DEEPLY MISCELLANEOUS HIGHLIGHTS FROM MY TRIP TO JAPAN

Overview

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Toyko

This is where I was for most of my trip! I adored Tokyo, it was nonstop fascinating things to discover and check out. I went a ton of places; Shinjuku, Shibuya, Ueno, Akihabara, Odaiba... I went to 7 art museums too, haha. Favorite parts were the Museum of Contemporary Art & getting tipsy in a tiny bar in the gay district with my friends - we stumbled across it as sanctuary from downpour & it was perfect. X
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Sendai

Sendai was mostly a hub to go to other places, like Matsushima. We played Mario Party w/ folks at our hostel, socializing with hostel folks is always a good time!! X
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Morioka

An unlucky many-hour delay to our bullet train meant we were only here for a bit. Very beautiful views; also, we did an udon eating challenge. I ate 43 bowls, my friend ate nearly 80 somehow! X
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Aomori

Stopped here for a day, went on a guided tour of the Sannai-Maruyama Site with folks in the JET program. Also went to one of the best art museums I've been to, the Aomori Museum of Art X
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Hakodate

A nice seaside town, structured in a Western style cause it was the first port opened to foreign trade. Has one of the best night views in Japan, I got to ride a cable car up a mountain for it! X
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Matsushima

An archipelago of around 260 islands; took a boat tour, then checked out some cool sites nearby. X

🐧 Don Quijote 🐧

The first store I wandered into was a Don Quijote, which was immediate sensory overload. And also gave me a kinda skewed idea of what other stores in Japan would be like. Blaring music, videos playing everywhere, and a labyrinthian structure had me stumbling around looking for sunscreen for nearly two hours.

One of my friends also told me about this enamel repairing toothpaste only available in Japan, and I looked for that too, but I couldn't read the differences on any of the tubes, so I gave up on that.

That's me!

That's Mario!

Lucky Pierrot

Lucky Pierrot is this weird chain in Hakodate that serves "American style" hamburgers. And let me tell you, Japanese-style American food is bizarre. Like, french fries served out of a cup that you eat with a fork. Or neat fushion foods like Pork Cutlet burgers.

Each of the 17 different restaurants have a different theme, and the one we ate at, of course, had an angel theme. The walls were filled to the brim with paintings of angels.

Other shops

This was a tourist-y shop near Ueno, with HUGE displays for a bunch of different franchises. I tend to not get franchise-y trinkets for myself, but the raw amount of Kirby was pretty snazzy.

A huge electric goods store, it had at least 6 stories if I recall correctly. Not as wild as Don Quijote, but still BLAHHH advertisements in your face everywhere.

A really cool retro games store my friend brought me to in Akihabara. We tried to find Umineko merch but to no avail throughout Akihabara. Though the sidequest I succeeded at was that I went to a gay store near Ueno to buy furry doujin, just to say I did so, basically.

I found him

Aomori-ken by Yoshitomo Nara at the Aomori Museum of Art

I saw this dog on tumblr years ago. I didn't know he would be here!!! But then I saw him!!!!!!!!




this one over here by Tomoko Konoike --->