan uh there was a too yearly too convention that was uh happening and to get into said too
Convention you have to get the catalog for the place and oops I clicked on Twitter I I I I close it don’t worry uh the the the catalog for the place uh can be gotten in certain places and for some reason my friend decided to take me to a shop in
Ome Road and can you imagine how awkward it is for two guys to go into a to Road full of fujo stuff wall to wall and all the clientele are basically female I noticed in like a reviews for like Google reviews a lot guys would be like complaining CU they don’t realize that
That’s what it is they think it’s just like a regular like just usual anime store they don’t realize it’s just for girls yes or meant for girls fors yeah yeah yeah yeah I mean you you can be a you can be a guy that’s into that but
It’s still very weird there actually no there was a fudi and the one that I went to and like I played it cool but in my heart I was like I was like thrilled I was like oh my God it’s a real fud the the thing is neither of us were really
Into that I mean in particular but we would just did you guys go on accident or it just like out of curiosity it it was on purpose he brought me there on purpose to get the catalog we were there to buy the catalog yes right but I don’t
Know why he brought me there when we could have gotten it elsewhere maybe it was just what was closest at the time I think so but I took Mr fangy into those fujo stores and he kept like asking me to explain things uhhuh and it was just I gave him like a
Boy love Ted Talk oh this that sounds it was special and then he went around finding books for me I’m I’m very curious about the other people in the shop if they gave Mr fangy any stairs they weren’t super populated like there’d be a couple girls like the one
Guy uhhuh um I didn’t really noce anyone staring but like people always said that like online like oh you know if you’re if you’re a different race and you go to Japan like people are going to stare at you and whatnot but we really really didn’t experience like that it was
Mostly the opposite where like people wanted to like avoid making eye contact and stuff I think well I it’s it’s it’s not so much that it’s more like you know it’s a Tomy Road this there there’s where all the fujos are and I I I feel
Like a guy in there unless they a fansi or somehow gives off fansi energy um it’s just awkward you know it I I felt see I feel like it’s different cuz like I get what you saying CU like before when I was in like the more guys
Oriented place I felt like I was making them uncomfortable I don’t think it’s the same really for like fujo areas cuz instead it’s like exciting like oh my gosh what if he is a fui like what if he likes this stuff that’s so cool I guess rather than feeling awkward I felt
Awkward I’m sorry I felt awkward because I I felt like there were a lot of girls just I okay I maybe it’s not because it’s one guy maybe because it was the fact that me and my friend oh yeah they were totally shipping you I bet
Sorry it might be that might have been it I think so that’s what I would be doing now you know he’s not my time I’m just going to say oh man though so like I experienced this at all stores in Japan really like trying to find specific titles is kind
Of difficult um when you don’t like read Japanese and like trying to figure out like the different uh organization Methods at each place like is this alphabetical how do they do it some of them are in some of them are in Kani they still do it like based off of like
You know the sound I don’t know um I got really good just like pointing at pictures on my phone and asking them if they had that thing oh yeah so I had to keep doing that in the mandak for boy love so I’m just like opening up like
Random like uh cover pages for various like boys love manga that are like super awkward and like asking like this middle-aged uh lady like do you have this what about this one they’re probably used to it but I I get you I get you yeah when they work in that
Store and it’s exclusively that stuff yeah but if it was kind of funny eventually I just got over I was like there’s no shame here no shame there’s no shame shame they they they they work there and uh you’re shopping there they get all sorts of people every day yeah
And I feel like if you work in that place you’re you’re probably okay with it probably probably it’s it’s just a thing though it it doesn’t make it feel any less awkward sometimes though no it doesn’t but I ended up finding like most of what I was looking for I filled up
Like half a suitcase oh good of manga nice nice it was like half a suitcase of manga one suitcase full of uh plushies and souvenirs for friends oh I ended up getting a shirt too one shirt yeah and shirao cuz um I don’t know if you know this do you know higashi
Yes um higashi the the town in there hinami zawa is based off of shirakawago um so there’s a ton of like higashi merch there and they have like a like an official like higashi shirao collab shirt so I got that nice I I did this I did the same thing
When I went to Saga uh have you seen Zombie Land Saga M okay is the Saga for Saga as what the Saga in the title is it referring to the location yes it’s Saga prefecture oh I always thought it was a saga like a story you know it also could
Be but it’s uh it’s first and foremost Saga prefecture um that’s funny I never knew that yeah but basically it’s the anime itself is half Idol anime half um advertisement for the area cuz it’s you know it’s kind of out there it’s kind of out there in the boonies um but they
