Japan Adventure

Hello all! It's been a long time and so much has happened since my last update. I apologize. I got caught up in some vacation laziness and Korean dramas. I did catch up on several TV shows, so there's that. Now, the many events of the last few weeks. I know I won't be able to cover it all since I waited so long to blog, but here's a long overview of the last few weeks.

Before my epic adventures in Japan, I had to finish out the school year. Our semesters are different here than in the USA, so school ends in February and the new year starts in March. 

Friday the 13th was graduation, and I had to say goodbye to the most wonderful group of 6th graders I could have ever asked to work with for my first semester here. Before the ceremony, the class that is right next to my classroom was all in my classroom so they could surprise Seul, their teacher. While they were using my room, they left me and So Jung a bunch of notes and a poster wishing us well.

I'm not crying, you're crying...

I honestly wasn't expecting much since I was only here for a semester, but man do I love these kids.

I cannot express how much I love those students. I watched them all graduate and it was fun and beautiful and difficult. I get attached really easily, and these kids were awesome and fun to work with. I hope my other students continue to be awesome.

After graduation it was quite a flurry of people leaving and fun. For our best 6th grade class on our last day we made "nutella crepes" 

the boys got a little crazy.

The girls were artists. They had a lot of fun.

Anyway, we had a lot of nutella, bananas, and tortillas left over, so So Jung and Su Hyeon and I were making them for the subject teachers. It was fun! Then So Jung had to leave to go on a retreat with the 6th grade teachers, so I had lunch with the 5th grade teachers and got to present my ingenious food craft to them. Honestly they kept telling me how great it was and how wonderful of a cook I was, and I was like uhhhh it's nutella on a tortilla with some bananas and marshmallows. I mean, it was pretty delicious. 

After lunch, I left early to prepare for the trip. I had already pretty much packed, but I had a lot of little things to take care of.

I got some ddeokbokki from the stand near my apartment to bring over to Tina's. The buses are stupid and it took like almost an hour and a half to get there, but it was okay. Little did I know that our travels would not always be smooth.

Sarah, Tina and I slept at Tina's apartment since she's really close to the airport railroad. "Slept" is a loose term because 3 girls getting ready to go to Japan for the first time eating a Tiramisu cake before an early flight means that we did not sleep much. We thought it would be fine, which it was, but oh man did we need our strength.

Our flight was at 8:40, and we got to the airport a bit before 7. The only way we could have gotten there earlier was by taxi or by the very early bus that we weren't familiar with, so we made the best decision for us.

Unfortunately, that was the day the Incheon, voted "Nicest airport in the world," decided to not be nice to us. It was SOOOOOOO crowded. We were checked in about an hour before our flight, but the lines to get through security were insane. 

Long story short, it was a nightmare. We had to take a little tram to our terminal and then our gate was at the end of said terminal. With a lot of sprinting and rushing through all of the immigration checkpoints, basically shoving Koreans out of the way because of their annoying propensity to spread out over everything and be in the way, yelling "excuse me" and more sprinting as the flight attendant unhelpfully says "hurry your flight leaves soon," we made it to our gate. Late, but there, nonetheless. 

The rest of the flight was pretty good. We couldn't eat breakfast as we had planned since our airport adventure was such a close call, so no motion sickness medicine for Tina and rumbly tummies for all of us. The descent into Tokyo was nauseating, but we managed without incident. 

WE WERE FINALLY IN TOKYO!!!

Almost.

Everyone had warned us that the Japanese level of English is not good and that we would have trouble. Strictly speaking, this is not true. We found the people to be helpful and wonderful, and able to communicate really well. The signs, however, not so much. Very confusing. They would point in one direction then disappear when you needed to continue. After some struggles finding out train, we made it! After having lunch, of course, we were on out way. 

The train seats were so bouncy and comfortable. It felt like a couch, not a subway bench. This proved to be true of all of the subways. SO comfortable and more spacious than Seoul. And when people piled in or shoved into you, which rarely happened, they actually apologized, something we aren't used to in Korea.

