On the 22st of June, my cousin and close friend, Charlotte, came to visit. I had been looking forward to seeing her for a very long time and we'd planned a lot of fun things. The next two weeks were hectic and fun and intense and amazing!
I picked het up at the airport in the morning and after some handling some baggage stuff, we set out to my university where we hung out for a little bit. Since I couldn't miss my kendo class, she came to see it and afterwards we went to the dog cafe I love so much. The guy, who is always really, really kind to me, gave us free ice cream!
We google mapped our way to our hostel to find it near the riverbank in Minamikata. It was a nice little place called Tomato. We slept in bunkbeds in a shared room, it wasn't much but it quickly felt like home.
We had dinner at a family restaurant chain called ガスト (Gast) and met up with Kazuki. We ended up staying there, talking for a long while and at last, me and Charlotte finished the long day with some wine near the river with a gorgeous view of the Umeda skyline just over the river.
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Our second day began at Sweets Paradise, a place I love because they do an all you can eat cake! For 1500 yen, you can eat as much cake as you can without puking. And if you want something a little less sweet in between your cakes, they also have curries and pastas and pop corn. Now that I'm writing it down like this, it is quite a random selection. But it works!! It was great!!
We also went and checked out some of the other forms of entertainment the city has to offer, such as the arcade (where Charlotte won a big Winnie the Pooh plushie in the end) and purikura (where me and Charlotte decided to rent costumes as well).
I had my job that evening as well, and since my tuesday evening session with the children at the kindergarten is quite relaxed, I brought Charlotte and Kazuki with me. On our way there, an old man came to talk to us and he bought us some senbe, a salty snack that Charlotte soon came to love. During the class, Charlotte and Kazuki sat at the back of the class with the moms of the children but in the end, we all played games together and we had a lot of fun! Our day ended with some good comfort food: ramen!
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Day three was a more active day. Let's say we needed to work off all the cake we'd eaten the day before! We decided to do a little hike in Fushimi inari. I went here before in one of the first months of my exchange and I believe it's one of the prettiest places I've been in Japan. So clearly I was eager to visit again. The tori gates looked beautiful as usual and the walk tired us considerably! I had sort of forgotten just how long it takes to get to the top of the shrine so we hadn't expected it to be such a big hike. But we had a lot of fun! Charlotte got her fortune checked at the shrine in form of おみくじ (omikuji) and found out she's got a lot of good luck coming her way! Also we encountered a live japanese hornet. I must say my heart was beating in my ears when I saw it. It was so huge!! I keep forgetting how big they are!! We fled the scene as calmly and quickly as possible and we survived.
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| Good luck Charrie |
After the shrine we travelled a little further into central Kyoto, where we hung around the famous bridge in Gion. Then we decided to wander for a little bit until suddenly we stumbled upon a geisha. We followed her through the narrow streets filled with little tea houses which was fun. After that we said goodbye to Kazuki and me and Charlotte made our way to a place called Matsuontoko. It's a little vegan restaurant in Gion, specialized in tofu burgers. It was amazing! Honestly though, it feel really odd asking for a burger at a restaurant. This kind of thing just doesn't happen for a vegan/vegetarian! But it was so good!!!
Day three was finished, as was by now a habit, with some wine at our pretty viewing spot by the river right outside the hostel.
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Day four was a must for me and Charlotte: The Wizarding World of Harry Potter! I've been to Potter world in USJ more than I can count of my hands now, but going with Charlotte, my childhod Harry Potter buddy, made this time really special and it made me realize once again how lucky I am to be able to come there so often.
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| These random girls wanted to take pictures with us so I made them take one with my camera too haha! I love it when Japanese people do this, it's so random! And Charlotte seemed very popular! ^^ |
The day ended in Umeda where we met up with Kazuki and had udon at one of my favorite places! They didn't have my favorite dish anymore, which made me and Kazuki almost burst into tears, but it was delicious noodles nonetheless!
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Day five was not all that spectacular. We had a lot of things to figure out because we would be flying to Tokyo in two days and we had to make sure we knew what we were doing. I mean, I know my way around Osaka pretty well by now, but Tokyo is not as familiar. So we went to my dorm and had a day of 'getting our shit together'. Before returning to our hostel though we decided to go sing some karaoke with Kazuki in Umeda! One thing I want to mention about karaoke here is that there is free drinks everytime (and often free ice cream too, I know, Japan is amazing) and they usually have these soup dispensers too and the soup there is so good!!! They have this onion soup that I'm so obsessed with and I was happy to find out that Charlotte was obsessed as well!