Have this really local chicken restaurant I’m not sure if it it’s it’s like a chicken barbecue it’s kind of like it’s kind of like Yakiniku by chicken mhm I went I I traveled from Fukuoka to the location 4 hours one way just to eat at that place and got a
T-shirt from there also so I I feel you I feel you it must have been really good oh actually I do have one souvenir I’d like to show off oh sure let me get let me I’ll post it up top okay ah yes okay so this one wasn’t planned
It was just kind of spur the moment we were there this looks like cond huh is this cond no no no no um we had to take a train here okay for like half an hour uh this is the the stairs from the your name movie by Makai if you
If you’ve seen that I’ve seen I don’t remember it though yeah there’s a scene where at the end where the characters meet again on the staircase um and it’s based on a real Shrine and a real staircase so we went to that Shrine and I got pictures of
Like the stairs and stuff and they have the the Emma there featuring it with art from the show or from the movie rather I have a picture of the stairs too nice from above yeah I know okay so here’s the thing about Emma guys if you
Ever go to a shrine uh the the Emma plaes are typically something you would buy from the shrine shop write down your wishes and whatnot and hang it in the shrine so that you know uh your wish will come true your wish will come true and that sort of
Thing but no one is saying you can’t take it home with you so some what I’ve done a couple of times I have two Emma uh plaques in in my room right now from a couple of different shrines that were pretty memorable so it’s like I want to
Take this with me I don’t want to leave leave it there yeah I don’t know if it’s frowned upon but I I see other people doing it taking them home I don’t know my plan my plan is to use them as Christmas tree ornaments which fine I
Want to like get some at every Shrine that we go to in Japan and then over the years kind of like decorate my whole tree with them nice at least you have your thing okay that’s that’s a good plan my I don’t I don’t do the same
Thing with the with the Emma I’m not a huge Emma person unless it’s like super special what I do though is um there are stamps at oh the go the Goen is is that what it’s called I never I never knew I think so I think it’s
Called Goan okay I’m not sure what they what it it is in Japanese but I there uh in train stations and tourist spots generally there are stamps oh no I’m thinking sorry the thing I’m thinking of is at temples I think it’s like Buddhist temples you can go and like the priest
Will like sign something yeah yeah I I I yeah i’ I’ve seen that uh in a in a few places I’m not too interested in that to begin with but I I do know what you’re talking about it’s it’s a like a really fancy calligraphy from yeah from the
Shrine or Temple I think it’s mostly Temple difference between a shrine and Temple from what I understand is Shrine is typically for Shinto and they’re usually smaller yeah and Temple is Buddhist and they’re typically a little bit bigger and they have more stuff going on there
Too but yeah no uh the the stamps I’m talking about is like in train stations and tour spots uh you might find a stamp that um that has like a what do you call this it has a uh design that unique to the area or at least you know something that looks like
It might like let’s say you’re going to shirao and in shirao you find a stamp at the train station that shows like something that the town is unique for like the like the houses it might have a St stamp of that uh let me show you really quick what one
Of mine looks like yeah I want to see them so here’s one of mine I have like a book build of every single one I could find uh ever since I’ve been to Japan a it’s the deer yeah so in yakushima airport you can find this stamp
And you can have like a stamp book that you can put now are these free the stamps is it free to use them yeah it’s it’s generally free some of them might be gated behind like let’s say an an attraction oh yeah like admission yeah but in general in the train stations
These are free well that’s like a really fun free souvenir yeah it’s it’s a really fun free and like a nice way to remember the places mhm I have I have a book filled with them um I I can show you sometime uh but I’m G
To have to set up the camera and stuff but yeah it this you can have like a a small notebook with you uh 3×5 I think is big enough for the most part though some stamps are pretty big but you can have you can put in a stamp in your book
And collect all the places that you’ve been to kind of like a passport but you know it’s it’s um tourist spots in Japan and this is something that Japan does in a lot of train stations and tour spots in general where do you go to like in the train station
Like if you want to do this where would you take your book it uh usually there’s one close to the to the turn Styles mhm or if there’s not one near the turn Styles there might be one near the ticket booths and you can sometimes ask
The the people that are in the like booths and stuff if they have a stamp I’ve never personally done that uh but I in some places you that’s one way you can get them yeah I didn’t know about this when I was in Japan but like now that I do I
Feel like it’s something I want to do in the future I don’t know how I found I don’t remember how I found out about this but I ever since I found out about it and I did this also since my first trip I think no maybe it wasn’t the
