…using both hands and my mouth to dust off the cobwebs on this blog…

What’s good everyone! Ahhh…looks like I got splainin’ (explaining) to do 😅 – first of all, I hope y’all are doing well (whether you’re in the states, or somewhere else in the world keeping safe and proactive in these times of covid).

I know it’s been since late July that I posted on this blog with “Keepin’ it 235%” Entry 2: Thoughts, Tenacity, Tennis. (7/22/20), and since last May since my last Japan trip #2 blog post with “Day 4 (Part 2): Scenic, Seaside, Sakura Shrimp. (11/13/19)”

Honestly, a lot has happened since then (both good and bad), and (without making any excuses) I found myself preoccupied with not only other priorities and sweeping changes in both my work and personal life, but also keeping up with both my physical and mental health – which I can truthfully say has been doing quite well (albeit a couple setbacks in my ongoing marathon training, but since then I’ve been recovering quite nicely).

Obviously with how the year has been going and the myriad of challenges that a lot of us face everyday in these times of covid and political unrest in our country (United States), I have been rather unhappy with how inconsistent I have been with this travel blog. This was one of those things that kept creeping back into my mind week after week, thinking whether I would ever have the energy and willpower to resume and get back into it.

I found myself constantly putting it off because of something that I deemed was higher priority, or even just because I had one of those tough weeks where I had to manage a lot in both work and personal life to the point where I just knew that I was not in the right mindset to talk about my Japan trip from last November (at certain times, I find myself going to my default of playing video games to get my mind off of things and take a nice breather – this does play into me keeping up with the Nintendo Jump Podcast – a gaming podcast that I’m a co-host of, and we’re still going strong as of today with 121 episodes and ongoing! Please check us out btw 😀 we’re on all of your favorite podcasting apps including Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, and much more!).

Let’s be honest, when you have a lot of things going on in your life, especially things that take up a bit of your time like house hunting (which has been a good chunk of my life for the past several months now), resuming a travel blog that happened almost a year ago is one of the lower priority things on the list.

Alright, so I got that out of the way.

I won’t make any promises on this, but given that it’s been almost a year since I’ve traveled to Japan (and given that I still have my notes from each of the days I’ve visited during those 10 amazing days) in moving forward with this travel blog, I may or may not be able to recollect almost every detail and thing that happened during this trip (especially the thoughts that I had during those moments and times); however, I will do the best I can to recollect and give you a good account of these moments and how it made me feel at the time.

I hope that this is enough for y’all to be able to take in and consider how meaningful this trip has been for me (despite my inconsistent efforts in keeping up with writing in the travel blog over the summer and in the fall this year).

Anyway, that’s all I wanted to say + look forward to the next travel blog post – “Day 4 (Part 3): An afternoon tea with the basement department floor to please.” (11/13/19)” coming soon!

As I’ve mentioned before in previous blog posts, take care y’all, stay proactive and stay safe during these tough times with the whole COVID-19 outbreak.

Have a great rest of the weekend + an awesome start of the week, and I’ll see y’all in the next post!

Cheers / wave

Hey what’s good y’all – I know it’s been a hot minute since I’ve blogged about my Japan trip that I took last November. I was slated to continue with Day 4: Part 3 of the trip (which I was super excited to write about!); however, life got in the way, priorities shifted, and a lot has happened since late May of this year – excuse me for the two month absence.

With that said, I had one of those moments this week where I just didn’t want to go out of my way to talk to people in general, and just spend that time to focus on the most important thing that I’ve been keeping up with in constantly improving – me.

It was just one of those moments where I just wanted to shut down a lot of my social energy, and use that to catch up on some of the things that I was really happy to do, like take today for example – I spent some time backing up a few years of photos that I’ve taken onto my External Hard Drive, and I finally finished up one of the best indie games on the Nintendo Switch – Golf Story. It’s a Golf RPG (role playing game) that has quite a unique personality of its own, and the golf mechanics/gameplay itself is really fun. It took me a while since I had a long hiatus with this game (since other games got in the way lol… I know, excuses haha JUDGE ME.), and man…when I finished the last part of the game, I was just like OHHHH HAILLLL YEAHHHHHH that was just a good way to end the late afternoon, CHYEAH.

Anyway, today feels pretty appropriate to keep it 235% (or keep it real, but more than 100% if you know what I mean). As it is pretty conspicuous from the title, I have quite a bit on my mind to write and reflect about.

Even though we’re still living in covid times (and most recently, the whole thing about federal agents flocking our city and wreaking havoc and violating rights against protesters unnecessarily has contributed to how bad it has been especially in Portland), it has been pretty tough to maintain a sense of optimism and positivity as a whole – we still have to be very meticulous about going out, and keeping up with what’s going on in the States as we face an uncertainty of this country’s future and just constantly wondering when things are going to go back to “normal,” or how it was before covid became such a huge thing.

That being said, I’ve somehow (surprisingly) been able to stay afloat and keep my spirits and energy as high and up as possible, but I have to admit – I do have days (and even from my last “Keepin’ it 235%” post) where I just want to be alone in my thoughts (not wanting to talk to anyone unless there’s an emergency or something urgent came up) and spend that time to rest and refresh myself through various means – whether it be to catch up on things that I’ve wanted to do for a while, or just chill and recharge the batteries, especially getting a bit more sleep.

Since I’ve moved to Portland a couple years ago (wow…it feels a lot longer than that to be honest…more like 10 years than just two…), I realize that even though being social is one of my strengths, I thrive on being more introverted and just keeping it low-key more often than not – there’s definitely a sense of refocusing and the ability for me to recharge more appropriately in the daily grind cycle that I’ve been able to create for myself here day after day, week after week – I love it. I love how I’m able to be more selfish and take more time for myself because in the end, I am the one who is responsible for me (if that makes any sense).

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that I put myself above others… I’m just saying that I’ve been to value myself just as much as others who I care for and keep in touch with when I can. I think that’s an important thought to embrace because living life (especially in these times of covid) isn’t about being on your own, it’s about being a part of a great team – a movement of people just trying to make it, trying to be successful, and trying to find purpose in life.

Ever since I finished going to therapy (I went for a while from late October of last year to early February of this year), I was able to recognize the biggest flaw that I’ve had all of these years:

I realized that I honestly didn’t believe in myself, and I had an inferiority complex that was always not only trying to protect the feelings of others, but also believing that even though a lot of good and success have come out of my life, the few things that haven’t gone my way completely overshadow all that I’ve done to do well in. I felt like a nobody for the longest time and that I was easily replaceable, especially someone who is better looking than me. Having these thoughts made me chronically depressed and empty inside throughout the years.

I couldn’t believe any of this until I thought more about it and admitted it (both to myself, and to my therapist). As a man (and especially in Asian Culture growing up), we were taught never to show any weakness or any vulnerabilities in order to protect ourselves from any danger (whether it be physical, or more importantly, mental).

“Gotta be tough, right? Gotta be tough. That’s how you can be tough. Don’t be soft. Don’t show any weakness. Mental Health? Whatever, it’s not a big deal, just grow the fuck up and tough it out because you’re a man. You are better than that, and you don’t have time for working on your mental health…the hell? Waste of time.” These were the thoughts that were on my mind for the longest time, and I was so afraid to talk about my mental health issues because I thought people might make fun of me and think I’m not tough and strong enough to realize my potential to be successful and have a purpose in life.

I’ve always felt this way until I heard about a particular NBA player who admitted seeing a therapist about mental health by the name of Kevin Love (and thank goodness for this person, seriously). He admitted that he was seeing a therapist in March 2018, and five months later, he talked about mental health awareness, and how he’s found his life’s work.

As a side note, Kevin Love was motivated by one of my favorite NBA players, DeMar DeRozan (who publicly talked about his struggles with depression) – thank you as well, my man.

Even though we share the same name and a love for basketball, I was really happy to learn that basketball players as high-profile as these guys were talking about mental health in this manner. I was so surprised too because I didn’t realize that NBA players had similar struggles like what I have been going through. It was really inspiring and motivating to see, and I took this thought going into therapy with much tenacity to figure out what was going on with me and why am I struggling with my own mental health.

After realizing my biggest flaws, I worked tremendously hard with my therapist to make that mental switch and realize that I am important and that I’ve come a long way in my life. I don’t need to harbor an inferiority complex anymore, and can rely on my greatest strengths to get me through my days and not let what I lack overshadow them by any means – my positivity, my insane amount of energy, and my relentless work ethic to strive for more and more success with and for the people around me.

With this being said, I am still a work-in-progress and will continue to convert my weaknesses into my strengths as much as I can.

I’m very glad to say that since finishing therapy in Early February of this year – I’ve been much happier with who I am and how far I’ve come. Last year was a great learning experience (especially with me finding my own groove and my own daily grind process to embrace and keep on going with), and this year has just been continuing the daily grind and seeing the fruits of my labor (in both my overall physical shape + my career) come to reality. I finally am able to say that I believe in myself, my abilities, and that I hope others can find their inner strength to do the same if they haven’t been able to yet.

Major credit to my close friend Tiffani for those uncomfortable, but necessary conversations that we had and encouraging me to go seek professional help (in this case, seeing a therapist) – she may be the most demanding person I’ve ever met, but the loyalty and care that she brings is unquestionable. She also helped me find my first Portland friend (outside of work) in her then fiancé now husband Kyle, and these two got me into Orangetheory (a type of HIIT fitness gym) that helped contribute to my overall better physical shape.

Besides Tiffani, I gotta give major credit to two of my close friends – Tony and Steven.

Whether it was motivating me to be #1, and always trying to achieve perfection from Tony, or teaching me not to take things too personally, keep more levelheaded, and keep things real from Steven, they’ve been the guys that I trusted with whatever was going on in my life for the longest time (whether it be with love, career, friends, anything).

In addition, I want to also give major credit to close friends Jason, Sunny, Edward, and Harvey for being there for me as well throughout the years. Jason has always set the standard of what it means to be ambitious and family goals, Sunny is the nicest, giving community type of person you’ll ever meet, Edward is really good with asking how are things and asking the right, caring questions whenever we catch up, and Harvey is a person who continues to strive to be better through any adversity he faces through it all.

Last but not least, I’d like to give major credit to another close friend (even though we’ve only known each other for just a few years) – Roberto. Besides being very caring and generous / thoughtful with gifts and care packages, he embodies the daily grind everyday – he was one of the very few who inspired me to have a process like that.

When you have awesome people like these that I’ve mentioned in your corner, how can you not be motivated to be the best you can be? Every one of them is irreplaceable – thank you.

As you may or may not know (besides my love for both basketball and soccer) I love Tennis – I watch it pretty much everyday (even old footage of highlights/matches of the past during covid times), I breathe it, I think about it, I eat it for breakfast, I used to play on the JV Tennis Team in High school, I played with the UC Davis Tennis Club in college (whether it be intramurals or other club sanctioned in-house competitions), I would play with my close friend Tony whenever I visit Southern California for the past couple years, and I’ve recently started playing more (along with reconstructing my game to get back into playing more competitively).

With my ongoing marathon training (again, for those who may or may not know), I figured that getting more back into tennis is a nice changeup and a great addition to my overall training regiment – it’s one of those things that I just love doing – I recently spent 2.5 hours at a local tennis center (even though it’s closed indefinitely for now) / park area where there was a wall that I could hit tennis balls against. I gotta tell ya – I haven’t felt this good about playing competitively again for the longest time.

I’ve recently been playtesting/demoing a couple rackets as of late (since I’ve been looking to switch up from using my ultra heavy Wilson nCode nSix-One 95s that I’ve had for the past 15 years), and it’s gotten me to feel good about playing more often forreal.

To be honest, I want to play again not only to make up for lost time when I went through long periods of time not playing as much I would like after college, but also, I want to play as Kevin J. Set who still has a lot to prove as a tennis player… and in the right, fair mindset without any ulterior motives, let me explain.

Before I continue, this is the first time I’ve mentioned this to anybody.

One of the biggest things I wanted to do in high school was to be on the Tennis team. It was a dream of mine to play on Varsity. I had a fantastic coach named Corey Brown who taught me how to play since 5th/6th grade. He taught me all about the game – the fundamentals, match play, everything.

When I got into High School, I tried out my freshman year, and unfortunately, I didn’t get in. I tried out my sophomore year, and I was able to get in and feel really good about it. I felt like I belonged and was one of the cool kids ON THE TENNIS TEAM. CHYEAH.

We had a surplus of JV players by the end of my sophomore year, and coach had to have us re-tryout the next year. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to retain my JV status on the tennis team in my junior year.

As a result, I was extremely frustrated and jealous (yes not envious, jealous…there’s a big difference) of people who were on the team. I was very salty, and I tried my very best to tryout again my senior yr (with the very slim chance that I could somehow make it to varsity), but wasn’t able to do so – I took a huge confidence hit in both junior and senior years (and the high school drama that was going on that I was involved in didn’t help at all), and all I could do was just to practice and try to get better on my own. I would have times when I would feel sorry for myself and just hit against a wall at a park next to where I lived just so that I can take out my anger and saltiness towards the most consistent, unbreakable hitting partner in the world – the wall.

Later on, I realized that I went into trying out for the team for the wrong reasons – the biggest one being to save face, feel entitled, and act as if I’ve been part of the team throughout my high school years, when in fact…I was only part of the team for one year (my sophomore year in high school on Junior Varsity). This extreme jealousy lasted until I entered UC Davis for my undergraduate studies.

My love for the sport renewed freshman year in college when I joined the UC Davis Tennis Club as a member – I was able to find people to hit with and they were all about being inclusive rather than being exclusive. That really helped me get my confidence back into playing. I felt included without the pressure of being “good” enough to join a team just to play with others at a high level.

I was able to compete and participate in intramurals for both singles + doubles (shoutout to Ian as my doubles partner for one of the intramurals. He was really fun to play with and we had a great time as doubles partners). I also played in the club-sanctioned in-house tournaments that would happen on certain weekends of the year.

I also made some awesome friends who I would play tennis with on the regular throughout my college days at UC Davis – shoutout to Karina, Malissa, Eddie, Alan, Lap, and Lester!

After college and during the past several years, usually the only person I would hit with is my close friend Tony. We’ve always had our great, fun battles in the numerous of matches we would play against each other, and there were times (as of the last two years) where we would play doubles both with and against each other with random people.

I have to say that he’s been a fantastic person to play tennis with, and I guess that got me thinking for the past year…maybe I should take up the sport more seriously – I know Tony has been practicing quite a bit on his end. I want to as well! Why not? (especially now since I’m in a much better mental state than before as I’ve mentioned earlier in this blog post).