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On our sixth day, Charlotte and I met up with Koni, my good Taiwanese friend, to go visit a maid café. This was a new experience for both Charlotte and me and I was very excited! I'd heard about maid cafés before but it's really something you have to see with your own eyes to believe.
Basically what this is, is a café where you can have a meal or a drink or a dessert and the waitressess are dressed up in really cute maid outfits. They act incredibly cute too! They're super smiley and they call you master and they serve you like they love you with all their heart. When they bring you your meal they will ask you to use magic to make the food or drink yummier. She will teach you the spell (which is often something that translates to yummy yummy great love!)
Besides food and drinks, you can also request your maid to dance to a song for you. She will give you a list with her repertoire and you can pick whichever you want and she'll dance it. They are usually the really hyper, Japanese pop variety. (stuff like this). It's all really, really adorable.
The odd thing about these Maid Cafés, to most foreigners, is the customers. Most of the time, the customers in a maid café will be 90% teenaged to middle-aged men. These men come alone a lot of the time as well. The guys that were at the maid café when we were there were like that. They ordered a lot, so that a maid would come and talk to them and some of them seemed to be getting slightly drunk. When our maid did her dancing performance for us, some of the guys got up from their seats and went to stand around the stage (a small cube in the center of the room), glowstick at the ready. I thought they were just standing there to cheer her on but when the music started they all started flailing their limbs around like mad ravers. They were all doing the same dance moves! Different from the maid on stage, but more like a choreogaphed supporters dance. I still don't really know what happened there, haha! It was amazing to see though! I wish I could've filmed it but there was no camera's allowed in the café, so all the pictures you see above are secret snaps.
All in all, I'm really glad I got to experience a maid café! I enjoyed it a lot and I think I might go one last time before I leave.
Because we had to arrange some stuff for our flight to Tokyo the next day we ended up being a little late to have dinner out somewhere, so we ended up eating kimchi (from Korea: basically fermented veggies, spicy and delicious) on brown bread with wine. It was amazing!
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We flew to Tokyo the next day!!
By coincedence, Kazuki was in Tokyo for his work that day as well, so we met up with him quickly, to have lunch, before going to our Hotel in Tokyo. It was a capsule hotel, which I've always been both scared and eager to try. It was actually a really nice place to sleep! Tiny but cofortable! Would recommend!
Before going to bed though, we went to explore Tokyo for a bit. We took the subway to Shibuya where we walked the big, famous crosswalk. Then we entered Shibuya 109, which is a mall for Japanese branded clothing and cosmetics. We just looked around for a bit and ended up in the make up section, trying out weird colors of macara and eyebrow gels.
We then really wanted to see the Hachiko statue in Shibuya. Hachiko is a dog of a true story about a dog. The dog always waited for it's owner at the Shibuya train station every day until his owner got home from work. And then, when the owner died while he was away, the dog, for years and years, still came to the station every day, to wait for his owner, unknowing that the owner couldn't come back anymore. There's a movie about it with Richard Gere in it, and I'm pretty sure there's Japanese movies about Hachiko as well, but I haven't seen those. I just rewatched the Richard Gere one's trailer and cried a little hahaha!
Anyways, we got a little lost, even though I'd visited the statue twice before, but we got there in the end!
We got ourselves some Krispy Creme donuts then and hung out at Yoyogi park until night fell. This Brazillian guy came to talk to us. He seemed really upset with Japanese society. I understood where he was coming from but his behaviour wasn't making things easier for him. He didn't like it when guys harrass girls on the train (a big poblem in Japan, fair enough), but his solution: to smack the guy square in the face, not so much a good idea. Or when people wouldn't give up a seat to a pregnant woman, he told us, he would just go lie in the laps of all the people sitting down, so they could be as uncomfortable as the pregnant woman. He seemed to think of himself as some sort of a Robin Hood, but he seemed to me just a very frustrated man. After talking for a long time we decided to leave him be and go to our hotel.
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The next day was already our last one in the capital. We started the day with a lunch at the Alice in Wonderland cafe in Shinjuku. We were both really excited about this. The whole place is decorated like Wonderland, the waitresses are dressed up as either Alice or the Mad Hatter, the food is Alice themed and they play Disney music all day long!!!