First trip but I feel like I if I look at my book I might be able see something from the first trip but yeah you you they’re not too difficult to spot but you do have to look for them to right like if you don’t know it exists you
Probably wouldn’t notice yeah you wouldn’t notice now a lot of places with in the tourist spots especially will have like a pamphlet that you can stamp into uh like uh for that particular place but I generally don’t use those I use my own book for it to collect the
Stamps that way they’re all spot yeah get one that you like yeah cuz I know the pamphlet is going to get lost in in my uh treasury box and gone forever and this way you can have everything like together organized mhm I mean I do I do
Have my my loot box with all the s souvenirs that I’ve collected and I’m the same way but you know it says kind of nice having that other thing that’s easy to get to okay well I’m adding this to my list for thing to do next time nice um okay
Did you did you get any snacks for souvenirs at all I didn’t oh well I guess I got one snack that we brought home okay what’d you get uh CU we went to the Capcom store in sunshine City and they had like a Resident Evil candy that was like this is like the
Uh like the pills to undo zombism and our friend is a is a Resident Evil fan nice so we got them for him okay um but otherwise we didn’t really bring snacks home okay uh the one thing I had thought about bringing home was like when we
Were in alore they had like you know Apple sake and stuff and I was like oh that could be like a nice souvenir for like you know my in-laws or something but Mr F was all like no I don’t want to have like liquids in the suitcases like
What if something goes wrong and it breaks open I’ve I’ve done I’ve done the sakeet thing before and as long as you have like um have it wrapped between all your clothes like really really well it shouldn’t be an issue yeah even even in the even in the cheick
In luggage it shouldn’t be an issue also I think they do they wrap it they I think they also wrap it but you can also wrap it even more oh wait actually I did bring something else home what uh because we didn’t do the sake what I did
Do instead was Jam Jam we got a bunch of apple jam at the alore place nice we brought that back for my mom and my husband’s mom do you still have some left over did you bring no did you bring it for any for yourself we got it for
Family so I don’t know I don’t know if they’ve used it all yet or not okay I’m sorry I I need to check something really quick be right back sorry no problem all right everybody ruk is asleep time to cause chaos we’re taking over the channel FY pack rise
Up no everybody’s sleeping I usually stream earlier let’s see while ruka’s doing stuff real quick I can tell you guys some of my other tips that I came up with for firsttime travelers to Japan um some of this is like real basic stuff that like you’ve probably already
Heard if you do like Japan travel stuff like if you watch like uh foreigners in Japan YouTubers like any of those people like a brown Japan stuff like that you probably know this stuff but if not um some really basic stuff if you haven’t been in Japan before you might not know
Uh most places don’t have garbage cans there so like if you’re if you buy food and then you walk around you might not have a garbage can to put stuff in afterwards so you want to bring like a ziplock baggie or something with you and carry it in like your purse or your
Backpack to put garbage in otherwise you’re just going be stuck with garbage all day oh is it the can’t find the bin sorry oh yeah I was just I was just gonna tell people random tips while Stu what what are your five M five big tips
For Japan oh five big tips oh my gosh there’s a lot but a lot of stuff we already covered like carrying cash and uh Google lens and translate um some other stuff I wrote down uh 7-Eleven is where you want to go for using the ATM
Yes all they have is like a 200 yen fee um other places like at the airport you might end up uh wasting more money I think the the airport uh regarding that I suggest don’t using the physical money changer the the teller that’s what I’ve heard uh they do add a
Fee to that there is a ATM at the airport so you can use that there and also the the ATM at the airport and in the 711s you can also use that to charge a sua yep um other stuff uh this one I did not do but I
Learned about it during the trip okay um there’s something called Luggage foring in Japan oh I’ve never done this one but I’ve never done either I didn’t think I had to personally because we don’t carry much luggage um but one thing you can do is if you’re going to multiple hotels
During your trip you can pay the first hotel and the second hotel to like transfer the luggage between them so you don’t have to carry it you can just say hey Hotel one send this luggage to Hotel 2 and like pay a little fee and they’ll
Do it for you yeah so this one I I looked into this uh after this trip just because I was planning and still am planning a 3mon trip in Japan and the best use for this from what I gather is if you are going from hotel hotel a to
Hotel C and there’s a hotel B in between that you’re going to stay for a short amount of time but don’t really want to carry luggage too oh that’s um that’s a lot of text on the screen right now and I get it but um but but yeah that that’s the best
Use of what I’ve heard let’s say you are in Tokyo and are going to Fukuoka but you want to stop by in Hiroshima for a little bit but don’t want to take luggage over there so what you could do is from Tokyo send your luggage to uh Fukuoka where you’re going to be