With my renewed mind and spirit this year, I can finally say that I want to get back into playing competitive tennis because I want to, and for the right reasons – I love this sport, I think it’s really fun, I’m in pretty good shape to play for hours without any major injury issues or caveats at the moment, and I want to get better and play more at a competitive level because I think I have the potential to play really well. I don’t want my skills to be wasted, and I know that I can play at a high level if given the chance to do so.

I’ve recently been talking to one of my close friends, Elton, about tennis, and he mentioned that he used to play for a local club league team and that I should check to see if I can do that in Portland. What a great idea.

To wrap this all up – I’m still a man on a mission:

• Like everyone else, to be the very best person I can be for myself and for others around me who I care about the most.
• Continue to improve in body, mind, heart, and spirit.
• Continue my long-distance running marathon training + diet regime.
• Continue my journey back into competitive tennis.
• Continue to keep up with my other important priorities in my life, including our video game podcast that I do with Darrel + Bec + Sergio + TJ via the “Nintendo Jump Podcast” (check us out y’all – we’re on all of the podcasting apps including Spotify). Shoutout to you four forreal – we’re still going strong and it’s been such a great ride so far. I appreciate the work that all of us have done (especially to foster what I believe to be the most encouraging, positive gaming community out there in the universe) so far and will continue to do in the future.

Anyway, that’s me keepin’ it 235%. Thanks for reading and listening to what I have to say. I know it’s quite a bit, but I felt the need to share my story that I believe is relatable and hopefully can reach out to others who may have had the same struggles that I had for the longest of time. Mental Health is very important to take care of, and it should never be taken lightly. To be honest, I always wanted to talk about this, but withheld my story for a long time until now.

With that being said, I will be getting back into talking about my last November Japan Trip soon.

As I’ve mentioned before in previous blog posts, take care y’all, stay proactive and stay safe during these tough, challenging times during this whole COVID-19 outbreak. Be kind to each other, and respect one another – treat others as how you want to be treated during these covid times.

One more thing before I bounce until next time – there’s a quote that I really like from one of my favorite NBA players – Damian Lillard:

“If you want to look good in front of thousands, you have to outwork thousands in front of nobody.”

Cheers / wave

As I was trying to make conversation with the bus driver in telling him that I needed to reach Shizuoka Station (as part of my journey to reach Kurasawaya (the lunch spot that I was talking about in the previous blog post), I was struggling to figure out how to say just that (granted, I could’ve used google translate prior to getting onto the bus to talk to the bus driver, but I just didn’t do that at the time).

I immediately took out my phone to show him the route that I was taking (with him seeing that I needed to hit up Shizuoka Station as my first stop), and he immediately reassured me that Shizuoka Station would be one of the stops he will make along his route (phew).

I believe I paid anywhere from ¥100 – ¥200 for the trip, and it was a nice 10ish minutes ride. There were other people on the bus as well, and it wasn’t packed at all. It definitely felt very akin to the buses that I would take here in Portland for some reason.

Just like how it was on the bus itself, the Shizuoka Station wasn’t that packed at all – there were a decent number of people coming in and out, but it was nowhere near the numbers that I was seeing at Tokyo Stations a couple days prior. Also, it wasn’t too hard to find the appropriate JR Tokaido Line (via Platform 1) to get ready for the next part of my lunch journey of the day.

This was probably the only time that I wished that the bullet train ride were longer than 21 minutes given the fact that I spent quite a bit of time walking earlier in the morning (I know that I sound like an old man lol...). Don’t get me wrong – I definitely appreciate the exercise that comes with the walking, but I mean… can’t a guy ask for 10-20 minutes more to sit down in one place 😅? I’m not a young guy anymore lol. (I know…first-world complaining.)

Also, I just like looking out the window during train rides in general to see the scenic views, especially if there’s a lot of sea to see 😀

21 minutes train riding went by pretty quickly, and after 5 stops, I arrived at Yui Station! CHYEAH. Another station that isn’t super packed at this time, and I have to say…it has quite a charm as it’s located right by the sea via Suruga Bay (駿河湾, Suruga-wan).

~ Side Note #38: You probably have already (if not yet, you will now) noticed that I tend to take quite a number of train station photos at different angles / perspectives – The reason behind this is that I am a huge fan of linear perspective as defined via Britannica:

“a system of creating an illusion of depth on a flat surface. All parallel lines (orthogonals) in a painting or drawing using this system converge in a single vanishing point on the composition’s horizon line.“

As a person who was extremely enthralled by the subject of art back in both my elementary and middle school days (in which it was to the point where I participated in multiple art competitions at that time), the idea of how we see things in our line of view (especially if they’re parallel to our line of vision) got me thinking more about how our eyes have been constructed to work the way they do.

I’ve always been fascinated by how artists were able to capture this train of thought on canvas – it drove home to me that because all scattered points in a person’s eye view leads to a singular point, the underlying theme denotes the gateway into our souls – the spirits and essence of our inner thoughts and feelings when we see things not just at face value, but beneath the surface where we get exposed to both the beauty and the understanding of the world (whether you’re in a crowded area in a section of Tokyo where you’re navigating through like a maze, or whether you see a train track leading into a tunnel under a mountain without a train on it at the time while you admire the structural integrity of both the train tracks, and the train station area itself).

For the majority of us in the world, we rely on our sight quite a lot – there is a sense of safety and self-preservation that comes with what we see, and how we perceive things with our sight. With such this sense comes a responsibility of having empathy for both people and things around us – the ability to see is a treasured gift that a lot of us are privileged to have, and this is something that I truly appreciate and treasure as much as I can everyday. ~

I’m really glad that the weather is still partly cloudy (with a bit of sun!) – definitely not too cold and not too hot to walk in this small town; honestly, it’s the perfect walking weather in my opinion.

Originally, the walk from Yui Station to Kurasawaya was projected to be 17 minutes (via 1.3 km, or 0.807783 miles), but it turned out to be about 30 minutes for the following reasons:

• I stopped by to take some pictures along the way and just took in the scenery (especially looking beyond to view the Suruga Bay)

• When I was trying to find the restaurant, I thought it was across the freeway (which that in itself took at least a few minutes since the cross walk took quite a while to give me the proper walking sign to light up since it’s not that often that people would cross the freeway in such this manner); so, I had to backtrack just a little bit to find the restaurant finally! Ironically, the timing was just right since I had about 15 minutes left to spare before the restaurant opened at 11am. and I was the first customer to line up 😀

As a big fan of sunbreaks (which is very common in Portland), I love them because they are these auras of light that start to shine from the sky to break away from the clouds in order to give give second wind to the day to boost both morale and positivity (even though I’m already in high morale and on good positive levels for the day anyway, it never hurts to have more of that)

There were other areas of interest that came along the way (including the Yasaka Shrine as shown above), but besides taking a picture here and there, I didn’t stop to take a look at any of these since I wanted to make sure that I got to the restaurant with a bit of time left to spare.

Right after I arrived her as the first customer (before this place opened for the day), a middle-to-old aged couple shortly arrived a couple minutes after. They were talking amongst themselves about something (maybe it had to do with this restaurant) in Japanese, but I paid no mind and just patiently waited until the restaurant opened.

Kurasawaya opened, and they welcomed + allowed me to sit anywhere I want in the restaurant – I decided to sit next to a window where I got both a nice smell and a decent view of the seaside.

I wasn’t quite sure what to order until I saw the sakura ebi combo that they offered (pictured above for ¥3,100 = about $29.00 USD) – this included the following Sakura Ebi dishes:

• Kamameshi (釜飯) – which translates to “kettle rice” – it’s a traditional Japanese rice dish that is served in a kama (which is an iron pot)
• Kakiage – a type of uncountable, thin tempura.
• Sashimi – a type of Japanese Delicacy that consists of raw fish / meat (in this case, raw shrimp)

By the look of the bowl on the bottom right corner of the picture with the other items, I’m guessing that was going to be some sort of soup (in this case, it was miso soup). I also decided on this combo since this was exactly what I saw from seeing this website (while doing research earlier today on what to eat for lunch) – having a resource of the “7 Must-Eat Delicacies in Shizuoka Prefecture” definitely helps a lot!

One of the employees who worked at the restaurant came over to take my order, and I just silently pointed (and nodded my head) at that Sakura Ebi combo aforementioned.

The lady graciously took my order, and I didn’t have to wait long for the first course to arrive. I have to say – oh my god, what a good first course to start off too…holy shit.

This was the first time I’ve honestly had shrimp like this – it definitely has this naturally, slightly sweet taste by itself. Even without the wasabi + soy sauce, it was still good on its own – that’s when you know that they did a fantastic job on the food and it strikes as very good first impression so far. With that being said, I thoroughly enjoyed the sakura ebi sashimi with both wasabi + soy sauce in this manner.

Unfortunately, I’m not a big fan of radish in general, but I did give it a shot with a few of the sakura ebi just to see what that was like – this combo definitely gave off a spicier, peppier, and zestier tone to the sakura ebi that i can appreciate (even if it wasn’t too much to my linking in general). In my opinion, using the radish garnish with the sakura ebi is definitely an acquired taste.

The second course (Sakura Ebi Kakiage) came a few minutes after the sashimi arrived – and this is another first – I’ve never had kakiage (uncountable, thin tempura) before, so I’m in for a treat! It looked really good, and I gotta say with the taste – IT. DID. NOT. DISAPPOINT…JUST…wow.

I don’t know what to say to describe how good this than this – I was caught off guard, and astonished on how delicious, light and refreshing (AND IT’S DEEP FRIED, ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! How is this possible?) this dish was. Of all the kinds of tempura I’ve ever had in my life, this shot up all the way to the #1 spot forreal – I don’t even have to doubt or question that. I was so tempted to order another one of these, but if I were to do that, I would probably order a few more, and then several more… and I would go on a roll of these – I wouldn’t be able to stop hahah.

Several minutes after they brought out the kakiage, they brought out this set of dishes as the main, final course to this Sakura Ebi Set.

When I opened up the cover of the iron pot, a nice, light stream of smoke came out and showed this nice presentation of steamed Sakura Ebi with the kettle rice.

Does it taste just as good as it looks? No… it tastes even better than it looks. I’m not even exaggerating on this y’all.

This is another first in my books where I’ve never had Kamameshi before, and I was very impressed with how this tasted overall. Using the wooden spoon that they’ve provided me to use to scoop up both the Sakura Shrimp + Kettle Rice in the perfect ratios as best as I can, I was again tempted to order another one of these (but if I were to do so, I mean… yeah let’s not go there lol, I would eat way too much and would be completely full of eating anything else for the rest of the day haha).

There were some more customers trickling in after I ordered + while I was eating so happily (and honestly, really giddy inside). This is honestly one of the best meals I’ve ever had in my life.

Even though the overall dining experience of eating in the restaurant wasn’t as interactive (in terms of talking to the proprietors in making conversation) as it was like the previous night at that local mom-and-pop shop with Kiyoshi and Hinoko, the service was excellent, and I felt extremely comfortable eating here.

After I paid for my meal, one of my employees went out of her way to give me a free “SHOP LOCAL” tote bag as a thank you – I was surprised, and I thanked her the same way (through bowing as the traditional Japanese courtesy as you know).

I left the restaurant with a nice, satisfied stomach, and a happy heart filled with more energy and joy – if y’all were to ever visit Japan, and happen to be in the Shimizu / Shizuoka area, I highly recommend y’all make a trip to visit Kurasawaya (or any other restaurant that serves Sakura Ebi in the area).

You will not be disappointed. Period.

Shortly after I left the restaurant, it started sprinkling and the clouds got a bit darker. Dang it…I wish I had an umbrella lol (as it turns out, I didn’t need an umbrella since the sprinkling would be on and off on the way back to the Yui Train Station).

While I was walking back to the Yui Station, I had Yuko’s (my Shizuoka AirBnb host!) recommendation of hitting up Kashinoichi Shimizu Fish Market (the famous fish market where more than 1 million people visit every year); however, as I did a bit more research (especially look at the google map location reviews, and the main posting about this particular fish market from there), I found out that this Fish Market is closed on Wednesdays 😦

Bummer…it would’ve been dope to visit (since I’m already in the area anyway), but all good! I was still very happy with how my day has been going so far, so it’s not a big deal, honestly.

Looking at the journey I made to get to this restaurant (from downtown Shizuoka + Toro Ruins), it was totally worth the trip – I love how scenic and beautiful the Yui area is – it is truly a seaside town that evokes this tranquil feeling of both adventure and mystery that just gets me going.

Even walking from Yui Station to Kurasawaya was very pleasant (and walking from the restaurant back to the Train Station).

I never got tired of turning my head over to see Suruga Bay to the East – there’s something about the sight and smell of the sea that makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. I feel like there are just times in my life where I wish I could live in a seaside town like this.

Even though I didn’t make time to stop by different parts of Yui, there were quite a number of shops along the way back where they would sell local, fresh mochi and other delicacies (although, some of those shops weren’t open – it was just nice to see the shops from the outside and see the mochi and other things on display).

You might be wondering, “Yo Kev, why do you have to get back to the Yui Train Station so soon? Shouldn’t you wonder around for a while, explore a bit, and see what this area has to offer?”

I would answer by saying that’s a good, valid point; however, I have other awesome places and things I’ve already planned to do later today that I want to have time for in and around downtown Shizuoka, especially MARUZEN Tea Roastery (マルゼンティーロースタリー) since they closed yesterday (and I don’t want to miss this opportunity to visit!).

I’m excited to talk about that and other places/things that I hit up later during the day y’all, but unfortunately, it’ll have to wait until the next travel blog post via Day 4: Part 3.

As I’ve mentioned before in previous blog posts, take care y’all, stay proactive and stay safe during these tough, challenging times during this whole COVID-19 outbreak.

Have an amazing week, and I’ll see y’all in the next post!

Cheers / wave

I got up about 5:45am in the morning, took a shower, and quietly got dressed and ready to go outside. The weather was partly cloudy, and the temperature was in the high 50s (°F) – not cold to be honest, but it was a decent drop from the low 70s (°F). I’m usually mindful about these changes in temperature because the way my nose (btw: I have a history of nasal allergies) reacts depends on how drastic and when these changes in temperature happen. If the drop is big (regardless if it’s an increase or decrease), my nose gets more sensitive, and more often than not, I start to sneeze a bit 😦 which is pretty lame.

My first main stop of today is the Toro Ruins! (a Historical, Archaeological Site -> a village that was built from almost 2,000 years ago) It was one of the places that I had bookmarked while doing research on places to hit up in Shizuoka (prior to this Japan trip); the only caveat about visiting the Ruins today was the fact that it technically opens to the public at 9:00am. Since it was 7:00am, I had two hours to figure out something to eat between then and 9:00am (when the Toro Ruins opens to the general public for the day).

