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Japan – Day 17 (Osaka/Kyoto)

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

I was still feeling run down from surfing the crimson wave, so I slept in and dozed in bed until it was time to get up and head to Kyoto. Today I got to meet a longtime friend in Japan, Etsuko! I met her a couple times while I was there before, and we’ve kept in touch on Facebook. We went to Starbucks for coffee and to chat about life for a while, then went to the station up to a really delicious tempura restaurant for lunch. Then we wandered around the station to look at all the Christmas lights, the tree, and went up to the two gardens up top. It was a really nice, relaxing few hours catching up with a marvelous person.

It started to rain as we went to the trains, so instead of staying in Kyoto and walking around in the cold and wet, I decided to go back to Osaka. On my way back to the hotel I discovered a shopping district street I hadn’t explored yet, so I took a walk down the shopping street and got a strawberry and chocolate parfait. Ice cream in Japan is next level, it’s so thick and creamy here. I went back to the hotel and ate some of the fruits and snacks Etsuko gave me, took a long hot bath, and worked on photos and journal stuff for a while. Now I’m going to bed early because man I’m tired!

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Japan – Day 16 (Osaka)

My plan was to go to Universal Studios today, but Aunt Flow had other plans which was to mainly sit inside and watch Netflix bitch you’re not going anywhere. So that’s basically what I did. I managed to get up around lunchtime and went to the Osaka Pokémon Center but it ended up just being a store in a shopping mall. I don’t know what I was expecting, but regardless I still wound up buying like $60 worth of stuff anyway. I dunno, maybe like a battle station for PoGo or special spinny things or something? But nah, it was just a store. A lot of cute stuff though, and the first Dratini evolution plushies I’ve found anywhere so I grabbed one of those and a bunch of travel related stickers and luggage covers. They had an entire plushie row dedicated to Ditto, which was funny. Then I grabbed some to-go food and more experimental alcohol and continued my now 17 year time-honored tradition of not celebrating my birthday and sitting by myself having my drinks, playing video games, and watching Netflix because God I hate my birthday…no cats this time though, which made me kinda sad. Anywho, I did get laundry done too so I wasn’t entirely invalid today. Tomorrow will be a better day, it usually is!

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Japan – Day 15 (Himeji)

Today was the opposite of yesterday, I guess I forgot to close my window before I fell asleep last night so I woke up at 5am freezing and with the morning delivery truck making noise outside. I couldn’t get back to sleep. When my alarm went off at 6am I went ahead and got up, showered, and out the door. I took the bullet train to Himeji, and walked over to one of the biggest and most gorgeous castles in Japan, in my opinion.

Himeji Castle is more of a spring castle, there are so many old cherry trees around it that during sakura season you can barely breathe there are so many people here, and that was 15 years ago so I can’t imagine it now! In the fall there’s not so much of a crowd, but it’s still gorgeous. I walked way up to the top floor, then back down and all around the outside, then back in to the side buildings and corridors. Then I went next door to Koko-en garden, which is definitely gorgeous during the fall with momiji, waterfalls, gigantic koi bigger than I’ve ever seen before, and mini-themed garden patches all hooked up in a maze. I hadn’t been there before, so it took me about an hour to get to it all. I walked through the shopping streets on my way back to the station, and went back to Osaka.

Since I couldn’t eat crab last night I made a reservation for tonight, and put on my comfy pants and a t-shirt and headed to Dotonbori to get fat. It was $50 all you can eat snow crab legs within 90 minutes, they also had a full buffet of other foods and you could order everything from raw crab (crab sashimi) to crab tempura. Well, 90 minutes was plenty of time, and I had to be practically rolled out of there. I’m probably solely responsible for the deaths of like 8 crabs tonight! All I wanted to do after eating that much was go lay in bed, and sleep early, so that’s the plan!