Staying and then when you get to Hiroshima and for your one or two days over there you your luggage will be in um Fukuoka and hopefully by not hopefully by the time you get to your hotel it should be there you can schedule when it
Gets Dro off by the way so and that actually would have made sense for us to do this time because we went from like takayama to Tokyo and then to alori so we were just in Tokyo for like the one night in between yeah so it would have
Made sense there yeah I I think for what was your route this time we went to Tokyo we were there for like a week then we went to takayama for a couple days went back to Tokyo for a night went to alore for a couple days and then went
Back to Tokyo yeah I I I think in this case what you would have done if you used the luggage service was uh do it in takayama and have it been dropped in alori yeah I think so um one other really big tip that I think is relevant to most gamers and
Like anime fans uh I guess more Gamers so there’s a lot of retro game stores in akih Habra that you see a lot of videos about like everyone knows about like super potato yep um and like maybe you used to be able to get good deals there
That’s not the case right now the Retro Game Market in Japan or at least in like touristy places is really really bad like getting a Game Boy might cost you several hundred dolls or like they might sell a game at Super potato for $50 but
If you go online to surugaya you can get it for like three bucks ba basically they’re G it’s bad they’re marketing towards tourists yeah that there’s that also I think uh the prices are like whatever they sold initially right like release prices is what what they’re
Selling at I don’t think so you I think it’s higher probably I think it’s higher for lot yeah for a lot of it’s like expensive rro games like there was um a Serial experiments Lane game I think it was oh that’s maybe it was Lisa cubed
One of the games was like a th000 bucks it was like 15 or no 150,000 Yen I think oh that’s ridiculous I mean it’s also pric are it’s probably also like a super rare game so that would also add to it but like at other smaller retro game
Stores we found the same thing for like you know 50,000 less oh wow yeah um it’s mostly the Retro games that are the problem right now for like the high pricing like anime goods are not so bad but like if you buy anime plushies and like Pokemon Plushies in akih Habra
You know it might be like 10 bucks where or 10 or 15 bucks but when we were in takayama and we went to like the local thrift store it was just like dozens of Pokemon plushies for like 300 a piece yeah and I’m talking like large plushies
I actually have a picture real quick yeah so just because you’re in a vacation doesn’t mean you have to pay a premium do that bargain hunting it’s a good thing to do yeah I mean it depends on where you’re going like if you’re just in a big city then you you might
Have to pay like the higher price yeah but if you’re going to like these um like more rural places you can find really good deals if you want down I have the picture yeah so the thing is also it depends on what you’re looking for sometimes uh the souvenirs or things you
Want to buy may just be available in that area so you kind of have to suck it up sometimes and just pay the pay the premium yeah sometimes yeah sometimes if you scroll down though I have a picture of the thrift store in takayama uh you need to scroll down cuz
I Oh you mean oh wait you mean like oh you’re right cuz I’m wait no you’re controlling it yeah weird I you’re controlling it it’s like not updating I see plush okay I clicked back to Discord I see plushies oh they are showing off now yeah I I I I’ve been seeing plushies
Oh no you know what it is I think my YouTube video is behind ah okay that’s what it was okay okay yeah these are the plushies um yeah and like some of them are pretty darn big like that my melody is like like several feet big and that’s
300 Yen it’s a little hard to tell from the picture cuz it could be also yeah small but uh no they were pretty sizable and you know once you do the conversion it’s like two bucks you know what’s ridiculous the the dollar the 100 yen
Shops have you have you been to any of them we walked through one I didn’t end up buying anything yeah and they have some really neat stuff there that are end up being pretty useful for how much they cost i’ have you been to like Daiso
Daiso is the big one um yeah but there’s also some other Local 100 yen shops in other places like in yakushima there’s a 100 yen shop in a grocery store that I got like some calendars B let’s just say that would have cost me 20 bucks here for that same
Calendar and they only cost like 100 yen each it’s kind of ridic oh wow even like the dollar stores in America cost more than a dollar now yeah I mean rounded it’s rounded to the dollar right that’s Daiso is also the same way because if you go to their kitchen
Wear section uh some stuff is like 300 Yen 500 yen kind of thing yeah yeah I’ve been to a Daiso in America um things are definitely more than a dollar it’s definitely more than a dollar because import and all that stuff they can’t sell at Japanese prices
I wish they could but they don’t they can’t if you like sreo stuff though Daiso usually has a bunch of cute stuff that s like Cinema Roll My Melody and things like that yeah in in general though Daiso is a one of the only ways you will get