From my Shizuoka AirBnB to Toro Ruins (via Google Maps), it is calculated to be a 43 minute walk (3.4 km), but while I was walking on the streets, I did a quick google search for any sort of breakfast place I could find (since I need fuel for the tank if you know what i’m sayin’), and the McDonalds (which was located inside the JR (Japan Rail) Shizuoka Station) showed up close to where I was! It was only a 15 minute walk (1.2 km) from my Shizuoka AirBnB, so why not! I couldn’t find any other breakfast place that was convenient and accessible during the time I was up, so I just headed over to the JR Shizuoka Station to hit up that McDonalds.

It was a two story McDonalds building, and there were a decent number of folks inside that were all different (from salary women / salarymen and school children with their parents, to older folks who were on their newspapers just catching up on what’s been going on in the world). I took a seat on my own upstairs on one of the counters they had situated against the windows, and just had my breakfast there.

~ Side Note #35: Normally, I wouldn’t think much about having McDonalds in the morning, but for some reason… this moment of eating this meal for breakfast reminds me of the times I’ve had having McDonalds with my parents once per weekend (while I still lived back in Southern California) as a morning tradition.

Either my dad or I would pick up breakfast at our local McDonalds, bring it back to our house, and have us eat breakfast together at our dining table. Both of my parents are huge fans of the Deluxe Breakfast + breakfast burritos + the coffee.

Yeah, you know. The Coffee.

Even though we have coffee that we can make at home, my dad loves to get McDonald’s “Senior Discounted” coffee every single time (I don’t quite remember the price, but it’s definitely more than $0.60 and less than a dollar – which obviously is a great deal on a small cup of coffee); I don’t know how long he’s been keeping up with this tradition of getting the “Senior Discounted” Coffee.

Our dog (Rusty) would want in on the McDonalds Breakfast action as well, but his McDonalds intake is severely limited to just having us feed him bits and pieces of the english muffin from the Deluxe Breakfast (since unfortunately, he’s allergic and/or doesn’t do well with a good number of foods). It’s always nice to see him nibble and eat on the English Muffin bits and pieces and giving us the look like he wants more, haha.

I bring this up as a thought because there’s something comforting and heartwarming about having McDonalds breakfast with your family – I still have vague memories of when I was 4 or 5 going to McDonalds with my parents and just thinking of these little trips as these treat experiences.

I’d usually have chicken nuggets, fries, and unboxing the surprise toy that came with my happy meals. I used to have this thing where I didn’t want to use any of the sauces that McDonalds provided (whether it be sweet & sour or barbecue – the two OGs. the classics.), and would either just have them plain, or at most with a dash of salt on top of each of them (even though I’m sure the nuggets themselves already had a decent amount of sodium).

McDonald’s slogan of “I’m Lovin’ It” typically refers to how the customers feel when they eat their Big Macs’ + Fries, but to me, “I’m Lovin’ It” means that I’m just lovin’ the times I’ve had with my parents having McDonalds together at the table – something fast and convenient that we can get if we ran out of ideas of places to eat, regardless of how our day has been (whether it be a good day, or a bad day where we just need that pick-me-up). I know that this could be said about any other food place, and for good, healthier reasons too I might add… but for some reason, this feeling of warmth is only synonymous with having McDonalds with my family. The fact that McDonalds has such an international presence and having the ability to give me the chance to remind myself of this little thing that I cherish makes it even more meaningful. McDonalds is more than just a fast food chain – it’s a consistent, family lifestyle tradition that is built on the presence of one of the things that I value the most – quality time.~

Anyway, I went ahead and finished both my Bacon Egg McSandwich + Hash brown + carried the rest of my coffee with me out the door.

After checking my watch + googling how long it would take to go from the McDonalds (that I was at via the JR Shizuoka Station) to the Toro Ruins (which was 33 minutes – 2.7 km), it dawned to me that I still had about 1.5 hours left before the Toro Ruins officially opened to the general public for today.

As I kept walking down one of the streets (in a Southeast direction), I was trying to figure out what I can do for the next 1.5 hours (while on the way to Toro Ruins)

~ Side Note #36 – After I finished my coffee (from McDonalds), I was trying to find a trash can for the longest time, but I couldn’t find one for the next 15-20 minutes of walking until I saw a local combini (convenience store) along the way and there happened to be both a recycling bin and a trash can next to each other. I think it’s a pretty interesting theme here in Japan (if I haven’t mentioned this already) that there aren’t as many garbage cans on the streets, and that might be somehow correlating to the minuscule amount of actual trash that are on the streets. Huh lol…go figure 😀 ~

~ The player’s strategy #10 – You should probably see if there’s a bakery or another breakfast place you can hit up along the way, your stomach still has a bit of appetite left, man. Don’t tell me that you’re already full from what you had a McDonalds 😀 ~

I listened to both my mind and my stomach – After searching on google maps on some breakfast places, a lot of them open either at 9am (at the same time Toro Ruins was opened for the day) or a bit later at 9:30/10am – right then and there… that just wasn’t a possibility given the time of day.

I started looking at bakeries around that could be opened both on the way to and around Toro Ruins – there were some that opened at 10am, and even at 12pm (which I thought it was strange since that’s already lunch time! How is that a thing?!), but while I was still walking + trying to find a bakery nearby, I found this one in particular called “ピーターパン するが工房” (pronounced as Pītāpan suruga kōbō) (btw, that’s the exact google maps link that I used to reference this bakery).

Obviously, I don’t know what that read since I can’t read Japanese to begin with, but from the website (http://www.peaterpan.jp/shop/) that was linked to the google map marker associated with this bakery, I deduced that this place is called “Peater Pan” (which is like Peter Pan in America by J. M. Barrie – first introduced in 1904, and later on in a Disney film in 1953).

Not only were the pictures (via that google maps link earlier) enticing, but also it was opened at 7:30am! OHHHH HELLLLLLL YEAHHHHH a bakery that is open in the morning!!! CHYEAH.

The icing on the cake was reading the google reviews about Peater Pan, including this particular one from somebody named Amanda L. (a local guide) – she said the following:

“My favorite bakery in Shizuoka. I could eat here everyday. They have the best Shiopan I have ever eaten. You also get a complimentary coffee with your order.”

Done. Let’s Get it.

Even though it was about half a km further than the Toro Ruins, this bakery was definitely worth walking to since it was already on the way anyway.

I got to the bakery around 8:10am, and initially looking through the windows, I can totally see all of the fresh pastries all organized and displayed so nicely as if it were too good to be true – as if it were literally a fairy tale. I was impressed and tried not to get too giddy with this bakery. How come I didn’t hear about this bakery earlier?! Man, what a hidden gem, and from reading the reviews (especially from Amanda L.’s), it did not disappoint.

As I entered the building, right to my left was the complimentary coffee that I heard about. Even though I already had coffee (from McDonalds) earlier, I was definitely down to get another cup of coffee! (albeit, I would’ve felt bad if I didn’t get any pastries from this bakery and get the coffee, but that didn’t happen because I obviously did get a couple pastries here 😀)

All of the pastries inside the bakery were laid out so nicely, and with labels that I couldn’t read lmao. I had to either take a guess, or use the google translate app’s camera scanning feature (where it has the ability to scan text and translate it from (in this case) Japanese to English).

And you know…YOU KNOW I GOT ONE OF THEM SHIOPANs’ YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN?! CMON NOW. GOOGLE REVIEWER HYPE. gotta get one at least. CHYEAH.

Taking my best guess, these looks like Melon Croissants. (mainly because of the pastries’ shape + the color of the label lol haha). Truth be told, I did not get one of these 😦 … which I kind of regretted.

When I saw that one of the customers took one of these pastries (the one on the left side of the above picture), the first thought in my mind was like… “this might be a good 2nd pastry to try! If that customer got it, then I gotta try it too. HELL YEAH. JUST DO IT.” (lol, brilliant thinking, no?) From the looks of the pastries (along with the colored leaves on the tray), I would deduce that the left side pastries had both powdered sugar (which was obviously very conspicuous), and some sort of maple filling in it.

I limited myself to just two pastries, because otherwise, I would get more and more pastries to the point where I’d have way too much to eat before lunch time (which you’ll find out what I had in the next travel blog post… oh man y’all are in for a treat for that one 😀)

The total (for both the Shiopan + the Maple, layered + cylindrical pastries) came out to be ¥310 (which comes out to about $2.89 USD). Adding the complimentary coffee, this was a pretty decent deal for my second breakfast of the day! Also, when I talked to the lady taking care of my pastries transaction, I didn’t need to use much Japanese and just said “ありがとうございます!” (translated to arigatou gozaimasu – also known as thank you very much!). As usual, both she and I did the whole courteous bowing thing that you usually do when purchasing/buying stuff.

It was nice to find that there were these decent wooden picnic benches for customers to sit, relax, and enjoy their pastries! Unfortunately, I didn’t get a closeup picture of the Shiopan I had – it was very delicious btw…such a savory pastry that was both light and delightful. It had the light buttery filling I was expecting, and the salt just had the right amount of savory flavor that tempted me to dip pieces of the Shiopan into the coffee (which I did, and it was a nice combination 😀) man… I was honestly tempted to get another shiopan…BUT!

Earlier, I mentioned that I was thinking that this had a maple filling of some sort – I was half right – it was honestly like this maple + chocolate combination that actually goes pretty well together! AND! you dip parts of this into the coffee.

BAH BAM! CHYEAHHHHHHHHH.

OHHHHH YOOOOOOO CMON NOW YOU KNOW THAT’S HOW Y’ALL SHOULD EAT PASTRIES. THE RIGHT WAY. THE WAY IT’S MEANT TO BE DONE, in a fashion that beholds the pastry consumer to have the best bakery experience ever!

hahaha in all seriousness, this particular pastry was very delicious, and not too sweet (which is what I would prefer for any sweet pastry, honestly).

After enjoying my second breakfast, and a restroom trip on one of the backdoor side (whatever you call that) rooms of the bakery, I took a good 9 minute walk (0.75 km) northwest of the Peater Pan Bakery to reach the Toro Ruins!

I got there 5 minutes early (at 8:55am) before they opened to the general public…and honestly (besides seeing a few people around the Toro Ruins walking – definitely not going to the ruins since I ended up being the ONLY person there at this time lol), it felt really eerie and weird to be here at this time.

It literally felt like a ghost town (along with some crows from afar who were just chillin’ like villains), and I was just all alone taking some pictures (like the first two above).

I was waiting for a bit to see if there would be some sort of tour guide coming over to do a tour of these ruins; however, that didn’t happen. I guess since this is on a random weekday (which it was – a Wednesday morning), maybe there’s usually more people visiting on the weekends? I don’t know…all I know was that these ruins were completely deserted when I came to visit.

After a few minutes of walking/looking around, I decided to just say “fuck it” and entered a pit-dwelling to see more of what these 2000 year old constructions were all about.

Inside this particular pit-dwelling, the ground that I was walking on was definitely made out of some sort of clay/dirt combo. It was a soft ground that wasn’t too soft to where your feet would sink like quicksand.

It was cool to see that there are audio guides for people who want to do self-guided tours here; the problem about this is the fact that this is only useful if I had the right information (aka maybe a tour guide can help out with this) to help me how to use my device to obtain that audio guide to get more information about these pit-dwellings.

Overall, it was honestly uninspiring to be here unfortunately 😦 I am aware of the legacy and cultural history behind these Toro pit-dwellings – no doubt that this public archaeological park holds a special place to Shizuoka in it’s long history. I guess I would’ve both greatly benefited and appreciate if there were a tour guide available on-site, but then again, I came on a random weekday and 5 minutes before it opened for the day…I shouldn’t have expected much than just my own self-guided tour (without the use of audio guides that the pit-dwellings have inside).

Not gonna lie, I only spent a total of about 8 minutes at these ruins lol… (not just because I ran out of things to look at given the situation I was in, but mainly because it just felt very eerie and uncomfortable being here all by myself).

I walked out of the Toro Ruins, and I proceeded to figure out my next stop. Since Yuko (my awesome AirBnb host) gave me that awesome dinner recommendation the night before, I went ahead and asked her (via the AirBnb Messaging Feature) the following:

“morning! thank you for the yakitori recommendation. it was quite nice. sorry to bother you again, but i wanted to ask you for another recommendation – where can I go to eat sakura shrimp around the area? Thanks :D”

~ Side Note #37: You know what I’m going for right? I mentioned this in one of my previous Day 3 blog posts – Sakura Shrimp is one of the things that Shizuoka is well known for. I had to eat this sometime and somehow! ~

She responded shortly after:

“おはようございます！サクラエビを食べたいのなら電車で由比駅まで行くことを勧めます。オススメのお店は「井筒屋」です。” (Ohayōgozaimasu! Sakuraebi o tabetai nonara densha de Yui-eki made iku koto o susumemasu. Osusume no o-ten wa `Idzutsuya’desu.)

(translation: Good morning! If you want to eat sakura shrimp, I recommend taking a train to Yui Station. The recommended store is Izutsuya.)

https://s.tabelog.com/shizuoka/A2201/A220102/22002585/top_amp/

“近場がよければ清水港の河岸の市で食べることができるかもしれません。” (Chikaba ga yokereba Shimizukō no gashinoichi de taberu koto ga dekiru kamo shiremasen.)

(translation: If you’re near, you may be able to eat at a market on the river bank of Shimizu Port.)

http://kashinoichi.com/

Danggggggg Yuko’s got the info! CHYEAH. Well I definitely want to stop by the Kashinoichi Shimizu Fish Market (as I quickly googled this up via Tripadvisor only to find out that they have a multiplicative of a variety of fresh fish and other types of seafood!) that she mentioned just now after lunch, and Izutsuya seems like a pretty good choice too! Just looking at that tabelog site’s pictures, I could tell that this would be a good place to eat Sakura Shrimp at.

The one caveat that I was hesitant about Izutsuya was the fact that when I inputted their address on google maps (going from where I was right outside the Toro Ruins to Izutsuya), I had search results that didn’t give me any search results as shown:

Sorry, we could not calculate transit directions from “Toro Remains, 5 Chome-10-5 Toro, Suruga Ward, Shizuoka, 422-8033, Japan” to “井筒屋, 314 Yui, Shimizu Ward, Shizuoka, 421-3103, Japan“

Granted, I had an idea on how to get to Yui station (that’s the not so hard part) could’ve spent some time to see if I could ask locals to help me get to Izutsuya… at the time, I just didn’t think it was worth the risk (and I felt bad since Yuko highly recommended it too 😦 …sigh), especially since I don’t know my way around Yui Station and walking up there.

