February 2017: Japan was the first leg of my journey. It was great because I had a friend here already, and I was able to stay at his house for free. So it was basically spending the next 2.5 weeks living in Kobe Japan and tagging along with Mickey’s new life. Right after getting there Mickey’s friend Taka, who also happened to spend a year studying in Missouri, picked me up from the Osaka airport. We got to Kobe and I got to see Mickey long enough to get his key. His apartment is in a great location, where you get to look out the living room windows right into the mountains. I couldn’t ask for a better place to stay. Seriously, this is what I got to stare at every morning with my cup of coffee 😃

I didn’t buy the JR pass, which is roughly $280 for 7 days of unlimited use on the high-speed trains. I thought it would be too expensive and I didn’t want to be constantly gone every single day. All in all, I am not sure I saved all that much money, because I still had to use local trains every place I went. I will look at that later when I get a better sense of all my expenses. But I did a lot of exploring nearby cities!

2/4/17: First order of business was Kyoto. We went to the bamboo forest, and fed some monkeys, obviously.

Please note, unless you like drinking liquefied cigarette ashes, don’t buy that tea. To me, it tasted exactly like what cigarettes smell like. I wasn’t a fan. In other news, it is very bizarre when these little macaques grab your hand. It is so human like!

Then we enjoyed a great yakiniku meal with new Aussie friends! This is where you get to order unlimited meats and cook it right there at the table. I am pro-yakiniku.

2/5/17: Alas, the Golden Temple in Kyoto. It was beautiful and gold-looking and made for a great reflection on the water.

2/6/17: You use a lot of coins when you pay in Yen, and I did not have a coin purse. I found this gem at the 100 yen store. Which is like the dollar store but better because they have these.

2/6/17: My new friend Taka took me to Osaka for the night. Dontonburi street is just filled with food stands, restaurants, souvenir shops, anything else you can imagine.

When we got there Taka said I must try the Takoyaki. It is essentially fried balls stuffed with Octopus. It goes excellently with a glass of beer.

After dinner we went to a club. Clubs are cool because it is free for women to get in, and then they get free drinks. Definitely a win/win situation for women everywhere. It was also a Monday night and the only other person in there was one man who was having the time of his life on the dance floor. It made for a good show.

2/7/17: Chinatown in Kobe is really cool. They have mango milk tea which tastes like heaven.

They have these dogs everywhere just chilling that I think makes for some pretty neat pictures.

2/8/17: I went to the Himeji Castle. It is very white and very old (1333). This one was really neat though because the inside was actually preserved, and you could walk through the inside (sans shoes of course) and see all the wood interior that has been preserved. This is the largest and most visited castle in Japan. I can see why.

2/10/17: Took a trip back to Osaka to check out the Osaka Castle. Incredibly gorgeous of course. The inside has since been gutted and turned into a museum with a lot of old artifacts and history. Very cool looking at things that are older than my country’s existence.

This is a cool view of the city from the top of the Castle’s observation deck:

2/11/17: Mickey and I went to Nara because I wanted to become bffs with some deers. They really love you if you buy them cookies and give them all of the cookies. They like you less when you share with other deer. And if they had antlers, they will be aggressive and head butt you until you give them all the cookies. Or I suppose run the other way.

I’m not sure which one of us is Lady and which one of us is Tramp. Jury’s still out.

Then sometimes your friend waits patiently all day for you to reach into his bag and ice yourself. Did you know people all over Thailand drink these as a drink, and not just to ice people? Who knew.

2/14/17: Got to spend Valentines day with this hunk. I naturally tried making chocolate covered bacon, and turns out Japan doesn’t have American bacon, so it tasted like I slathered chocolate all over ham. Doesn’t work quite as well and I definitely didn’t serve that. We went to all you can eat shabu shabu. You order the type of broth you want in the pot and then order as much meat and veggies as you want. Very tasty.

For dessert I opted for the strawberry red bean ice cream sandwich. Usually when I eat ice cream, i prefer it to be without beans. However, I guess Japan knows what it’s doing because this was delicious and I couldn’t really tell that there were beans.

2/15/17: Sometimes it may take you 2 separate tries to figure out where to go on your hike. Turns out in Japan, the trail signs are in Japanese. I had no idea. But sometimes you get smart though and look up what the mountain you are trying to summit looks like in Japanese. This is how I was able to make it on the second try.

Then sometimes, despite people telling you you won’t have enough time to make it to the summit of Mount Rokko, you go there anyway and then get terrified that you won’t make it down in time before the sun sets and will be stuck in the Japanese jungle alone without a light, so you sprint the entire way down the mountain. But you miraculously make it down in time and watch the sunset!

2/16/17: There are days you forget you have a self-timer on your phone, so you get all fancy and try to take a picture of yourself. Then you get this and remember why you don’t try to use the self-timer on your phone.

2/18/17: For my last evening in Japan, Mickey and I were determined to watch the sunrise over the city, on the helipad of his old apartment building. This is the view we got. We started the evening with some Chinese food and lots of beer. We then continued on to other bars and finally went to my first karaoke bar! It was definitely worth the wait and a shame that I had only gone to one karaoke bar the entire time I was in Japan. Then there were 3 of us, and even though we may have taken a quick power nap in the stairwell, the mimosas and this view was so worth it. 😃

So happy to get to spend so much time living with Mickey in Japan. Met a ton of his friends and got to explore many different parts of the city. Also, I know how to ask for the check in Japanese and order 2 more beers, so I can definitely get by the next time I’m back. Kanpai!🍻