Like Japan HomeGoods to begin with in the US yeah what did I get from I got this um I got like socks for my chairs do you know about chair socks I have I have I have some of those too yes to like protect the floor yes I got some and
They’re shaped like little sheep enus m that the the paws and also cat paws I have some of those yeah yeah Daiso sold those I’ve never seen them before like in America we just have like here put like a little little like uh stick on cushiony thing on the bottom we don’t
Have socks they they they have those there in Japan too but the nice the nice thing is you have options yeah and some of them are really cute they have cute options yeah it it’s just it’s just you can shop for the most random stuff in Japan that you just can’t get anywhere
Else I feel I mean I think in Asia in general you can shop for the most random stuff that you can’t just get in the US because for some reason we just don’t Market cute around here I wish we did but we don’t the only quote unquote cute
Stuff we have is Funko pops and those are kind of ugly to be honest they’re creepy I don’t know if they’re creepy but they’re kind of ugly I only like one Funko pop it’s the dog meat one from Fallout I feel like when it’s not a
Human it can be kind of cute yeah but when it’s the humans they creep me out yeah I feel you it’s it’s just it’s a it’s a it’s a cult favorite I get it but it’s um it’s definitely not the Asian Japanese cute aesthetic that I am
Looking for because it’s not yeah and it’s like everything in Japan has that kind of stuff I was very surprised rised yeah like I knew that like I know like all different cities have like different like mascot characters and stuff like a lot of stores had like little mascots
And the train station had little mascots but it’s everywhere everything was cute even even the even the uh the warning signs are cute they are I saw one it was like a rabbit and he like R he like ran into like a pole or something the train
Station and dropped his carrot yeah and I was like that’s cute I that’s just that’s just something uh um you don’t see anywhere outside Japan maybe Taiwan has it I haven’t been in Taiwan but I hear Taiwan is pretty close in um that kind of design to Japan too
So it’s it’s it’s definitely an interesting place I how I mean despite everything that the sickness and stuff like that he hopefully you did you enjoy it as much as you expected to I guess yeah I mean I I really loved it by the end I was like ready to come home but
Honestly it was only cuz I missed my dog ah that makes sense like if I could bring my dog with me I think I could stay there a long time and just be happy yeah if uh if Japan ever does the digital Nomad thing you could bring your
Dog but I think there’s a lot of checks for your dog before it can be uh oh yeah whenever you do like pets internationally stuff like that they have to make sure like you’re not bring any kind of like diseases over and things like that the big thing for your
Dog I think in Japan uh if I’m not mistaken is definitely has to be rabis free had the rabis shot and I think your dog has to be tagged also well our dog does have all that stuff luckily okay but anyway well we’ll we’ll keep an eye out on that um what do
You calls the digital Nomad digital Nomad stuff I think for me the only way I’ll be able to work in Japan is if I start vlogging over there and I just you know can sponsor my myself as a vlogger and live there yeah I think you got to do
Something like that like be self-employed or work remotely unless you learn Japanese and then you can like try and apply at Japanese companies that that that’s do you want to that’s the thing yeah that that’s its own other thing yeah I I wouldn’t mind probably doing it for like a Hospitality or
Tourist thing I think that’s I think that’s that I’m I would be okay with that I mean there’s probably a market for like tour guides that speak both languages and stuff like that yeah I I think you have to be certified as a tour guide which I didn’t
Even know was thing oh really yeah they had the tour guide certification apparently oh that’s interesting I kind of wish when we were in Shero I kind of wish they had a tour guide that like knew all the different anime locations and stuff I was kind of
Surprised that wasn’t like an option CU I was looking at like the shago website and like they had like list of like tour guys and stuff I feel like uh um as much as anime likes to feature a lot of real life places in Japan um there’s really no tour guide
For that specifically but I feel like there could be a market for it there is a market for foreign tourists for foreign tourists I think there is a market for it but you would have to like spread them throughout everywhere and not all locations are equally popular
You know what I mean no no of course not um so that I think around the Mount Fuji area with Euro Camp I think that’s pretty doable shirao is a hot spot so I think that’s also doable but random places like Saga prefecture for Zombie
Land Saga may be a little bit iffy even though it is a cast classic and in hioki next to alori for flying witch that’s also a little bit iffy but yeah it have to be something big it we have something big like may but it’s still like you
Know it can it’s doable but I think it’s also a little tough I also feel like a lot of people who do anime pilgrimages that that um kind of do it themselves to be honest they they like going out there and getting the specific shots and just being there yeah for me