With that being said, I was already researching on another place where I could have Sakura Shrimp – ‘lo and behold, I found this place called Kurasawaya! (along with looking up this site via Tsunagu Japan after some googling) The pictures looked really appetizing, especially both the sakura shrimp tempura, and the claypot sakura shrimp!

Also, when I inputted the address (going from where I was right outside the Toro Ruins to Kurasawaya), I was able to view an easy enough way to get there via Google Maps!

Bingo – I have clear directions (shoutout to Google Maps!) to get to my lunch spot. I calculated it so that I would get there 25 minutes early (since they open at 11:00 am), and I honestly don’t mind being the early bird anyway.

I’m going to put a stop right here. Another late night of me writing and it’s 1:13 am right now. 😅

In the next blog post (Day 4: Part 2), I’ll cover my mini trek to Shimizu to hit up Kurasawaya + having lunch there + the seaside views, and more – Stay tuned!

As I’ve mentioned before in previous blog posts, take care y’all, stay proactive and stay safe during these tough times with the whole COVID-19 outbreak.

Have a fantastic start of the week, and I’ll see y’all in the next post!

Cheers / wave

Before I get started, excuse me for being away for a hot minute – it’s just been quite busy with other things going on in my life – whether it be the long hours at work where I’ve surprisingly have been managing my workload as best as I can, religiously working on building up and engaging in a myriad of activities via my island of Minato (which means Port in Japanese – 港 ) via Animal Crossing: New Horizons on the Nintendo Switch, the recent habit of going on more outdoor runs (whilst in the practice of social distancing!) than I would have imagined I would have done in the past couple months, and most importantly – finally being more proactive in socializing with close friends and coworkers in general, and getting out of my slump of having a lot of moments where I just don’t want to talk to people (see “Keepin’ it 235%” Entry 1: Set the Tempo, and a Giant Sea Serpent. (3/26/20) for the scoop behind that one).

It’s been an interesting, unique challenge to have that work/life balance since the whole COVID-19 situation began, and I think it’s one of those things that I realized – it’s about your overall attitude and how you respond, given how COVID-19 has changed our daily lives so dramatically in this “new” normal that we are in today.

Everybody has their own way of living in this “new” normal: for me, I just became more obsessed with “setting the tempo” for this year. I’ve been able to do this not only in my career at my current gig (where I’m honestly surprised that my morale is still holding up with all the work going on and the priorities that I have on my plate to handle appropriately), but also with my mental state – I’ve been just go-go-go with making sure that I get enough gaming time to both aid my talking material for the podcast episodes + recharge the batteries at times, with keeping a well-balanced diet as best as I can, and with my running routine (it’s just been a really welcoming change to my overall lifestyle) – I welcome this challenge and for some reason, I’ve embraced this “new” normal and I’ve just been tackling it head on all day everyday.

I’ve been motivated by my closest of friends, and inspired by the daily happenings from them and from coworker friends – we’re all in this together to work tremendously hard, and get through this storm that is COVID-19.

With everything going on in the past couple months, (to quote similarly from Frank Costello via The Departed (2006) movie) I realize that I’m not a product of my environment, the environment is a product of me. I am one of the positives in the world that the environment can take from me, and I’m pretty confident that what I’m doin’ for others and for my life is working – to those who have shown me gratitude and appreciation for who I am (especially for bringing the energy everyday in the hopes that I can lighten up your day somehow), thank you so much for the support – much love.

…and with that, I will now step out of the territory of cheese and corn (aka being cheesy and corny… lol) and step into the lands of the travel journal – onto “Day 3 (Part 4)” of my first night in Shizuoka! (and yes, this is going to be the last part for day 3 haha I promise!)

By the time I reached outside of the Shizuoka PARCO department store, the sky went from dark blue partly cloudy, to pitch black like BOOM, it’s nighttime! Dang that was pretty quick, considering that the walk from Yakitori Hinode (the small mom-and-pop shop where I had an amazing, local dining experience with the proprietors Kiyoshi and Hinoko) did not take too long.

Even in the nighttime, the downtown Shizuoka area wasn’t as packed as it would be in downtown Tokyo – this is such a drastic contrast that I honestly didn’t expect because I initially thought that Shizuoka was another big time city area like Tokyo… but it’s not, and I love the fact that it’s just big enough of a city and small enough of an area where it’s not entirely commercialized and flooded with an atrocious number of tall skyscrapers and buildings that just hovers over you with both awe and intimidation simultaneously. It honestly reminds me of where I live now in Portland. Even though I haven’t stayed in Shizuoka for that long thus far, I just get those Portland vibes that just makes me feel more comfortable with the environment around me.

You’re probably thinking “well Kevin, maybe it’s because it’s a weekday night, and not a lot of people would be out and about on a random Tuesday night + maybe students are still in after school sessions, and adults are still at work until later in the night.” You could be right haha but still – it’s the main downtown area, and I would have thought that it would be a lot more crowded than it is.

When I first entered the PARCO department store, I immediately got vibes of the ideal asian department stores that I’ve been to in other Asian countries (especially in Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia) – it’s at least 8 floors (including a B1F or 1st basement floor).

~ Side Note #29: As quoted within the About Us section of the official PARCO website (via The Concept Behind Our Name) – “PARCO, is the Italian word for “park.” Like a park, each PARCO location is a space where people come together to share time and space, where they can relax and have fun.“ The fact that such a simple concept can lead to a chain of successful department stores throughout the country is something that I admire and appreciate. I know it may seem like i’m overexaggerating about my interest in the meaning behind the name, but I have a genuine interest in finding out about the behind-the-scenes on things – in this case (due to the fact that I’ve never had of a chain of department stores be called “Parco”), I was just really curious about the meaning behind the name. ~

They definitely stay true to that concept – like in other department stores that I’ve been to in Tokyo, each of the 9 floors has their own sections of things that they specialize in – whether it be men’s and ladies’ fashion & variety goods, or a food & grocery + kids section (particularly in the first basement floor, and later on you’ll pretty much expect that (if I haven’t mentioned this already) a lot of first basement floors are generally catered towards speciality food, snacks, and groceries – it’s pretty standard to be honest).

Maybe it’s because it’s a random Tuesday night, but I felt really at ease just shopping and browsing at my own leisure just because there weren’t as many people (not like in department stores in Tokyo where there are tons and tons of people flocking around and shopping/browsing especially in Yodobashi Akihabara, which is very well known not just in Tokyo, but even with a bunch of people here back in the States who keep up and are interested in all things related to travelling and visiting Tokyo.)

~ The player’s strategy #9 – before browsing anything else, hit up the soccer store that you had an eye on for a minute 🙂 ~

~ Side Note #30 (oh man… just to preface – this is quite a long note haha get ready y’all)

For those who don’t know, I’m also an avid soccer (or football as it is called EVERYWHERE else besides the states) fan. I love the game, and I wish I grew up with it earlier than starting since 2010 (with the whole FIFA World Cup 2010 thing + my cousins obsessed with the English Premier League the last time I visited them, which led me to choosing my club at that time in summer 2010 – Arsenal F.C.)

(Here we go, takin y’all back about 9.5 years ago, a blast from the past!)

I remember the days in summer 2010 when I was doing summer school + when the 2010 FIFA World Cup was going on, and my college housemates were getting me into following soccer, including playing the “2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa” video game on the PS3 (PlayStation 3). Interesting enough, besides rooting for our home soil team, I was also rooting for the two Asian National teams that made it out of the group stages of the tournament – South Korea, and especially Japan.

Combined with the fact that whilst this was going on, I was starting, watching, and finishing up this awesome soccer anime called Whistle! during my downtime when I wasn’t talking with my housemates about the 2010 FIFA world cup (I highly recommend y’all this anime btw!).

Honestly, it was a whole, new world in sports that I never realized how global and amazing it was. Football (in so many countries) is considered to be a religion, and a way of life. I was just captivated by the energy and spirit of the game. I was so enamored of how so many countries around the world come together in this World Cup tournament (held every 4 years like the Olympics) to qualify and be the last, remaining 32 countries out of 211 to compete in this prestigious World Cup Tournament. I know basketball is a global sport, but Soccer is in a different class of its own – it has a rich history of competition and spirit that has been ongoing since mid to late 1800s.

After the 2010 World Cup + visiting my relatives in Asia (which I found out that my cousins were huge fans of certain teams in the Premier League, such as Manchester United, and Liverpool), I started to get even more obsessed with soccer – with the months after, I got into the FIFA games more (especially FIFA 11 on the PS3) with my college housemates, and I engrossed myself in learning about all different domestic leagues around the world (whether it be the English Premier League in the UK, Serie A in Italy, La Liga in Spain, MLS in the States, and others). No joke, I would spend hours reading through wikipedia on the English Premier League – the history and culture about it, the number of divisions and how these leagues are ran, and the different clubs that compete in these domestic leagues (I was particularly fond of the English Premier League since I learned that it was one of the top, if not the top, domestic soccer league that many people watch all over the world). I thoroughly enjoyed every single minute of that, and it was to the point where I would neglect and forget about other sports such as basketball with following the NBA (National Basketball Association) for a long while. ~

You’re probably wondering, “Well Kevin, this is all decent stuff about your history with soccer, but what the hell does that have to do with going to a random soccer shop in Shizuoka?!”

Because of my late upbringing with the sport (especially with my recent interest in the J-League (Japan’s domestic league, and arguably the strongest domestic league from Asia in the world) – seeing the fact that I’ve watched Japanese Animes about it + my fandom for the Japanese National Soccer Team), I made it a point to visit at least 1-2 soccer shops in Japan this time around to see if I can shell out a reasonable amount of money to get a jersey of a club (via the J-League), or even a hat/shirt, just something (but forreal though, a jersey would be soul dope). Since a couple months prior to the start of this solo Japan trip, I’ve always wanted to support and follow a J-League club religiously just because I think it would be cool to be a part of being one of the supporters of a Japanese domestic soccer club from afar to further continue my passion and love for the sport in a country that has given me a good number of influences that have affected my life tremendously by providing me the groundwork to two of my favorite hobbies (in the form of anime, and ESPECIALLY video games). I hope this makes sense to y’all.

Anyway, it was cool to check out Soccer Shop KAMO (on the 5th floor) and what it has to offer – initially, I thought that they would have reasonable prices on jerseys (like they do back in Singapore / Malaysia at those local mom-and-pop shops – one of which I got a Replica Malaysian National Soccer Jersey for pretty cheap – I think I spent about $30-33 USD for that one. Totally worth and I still have it today!) – however, this shop in particular didn’t have any replica jerseys; instead, they had the authentic jerseys that the professional soccer players would wear on match days via the pitch. This is cool and all, but typically Authentic jerseys sell for way more than Replica jerseys.

When I was looking at the prices of the Authentic jerseys they had (including the Shimizu S-Pulse ones) along with a number of J-League teams (unfortunately, I don’t have a picture of those…), they ranged anywhere from ¥12,800 (or $119 – $120 USD) to ¥15,000 (or $139 – $140 USD). Considering the prices of Authentic jerseys of NBA players (that usually go for $300 USD a pop), that’s not bad at all – however, I just don’t see myself wearing an authentic jersey for a club that I’m just starting to choose and support. Given the price and my initial thoughts, it’s just not worth it, and I wasn’t willing to make that commitment right from the get-go, especially with Shimizu S-Pulse (even though their jerseys were pretty cool and vibrant with that orange color though!)

I did consider other J-League teams jerseys there too (especially Sanfrecce Hiroshima’s – their club name (according to the associated wikipedia page) is a portmanteau of the Japanese numeral for three (San) and the Italian word frecce, which means ‘arrows’. ), but I had an initial thought where if I were to get a jersey from a soccer shop in Japan, I would like the club that I would ultimately support be a club in a Japanese City that I’ve visited, and in this case, Shimizu S-Pulse fit just that.

Ultimately, given the price of those jerseys, I opted not to get an authentic Shimizu S-Pulse jersey. It was pretty dope to check out the store though – they did offer different soccer apparel that I don’t normally see online or in sports apparel stores in the states (from brands such as Puma (which I knew they were involved in soccer in some capacity) or New Balance – this one surprised me because I did not know that New Balance made soccer apparel: I found out later on that one of the biggest clubs in the English Premier League (Liverpool) has their jerseys / kits made by New Balance. That is something else.)

~ Side Note #31: For the next two shops that I’ll talk about where I spent a considerable amount of time browsing + shopping within PARCO (as a fair warning) tonight, I didn’t take any pictures while I was at both shops respectively just because I was just focused on figuring out what I want to buy and more importantly – I didn’t want to make it a primary focus to just take pictures of all the different clothes and cool stuff in these shops. Excuse me for that. ~

Moving onto the 6th floor while browsing around, I stumbled upon one of my favorite stores of all-time: Design T-Shirt Store Graniph.

~ Side Note #32: Design T-Shirt Store Graniph is a chain of Japanese art apparel stores that specialize in graphic tees (short and long sleeves) of considerable, high, and durable quality at somewhat reasonable prices. I first stumbled upon this apparel brand when Wesley Chan (one of the main three who’s part of the famous Wong Fu Productions – an independent, digital media company that has had an impact on my life since my high school days) wore one of their shirts. I was intrigued from the get-go, and during my family trip to Taiwan back in October 2011, I found out that there was a Design T-Shirt Store Graniph shop in one of the districts in Taipei – I ended up getting two awesome t-shirts there that lasted me for quite a long while (one of which I still have today!)

I’ve gotten a few more t-shirts from them several years later, when my mom made a trip to Taiwan to visit her close friends and helped me get the following three shirts which I still have today (especially since that same branch in Taipei was about to close down at that time :[ sigh.).

These shirts are made very well, and the material that they are made from feel really nice on the body – I always have a good time rockin’ these tees. ~

Anyway, back to my visit at this particular Design T-Shirt Store Graniph branch in Shizuoka PARCO – I was browsing around, and there were quite a number of designs that were cool and shirts I could see myself wearing, but only one in particular caught my eye:

This “Costumed Performers” long-sleeved tee looks pretty promising. After I looked at it for a bit, I asked the lone employee (who was folding clothes prior to me asking her) if the shop had this particular long-sleeve tee in size small (since the one I was looking at just now is a size medium, and I typically fit in size small shirts as of now).

I asked her the best I can in Japanese with “Sumimasen, eto chiisai size arimasu ka?” (which roughly translates to “excuse me, umm…do you have this in small size”… except I didn’t know how to say size in Japanese so I just said the word size hoping that she would understand well enough lol haha fail.) while holding the medium-sized tee.

She then proceeded to say something in Japanese that I couldn’t understand unfortunately, and then I just said “Hai.” (yes) like yeah I totally understood what she said lmao! JOKES.

Right after, she looked at me like she just realized that I just didn’t register what she just said (and she’s right!). It was immediately conspicuous to her that I barely spoke the language.

