being home

Bear with me while I update this page! Major overhaul coming soon i hope.. It's true, I really fell off with the daily entries! But I still have lots more I want to share, so I'll work on archiving it now that I'm home! In the meantime, you can check out the videos I put out. The are mostly compilations of clips and I hope to publish some more content for Taiwan and Japan! That's all for now, thanks for reading!

Shizuoka

We spent the night in Shizuoka, which was cuter than our wildest dreams. We went to a fantasy themed cafe that was one of the coolest spots ive been. Today we rented a car and now we are in the Kiso mountains ! We plan on sleeping in the car at a rest stop tonight and doing some exploring early in the morning tomorrow. We are in a pass that was a main passage used by travelers to go from tokyo to kyoto on foot hundreds of years ago!

Birthday

Its my birthday today! We did so much fun stuff. First, we went to a storybook- themed cafe in osaka. It was filled with storybook characters, and the food was really cute!! We booked a matcha making class at 3 in Uji, one of Japans major tea growing towns. The class involved using a heavy stone mill to turn tencha tea leaves into matcha powder. It was interesting to learn about the processes of preparing tea. The matcha we prepared was delicious! We came back to our hotel to take a little rest (and drink some sake we had picked up in nearby Nara, where sake originates from!) Honestly we felt really sleepy but powered through to get a nice sushi dinner. It was a bit of a fiasco finding the place-- there were several bars and restaurants with same/similar names in the same building. It took some searching, but we came to a nondescript door and slid it open to a restaurant. Our coats were taken and we were sat down in this very nice establishment. When it came time to look at the menu, there was no sushi on it! We tried to piece it together.. "well the name is the same.." "but theres no sushi case!" "the seats look different than on google maps maybe..?" Several waiters came to ask us many times if we were ready to order or needed anything, until i got the courage to show them the photos of sushi on the google maps listing of the places we were trying to go! They really didnt speak much english. They told is that that restaurant is not this one, essentially, and we were embarrassed and wanted to get out of there. After being handed our coats back, and handed a complimentary brownie in a gift bag, we were ushered back out into the elevator. Once we got down to 1F again , out of the corner of my eye i saw the chef guy and thought, that is strange.. did he run down the stairs while we were in the elevator? Then he was beckoning us to follow him and we were like omgggg. He walked us down the street, into a different building, to the front of the sister restaurant, went in, requested our seats for us, and then left. I think Raven was a little mortified. The meal was really nice, omakase style sushi :) with beers and miso and veggie tempura and they even made some veggie rolls for raven. The food was good, but it was more than a little silly getting there. To wrap up the evening we decided to get a nightcap, the bar scene is really interesting in osaka. We essentially went to a giant building with small, office sized rooms filled with bar after bar. The bars often cant seat more than 5 people. We decided upon a storybook themed bar by chance and it was really well executed. Gab bar has been there for 14 years! Its filled with hungry hungry caterpillars and other beloved creatures. The owner had made a custom menu in the style of a storybook. It was nice to have a drink there before bed.

nara

We took a day trip to nara, famous for the nara deer. It was interesting to see them everywhere. They really do bow to you!! Though some of them look more like theyll ram you... We didnt feed any, but they were fun to look at. We went to a shrine and i got a piece of calligraphy done (i am trying to collect stamps and calligraphy from all the shrines) and then we went to another temple, which was really beautiful as well.. hundreds of stone statues that they light candles in on special occasions. The sake tasting was probably the highlight for me, the man operating the business was really funny. We tried 5 different sakes, all of them from local small breweries. It was only about $1.50 to $2 per glass. Sake has its origins in Nara! We ended up buying a bottle of our favorite.

tatami mats

We stayed at a traditional japanese guesthouse and took a tatami mat marking workshop to make our own mini tatami mats. Went out to eat for the first time in japan, nerves were crazy but the food was so worth it. I love udon!