Though like when I first started planning the trip um it was very hard finding information about where the locations were and really it was like a month before we went when someone posted they compiled an entire like Google map of all the locations where I was like
Okay this is what I’ve been looking for all along yeah like this is why I wanted a tour guide yeah just just because uh someone also has taken all the pictures it’s still different from you actually being there and actually oh yeah this this is it this is there’s the place
Kind of thing oh yeah definitely it’s like some like it’s kind of it’s kind of the same question like why would 20 million people take the same picture of the Eiffel Tower the same picture of the Eiffel Tower that you can see anywhere but the here’s the
Thing you went there you you went there so it’s your picture and it’s your experience kind of thing so that’s that that’s kind of I feel like it’s kind of the same thing with the the the pilgrimages and stuff yeah it helps to have a map because sometimes
It’s like really hard to find certain places yeah I mean that’s that’s what I needed really like there’s some locations I didn’t go to where it’s like uh so like I don’t know if you remember in higashi there’s a dam and that’s kind of like one of the sources of like is
The dam actually there or is that or is that somewhere else it’s a real Dam yeah okay it’s a real Dam that like uh you know they ended up like taking over like a town or something or whatever and have like Clos some people’s houses and and
Stuff like that okay so I was in a different spot but it’s in a different spot it’s like half an hour away or something like we we didn’t drive so okay I was like I don’t really want to make that walk but like that’s a thing
Where like I kind of would need a Google map to get there all right well let’s see I think I asked you everything I want wanted to ask you and I know we could keep going forever there just yeah it’s fun to talk about there’s it’s it’s it’s just nice
To talk about uh with someone especially just trying to compare no and um what what you saw what you expected that kind of thing so yeah I think like you know Lessons Learned or mistakes made oh yeah I prevent other people I still made mistakes even during this trip and this
Is my fifth time to Japan so oh yeah I’m sure there’s always going to be mistakes hopefully you can learn a little each time yeah yeah I think uh my maybe not my biggest mistake but the one mistake I didn’t realize until after I was
Done not the trip but I went to a public Cento and I basically just went up to the the counter paid my money and I think I there was a little confused face with the person at the at the counter which like I didn’t think about it at
The time but after I got out I saw there was a vending machine by the entrance oh yeah and I didn’t realize it was there cuz I didn’t see it I didn’t think to look for it but when I thought about the um when I thought about
The public onon I went to earlier oh yeah I did use a vending machine there but it was like right in front of me so I saw that but I didn’t see the other one I saw those vending machines a lot at like restaurants M how I wouldn’t I
Wouldn’t have thought to look for one at asento though you’re right yeah how how’ you how how do you feel about the vending machines for the tickets uh I kind of like it cuz you know socially awkward person not having to talk to people and a lot of them would have
Pictures of the food too which is nice yeah the only issue I had was that um some of those machines wouldn’t accept our bills because the bills that we got got from like the ATMs and places were too large like we had like some 50 we had some like uh
5,000,000 yeah and they wanted like 10,000 Yen or 1,000 yen sorry yeah so here’s here’s the thing also though a lot of those uh restaurant uh what do you call this restaurant vending machines don’t use the sua or credit cards so yeah so just keep that in mind that that’s the reason
Why you want cash with you yep yep that’s where we use cash a lot that’s where that’s where you use cash um it’s just having and you want you want small bills if you can get those 1,000 yen notes I mean they will take even a
10,000 Yen bill for a 500 yen purchase in a convenience store it it sounds awkward but they will accept that and I’m not sure if you’ve seen this also sometimes they’ll wait for you to pull out any extra coins or whatnot that you want to get rid of while you clearly
Have enough money on the plate um because you trying to get rid of the smaller coins especially the one yen coins is difficult so sometimes they’ll a lot of times actually they’ll wait for you to see if they if you pull out more coins from your from your purse and
Before asking if that’s how much you wanted to pay like like let’s say I have I put 10,000 Yen down already but I wanted to get rid of some coins that would actually make the small part of the the bill let’s say five 55 Yen and I put
Five other coin five other Yen down apart from the 10,000 they would still take that gotcha I just I just like putting it into the sua machine the Su machine drop all the coins in sua machine is also fun even the most mundane things seem a
Little bit fun over there right I don’t know why oh even like like uh on the trains and like everything is like a nice little jingle it does okay speaking of the jingle did you go to a donkey we did oh my gosh the song yep did how did you feel about the