I then proceeded to say what I would say (as referenced from “The player’s strategy #7” via the last travel blog post) when I’m caught in a situation where I need to let the person know that I do not understand Japanese very well.

"すみません、わたしわ 日本語があまりわかりません" 

(Sumimasen, watashi wa nihongo ga amari wakarimasen – or Excuse me, I do not understand Japanese very well.)

Immediately after I said that, she smiled and chuckled a bit (which did put me at ease, phew) searched a bit at another section of the store via my request for a small-size version of the tee, and found the “Costumed Performers” long-sleeved tee in size small.

She then took both the medium and small sized tees and measured both of them against my back. After doing that, she spoke to me in a little bit of English to describe that the medium size should fit better on me than the small.

I then used hand gestures and a little bit of English to tell her that I usually wear small-size shirts, to which she said: “ehhhhhh?! Sou ka?!” (like ohhhhh is that so? but in a very comical, light-hearted way).

I then smiled + chuckled a bit + responded with “hai.” (yes). I first tried on the medium-size tee first, and then the small-size tee shortly after (right in front of her, and keep in mind, I was trying out this shirt over the shirt that I was already wearing, but luckily the t-shirt that I was already wearing is thin so it shouldn’t be a problem).

After I put on the small-sized tee, the lady was like “ohhhhhh! muscles” – LOL… I thought it was pretty funny that she would say muscles in that sort of surprised, comical, light-hearted way. I was caught a bit off guard since (by her facial reactions) she was surprised that the small size of this “Costume Performers” tee actually fit me decently, and I didn’t know how to respond other than just to smile + laugh right then and there to respond back with “hahah yeahhhhhh I usually like a tight fit.” We both chuckled a bit shortly after that.

She nodded in agreement, and I told her “hai” (yes) once again (as a confirmation that I want to buy this shirt in size small). And that was that, I took off the small-sized tee, gave it to her to ring it up to the register + somehow told her / motioned my way to say “Okay, I’m ready to purchase this shirt”, paid for it with cash (total came out to about ¥2800 or about $26 USD) of and not my BOA travel CC after we tried using that CC to pay (which is fine… I mean this wasn’t a surprise since I’ve already mentioned that there were times throughout this solo Japan trip where my BOA travel CC got denied for whatever reason). I got my change, and I left + said goodbye in Japanese to her… and as you would expect, there were courteous bows from both of us that happened during this transaction haha.

I went to browse a bit more on the 6th floor (which I didn’t find anything else I wanted to buy in particular), went into one of the fitting rooms on the floor, took off my light exercise green short-sleeved t-shirt I was wearing earlier to put on the “Costumed Performers” long-sleeved tee (since I really liked it and wanted to wear it for the rest of the night), went back to the same lady working at the Design T-Shirt Store Graniph store, and I asked her if she had a pair of scissors to help me cut the back tag of the shirt by asking the following:

“すみません、はさみはありますか？”

(Sumimasen, hasami wa arimasu ka? – or excuse me, do you have scissors) while I pointed to her the back tag that I wanted to snip off from my newly purchased tee.

She smiled and I could tell that she was a bit amused that I would come back with this shirt I just purchased to ask her to help me cut off the back tag. She gladly did so, I thanked her, and said another goodbye (courtesy bows included yo you already know…CHYEAH 😀)

The next shop I went to visit more in depth was on the 7th floor where there was a MUJIs! (it’s like Uniqlo where they’re a Japanese based brand that sells clothes but they also carry household goods like humidifiers and stationary! 😀)

~ Side Note #33: MUJI is one of my favorite brands to shop for clothes – we have one here in Portland as well as one back in Southern California (where I first visited the West Hollywood location a few years ago). They always have pretty good clothes (especially their sweaters) that are simple + casual yet stylish and business professional at the same time. ~

I’m not going to lie, I spent a good hour and 15 minutes browsing through MUJIs’ trying different sweaters, pants, and casual shirts until I decided on the following:

This brown sweater was the player’s choice, and for about ¥2500 (or $23.26 in USD), I thought it was a reasonable deal for this. Purchase done. Oh and the kicker, I was able to use my BOA Travel CC – HELL YEAH. ONE OUT OF TWO PURCHASES WITH THIS TRAVEL CC…BETTER THAN ZERO OUT OF TWO. hahaha 😅

~ Side Note #34: btw, I’m sure y’all have noticed, but the pictures taken above of the apparel were pictures I just took not too long ago (as of today – April 25, 2020) just to show y’all what the clothes I was referring to looked like ~

After MUJIs’, I just browsed around a bit throughout the entire dept. store, and eventually I left and walked about a quick 2 minutes to another shopping centre called Cenova Shopping Centre. I got there about 7:45pm, and even though they have over 100 stores in 6 floors (including a pretty big food court area that had quite a number of options), I didn’t have much time to browse and shop since I found out shortly after that the Shopping Centre was going to close at 8pm. Despite that, first impressions of the Shopping Center were good – it definitely had a variety of lifestyle clothing shops (from casual to contemporary / business).

After stopping by, I was itching for some sort of snack or drink as a pick-me-up. I was wondering around for a good 10 minutes until I stumbled upon (see picture above) a Tea Bar called Pearl Lady Cha Bar.

I took a look at the menu (while following the directions on how to order as shown on the top of the menu), and I proceeded to order a “Honey Oolong Tea Latte” (the popular no. 1 choice) w/ brown sugar tapioca (a popular no. 2 choice).

Now here’s the thing, while I was ordering and talking to the lady taking my order, I thought I told her that I wanted my drink cold, but apparently it got miscommunicated and she thought I wanted the drink hot lol… and she ended up making my latte hot instead of cold 😅.

I didn’t know how to communicate to her that I wanted a cold drink instead, so I just took the hot drink as it was and paid ¥420 (or $3.91 USD).

Here’s the thing though with me – usually when it comes to milk tea, I like it hot; however, since I originally wanted boba (or bubbles or tapioca) in my milk tea, I opted to get the drink cold…so when the lady made me a hot milk tea latte with boba…I initially thought that the concept of a hot milk tea drink with boba is going to be weird and not to my liking.

I do recall one of my cousins telling me a few years ago (actually when she came to visit me while I was still in Cali, she ordered a boba milk tea in this fashion) that boba in hot milk tea is pretty good. I recalled telling her that such a concept seems odd as hell, but she paid no mind and said that I should try this out sometime.

What do you know? Guess this was fate lol…I went ahead and tried this hot milk tea latte with boba…and to my surprise – it actually tastes pretty good! wow. Now I can see why my cousin likes boba milk tea hot. It actually fits pretty well, and I honestly wouldn’t mind getting hot boba milk tea drinks in such this way more so than having cold boba milk tea drinks – guess I’m in the minority for this 😅.

Another thing that was interesting was that “hot” wasn’t burning hot – the latte was just warm enough to drink and enjoy – it’s fascinating because I loved how the lady still put the drink in the same plastic container (as opposed to using the usual paper cups) that you would put a cold drink in and that I was able to drink it right away without burning the roof of my mouth. GOOD DEALS. The way they make “hot” drinks this way is clearly intentional.

After that, I finished the drink, got another drink from a local vending machine (a “hot” honey lemon green tea – again, “hot” as in warm enough for me to drink and not to the point where I would burn the roof of my mouth) on the 15 ish minutes walk back to my Shizuoka AirBnb.

I went back to my room, exhausted and just chilled for the rest of the night (caught up on stuff like news + youtube vids of NBA highlights and messages I haven’t responded to from earlier).

Phew, day 3 complete finally! Ahahaha I know, I know…this post was pretty long, but I had quite a lot to say and oh my god… it’s almost 3:30am in the morning 4/26/20 damnnnnn (I started writing this post at around 10pm via 4/25/20 last night).

Day 4 (11/13/19 – second day in Shizuoka – most likely in 3 parts I’m predicting right now haha) travel blog posts are coming up! There’s quite a bit to share that I’ve gotten to try, drink, and enjoy eating + the views! Oh man y’all are in for a treat forreal. Stay tuned.

As I’ve mentioned before, take care y’all, stay proactive and stay safe during these challenging times with the whole COVID-19 outbreak.

Have a great rest of the weekend, and I’ll see y’all in the next post!

Cheers / wave

“こんにちは私はケビンです! はじめましてどうぞよろしく。”

(Kon’nichiwa watashi wa Kebindesu! Hajimemashite dōzo yoroshiku – or Hello, I’m Kevin! Nice to meet you. [in a very polite manner]) as I said to Yuko’s (the main airBnb host that I was in contact with for making the reservation to stay at her family place in Shizuoka) husband as he opened the door after I rang the doorbell.

He immediately responded back to me the same way with introducing himself, and asked me something like this in English: “Oh! Do you speak Japanese quite often?”

Me: “Unfortunately no… not really haha I have a very limited, basic understanding of the Japanese language.” (which is true)

It was a nice, pleasant exchange as I carried my luggage in the house and walked into the main living room to also meet both Yuko and their 1 year old daughter (I’m totally blanking out on her husband’s and their daughter’s names unfortunately 😦 excuse me for that!).

~ Side Note #26: I learned quickly (and as Yuko’s husband mentioned to me) that Yuko herself doesn’t speak English at all, which does explain her messaging me via the AirBnb website / mobile app in Japanese when I inquired about her private room in their house. Given that she’s an AirBnb superhost and having read the reviews on how hospitable she and her husband is, it didn’t matter to me whether she knew English or not. From the way she greeted me (along with her daughter, though she was really shy in saying hi, which is understandable haha), it was extremely conspicuous that this place that I was going to stay in for the next couple nights is going to be a nice, peaceful time. But on the real though, I’m really glad that Yuko’s husband can speak English so I can communicate with him easily without struggling with my very limited / basic Japanese hahah 😅 ~

Yuko’s husband and I sat down as we went over house rules and having me provide them my personal information (as I learned can happen for some AirBnbs’ here in Japan) to verify my identity (making sure that it’s me and not someone else, which is totally understandable).

After I filled out the form that Yuko’s husband gave me – he looked at my personal information and mentioned “Oh! Portland, Oregon! Our family has been there before.”

Me: “Oh wow really? That’s so cool! What did you like most about Portland?”

Yuko’s husband: “We liked the food, and the bridges and scenery there are beautiful.”

It was really nice to hear that this family has been to Portland before, what a small world. I didn’t expect to hear that while on this Japan trip since Portland isn’t really one of the most well known cities to visit and travel to in the states.

As I was being given a short tour and taken to my room, I couldn’t help but notice how wonderful this traditional Japanese house is – it feels very quaint and homey, despite the fact that hallway on the 2nd floor going towards my room was very narrow and I had to exercise caution on the stairs because weirdly enough, each of the steps felt a bit taller in height than the steps that I would normally be used to with stairs that I climb (say at my apartment complex or up to my work office) in general. There was also a hammock in the common room that is open for any of the guests staying here.

~ Side Note #27: Normally (as what Yuko’s husband mentioned earlier before I was shown to my room by Yuko herself), there would be other guests in other rooms staying too, but as luck would have it – I would be the only guest staying for tonight and tomorrow night… which mean I HAVE FULL ACCESS TO THE HAMMOCK ALL DAY MAN YOU KNOW IT! CHYEAHHHH THAT’S WASSUP… (even though I didn’t end up using it during my stay here in Shizuoka 😅 ) ~

The room that I was staying in had both air conditioning and this modern lock that was easy to use.

(Note: I’m not going to post the picture here since it would reveal the location of the Shizuoka airbnb) The family provided me a printed out map of the “Neighborhood of Chirorin-mura” (which is the area northeast of downtown Shizuoka of where I’m staying at for the next two nights) that pointed out several POIs (points of interest) such as a couple ramen shops, the nearby supermarket, a deli (or delicatessen as it’s written on the map – very formal haha I don’t know anyone else who calls a deli a delicatessen 😀), and a couple soba places!

Since I got to my AirBnb in the late afternoon (at around 3pm), I had some time to sit down, relax, catch up on some news + sports, and last but not least, figure out what to eat for dinner. At first I was quite uncertain what I wanted to eat, but then after thinking about it for a good 5-10 minutes, I thought of one thing – yakitori! (which I mentioned in a previous blog post that it’s a Japanese type of skewered chicken). Given the fact that I had a terrible experience at Niku Yokocho (in Shibuya the previous day) where I was just both flustered and intimidated by the environment (even though I’ve heard great things about the yakitori and other meats there), I wanted to see if there are any good local places to have yakitori (that may not be as obvious to find on TripAdvisor).

I did look up one place on TripAdvisor though called “Yakitori Michiba” that looked pretty decent, but I wanted to ask Yuko for her recommendations on Yakitori since she knows this area quite well.

Me (on my AirBnb message conversation with Yuko): “Hi Yuko! I was just wondering – Do you have any good recommendations for yakitori around this area? I was looking at one not too far away from here called “Yakitori Michiba”, but I am not sure if they’re open right now or if its good. Thanks!”

She responded back shortly after with a couple suggestions that opened at 5pm respectively: “Yakitori Dojo” and “Yakitori Hinode” (which she said that “it is cheap and delicious near my home” [after I used google translate to convert what she said in Japanese into English]) Yuko even sent me a map of where “Yakitori Hinode” is, and it was only a 10 minute walk southwest of the Airbnb (which works out because that’s pretty much on the way back to downtown Shizuoka, where I wanted to checkout especially PARCO – which I believed I mentioned earlier in the last Japan trip post that it’s a nice department store to hit up)

~ The player’s strategy #6: This goes without saying and is obvious – when given a local recommendation from an AirBnb host (even though you found a place on TripAdvisor that seems decent enough to hit up), go with the local recommendation every time especially if that restaurant is cheap and delicious – you can’t beat that! ~

Me: “sounds great! i will go with your recommendation and try Yakitori Hinode. Thank you so much! :D”

~ Side Note #28: In case y’all are wondering…even though I communicate to Yuko in English, I’m 100% sure that she’s able to translate it to Japanese on her end by clicking on “Translate to English” via our AirBnb messaging thread. I’m really glad that the AirBnb instant messaging functionality is able to leverage the Google Translate Service to make conversing ever so seamless (despite the language barrier between me and Yuko) ~

I pretty much just chilled and caught up on stuff going on in the states / relaxed a bit until about 4:50pm ish. I got out of the house and made that 10 minute walk towards Yakitori Hinode.

When I arrived by sliding the front door open to enter (and subsequently closing it behind me), I was greeted by a nice, old couple (I just gracefully assumed that they owned the small restaurant) in which we both exchanged bows and greetings to each other appropriately. Since they opened right at 5pm, I was their first customer of the day!