We deliberately chose to go during lunch time because we figured there'd be less people and because the food is cheaper then too.
It was a great experience! For my main dish and my dessert, in total, I think I paid 1500 yen (about 11 euro) and for a restaurant that's themed like this, I was really impressed. Oh and the food wa actually really, really good as well!
We put our heavy luggage in a locker at the station and went back to Harajuku, where Yoyogi park is. Next to the park is the Emperial shrine (meiji jingu - 明治神宮). We weren't sure we were going to visit this one but in the end I'm really happy we did. Charlotte ended up loving it a lot! I have to admit, it is a really pretty shrine.
After that traditional piece of Japanese culture, we walked just a few steps to a completely different side of Japanese culture.
Takeshita street (竹下通り) is the most famous shopping street in Harajuku. I've been wanting to go there this year but every time I find myself in Tokyo there's not really any time to go there, so I was very happy that Charlotte would go there with me. I was on a budget but I did manage to find a lot of cute things. Now I don't want to bore you with the things I bought but just imagine it was all really cute ok? Ok!
Oh and we took purikura pictures again, obviously.
After all that browsing and shopping we got some really yummy dinner at 7/11. If you're ever in Japan and need a really cheap but delicious meal, go to 7/11! They have a lot of pre-packaged meals and they are, out of the many convenient stores in Japan, one of the best quality! If you're a vegetarian, you might have less choice, but even then, you can usually find something really good! I had cold noodles and veggies!
Also, it was clearly selfie time in the park, as you can see behind us in the picture below, so we couldn't help but join in.
We wanted to eat our food at Yoyogi park again and guess what. We were approached again! This time it was a guy from Senegal. The funny thing is, he had a very similar story to tell to the guy we met the night before. Maybe they were friends? In any case, he asked us if we would come to the conveniece store with him to buy some alcohol. He told us we could pick out whatever we wanted and he would buy it for us.
Now I know what this looks like: sketchy as hell right? For some reason, me and Charlotte had a good feeling about this guy. He wasn't angry like the last guy either. He just seemed like he wanted someone to talk to. So we went with him. He was a cool guy. We talked about a whole bunch of stuff and we laughed a lot!
After that we caught our bus to Kawaguchiko (河口湖), near Fuji mountain, arriving pretty late, so we went to sleep almost immediately.
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Our next day would be full of adrenaline because we were going to Fuji-Q Highland! This is another one of those places I've been wanting to go eversince I knew about it. Fuji-Q is a thrillride amusement park and its rollercoasters are some of the craziest in the world! We'd seen the park from the busride to Kawaguchiko the night before and it all looked really intimidating. I'm usually never scared on rides. The crazier the better, but we'd been egging each other on since the night before so when we got there we were actually both a little nervous.
We were lucky that Fuji-Q lies in the middle of nowhere and that it wasn't high season yet. There weren't many people at all!
The one we did first was a 4 dimension roller coaster, which means the
seats can rotate forward or backward 360 degrees in a controlled spin,
whilst the coaster is going. There is only one other 4 dimension coasters
in the world and I rode it a few years ago in Fix Flags Magic Mountain.
That one is called the X2, but the one in Fuji-Q is taller and faster! Eejanaika is the roller coaster with the most inversions in the world! I
also really love the name of this coaster: Eejanaika (ええじゃないか). I really like the
expression ええじゃないか. It sounds very kansai to me so it feels homely haha!
It means something like: ain't it great!
The park also has a steel coaster called the Takabisha, (which means high-handed), and it has the steepest drop in the whole world (121°).
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| Takabisha |
The coaster, Fujiyama, was the tallest coaster at the time it was built (1996). When you get to the top, you can see Fuji mountain right in front of you (except on cloudy days, so we didn't really see that much when we rode it haha). 
The craziest coaster according to both me and Charlotte though, was the Dodonpa (ドドンパ). This is a steel roller coaster that broke two world records when it was made in 2001. It was the fastest coaster in the world (but has since been beaten by the Formula Rossa, Kingda Ka and the Top Thrill Dragster) but it is to this day the roller coaster with the fastest acceleration in the world. It goes from 0 to 172km per hour in 0.8 seconds. It is amazing! The ride shoots you forward and you have no idea what's happening. It's so fast that I really felt like there was no control and that made for a lot of butterflies in my stomach haha! So even though the ride only lasts for about 55 seconds, it was the best ride in our opinion.
