Hello everybody!!! In this week of our adventures in Tokyo, we began our next class. EDES 200 and EDES 301. Beginning these classes was starkly different compared to our BUSI class. This class was lecture style, but we got to mess around with our circuits during class, which is fun.
This continued until Wednesday, when we got the announcement that Thursday and Friday classes were cancelled!! Yayyyyy!! I immediately changed the booking of my shinkansen ticket to thursday right as he confirmed it was true and at 5 AM the next day I headed straight to Kyoto. And let me tell you, Kyoto was absolutely gorgeous. The old traditional buildings and the new modern brutalist architecture were both amazing.
(I rang that bell). This was one of the many, many temples in Kyoto. Theres like 17 World Heritage sites. Towards the end, I got so tired of temples I just stopped going to them. I don’t remember the name of this one.
Me at the park made for giants. everything was huge
Then I went to Nishiki Market and had this amazing candied kiwi and A5 Wagyu Kobe beef. Both were DELICIOUS.
Then I hiked the thousand Torii gates. It was a nice hike. I saw a ton of wild pigs. I was hiking back down and I heard some squeals and then I stop and see a pig sniffing the torii gates. The one in the picture was HUGE.
light day fr
Then I travelled to a 7/11 in the middle of nowhere all the way across the city in search of a capsule hotel (that was closed by the time I travelled the one hour distance). I then trekked all the way to literally the exact same spot I was at to stay at a capsule hotel that was nearby LOL.
The next day I went and explored some more. I was looking for geta, the wooden shoes with the teeth, but every store was just selling tourist trap garbage. But eventually I ran into this really nice store that handcrafts everything traditionally Japanese and they put all the stuff on me. I wanted to get my picture taken but my phone was in my pocket and they’d have to undo everything. So he got out his iPad and took a picture of me to send on Instagram. I was NOT aware that he was going to post it on their story lol. Officially a fashion model!
Then I had dinner at a nice soba place with my exchange student from 10 years ago. He’s a full grown man now, life goes by so quickly!
After this I went straight to Osaka, found a caspule hotel (which was so retro it was funny), and went straight to bed.
I slept in until 10 AM, then spent the whole day at the World Expo!
Unfortunately my phone died, but I tried Polish food, African food, visited the Indonesia, Malaysia, and Australia pavilions as well as the commons. So cool! There was some nice fireworks and a drone show afterwards. There were SOOOO many people, like shibuya crossing but everywhere. Each pavillion had an hour+ long line, it was ridiculous but worth it.
After I left, it was very late, so I couldn’t secure a capsule hotel. Instead, I went to SpaWorld which is a 24 hr onsen that allows you to sleep. Man this was the highlight of my trip. There were 5 baths and they were all themed around different countries in Asia. There was a salt sauna too. I ended up going to sleep at 2 AM, falling asleep on the floor next to a charger. I woke up at 5 to move to the sleeping rooms and slept until 8. I then went to a nice cafe run by an old man who just does it for fun. Absolute steal for breakfast: a boiled egg, toast, and coffee for 450 yen. ridiculous. But the day ended there, as I had to head on a shinkansen back to Tokyo to do my homework. Toto was actually really cool, but not as cool as Osaka. I’m definitely heading back!
Goodbye y’all! Stay tuned for next week where I visit the IZU ISLANDS!!!!