Seriously, Japan is like the Canada of Asia. They apologize for everything, they're super nice, and really polite. It was awesome. And even though we got a lot of attention for being foreigners, it felt different than in Korea. Japan is a different kind of foreigner friendly (in that they are really friendly) but surprisingly anti-foreigner too.  While we were on the train from the airport, a man about to go down the stairs looked into the train, saw us, stopped for a few seconds to stare at each of us individually, then went on his way. The word for foreigner in Japanese is "Gaijin," and I think we heard it exactly 0 times while we were in Japan. In Korea, the word for foreigner, "waygookin" is such a joke because we hear it so much. I was in the elevator of my building and a mother and son were talking about me in these terms. Or we hear it in places where there are lots of foreigners and it shouldn't be a surprise to see us. In Japan, it felt less obvious that we were foreigners. People stared at us or said things about us, sure, but no one was as blatant as Korea. I suppose some of it might have to do with us living in Korea and desiring to be accepted as residents while we were only visiting Japan that it grates on us to be called out in Korea, but it also feels a lot more welcoming to not have the word thrown at you all over the place. We get it, we're foreigners. Ya think? We couldn't tell. 

Our Hostel was amazing. it was in Asakusa, which had a lot of good connection points to the areas in the city we wanted to see. We wandered around our area a bit once we finally got to our destination in Tokyo. We got some food on the temple grounds of Sensō-ji, and made our way over to the Skytree.

The Tokyo Skytree, where you can be in the tallest tower in the world and see so far!

Unfortunately, the skytree had delays of up to 3 hours due to high winds, and we were too winded ourselves to wait that long. We made our way through the temple and shopping area near our hostel and then settled on Denny's for dinner. By settled I mean we excitedly and animatedly chose to eat there despite it having no similarities to American Denny's beyond the name. We split a stack of pancakes for dessert that we ate in an impressive 2 minutes. 

DENNY'S OMG NOM NOM NOM

After our exhausting journey, we decided to chill at the hostel and plan the rest of our days. Our hostel had a bar and gave us a free tasting of sake and plum wine, both of which are excellent. We settled in with some strange snacks too, like vending machine french fries, pizza chips that legitimately had cheese on them, and other delicacies. Japan's snack game is really strong. 

I do declare, the snacks here are stupendous. Indubitably. 

The next day we got off to an early start by fueling our bodies with traditional Japanese Meiji era Mcdonalds. We make a point to try the fast food places in any country we go to because they are so different. Korean options are limited, but Japan gave us a taste of joy we had thought only existed in the USA:

THE MCGRIDDLE THE HOLY GRAIL OF BREAKFAST SANDWICHES

I know. You're like "You went all the way to Japan for a McGriddle?" It's only been 6 months since I've been in the USA and have had one, but for Tina and Sarah, it's been three times that long. And some things from home just hit you. So we had them like 3 times that week and I am not the least bit ashamed.

Anyway, after our fuel we made our way out to see the Imperial Gardens.

Lovely Tokyo Station. And that girl who looks like me.

 This introduces us to two of our major travel problems of Japan.

First, the subway. Here, Seoul is superior to Japan. In Tokyo, the different lines are owned by different companies, so it's hard to get around. It's confusing. At one stop you can have several different lines, but they are all at different stations. So if you have to go from the silver line to the red line, you might have to wander for like a mile outside to find the other line. Also, the rates change based on distance, which is not unusual, but these ones jump up a lot. The cheapest was about $1.50 for like one stop, but it was sometimes like $3 to go not super far. In Seoul you can get across town and back for about that much. We were able to avoid this problem in Osaka with a day pass and in Kyoto by using a day pass with the bus, but man did we miss this part of the subway from Korea. Though the overall etiquette and space and comfort was much better in Japan, the confusion and cost was a big factor.

The second confusing travel problem: maps. In Japan, they orient all of the maps from which direction you're facing. Doesn't sound that confusing? Well when you are in the subways station and you figure out which exit won't leave you miles from your destination, and you look at your map, you think you know where to go. But then with some twisting stairs, when you get to the next map conveniently located by the exit, the orientation is all different because you turned corners. You were supposed to go up and left, but now it looks right? Oh. Let's look for street signs. Nope. Even the gridded system of Tokyo (Seoul has no grid system because of the different times it was built and the fact that there are actual mountains in the city, so no one has a concept of a "block" for directions so we though Tokyo would be easier) became confusing without a lot of good indicators as to where you were or where you had to go. And when you're used to always orienting yourself based on North, suddenly having to switch to orient everything in the direction you were facing was quite confusing. We managed, but it took us longer to find places than we were anticipating sometimes.

Anyway, we made it to the Imperial Gardens, which were stunning. Seoul doesn't have great air quality or much greenery, and Tokyo seemed like a breath of fresh air for our yellow-dusted lungs.

"I know my bamboo. Well, I know when I'm looking at bamboo."