Song after being in there for a while were you still okay with it or did it start to annoy you or did it did you just didn’t think about I tuned it out I tuned it out but we were definitely like jokingly singing it to each other later
It it it it does it’s very catchy but I also can’t imagine the people working there having to be in that environment the entire day yep yep donkey donkey kind of thing yeah It it’s it’s overwhelming at first it’s like oh it’s neat and then gets overwhelming and it’s then you just tune it out after a while because otherwise it’s just too much it’s not just donkey either it’s Al it’s no but I definitely remember other stores having some little Jingles too
Yeah um Yoda Bashi is bad about it big camera is also bad about it no regular shops don’t have it 7-Eleven doesn’t have it I think I think 7-Eleven in the convenience stores usually have some sort of music playing I don’t remember any something less annoying something a lot less
Annoying though I did appreciate every time it’s like and then when leaving a restaurant especially uh whatever they say to say goodbye to you I did appreciate that so there’s just a a lot of sound kind of nice yeah there’s a lot of sound cues
That you’re not used to in the US or most places I guess that you run into Japan and at first it’s sounds weird but if it feels weird but then you kind of appreciate it even the the beep of the um The Pedestrian walking thing the walking light pedestrian lights I do
Appreciate a little bit oh yeah I’m in Japan it’s kind of wild um I guess if you’ve ever been in like an American city and then you go to Japan it’s like everyone obey the the traffic lights like if it says you can’t walk now nobody walks
There’s no J yeah meanwhile here it’s like if it’s clear and it’s red I’m still walking most people oh yeah yeah which is also kind of dangerous anyway but and like my husband wanted to walk I’m like no we are not moving stop we will not be those people stop
Stop he’s like it’s 8:00 p.m. there’s no one else around I’m like no we can’t do it stop we can’t be the stereotypical tourists no you must obey every single light even if there’s no one there it could be dead in the night they still obey those
Lights I it’s just like I’m so paranoid after like all like the bad publicity some like uh foreign YouTubers have gotten yeah Johnny Somali and people like that my best behavior those are super egregious and I’m but I get it I get it it’s it does paint uh visitors in the
Bad light even though it’s it’s like but we’re not them it doesn’t matter yeah that you may not think of it this way but the one thing I don’t like about Japan but it is a reality you just kind of have to deal with is that stereotypes
Are a thing and uh uh if one person is bad about it it kind of paints everyone the same as that person in a bad light so yeah that’s why I like try and be extra good yeah so just just keep that it’s it’s it doesn’t sound it doesn’t
Sound fair but that’s just how it is that’s just how it is I okay real quick um I was so upset on the shansen one of the guys a guy stand next to me oh it was a Japanese guy and he left his garbage he left his
Garbage in his seat and I was like you can’t do that buddy like people are going to cuz you left and I was like people don’t think it’s mine cuz I’m the person so like I quickly grabbed his garbage I put it in the garbage can I
Don’t think I’ve ever seen like I tried to get his attention I’m like I’m like s m and he just like waved his hand at me I’m like it’s your garbage please I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before that’s that was really weird when you first saw I was shocked horrified even
I was like how dare you free me I get it though that’s never happened to me but it it’s surprising it’s surprising that it does happen I I think he just didn’t really think about it we made eye contact I pointed at that garbage oh you
You pointed it yeah I was like I was like oh and I pointed at him he just like ignored me he didn’t ignore me he like looked at me and like waved his hand like don’t worry about it and I’m like no I’m worried okay there there are there are
Weird things that happen like that every once in a while it’s rare but it does happen gosh it is 11: though I know you said you work tomorrow I I I do I just I just want to I just want to share this one weird thing that’s do happened which
Is it’s less weird more no it is weird we you know how PDA is in Japan oh public displays of inection yes yeah like it doesn’t happen typically yep yep I saw the most annoying this PDA ever on a bus ride from a train station all the way to like a
Temple right in front of me a couple that basically were just kind of flirting each other it’s like pretty overtly it’s like really guys in front of me what yeah Japan’s not really the country to do that in no but they’re Japanese that’s surprising I know
Right but uh I don’t know it’s like I never thought I would actually see this like what the heck is going on in the most Rand I don’t think I saw I don’t think I saw like any Japanese couples like holding hands or anything oh you’re
There yeah I it it it does happen once in a while but you don’t really notice it for the most part I will say though everything’s more relaxed outside of Tokyo I feel like a little bit more relax and even more relaxed if you go towards off the mainland
From go go down all the way to kushu go all the way up in Hokkaido they’re generally more relaxed than they are in Tokyo for some reason but it’s nice it’s nice I I appreciate it I appreciate it anyway uh yeah that’s that’s kind of how