There's many more rides but I can't talk about them all haha! I loved the water rides though! Even those were extreme. Like, extremely watery! I got soaked, it was wonderful!
They also have world's biggest haunted house, but that one was unfortunately under construction. It's an abandoned hospital and looks really scary. I would have loved to go on it, since I know the Japanese know how to do horror so well. Oh well, maybe one day!
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The next day was a very important day for us. This was the day me and Charlotte were going to climb Fuji mountain. We'd been preparing for this for a long time, we'd brought our hiking gear, we had hiking food. And then the wind came.
They had
closed everything for the day because the wind was too heavy and it
would be dangerous to climb up the mountain. We were very disspointed,
of course, but we did have some warning signs. The weather had been
looking gloomy for a while.
So instead
of sulking and doing nothing, we decided to hike around the lake
Kawaguchi, since we might be able to get some pretty views of mount Fuji
if the weather decided to clear up during the day.
We started
our six hour hike in the pouring rain. It was quite hard for a while,
but soon we got into a good rhythm and we were having a great time. I
really enjoy hiking. It was especially nice because there was no one
there but us. It was just us and nature (and a lot of rain and wind
haha!). Sometimes we'd talk or sing and sometimes it would be silent for
a long time. I really, enjoyed that walk a lot!
In the end
we did manage to see mount Fuji! The sun started to break through half
into our hike. We were so excited when we finally got a good look at it!
We didn't manage to climb it but we will come back one day, and it'll
be awesome!
We had dinner and wine from 7/11 on a bench near Kawaguchiko station as we watched the sun go down that evening and we crawled in bed early to take the bus back to Tokyo the next day.
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We arrived in Shinjuku, Tokyo at lunch time and because we had some time to kill, we went back to the Alice in Wonderland café for a quick lunch. We then took another bus to Narita Airport where we hopped on a plane back to the wonderful Osaka!
It was dark by the time we got back, so we didn't have much time for fun that day. We just went to my dorm to pick up a few things I needed and travelled to a new hostel.
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I had my job again the next day and unfortunately I couldn't really bring Charlotte along this time. My Friday morning classes are a lot longer and they're a lot more official. Whilst Charlotte went to have a coffee and read her book at a good coffeeshop near the trainstation I did my job and we met up again after.
That night, a bunch of people of the dorm had booked some rooms at a ryokan (traditional Japanese style hotel) for a night of partying. I was going to and I'd invited Charlotte as well. It was a really great opportunity for Charlotte to meet my friends in Japan. Everyone was really welcoming. Even the Japanese people who weren't all that confident in their English skills talked to Charlotte a lot.
Before starting the party, we all took a dip in the onsen (traditional bathhouse) of the ryokan. I have a love/hate relationship with onsen. I love it because the hot water is so relaxing but I dislike it because the hot water makes me really light headed after a while. I basically can't stay in there for long. But I really enjoy going there with female friends to hang out. I don't know, it feels like a really feminine ritual kind of thing. Maybe it's because there's only women and we're all naked, haha, I don't know. Anyways, me, Charlotte and some of the other girls chilled and talked there for a while and then went back up stairs so the party could begin!
It was a great party, very representative of the kind of parties we have here in Japan. I don't usually blog about them because the pictures are often too embarrassing to share haha!And so are these ones. But here are just some that are alright!
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The next morning was a little rough. Everyone was sprawled accross the floor in their yukata (traditional japanese bathrobe), in between empty bottles of god-knows-what. We had to get up though because we had to go on a field trip for one of my classes at Kansai University and of course, thanks to my kind teacher, Charlotte was invited as well!
I've talked about my geisha culture class before. We were going on a trip to Kyoto that day, to meet a real geiko.
A geiko is a geisha that has matured into adulthood. We were extremely lucky to have been able to meet a geiko so personally. It is not something that people can just do unless they are really rich and even then, they could never meet a geiko the way we got to. Our teacher, Peter Macintosh, is someone who has developped really good relationships with the maiko (underage apprentices) and geiko in Kyoto and he wanted to introduce us to Miehina, a geiko he is particularly close with, as to help us understand the world of geisha better.