Nature and City. Beautiful. 

Tina marveling at Japan's so strong snack game. This Ice cream sandwich was a cone, chocolate, then vanilla ice cream. 

"The Orchard." I'm sure this was quite impressive back in the day.

Caves and cameras.

When I have a palace, it shall also have a serene river garden.

 After trekking around the gardens and seeing signs of life and spring, we marveled at how beautiful this must be in the warmer seasons. And how impressive and wonderful it would have been before skyscrapers. And how lovely Tokyo is.

 We made our way back to Tokyo Station for something that we have been eating for years but we had never truly tasted: Ramen!

We went to Ramen Street, which is where a bunch of famous ramen stands have shops in the station. We stopped at one where you had to pay in a machine outside then give the guys your tickets, then wait for your food. Almost no interaction with waiters, which is fun for us to not have to pantomime for an hour!

Oh my god you have no idea how good it was. I wish I could eat it every day. This kind. I am aware that I could quite cheaply eat ramen every day.

Tina is full of ramen joy.

After filling our bellies with ramen, we headed to the Tokyo National Museum for some history and browsing. Unfortunately I am lacking in pictures from this part of the trip, but here are some shamelessly stolen from Tina:

Looks like it would go nice with the Iron Throne. Unfortunately we didn't find out what it was for.

Dat bow doooooeeee

Kimono!!

 We mostly looked at the beautiful kimonos and the cool weapons and armor that the museum had. Seriously, it astounds me to think about how these things are made and worn and preserved.

Afterwords we continued our culinary tour of Japan by getting sushi with one of Sarah's Ithaca friends who grew up in Tokyo and also happened to be there the same time we were!

I avoided all seaweed kinds, but there are so many delicious other kinds!

If you had told 14 year old me that I would be eating sushi in Tokyo someday, I would have called you crazy. Yet, it happened!

We got some drinks and such. It was fun! Sarah's fluent friend joked "oh this must just look like squiggles to you!" Yes. Weirdly, English menus weren't too much of a thing, and it was hard since of the three of us traveling, not one of us had a basic handle on the language. It was difficult, but an interesting experience.

After dinner and drinks we made our way back to our hostel to prepare for our final day in Tokyo.

Day Three proved to be long but fruitful.

 We got up early and hit up Mcdonalds again. This showed us another issue of Japan: They're still really cash based. Mcdonalds didn't take credit cards. This proved to be quite a difficulty, but also an interesting way to make us budget, throughout the trip.

We made our way to the Skytree really early and waited for like 15 minutes to get our tickets rather than 3 hours. It was awesome! We had a great view of the city and everything!

We couldn't make it out to Mt. Fuji, but we got to see it!

 I hate elevators to taking one up to the top of the second tallest building in the world was not fun, but it was worth it for the view!

They had a glass floor panel which was dizzyingly cool.

Twins on top of the world!

After the tower, we decided to see some other famous Tokyo haunts. We made our way to Shibuya to see some dramatic street fashion, and some cool landmarks!

Here's that famous dog Hachiko, who came to the station to wait for his owner even after he died.

 The statue was hard to find because it was rather small and again with the maps being confusing, but still. It was cool! In Shibuya there's also the giant crosswalk where like 3000 people cross every time the light changes, made famous in America in the movie Lost in Translation.

Walking. As people do.

 We made our way to Akihabara, known as Akiba, which made the 14 year old anime/manga lover in me super stoked. It's the otaku capital of Tokyo, so anything anime/manga related is here. We even found some Final Fantasy stuff, but we haven't played in so long that we are unfamiliar with the new developments, and the old ones we loved aren't super popular anymore. Alas.

Look how fun it is!

 It was here that we stopped by the @home cafe, which is a Maid Cafe. This is a thing I had seen in mangas and heard about but wasn't sure it actually existed. It totally does. The girls are dressed up adorably as maids and they act super cute and welcoming the whole time, even referring to us as "my princess." I suffered a lot of embarrassment at the cafe because it was awkward, but oh man was it fun! The maids were so cute and nice to us and all of them spoke English really well! It was so adorable, and a lot of them were curious about us as foreigners there. Plus this dude sitting next to us looked like he was straight out of an anime.

They had a lot of rules to protect the girls and the cafe. No touching them. No taking pictures of anything except the food and drinks, and you could get a set where you got a snapshot of the maid. Also there was someone watching the whole time to make sure things ran appropriately. The customers seemed respectful and kind (not shocking in Japan, honestly) so it was pretty cool. This was one of the most bizzare but fun things we did in Japan!