That’s kind of what we have for today thank you everyone for listening to the random stuff hope you learned something new hope you um found something interesting from that so any last any last words uh Last Words any anything oh my is what is this an
Execution yeah let me let let me get my knife really quick anyway um oh no I did get a knife from Japan um not this trip the the trip before I heard a lot of people do that they have nice like Cutlery I it’s a really nice not Cutlery
But like kitchen knives yeah it’s a really nice kitchen knife super nice super sharp I only okay you don’t okay you don’t need to tell tell me that I’m starting to feel more threatened I mean h how much does um crypted um you know body parts so I wonder uh guys
Help anyway uh yeah is nice words yeah um any any anything else you want to share before we end today Japan’s really fun uh if you can go you should please please go if you can and go for at least 2 weeks anything shorter I feel like it doesn’t make any
Sense unless you’re in Asia just because you lose a lot of time in like Transit a lot of time so like try and at least try and make sure you have a full week in Japan yeah like after landing yeah if you can I know not everyone it’s hard
Because in America not everyone has like that much time off and stuff like that but if you can definitely do it yeah I’m I I’m planning to make some um videos as far as general tips and things I’ve noticed are different from this trip compared to previous trips I still need
To get on that um yeah I mean things I mean things are a bit different like post or like pandemic too post like masking was still a big thing in Japan when we were there it was I I didn’t it’s really not in the US I didn’t mask
Actually during the during the trip I probably should have at that one particular point you know which one I’m talking about it was because of it was because of that we got sick But I it is what it is but yes stuff is a little different now it’s not too it’s not too drastically different from before the pen before the pandemic started but it is the big thing is the Retro Game prices don’t go to super potato don’t do it yeah don’t don’t do
That I mean you can go to look around but like price check stuff on online guys always price check the yeah I was also looking for cameras and most of the cameras I wanted to check out were sold out because they were like super popular my the the camera that I had
That broke that was one of them so yeah I think it’s just that everyone’s going now after um you know things have opened back up and there’s just like a huge boom of tourists and everything selling out in the big areas in the cities yeah it’s like if you wanted to get some
Really high quality Japanese Goods now is the time to do it honestly now was the time to do it before it’ be like think twice because it’s expensive now it’s not so expensive anymore yeah at least because of the the weaker Yen the weaker Yen anyway that’s all we got just make
Sure it’s not like a tourist trap kind of thing oh beware of tourist traps though it’s a little hard to figure out what’s a tourist trap and what’s not over there to be honest at least for me that’s definitely true if it’s like your first time even
Like too much about it yeah especially if it’s your first time I mean a lot of stuff that you find in souvenir shops you have to ask yourself am I going to find the same thing in the next souvenir shop I find and we definitely noticed
That at places yeah and 90% of the time is the answer is yes so especially around Tokyo however if you go outside of Tokyo there’s definitely some Regional stuff that you’re not going to find in Tokyo so keep an eye on those those are the
Ones you want to get if you want to keep anything or at least you know buy buy it when you’re there because you’re not going to see it again but still ask yourself do I really want this because you can you only have so much luggage space the the ve the
Limiting factors of luggage space but if you do end up buying too much you can buy new luggage cases at donkey hot you could also if you really really want to um ship it Japan post that works too like it can get it’s like the UPS
You know uh get a box there put everything in there ship it back home kind of thing I have heard of people doing that yeah I was a little too intimidated it’s I I’ve been I’ve been there once for a different thing and it’s not bad it’s not bad they um you
Know just have Google Lens handy just in case but it’s not it’s not that well anyway that’s all we have time for today I got to end for now we we went for a lot longer than than than we expected um yeah that was four hours hour we were originally planning to but
Thanks thanks for coming coming by thanks for listening if you have any questions if you have any questions or comments for us uh please leave them in the comments after the stream is over and uh we’ll try to get to them as be and answer them as best as we can
Afterwards um I’m planning to make some videos and such still have to plan them out and actually make them and put them here but hopefully those would also help you um do you have anything you want to promote while you’re here fangy me okay I want a promotion okay uh come
Check me out on twitch.tv/ fangy I’m normally not on YouTube but Ruka invited me on over thank you for having me here Ruka yeah no problem uh also if you want to see Fang’s information it’s in the description below so check that out hot damn okay all right we’re going off for
Now see you everyone have a good rest of your day and byebye bye-bye good good Night