The gentleman behind the counter gave me a menu (the same one shown in the above picture), and because it was all in Japanese – I had to figure out how to communicate to him what I wanted to order.

~ The player’s strategy #7: Now! This is something that I alluded to earlier in this travel blog and that I was prepared for (given a situation where the menu is all in Japanese and I had to say something to ease my initial, mental anxiety of being able to communicate what I wanted to order to eat. I looked up different things to say, and I ended up finding the following phrase that I can say to help me in this situation:

"すみません、わたしわ 日本語があまりわかりません" 

(Sumimasen, watashi wa nihongo ga amari wakarimasen – or Excuse me, I do not understand Japanese very well.)

By saying this phrase in these situations, not only does this help the person listening to me respond appropriately by being more than happy to help me, but it also eased my initial, mental anxiety of having to communicate in a language that I only have a very limited / basic understanding of speaking. I might have mentioned this before, but there’s definitely something about using a language that you’re not as comfortable with using as you want to where it’s both a beautiful struggle, and a very good way to both increase cultural education, and to show empathy + willingness to better getting to know people in general. I feel like this is so universal to have, and I call this cultural bridging – I believe this is the most important thing that any of us can practice in today’s society.

Anyway, This is a phrase that I would use A LOT during this trip from here on out. ~

Immediately after I said “Sumimasen, watashi wa nihongo ga amari wakarimasen“, the gentleman suddenly had this smile on his face, said some things to me in Japanese that I didn’t quite understand, and pointed to each of the things in the glass case (where the raw meat was for customers to choose which ones they wanted to have on the grill and enjoy eating) one by one.

~ The player’s strategy #8: Even though I couldn’t read anything on the all-Japanese menu, at least I did a bit of research on yakitori at my AirBnb about an hour prior to coming to Yakitori Hinode via https://www.japan-talk.com/jt/new/yakitori – this was extremely helpful because I could understand / recognize yakitori related items that I would be interested in eating if a situation like this were to happen where the chef behind the counter would point to different types of yakitori that I can choose from. Always got to be prepared somehow ya know what i’m sayin’?) ~

“鶏肉 (toriniku, or all white meat chicken)”

“手羽先 (tebasaki, or chicken wings)”

“ねぎま (negima, or chicken thigh with negi – which is a type of Japanese Scallion)”

“皮 (kawa, or chicken skin)”

“シロ (shiro, or chicken small intestine)”

“砂肝 (sunagimo, or chicken gizzard)”

and a few other types of yakitori that he would point out to me that he had available for me to order. To be honest, I wasn’t quite ready to be adventurous and get stuff like shiro or sunagimo 😅, and I didn’t feel like having something as fatty as kawa today. I responded to the gentleman by ordering the toriniku, tebasaki, negima, and some other chicken that I forgot the name of (I do remember it having a soft bone that I could chew on and possibly digest).

After I placed my order, the lady (who owns the restaurant with the gentleman + heard me say that magical phrase that helped me start my order haha) asked me if I wanted tea by saying “Tea?” to which I replied, “hai, onegaishimasu” (or yes, please! in japanese)

After the gentleman placed the yakitori that I ordered onto the grill with charcoal fire, I was trying to figure out how to ask if I could take a photo of that yakitori on the grill. I quickly looked up how to say “Can I take a photo?” via the google translate service (I didn’t have the sound on since I didn’t want the proprietors to hear it since I thought it might have been a bit embarrassing haha, but I mean they already know that I don’t understand Japanese very well anyway, but still!)

“写真を撮ってもいいですか？”

(shashin o totte mo īdesu ka?, or Can I take a photo?)

I went ahead and did my best to say that in Japanese (I probably butchered it, but oh well haha), and thank goodness, the gentleman smiled, obliged, and let me take the photo (the most recent photo above). Phew, that worked out well haha.

While I was waiting for and a bit after I received my yakitori order, and despite the language barrier (since the proprietors didn’t speak much English, and I didn’t speak much Japanese) the lady and I were able to engage in a nice, casual conversation – it started with mainly small talk about where I am from and why I’m here visiting Shizuoka.

We went about me telling them the places/cities that I’ve been to in Japan so far this trip and will go to (aka just listing out places in Tokyo like Shinjuku + Asakusa + Shibuya, and the following cities – Hamamatsu, Nagoya, Chikuma, and Nagano), and the things I ate already and are looking forward to while here in Shizuoka like the Unagi (eel) but more specifically Unaju (うな重, which is an Unagi box that contains “grilled eel fillets served with cooked rice in a rectangular, lacquered box” ) that I had earlier for lunch today, and the Sakura Ebi! (aka Sakura Shrimp).

The lady was a bit in amazement that I would mention Sakura Ebi, and when I mentioned unaju, she laughed and said in English “expensive!” I laughed right after with her and just told her in English right there that “even though it was expensive, it was still good!”

The gentleman joined in the conversation as well, and it was just great to converse with them (despite the language barrier) – the more we engaged in conversation (in between me eating the yakitori), the more delicious and satisfying the yakitori tasted.

“おいしい！” (Oishī! or delicious!)

“すごい！” (Sugoi! or amazing!)

I mentioned both of those phrases (not just to be polite, mind you… but because I thought that this yakitori was very good! :D) to the proprietors, and they were delighted to hear me say that. It wasn’t just delicious, but the yakitori here felt like good old home-cooking that I honestly could eat everyday. There’s something about these mom-and-pop shops that just sparks that rustic and dazzling charm, you know?

I went ahead and asked the gentleman if I could order more and I decided to order more tebasaki + toriniku, to which he said “hai!” and put a few more yakitori on the grill.

One thing that the lady mentioned to me that caught me a bit off guard (but not so much in a bad way) was that she was surprised that I did not appear (while doing this motion of describing someone as being skinny or thin) to be “big” (or overweight) because she mentioned that (in her best effort at describing this in English) there were three guys who came to eat at their establishment in the past – they were from the United States, specifically from California (given that I told them that I grew up in California), and that they were “big.” (as she did this motion with her hands out wide to describe someone who is overweight).

I thought it was interesting that she mentioned that because it seemed to me that it might allude to the stereotype that people not from the states have in which they think that a lot of Americans are big-boned. I’m not sure if a lot of non-Americans think that way, but it was just a different topic that I usually don’t think about that often. Maybe I don’t think about it that much anymore because I used to be overweight (especially before I moved to Portland), and I worked my ass off for the past year to lose 25-30 pounds to be in what I thought was the best shape of my life at this point (but that’s a more personal story for another day).

Anyway, after having a delicious round two of yakitori, I did think about round three, but I decided to just call it good, and ask for the check (by doing my usual “check, please!” hand motion that I think is universal to anybody especially for those who work at food establishments)

Given the quality of food that I received, and the enjoyable conversation that I had with the proprietors, I thought that my meal at about ¥2,200 (roughly equates to $20.28 USD) was well worth it.

After I paid (and dang it I totally should’ve introduced myself sooner), I introduced myself formally and they reciprocated the same way as well. Kiyoshi (the gentleman), and Hinoko (the lady).

“ありがとうございます!

(Arigatō gozaimasu!, or thank you very much!)

I said just this and bowed courteously to both Kiyoshi and Hinoko for the wonderful meal and conversation that we had together.

Shortly right after – something graciously happened that I didn’t expect at all – Hinoko said the same thing, bowed, and reach over with both of her hands to grab mine and said thank you again + some Japanese that I couldn’t quite understand (but I feel that she was probably saying something to the extent of “it was a pleasure having you here”… at least that’s what I thought she might have said.) I was caught off guard but I immediately bowed and said thank you again as well in Japanese.

That seemingly small gesture of gracious courtesy that I just experienced…I was humbled and touched – it was something that was just so quaint that hit home for me really well… I had no doubt in my mind that it was genuine and thoughtful. That point right then and there made me realize that not only I was extremely thankful that Yuko recommended me to eat at this place, but also I just witnessed probably the pinnacle of Japanese courtesy.

I love how down to earth and old-school this was (at least to me it felt old-school) – it was very direct, simple, to the point, made me felt very welcomed, straight-up courtesy.

I know it may seem like I’m overly exaggerating and all that, but if you were to experience what I experienced, you would probably feel the same. forreal. I don’t know what to say.

Anyway, after I graciously bowed and said good bye to both Hinoko and Kiyoshi (to which they reciprocated graciously as well), I left and started walking towards downtown Shizuoka with a tear in my eye while thinking “man… that was soul dope!” and realizing that this was one of the best cultural bridging and food experiences that I’ve ever had in my life. I hope all of y’all would get at least one chance to experience the hospitality and courtesy that I had just now (and this is considering the language barrier too).

Cultural bridging has no barrier – it is universal and the best way to get to know people in all walks of life.

Alright y’all, I’m cutting off the rest of the night here as we end the blog post of “Day 3 (Part 3)” at this juncture…

So! I’m well aware I mentioned this from the previous Japan trip post (from Mid-March of this year)

“In the next post, I’ll cover the airbnb that I’m staying at, a couple, notable, interesting stories that happened over both dinner and while I was shopping at night, and something that I didn’t expect that I would get into moving forward with how I like that particular drink – stay tuned.“

However, it’s gonna take “Day 3 (Part 4)” to cover the other notable, interesting story + something I didn’t expect about how I liked “that particular drink.” That will definitely finish for my first night in Shizuoka, forreal!

Excuse me for doing that haha…I feel like I’m starting to get more into this sort of habit. Hope it’s cool with y’all – I mean honestly, I just have a lot from my notes, memories, and things to talk about for this trip.

As I’ve mentioned before. Take care y’all, stay proactive and safe during these challenging times with the whole COVID-19 outbreak.

Have a great rest of the weekend, and I’ll see y’all in the next post!

Cheers / wave

Pump the brakes kev whoa whoa whoa…yo hold up! what’s up with you man? I thought the next post in your travel blog would be about “Day 3 (Part 3) – [Insert a chill yet vibrant title to describe your late afternoon to nighttime experience in Shizuoka, Japan] (11/12/19).” WHAT IS UP?! D:

To answer that – technically, Listen to what you see. is “a blog + travel journal by a wave.” It’s not just a travel journal, but a blog as well – the way I started this whole writing experience is based on the idea that this is both a blog and a travel journal together. This gives me the flexibility to deviate from the normality of my 2nd Japan trip travel entries and keep it 100% (or actually 235%, which I’ll explain shortly) with y’all the same way when I do written entries about my thoughts in the current day (in this case, today – Thursday, March 26, 2020) when I finally feel is appropriate to do so. This is just one of those days.

Before I get started, you’re probably wondering why I called it “Keepin’ it 235%” rather than Keepin’ it 100% (people usually say this as everyday slang to mean being authentic and truthful, or some people say keepin’ it hunnit if you want to get more street with it haha.) – as you may or may not know, I’m one of the hosts of a video gaming podcast called the “Nintendo Jump Podcast” (btw, shameless plug but check us out! We’re a video gaming podcast created for Nintendo gamers, by Nintendo gamers. Although, two of us (including myself) play on other systems too 😀 just sayin’! We’re on all the podcasting apps such as spotify, google play, etc.).

Anyway, If I recall correctly…during one of our episode recordings, Darrel (one of our awesome hosts) said something about being ready for an upcoming game (dang it! I wish I could remember but I don’t at the moment…), and asked us what we thought about it. I responded by randomly spitting out a number much higher than 100% (since I felt more than 100% ready) and said: “yo, I’m 234% ready!” Then Darrel said, “Really? Only 234%?! I was expecting 235% man…” Both Darrel and Sergio (our other awesome host!) laughed right after, and I followed up with a laugh / chuckle and said something like “haha aaaiiiiittttteeeee (which translates to aite or alright in slang but just more drawn out to accentuate my vivid expression of agreeing with that host at that juncture) yeahhhhhhh 235% there we go!” So that’s really how that “Keepin’ it 235%” came to be, and I figured given the fact that I like to exaggerate my excitement on things a bit more than the usual, average person – 235% is the right number for this new blog series that I’m doin’ at this juncture. There you go – I’m gonna keep it 235% on this one right here, right now. (or I mean, I have been since I started writing this blog entry, but y’all know what I mean?) Here we go.

Since the whole COVID-19 outbreak got more prevalent here in the states a couple weeks ago, a lot has happened since our country has been taking more and more precautionary measures on having a lot of us stay at home, essentially shutting down gathering of any sort, and heavily encouraging us to practice social distancing and self-quarantine.

Not to anyone’s surprise…and personally, my life has definitely been affected. Even though I still do my usual morning acai smoothie routine + sous vide cooking (which btw is an excellent way of cooking), it feels very surreal that we’re being heavily encouraged to stay indoors as much as possible in order to stop spreading this coronavirus as much as possible (because we could be the carriers of COVID-19 while being asymptomatic – we could have it without even knowing we have it).

The whole WFH (working from home) situation and adjusting to this lifestyle for the time being is definitely something that I’ve gotten used to fine (I definitely feel extremely fortunate that I still have my job… there’s a myriad of others who aren’t so lucky unfortunately), but the one thing that surprised me and threw me off guard was the way I approached my social life since this COVID-19 outbreak got more prevalent here in the states a couple weeks ago.

With the exception of having a zoom call with some of my close friends from California last Saturday (which was honestly one of the highlights of this whole coronavirus fiasco), I’ve honestly just gotten more and more introverted as the days go by. To be real, during this whole COVID-19 situation… I’m not as motivated to talk to people as much as I would think I would be.

I’m not doing this because I think people don’t care about me (even though I’m fully aware that pretty much everyone around me is more focused on their own lives and figuring out how to deal with this COVID-19 situation like I am), but it’s because I realize that instead of spending so much time on social media and trying to keep up with the news of what’s going on, all I want to do is focus on just keeping up with my own routine, making sure that I keep and stay as fit (both physically and mentally) as I can without any sense of being lethargic at any point, and spending more me time rather than keeping up with all of the group conversations and things that I have ongoing (unless it’s urgent and super important for me to participate in, of course I’ll make exceptions). Don’t get me wrong, I’m not completely cutting out my social life – I’m just adjusting to a different way of doing things to keep me refreshed and refocused on something I like to call “Set the Tempo.” Even before this whole COVID-19 situation got more serious, this is the theme of my year that is defining who I am and setting new goals to achieve this year.

Honestly, it has been tremendously difficult to keep up with people nowadays for me just because I’ve been putting in more work hours while working from home, and just being more focused on what I want to do in my spare time. I do try to keep up and check in with friends and family on occasion to see how they’re doing + hope all is well and that they’re safe, but other than that, I’ve just been dealing with my own personal things in terms of what I want to do to get better during this rough time that we’re experiencing today. It does helps that I just got Animal Crossing: New Horizons (what a perfect time for this game to come out late last week, seriously…), and that our gaming community (as a result of our “Nintendo Jump Podcast”) has been ridiculously into it since it’s release, especially Sergio (he’s probably the world number #1 Animal Crossing fan I know). Video games have been a nice medium for me to have as part of my me time, especially since it’s one of my greatest passions in my life.