My picture with our maid. So embarrassing but so cute.

 They called us up on a stage where a bunch of the guy customers were sitting to get the pictures, but they all participated too so it wasn't too weird. We got to pick our ears and our pose, and it was sweet. I felt bad because our names are long and difficult, but they did a good job when they had to talk to us in English. Note that my name is spelled wrong in the picture: this is totally cool. In Japanese they don't really have double consonant sounds, so having the "sca" at the end of my name is problematic. Even in Korean, my name is Peu (no f sound) rahn chae seu kka if you pronounce it out. So in Japanese it's along the same lines where they use a vowel as a spacer. I thought it was adorable.

Our maids were super sweet and patient with us. They do little artwork on the drinks and the food.

Ours drew Totoro on out omurice.

LOOK AT HOW CUTE IT IS.

It was all delicious too. Normally I expect the food to be shit but it wasn't. It was an expensive experience but it was pretty awesome? Would I do it again...? Yes. Absolutely.

After we had that experience, we went back to our hostel, but first we revisited Sensō-ji at night. It was so pretty! 

So bright and beautiful.

Things here look so pretty lit up at night.

Exploring.

 You could also try to get a fortune from the temple. You shook a jar, got a stick, and had to match the symbol. I got a bad fortune :(

So you ask the gods for better luck and tie your bad fortune away. While looking like a vampire in my case.

Twice. Two bad fortunes. I tied them up and prayed reeeeeeeeeally hard, then got one that said "Good fortune in the future" but sounded not great. Oh well! It was fun. 

Temples and Skytrees.

We gathered our things and headed for the bus station to continue our journey.

We interrupt your blog to bring you: this.

To see more Tokyo pictures, check out my album: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10153749340734968.1073741848.697649967&type=1&l=86bce1db96

If you rearrange the letters of the capitol, Tokyo, you get the former capitol, Kyoto. That was where our journey took us next.

We took an overnight bus, which may or may not have been a good decision.

The bus pickup was in a parking lot and there was not very much helpful direction, but we made it onto our bus and it turned out fine. Tina and I took motion sickness pills not for the intended purpose but because they make you really drowsy. Despite dropping my phone a million times, it helped and I had a mostly unconscious trip to Kyoto, where we arrived at about 7 AM.

After changing and kind of making ourselves presentable in the restroom, we got some $5 all day bus passes and headed out to see the city.

Saw this little thing everywhere,

I love the old and new combination. 

 Kyoto was much... shorter that Tokyo, It was really pretty and cool to see! Also they drive on the left in Japan and it was confusing. Also in the Kansai area (Osaka and Kyoto) you get on the bus in the middle and off on the front, which sucks. It's not fun.

Anyway, here are more things I saw on the bus ride around:

hehehe

I wonder what they think KFC stands for here. Also creepy Colonel Sanders...

I love these!

 We got off the bus and had to walk a bit to Ryōan-ji, a place with a zen garden. On our way up we found some interesting stuff:

Apparently a temple statue graveyard. Cool but creepy.

I love all the signs.

Inside the grounds but not at the garden.

What a cool forest path!

Don't drink the water.

 We felt like Kyoto was a bit of a tourist trap. We had to be careful with our cash since we had no way to get more (neither our korean bank cards nor our credit cards would get us cash) and this temple grounds cost us $5 to get into. In Seoul, things are like $2. And we had researched a lot but nothing told us we would have to spend our precious cash on such things. Still, we went and it was worth it. It was so peaceful and nice.

The actual zen garden part.

I found the nature a bit more zen.

We cute.

 Next we made our way up to the Golden Pavilion, which we also had to pay to see and then the path only allowed you to walk through the grounds, which ended up being pretty fun.

Our cool tickets.

I have no idea how it was made or is preserved, but it's pretty cool.

 I mean, it is a stunning structure. It stands out so brilliantly against the nature around it. I always marvel at how these things are made and maintained. We didn't have the means or tie to get to the Silver Pavilion, but it would have been awesome too.

How pretty!

 Our trek through the grounds was pretty fun too. There were all sorts of cool things.

Throw a coin in and get a wish! 

 There was one of the coin things later and I got it in one shot. I wished for an excellent trip in Japan and I totally got it.

