Tina in Japan

This was around the last week if not less of Sakura blossoms still being on trees but dissapearing. The Sakura Blossoms were only up for 2-3 weeks in Japan. very short time =( They honestly are really pretty, it’s a shame they’re not up that long. I was really happy to get a chance to see them and go to all the festivals and do Hanami.

I thought this was really cool. These are alot of Sakura petals that fell into the river and piled up into a clump. Very pretty.

I love how in Japan, you see something as simple as like say, a cat sleeping on a tree, a group if not hordes of people crowd around that tree to take pictures of the cat(s) sleeping like the paparazzi. What’s great is that this has happened more than just a few times since I’ve been here. Kind of makes me feel happy to know I’m not the only one around that’s easily amused by these things.

When Yilan and I were walking in Ueno Park during the Sakura Festival there were these really cute cats in a pack of three sleeping on one of the Sakura tree branch. It was a huugge crowd of people just wanting to take a picture of them sleeping with their cellphones and cameras. It actually took me a while to just get to the front to take a picture myself! It was indeed really cute though, it was worth it =P

Here you can see some of the other cameras and cellphones before I was able to get a pic of just the cats lol.

Osaka is known for their Takoyaki, when Yilan and I went to see Osaka Castle we both order some. It was incredibly yummy, the batter used tasted really different that we couldn’t put our finger on. =3

Osaka Castle was really modernized and redone. It’s more of a museum than a castle, which isn’t bad necessarily. Awesome displays with artsy sliding doors and walls.  The walk over up to the castle was very scenic as well.

Outside of Gumyoji Station. Sakura Blossoms have been bloomin’ around Tokyo and Yokohama. A Hanami is to be planned =)

Shikkaaa~!<3

for the Kansai region escapade we were in Nara for a half day. One of the main attractions of being in Nara is the deer feeding. Just two blocks away from the main station, and you start to see lots and lots of deer<3

Lots of deer are just chilling in the streets and temples of Nara where you are able to feed them biscuits that you can purchase from vendors on the streets. They were everywhere and so cute, it probably took us over an hour to finally get to the Daibutsu temple because we (or mainly I) wanted to keep seeing and feeding deer when in reality it was like a 10 minute walk to get to the temple. I think I bought like over 10 packs of the biscuits to feed to them. I was super giddy :3

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In the beginning of Jan.  was the Osaka/Nara/Kyoto trip that Leslie and I embarked on.  The night in Osaka we stayed at a capsule hotel. Omg I LOVE capsule hotels.  The boxes we live in are so freakin’ nifty and they are honestly not as small as everyone makes it seem to be, I was very comfy.

It was great! There was a bath house, bathroom with free hair dryers,  free internet, and so many more cool things =). It was a great price too at less than 3000yen a night ( roughly 30 USD  a night) per person.

Inside the capsule had a TV, radio, alarm, shelves to place items, air conditioning, and mirror. :3

For capsule hotels they aren’t great for huge families or couples who want to be together since each capsule separates per person and women and men have different sections of the hotel. But if you’re just traveling with a friend or two it’s great =)

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I was watching Ferris Bueller with Leslie late last night and I totally forgot for a second or so that in America we drive our cars on the right side of the road. I actually said out loud ” oh wow/ oh yeah, we drive on the right side!”

doy. I thought it was kind of funny how I forgot that for a moment there.

Japan clinics takes some of what I view as more trivial sicknesses or problems a lot more seriously than what I am use to.

Example: last month I got a UTI, and normally UTIs really aren’t a huge deal as long as you take care of it early. As the days went on the UTI was actually disappearing and it wasn’t stinging as bad, but I thought it was good to be safe to go to the doctor to see if I should take any medications or not.

Normally in the US when I had this problem, you just go and tell your doctor you have symptoms of an UTI, they’ll ask you some more questions, and if it all matches they give you the meds all in one shot right? When I went to the school clinic here it concluded to ” oh you need a urine test at this particular hospital over here and then we need to see what bacteria it is before giving you medicine.” The place where the hospital was at and its available times really clashed with my schedule at the time so in the end I couldn’t go and the UTI disappeared. I double checked with the clinic on if my symptoms disappear should I still worry about it and they said I didn’t need to worry about it.

So today I went to the doctors regarding my cold and potential pink eye ( that actually is better today). They concluded that I have a stomach infection, throat infection, and an eye infection. ( which honestly, I think it’s just a simple cold and a minor case of pink eye if even pink eye) Then afterwards they gave me four different medicines to take that last for a few days.

It’s like wow, in that situation I seriously would have just taken Nyquil and used some eyedrops or something.

What an adventure.

I plan to come again when it’s spring time. I heard it’s particularly even more gorgeous with the Sakura blossoms bloomed.

During the weekend went to Kamakura with a big group. Saw the big Buddha, visited one of the temples, and went to the beach nearby.

I’m having a bit of problems with my camera. I can not work it to take good pictures in low lit places. I believe I worked with all the settings but still no go. Hopefully that will figured out.

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The final stop prior to coming back to Yokohama was seeing the Matsumoto Castle. The insides were like a barrackfortress. The surroundings of the castle was really pretty, and it was really fun to take pictures of outside from the top floors of the castle.

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