To put it simply – I just have a lot of moments during these past two weeks where I just don’t want to talk to people. I really don’t. I just want to be alone and in my own thoughts without any distractions and just focus on me.

When I say this, I mean that when I do talk to people, I’m not just talking to them for the sake of talking and getting my quota in of like “oh I’ve talked to this many people and said this many things already, done. I’ve met my quota good night.” haha not like that – I’m being more choosy and picking when it’s the right time to talk to others when it matters the most – like with seeing how people are doing + checking in, and especially when it comes to figuring out different ways to help both the local Portland Community (such as donations to a particular small business that I love + the PDX COVID-19 mutual aid fund and network) and the 626 area (back in Southern California) during a time when families and people greatly affected by the coronavirus outbreak need it the most.

Honestly, I love it – I love that I’m being more introverted at this time just because what I say to others when I do talk can hold much more meaning and isn’t just talk wasted. Ever since I’ve moved to Portland, I’ve been thriving more and more under the notion of operating within my own private time, and spending more time with small groups of people (rather than at parties and at huge social gatherings – unless they’re birthday parties, baby showers, weddings, you know the events that really do matter and are personally significant to me).

It’s been an interesting change in my life especially in becoming more of a listener and an observer, which I’m getting more and more comfortable doing. It’s still a work in progress on my end, but I’m seeing the benefits as the days go by. I feel that being a listener / observer is so much more important and effective in interpersonal communication than just being a talker.

Don’t get me wrong – I do love talking to people in general, but I’m just being less frequent about it because of where I am in my life. I hope y’all ain’t offended about this especially since it’s coming from me (as a person who is a social butterfly) – For those who are close to me – this shouldn’t be a surprise. It’s weird for me to say that I don’t want to talk to people that much right now, but I mean I gotta keep it 235%.

I see this as me being a giant sea serpent (like Leviathan from the Final Fantasy Series – also known as one of the best RPG (role-playing games) series in video gaming history) hiding under the water most of the time. When you think of Leviathan, you don’t necessarily see her right in front of you immediately, but if you wait and look carefully with a good view of the water, sometimes you’ll see her come out and show her true colors. That’s when you’ll get to see who Leviathan really is, and what she is all about. She picks and chooses when to come out of the water, and does it in a way that not only makes her feel more comfortable and confident, but also more importantly, makes it count.

For the past couple weeks (and especially as an alternative to the usual Orangetheory since they’re temporarily closed for the time being due to the COVID-19 situation), I’ve been finding myself in an auto-pilot, de-stressing sort of moment whenever I go out for a run (especially whilst listening to podcasts at the same time). I have this routine now where I would go outside (obviously with being as respectful of those around me through social distancing!) and just go for a run down by the waterfront in the city. I would have moments where I would go for a long run, then walk, then run again, then walk, then run til I get back to my apartment and call it good for the day. I’ve also incorporated running across the local Tilikum Crossing Bridge (one of Portland’s 12 bridges) from the west side to the east and back as a nice roundtrip. That bridge is really nice to run on, and at night, it glows with a fantastic shade of green – very pristine, and it’s quite refreshing to see. There’s something about running that just feels very therapeutic to me.

Keeping with this new routine along with my other existing routines / passions / hobbies + being more introverted as I am now is what I do to “Set the Tempo.” I think it’s extremely important to set a tempo that you are both comfortable with and uncomfortable to a point where it just gets you more motivated to become better as a person for yourself and for others. This is the beautiful struggle of life that I embrace – the daily grind…the process is the dream (as what Kobe Bryant, who has since passed since earlier this year, has mentioned during his jersey retirement ceremony back in December 2017).

I hope y’all can see where I’m coming from in my current state of mind. I know that it may be quite a bit to take in, but that’s what’s been going on with me currently.

It’s getting a bit late, I’m starting to get tired and fall asleep on my office chair haha but anyway…

Also, not to worry – I’m still focused on my travel journal! (the next travel blog post of my 2nd trip to Japan will come by the end of this upcoming weekend!). I just wanted to stop by and share these thoughts with y’all just because this is my current state of mind – this is me keeping it 235%.

Take care y’all, stay proactive and safe during these tough times with the whole COVID-19 outbreak, and I’ll talk to y’all in my next travel journal entry via my 2nd trip to Japan.

Cheers / Wave

Before I begin:

Hey what’s good everyone? Hope y’all are doing well and keeping proactive + safe from the recent news about COVID-19 (aka Coronavirus) – excuse me for not being as diligent with this travel blog as of late. I was originally going to write this up about a week after the last post, but unfortunately life got in the way (both work and personal) and I just wasn’t able to sit down, make time, and actually have the proper effort to write up the next post. Not to worry though – I’m alive and well. Ain’t a thing in the world stopping me from doing the things I wanna do for the people I want to share this blog with. CHYEAH you know what i’m sayin’ super saiyan? 😀 The daily grind is always on my mind.

Okay! Back to the post – here we go.

Taking the Shinkansen from Shinagawa Station (via Minato, Tokyo, Japan) to Shizuoka Station was quite a pleasant experience even though I wish I could’ve gotten a window seat so I could look at the scenic route and the endless number of buildings zooming past by the second…but unfortunately, since the specific car (or part of) the Shinkansen is non-reserved, there were no available window seats (first come first served type of deal when it comes to these things, next time I’ll be quicker than the Flash for this!).

All good though! I ended up getting an aisle seat, and I thoroughly enjoyed the fact that there was SOOOOO much leg space between rows of seats to where I could literally fit my green luggage, my blue backpack, and my own two legs (with a comfortable amount of space!) This is how trains should be! (and airplanes in general). If there were an award for “most capacious experience as a passenger via public transportation”, this particular non-reserved car of this Shinkansen would win by default forreal. No competition man…like how is this even a thing? This is one of the reasons why I love Japanese trains! (c’mon states, where you at with this? -_-lll Step your game up, homie).

53 minutes flew by so quickly as I spent the time chillin’, catching up on some sports / video game news + our gaming discord community, and chargin’ my phone via my super duper trusty travel charger. CHYEAH, gotta always have juice in my electronics ready for the day.

As I stepped out of the Shinkansen and outside of the station, I was thinking of one thing – I AM SOUL HUNGRY, IT’S LUNCH TIME DAWG. CHYEAH. You’re probably thinking – “yo kev, you gonna get some of that Sakura Ebi though (like in that picture above)? That’s gotta be it right?” HELL YEAH, BUT NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA… (which is pretty much no.) I would end up having that for lunch, but not today 😀 (tune in for Day 4 on that one hahah, no pitchforks outside my door please.)

~ The player’s strategy #5: Since my Shizuoka Airbnb check-in time is at local time 3:00pm, the plan is to have lunch, get some green tea (which Shizuoka is widely known as the green tea capital of Japan), and improvise along the way with maybe some snacking + shopping for a bit before I get to my Airbnb at 3:00pm. ~

Besides Sakura Ebi (or Sakura Shrimp) and green tea, Shizuoka is known for quite a lot of things, including what I was about to have for lunch – Unagi (うなぎ aka eel)! Prior to this trip, I had to do some more extensive research on where to have, and this site showed up (https://wow-j.com/en/Allguides/shizuoka/food/01439_en/) – The fifth on that list out of five is the place I ended up going for delicious unagi called Tenbun Honten (天婦羅・うなぎ専門店 天文本店), which is a well-established restaurant that opened its doors in 1879. Just reading that fact alone got me intrigued about how legendary this restaurant seemed to be (especially since it has that longevity…it must be good and definitely worth going!)

It was a decent 14-15 minute walk from Shizuoka station to Tenbun Honten – originally, I couldn’t find the place since there were other places that had a similar entrance layout like this, so I ended up wandering for a few minutes around the area until I found it!

When I entered through the slide doors, I was a bit surprised that there were no customers, and I thought to myself “Holy shit…am I in the wrong restaurant? Why is this place so deserted?” I was so befuddled like what is going on? This is the “legendary” Tenbun Honten… I mean even though it’s about 1:30pm in the afternoon on a Tuesday, but still… there’s gotta be at least one other customer – nope.

At this point, I was greeted by one of the employees. Right when I sat, that same person was speaking to me in Japanese, but honestly, I couldn’t understand a word he was saying (which I felt pretty bad about since if I’m going to be dining in a Japanese Restaurant, I should be more cognizant of key words or things that people working there would say…) and just nodded quietly as I took a seat and sat at the counter bar.

~ Side Note #22: there’s a future player’s strategy that will be at play here later on today that I’ll get more into detail as a result of the initial awkward conversation I had with that restaurant employee I just mentioned not too long ago. That strategy would serve to help me communicate more effectively despite my limited/super basic Japanese language skills. ~

After what that particular restaurant employee mentioned, I think it was pretty conspicuous to him that I was a foreigner who (well I guess given the fact that I brought in both my green luggage and my blue backpack with me is a definite visual indicator) barely knew Japanese.

Subsequently, I just had a thought in my mind where I think that restaurant employee was most likely asking me if I wanted something to drink, and if so, what would I like? It was the most educated guess I could have thought of at that moment because nothing else seemed to pop up in my head.

With that being said, I did a quick search on how to say “tea” in Japanese, which is “ocha.” Shortly after, I got that same restaurant employee’s attention and said “sumimasen. ocha, onegaishimasu. (すみません。お茶、お願いします。)” with a bow on my end, which translated to “Excuse me, tea please.” The restaurant employee then said “hai! (はい！)” (or “yes!”) with a bow on his end. Success! I was able to order Japanese tea and bow the proper way about it too 🙂 HELL YEAH DUDE YA BOY IS GETTIN’ THIS JAPANESE CULTURE COURTESY STUFF DAY BY DAY YOU KNOW HOW I DO. 😀 haaaahaaaa!

I then proceeded to look at the menu (which was all in Japanese, but no worries… I mean I already had a plan on what to get anyway). From that link I referenced to in regards to Tenbun Honten, I wanted to get the Unaju (うな重), which is an Unagi box that contains “grilled eel fillets served with cooked rice in a rectangular, lacquered box” (reference: https://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2344.html). There were a few options in terms of how much unagi I wanted to get (ranging from ¥2,500 – ¥4,000). I ended up getting the middle tier option that I believe was ¥3,200 (which translates to about $30 USD).

~ Side Note #23: You might be thinking, “dayeum son, that’s pretty expensive for lunch dawg, despite the fact that you’re travelling and even though you’re being a bit more lenient on how you spend for food….you forreal?” and I would respond back with this: Honestly, the pricing is not bad for something like this – I’ve read and heard that having unagi in such this format is usually more expensive from the standard range of ¥3,000 – ¥5,800 to the upper ranges of ¥5,000 – ¥7,500…and it’s not like I’m going to have this for every meal.

For what I’m getting overall (along with a couple side dishes that you’ll see in pictures soon), I think it’s worth the try fsho. I really just thought this was the appropriate time to have this because I wanted to taste the specialities of each of the cities/areas that I haven’t explored yet in Japan, and in this case, I HAD to try the unaju. food for thought. ~

Anyway, it didn’t take too long (probably 5-10 minutes tops) until I got the following:

Look at this beautiful design on this rectangular lacquered box! I love the waves / ocean designs along with the fish! Man I’m in for a treat, and if you don’t know already, waves are synonymous with who I am and how I live my life. CHYEAH, if you don’t know, now you know.

I lifted up the covers on both the clear soup AND the unaju…. HAVE MERCY. D-D-D-D-D-DAYEUM SON. I mean… I don’t know what to say, it just looks scrumptious.

A closer shot right here. Hell yeah. HELLLLLLLLLLL YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

~ Side Note #24: While I was taking pictures before I started eating this lovely meal, there was a couple and a single person who started coming into the restaurant….so I’m not the only customer here! 😀 This isn’t a deserted ghost town of a place to eat at! People know about this place forreal, and I think I just got here for lunch at an odd hour. Occam’s razor. ~

I had to get one more angle on this one…look at this! LOOK AT THIS. I have to say, it tasted better than it looks forreal. My god… this is the best unagi I’ve ever had – it’s not too sweet, it’s soft, tender, moist… the rice laid perfectly as I used my chopsticks ever so carefully to get that perfect unagi to rice ratio per bite. I mean, what is not to like? The way this restaurant presented and grilled this eel was just right (I mean this is coming from a place that has served and presented grilled eel in this manner since 1879, that’s amazing). I love it.

I thoroughly enjoyed this meal – it was such a nice, refreshing take on unagi for me and a good first meal in my first time here in Shizuoka. Very appropriate for this situation.

After I paid for my meal, and courtesy bowed 23098095682309 times (jokes, only three times after I finished my meal and asked for the check, got some change, and said goodbye – the restaurant employees bowed back too for each of those moments as well – as I’ve mentioned before, this sort of courtesy is extremely common practice here in the land of the rising sun.), I left to hit up my next destination on my list – MARUZEN Tea Roastery! (which is a green tea roastery that is described as a very modern tea house in the heart of downtown Shizuoka)

~ Side Note #25: The weather here in downtown Shizuoka for today was around 21°C, or approximately 70°F. Coming from a much usually cooler climate like Portland, it was definitely a bit too hot for my liking; haha yeah I’m not used to the California weather anymore lol… I’ve gotten more adjusted to how the weather is in my adopted home in Portland – so I had to take off my Jacket and just hand carry it while I was walking in this city. Good thing I was just wearing a t-shirt since I already prepared earlier in the morning on what the weather / temperature would be in Shizuoka.~

Just from walking in this city (including my short 5 minute walk from Tenbun Honten to MARUZEN Tea Roastery), I already began to notice that walking here in Shizuoka already felt so different than walking in Tokyo – it’s not as crowded, the streets are a lot smaller and narrower, and it kind of has what I would describe it as a Portland / Taipei hybrid feel – smaller, narrower streets like how we have it in parts of downtown Portland + has that Taipei street essence with the way the roads are painted along with the presence of two wheelers – bicycles and scooters!