Not surprisingly the journey ended with a temple. The candles were interesting:

This was where we encountered one of the more ludicrous things in our trip: paying for toilet paper. At this point we were annoyed at the cash crisis and then the bathrooms were a bit gross, and we were joking about having to pay for the toilet paper but in reality we were supposed to pay for it. Thankfully we are a group of runny-nosed girls, so we always had tissues and hand sanitizer on us. It pays to be prepared.

Not impressed.

Our tourist trap feelings intensified as we ventured to Gion, the geisha area, and failed to find a single restaurant that would accept our credit cards. We had cash, but for $10 a plate it would have sapped us a lot to eat. So we ended up chowing on the awesome convenience store food that Japan has, and made our last stop in Kyoto, Kiyomizu-dera. It was up a huge hill and our tired legs almost didn't make it, but I'm glad that they lasted!

Lots of stores and shopping, along with places to rent a kimono!

 You could rent kimonos! We saw a ton of people in them and we thought it was weird or a special weekend, and we finally asked a group of lovely young women who claimed they spoke no English but explained really nicely that it was a fun thing to do with friends. I suppose it would be a really fun way to explore these temples!

I loved when couples did it. The shoes look uncomfortable though.

So pretty!

 We trekked up the hill and got rewarded with an amazing view of the city!

We noticed that the color scheme was similar to that of the palaces.

We browsed the souvenir shops and found some that took our cards, and got some awesome trinkets and whatnot. 

For example, this cute sushi candy.

After a long day of bus riding, temple touring, and hiking around temple grounds, we headed back to the train station to Osaka.
For more Kyoto pictures: https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpf1/v/t1.0-9/11009843_424282351073468_2124668982811647762_n.jpg?oh=3504cbaf50e35092a0f0ea91ee45e9af&oe=5592739D

We got into Osaka late and decided to get dinner then plan. The next day we took a trip out to Nara, where the only thing we knew was "there are deer."

Seriously where all the deer at

The English is awesome and hilarious. 

 It didn't take long before we wandered into the deer park. A helpful information woman thought we were from Spain and gave us a map and told us it would take like 4 hours to see all the things in Nara. It's actually a pretty legit town with things other than deer, but the deer were a highlight.

Nara was probably my favorite place because it combined like everything I liked about Japan. Animals, nice people, calmness, awesome history and shrines, and clean fresh air with the green space. It was awesome.

Selfies with der.

Making animal friends.

Funny sign. Side eye to Korea....

On the steps of the temple!

Like churches in Italy, there are temples and shrines everywhere in Japan.

The deer were cute but hella aggressive.

They were like cats too. They would rub up on you to get you to give them food.

Making friends.

Here we are at this national treasure and all we care about is feeding some crackers to some deer.

Beware of deer nipping at your shoes, pants, coat, bags, and maps.

More selfies with deer.

A helpful sign.

 The deer were so cute! And friendly. Some were really aggressive though. When feeding them, one actually snatched our map! It wasn't  huge deal since Nara is pretty straightforward. but it was hilarious.

And I thought the orientation changing was hard enough....

Seriously they would eat anything. You'd think the entire tourism of the area wasn't based on feeding them.

FENCE? OKAY THAT SOUNDS GOOD.

 We walked through the main shopping area up to the temple, but the temple was expensive and we were a bit templed out at that point, so we headed back through the hoards of deer back down to the train station. We got a delightful surprise:

THIS DEER THOUGHT HE WAS PEOPLE.

LOOK AT HIM WAITING AT THE CROSSWALK LIKE A HUMAN.

Not pictured: the deer actually crossing the street when the light turned green. I didn't take a picture because I was squealing and jumping around like an idiot because I was so excited. 

Nara was awesome. 10/10 would tell anyone going to Japan to spare a few hours to go. It was so much fun!

For more Nara pictures: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10153751417599968.1073741853.697649967&type=1&l=43a78ca92c

Our last stop was Osaka, which also turned out to be awesome. I missed Korea while I was in Japan, but Japan was seriously awesome. I could see myself living there too, but their language is hella difficult to learn to read and write. At least Korean is easier in those respects.

When in Japan, try Chinese food!

 After our stint in Nara in the morning and afternoon, we had the evening in Osaka. We decided to spend it at the Umeda Sky Building. We thought about going up during the day, but since we don't know much about Osaka or the layout we decided a sunset trip would be nice. It was so great!

Osaka at sunset.

Sometimes I wonder what I did to deserve such adventure where I get to see such beautiful things.

 We got there right at sunset and went outside to the observation deck before retreating inside for coffee and snacks until it was sufficiently dark. Then we ventured up again!