I don't know how much I am allowed to blog about the experience because I was told that, for our learning experience, she did things she wouldn't do for regular customers. In any case, she was absolutely amazing! We got to talk to her, ask her questions and take pictures with her. We watched her perform shamisen (traditional Japanese guitar) and dancing (at which she was absolutely amazing).
I was mostly surprised with how bubbly and straight-froward she was. She wasn't all stoic and mysterious like you see geisha in pictures or on the Kyoto streets. She was just a woman with a profession. I loved how open she was about her job and her life and I feel so very priviledged to have been able to experience this. I also think I finally kind of understand what geishas are about. I mean, the whole geisha culture is a mystery and in my opinion, no documentary is going to help clear much up (believe me, I've watched a lot of them this semester). But this experience has really helped me to finally understand who geisha are. I will never ever forget that day!
That evening me and Charlotte split up again, this time because I had a very special celebration waiting for me in Umeda. It was me and Kazuki's half year anniverssary!!!! That evening was amazing as well, but I think I might blog about that seperately hahaha!
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The following day, Charlotte, Kazuki and me went to Nara, the place with all the temples and deers, as people call it. We played around with the deer for a bit. Kazuki actually bought the crackers you're allowed to give them and we experienced how scary the deer can be when they want your food. I'm never doing that again haha!
We visited the Todaiji as well. I visited this one with my family as well but I really like it and I figured Charlotte would like it as well. I was still as impressed with the big buddha as I was the first time. I just can't get over it. It's gorgeous! Charlotte said she liked it, but it wasn't as good as the Imperial shrine in Tokyo.
We returned to Umeda then, where we had some Okonomiyaki (AKA delicious comfort food). They call it Japanese pancakes sometimes but I think that's a misleading title. Basically, what it is, they put whatever you like (potato, veggies, cheese, meat, sea food,...), whack it onto a hot plate, make it into a pancake form and when it's all nice and cooked, pour okonomiyaki sauce and mayonaise over it.
IT. IS. SO. GOOD.
I always get one with potato and veggies and it's amazing! Charlotte deemed this her favorite Japanese food and I totally understand. It's greasy and filling and you can completely alter it to your own taste. The okonomiyaki sauce is sometihng I can't really decribe to people very well though. It goes well with mayonaise, I can tell you that though!
By now, we were back to our old hostel from the first few days: Tomato!
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I had a dentist appointment the next day. My teeth had been hurting and my gums had been bleeding for almost a week, so I figured I couldn't really wait until Charlotte was gone to get it fixed, but luckily, after one appointment, my teeth were all better!
This was our last full day together. We spent lunch at the dog café again, which was of course really fun and then we went to one of my favorite karaoke places! It has free drinks, free soup and free ice cream. We sang karaoke for six hours that day, filling up on soup and ice cream. We were both really tired but we never got bored of singing! It was dinner time when we got out so we got something called aburasoba at the shop right outside the karaoke place.
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| aburasoba |
I love this stuff! I think it's my favorite ramen shop in Kandaimae (and there is A LOT of them). The translation of the dish is basically oily soba noodles. You pick your noodle amount and toppings from a vending machine and when you get your bowl, you pour the amount of flavored oil you want. I usully pour a mix of the two different kinds they have. They also have many other things on the table to flavor your noodles with. I like putting a crap ton of garlic in mine.
After that we returned to my dorm one last time to pack up Charlotte's stuff. We hung out in the common room for a long time as well and we had a great time. Charlotte had brought me Speculoos pasta and a lot of chocolate from Belgium so we all shared that with the international students (a lot of whom are completely and utterly obsessed with Speculoos pasta ever since I introduced the stuff months ago. Actually, one of them still has the jar from that night I need to ask that back I'm hungry hahahaha).
Me and Charlotte then took the train back to our Tomato hostel and had the last of our wine on our pretty little look out spot and the next day, I took her to the airport and that was the end of our trip.
Wow
This was long
hope it wasn't too boring haha
we just did a lot of stuff man
no wonder I was so exhausted after haha
But I had the best time with Charlotte! I had missed her a lot since being in Japan and I'm so thatnkful she came all the way here to see me! I'm really glad I got to show her the things I love about this country and also that we got to share a lot of new experiences as well!
Charlotte, thank you so much for the unforgetable trip and many memories! Can't wait to hang out when I'm back in Belgium! I love you, it was so nais ♥
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