The pathway was all lit up at night. Wahhh!!

 I love seeing cities at night. Osaka was so pretty too. Really this trip was unreal in its beauty. I'm so happy writing about it now and I will cherish my memories forever.

I would love this view forever.

After sitting up there for quite a long time resting our tired legs, we descended back to where normal humans exist.

The cool fountain outside.

Lovely ladies!

We headed back to our hostel to prepare for our last and one of our longest days of adventuring in Japan.

Our first stop on our final day was Osaka Castle, which looks less like a castle that I'm used to and more like a giant mansion. It was really cool though! The gold and green details were great and it never ceases to amaze me to see these old important buildings in the middle of cities.

Castle selfies!

 At this point there's not much more to say. We saw the castle. It was awesome.

Looks like spring a little bit! 

After wandering around the castle grounds, we decided against going inside the museum as we had a more important endeavor: the Owl Cafe!!

You get an hour slot. They explain the rules and take your drink order. Pet with the back of your hand for big owls, finger for little owls. Show the owl your hand first. Don't worry if it poops on you. Only the staff can move the owls.

We seriously just got to hang out with owls for an hour. It was awesome.

LOOK AT HIS CUTE LITTLE OWL FACE.

Twins.

This owl was crazy and had a penchant for jumping on heads.

Me and the chillest owl.

Hahaha I love it.

You ever had an owl on you head?

So cool.

On the left, the spazziest owl. On the right, the chillest.

Cute!

Here I am with my parliament of owls.

Having so many owls is distressing. Or they realized my Hogwarts letter was late so they sent all the owls.

I cannot describe the experience better than this picture can.

The big guy.

Bonding.

After our awesome stint at the owl cafe, we headed to Namba and Amerikamura, some fun shopping areas in Osaka. We ate some Okonomiyaki, which is like a savory Japanese "pancake" and a famous food in Osaka. It was awesome.

Okonomiyaki

We then hung out and went shopping, and we blew the last of our cash on an arcade where we played games and won cool little things.

Not won, this Pikachu. 

This famous billboard thing in Namba.

With some difficulty we also did a Purikura booth, which is where you take cutesy pictures then put a million designs and things on it in like 3 minutes. It's awesome.

Purikura! 

 After we blew all of our remaining cash, we headed back to our hostel area and got one last meal before heading out. What did we get? Korean food. We were homesick. The restaurant had neither a Korean nor and English menu, but we just said the names in Korean and we got the correct food so it clearly worked out fine.

Bibimbap!

Ddeokbokki in Japan is not as good as in Korea.

Basically a kimchi pancake. I can't remember the name.

For more Osaka photos: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10153751856499968.1073741856.697649967&type=1&l=87f76d20a8

After our final little errands and stops, we made our way to the airport. Our flight was again really early, so we opted to sleep in the airport. After sleeping on a bus, we figured why not sleep in an airport?

At least the airport had blankets you could borrow, and a 7/11 for all of our needs. We bought some of the weird flavored kit kats and other things. I was up for most of the night since I am a terrible sleeper anyway, but it was fine. I can check that off my bucket list so now when someone's like why don't you just sleep at the airport I can say "I would prefer not to." (Points for the literary reference!)

Tina sleeping.

We made it home tired but without incident. I hardly remember coming back. The flight attendant had to wake me up every time we had to do something like get our immigration papers. After a long journey, we made it back to Tina's apartment where we slept for the afternoon before getting on with our lives.

Japan was amazing, awesome, difficult, frustrating, incredible, tiring, and fantastic. I'm so glad I got to go, and that I had some cool people to share it with. There's so much more there I want to see, and it made me motivated to see more in Korea as well.

Remind me never to leave so much to blog at once!

Now some of my other favorite pictures throughout the trip:

We did those capsule machines and got fraternal twin Sailor Moons.

And why not end with what started it all? Our flight to Japan.

After an amazing trip and a week of recovering (not so much relaxing because of a lot of incidents) and catching up on Kill Me, Heal Me, Hyde, Jekyll, Me, Agent Carter, and Fresh Off the Boat, I'm looking forward to starting the school year with all my new students! The subject teachers are largely the same. I have a new 3/4 coteacher (Su Hyeon is a 2nd grade homeroom teacher wahhhh but I'll still see her a lot) and So Jung is my 5th/6th coteacher!! I'm excited to continue my journey with my supportive coworkers. And I can't wait to give them the presents I got!


Let's go on many more adventures together~