When I got to MARUZEN Tea Roastery, I noticed right away that it was closed! OH NO… and then I checked on google to see what could be up…and sure enough, they’re closed on Tuesdays! DANG IT 😦 tough shit for me… but all good (I would visit this Tea Roastery the next day – stay tuned for that particular day 4 part [INSERT NUMBER] travel post)

I ended up walking for 3 more minutes to a nearby Doutor (a coffee shop which has become my favorite chain here in Japan). This Doutor in particular is called Doutor Coffee Shizuoka Gofukuchō Shop (ドトールコーヒーショップ 静岡呉服町店). There was a decent queue with a good number of people inside, and I ended up getting what I got yesterday at Doutor’s in Asakusa via Tokyo, a large iced coffee 😀

It was just the refreshment I needed after a nice lunch, and then my stomach told me “yo kev, what’s good man? your rubber stomach here – so uhh…yeah it’s cool that you had that fancy schmancy unagi meal and this coffee with that gum syrup that you’re starting to get obsessed over… BUT UHHHH….I think you should have some sort of afternoon snack soon, you and I both know that THIS ISN’T ENOUGH to hold me over for the afternoon. c’mon dawg. FEED ME NOW. MORE FOOD. MORE STUFF. LETS GO.”

On the way to my Shizuoka Airbnb, I found this little gem called Melon de melon (the full name of this small chain bakery is メロンパン専門店 Melon de melon（メロンドゥメロン）静岡駅前店). HELLLLLLL YEAHHHHHH time to indulge in a nice afternoon snack in the form of a pastry!

I went up to the lady working at this bakery, and (using my limited / basic Japanese) said “Konnichiwa! eto… ichi melon pan (as I pointed to the plain melon pan in the display cabinet) onegaishimasu.” I basically said “Hello, um…one melon bun please.” I’m sure there was a more proper way of saying that, but it was good enough for the lady to understand me without having to use any English! SUCCESS – HELL YEAH! PLUS ONE POINT FOR ME. 😅 CHYEAH. y’all know how I do scooby doo?

The lady did me a solid and heated my melon pan up so that it came out warm! I took a bite, and I was like nice!!! this is good – it instantly took me back to the days (either in college or shortly after I graduated) where I would binge watch this one bread-making bakery anime from start to finish called Yakitate!! Japan (焼きたて!! ジャぱん,“Freshly Baked!! Ja-pan” – reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakitate!!_Japan), which I HIGHLY recommend y’all watch it sometime.

I’ve always been so intrigued about melon pan and how it tasted, especially after watching that particular anime. This was the first time I’ve ever had melon pan ever, and I gotta say – this is a pretty decent way of popping my melon pan cherry.

From Melon de melon to my AirBnb, it was a nice 13 minute walk – I soon realized that I was walking away from the downtown area and into the quieter local part of the city.

Even though there were only a handful number of cars that passed by while I was walking, it was really nice because it felt like a refreshing change from the hustle and bustle of the energy that I’ve experienced while I was in Tokyo earlier this trip.

Honestly, I love it – I love how Shizuoka has these pockets where you can live right outside of the downtown area and still be within earshot of the shopping centers (which I will get into in the next blog post) and restaurants.

Shit… it’s just past 2am PST here in the early Sunday morning where I am in Portland as I’m finishing this up – unfortunately, I’ll have to put a stop right here and do a Day 3 (Part 3) in my next travel blog post. Not to worry though! I’m going to have that written up a lot sooner than how I wrote up this Day 3 (Part 2) piece 😅.

In the next post, I’ll cover the airbnb that I’m staying at, a couple, notable, interesting stories that happened over both dinner and while I was shopping at night, and something that I didn’t expect that I would get into moving forward with how I like that particular drink – stay tuned.

In the meantime, please take care and stay proactive with the COVID-19 news. I will do my due diligence on my end as well.

Have a great rest of the weekend, and I’ll see y’all in the next post!

Cheers / Wave

I managed to get some decent sleep after yesterday’s long day of eating, walking, shopping, eating, walking, shopping, eating, eating, and eating (obviously nine different things haha) – my jetlag has started to die down quite a bit since waking up at 6am.

One of the things that I really like about this AirBnb that I’m staying at in Shinjuku is that there’s just so much personal touch and style to this place – from the Gundam models (scattered all over the place) and the random posters of things such as the “Pasadena Rose Bowl” (which I’ve mentioned in a previous post in which I thought it was nice to see – what a small world that something related to Pasadena (a city in Southern California that I grew up close to + being the first place where I had my first gig after college)), to artsy designs on everyday things like these two cats surrounding a power switch. I feel like this fits so well with an AirBnb, and it gives off the host’s personality, how they like to live, and what kind of things they like and interests they have without spelling it out. It has a charm and a spirit that reminds me of Nintendo.

As mentioned at the very end of my last post, I have plans to hit up Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden (新宿御苑), which is a large, national park that is located in both Shinjuku and Shibuya via Tokyo; however, I wanted to stop by somewhere along the way for some coffee or something before I get to the park at 9am (right when they open for the day) – a nice 16 minute walk from my Shinjuku AirBnb for this coffee shop called Caffé Veloce.

There’s a set of basement stairs that lead to the coffee shop, and right when I started going down the stairs, I was immediately hearing violin music (which a variety of different violin tunes would play all throughout my visit). I might be reaching for this one, but I thought that the slow-medium pace of the violin tunes were ironic given that the name of the coffee shop has the name “Veloce” in it (which means fast in Italian) – quite a contrast it was.

With my limited/basic Japanese, I was able to order a medium sized hot coffee without barely using English! (although, it was instantly conspicuous to the lady taking my coffee order that I wasn’t from around here given how my Japanese was while ordering the coffee haha, dang it!)

As expected, I enjoyed this hot coffee with a bit of cream (I forgot whether it’s 2% or whole milk…it’s been a while since i’ve used either one since I usually use either unsweetened almond or oat milk whenever I drink coffee) + THAT SUGAR SYRUP. YOOOOOOO OKAY. LET. ME. TELL. YOU – this sugar syrup stuff is just too good. It’s pretty addicting to add to coffee, and I’m only going to make an exception this trip to use sugar syrup since well…I’m on vacation and…whatever! Gotta enjoy coffee with a bit of sweetness from time to time anyway. CHYEAH you know what I’m sayin’?!

It was nice to chill here for about 30-35 minutes. After leaving the coffee shop, I walked a short 3 minutes to reach the entrance of Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden.

I arrived at around 8:50am (10 minutes before they open the gates to the National Park), and there were already people outside waiting to get in.

Only ¥500 for entry? HELL TO THE YEAH – that’s a decent price for one of Tokyo’s largest and most popular parks!

Coming into visiting this place, I wasn’t sure what to expect besides trees and a bunch of green like what we have here in Portland’s Japanese Garden – which by the way is on one of my favorite places here in the city – however, it was totally different than that.

Even though there were pathways with trees that enclosed 2/3s of the sky in certain parts, it was a very open park that had this peaceful, quiet spirit about it.

I’m glad that I visited at a time when I was still able to see different color leaves (like how we have it here back home in Portland – red, violet, orange, etc.)

There were about a handful of these traditional Japanese house structures in the park, and when you entered, you would see a view like in the picture below.

This is totally wallpaper worthy – I had this as my mobile phone wallpaper at some point.

Even though the sun was really bright, I definitely enjoyed taking these sort of pictures that made the water glimmer with the reflection of the trees shine with it.

This was one of the many chrysanthemum flower beds / arrangements that pervaded throughout the national park. It’s part of the two-week-long chrysanthemum exhibition that they have in the fall season – Perfect timing, chyeah.

~ Side Note #20: https://www.timeout.com/tokyo/things-to-do/chrysanthemum-exhibition (as quoted from this page): “Just as cherry blossom is the representation of spring in Japan, chrysanthemum (or kiku in Japanese) is the symbol of autumn. More importantly, it is the ‘royal flower’ of Japan – the Imperial Seal of Japan is also known as the Chrysanthemum Seal. At Shinjuku Gyoen, this annual exhibition (since 1929) highlight the regal blooms under protective awnings. They are a sight to behold, and perfect for your Instagram, too.” ~

I can’t get enough of these pathways with the trees in that sort of formation. I think there’s a term for this, no?

More of the flower beds via the two-week-long chrysanthemum exhibition.

A nice variety and just the way they all stand up like that…it’s just really pleasant to see.

This is one of my favorite flower arrangements they have here – for some odd reason, it reminds me of the Spartans (with the strong group of 300) in the Battle of Thermopylae where they had all of the soldiers forming this kind of shield barrier (by having their shields raised up – protecting their bodies as much as possible) to fend off incoming arrows that were multiplicative.

One of the lone islands here in the park – the reflection though! Beautiful.

While I was crossing the bridge and around this area, I met a family of three who were from the LA area – primarily the 626 (aka San Gabriel Valley…like me! I grew up in the 626 btw). What a small world. It was pretty dope talking to the family and just conversing a bit about Japan, LA, and even my adopted home in Portland – seriously though, what were the chances that I would encounter / meet people from the 626 all the way here in Japan? hell yeah dude…that’s just unreal.

I’m not quite certain what that building is (until I just looked it up recently to find out that it’s the NTT Docomo Yoyogi Building) – it’s the fourth tallest building in all of Tokyo. I have to say – it fits pretty well with the garden at this juncture.

Haha OH HELL YEAH you know I like them chrysanthemum flower beds and arrangements. There’s just something about it…maybe I just love chrysanthemums in general – I used to have an obsession with VITA chrysanthemum tea (along with VITA lemon tea back in the college days). Chrysanthemum is usually one of the main things that my family and I love to have in our tea whenever we go to Chinese restaurants in the 626 area (especially during dim sum sessions – soul good).

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed my experience at Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden (新宿御苑) – this was a nicely timed visit since the previous two days were just all about trying all these different foods and visiting places in such a go-go-go format. Definitely a great way to finish up my time here in Tokyo before I take the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Shizuoka.

HOLD UP! Before I went back to my Shinjuku Airbnb to gather my belongings and walk over to the nearest train station (to head over to Shizuoka by Shinkansen), I needed to stop by a foreign exchange shop called “The World Currency Shop” in Shinjuku. I talked to my close friend Tony about where to do currency exchange prior to this trip, and he mentioned that he did his currency exchange (from USD to JPY) at one of the local places he found on yelp / trip advisor in the city – so I did just that and found this particular shop in Shinjuku. I was the first customer (I got there about a few minutes before they opened at around 10:30am) there. The timing could not have been more perfect since I had to checkout of my Shinjuku Airbnb by 11am.

The lady handling my transaction was super nice and very courteous about it – we definitely must have exchanged 4-5 bows to each other during my visit there (as I’ve mentioned in a previous blog post, this sort of gesture is quite the norm in Japan)

Given that the current USD to JPY was 1 US Dollar = 108.97 Japanese Yen on that day (I googled it while I was walking to the shop), with my limited / basic Japanese + some English, I was able to exchange $400 USD to ¥42,480 (the exchange rate they gave me at this store was 1 US Dollar = 106.20 Japanese Yen), which honestly was a lot better than if I were to do it at any of the Tokyo train stations or at the Narita Intl. Airport (which I considered doing on the first day I arrived in Japan, but to my better judgment and with Tony’s advice, I decided against doing that since the exchange rate at those places were 1 US Dollar = around 102 or 103 Japanese Yen). Good stuff! I definitely felt relieved that I was offered a decent exchange rate.

~ The player’s strategy #4 ~>I figured that this was a good time to exchange my $400 USD (that I brought just in case, thank goodness I did) since I was pretty cognizant of the fact that Japan is more of a cash-based society – it’s much better to bring cash and not always have to rely on credit to purchase / pay for stuff (plus, there was that apprehension of my BOA travel credit card getting rejected at random – it’s unpredictable. -_-) ~

I walked back to my Shinjuku Airbnb and got there around 10:50am, gathered my belongings, wrote a letter in Min’s + Harumi’s guestbook (writing things such as thanking them so much for letting me stay and that I would definitely highly recommend anyone that I know to stay at their place who’s looking to find a nice place to crash/stay in Tokyo), left them a bunch of my pocket coin change (I think it was at least ¥500 or ¥600 worth), and left the AirBnb right around 11am.

~ Side Note #21: Unfortunately, I didn’t get to say thank you to Min and Harumi in person, which is why I figured that writing in their guestbook would suffice. Also, for the record, y’all should definitely consider staying here if you’re looking to visit Tokyo (especially Shinjuku – let me know if you want a link to their AirBnb – I’d be more than happy to share it with y’all!) ~

On the way to Shin-Ōkubo Station (which is where I need to go to take a 22 minute train ride to Shinagawa Station, where I can take the Shinkansen to head over to Shizuoka Station to get to Shizuoka), I walked by this dog cafe called Bistro Love Dog. Apparently, you could pet their dogs and if you really really like one of them, you could ask to adopt them (as I’ve learned about later on)

Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to stop by inside and check it out (since I had to make sure I get to the Yamanote Line on time to head to Shinagawa Station). Seems pretty dope though!

As expected, the Yamanote line got to Shinagawa Station right on time (11:41am…man these Japanese trains are so punctual.)

The station wasn’t that crowded, so it wasn’t too bad walking to platform #24 (not like how it was in Nagoya, which I’ll get into in a future blog post later this year)

It was a decent 9 minute walk to Platform #24 (with some time left to spare).

That about wraps it up with my time in Tokyo this trip (for now). I’m gonna end this post on this note – Tokyo’s pretty dope and there was quite a lot to eat and take in, but I’m more hyped for the cities that I haven’t been to yet (including my next stop – Shizuoka).

I cannot wait to share my experience about these next cities with y’all. Deuces for now.

Cheers / Wave

~ Side Note #15: The Pokémon Center Tokyo DX store that I was at is located in the Nihombashi Takashimaya S.C. (stands for shopping center) East Building. Nihombashi Takashimaya S.C. consists of three parts – Annex, Main Building, and East Building. Each section of the shopping center has a variety of things to shop and eat at (such as lifestyle wear / fashion, sports wear, restaurants, furniture, and kimonos!) ~

After both geeking out on all of the products around me and finally deciding on which merch to buy at the Pokémon Center Tokyo DX store, you’re probably thinking (most likely not haha I can say with 99% certainty) – “Hey Kev, since Pokémon Center Tokyo DX wasn’t the only store within the Nihombashi Takashimaya S.C. Buildings overall, how were the other stores in the other sections of Nihombashi Takashimaya S.C.?”

The answer: I was just focused on trying to get out of the Shopping Center and to the Nihombashi Station haha – I literally spent 20 minutes trying to figure out how to get out of this ridiculous labyrinth. I have to give credit to the builders of this S.C. – if you want to get lost in a shopping center, you’ll be able to do that within seconds. NO JOKES HERE. my goodness…I gotta get better at navigating through these shopping centers!

Combined with the 20 minutes I spent just now + including spending time on the following:

• 20-25 minutes walking to the Nihombashi Station, taking the Ginza Line from there to Shibuya Station, walking about a minute to the department store area where my next stop (which was Katsu Midori Seibu for SUSHI! HELL YEAH SON.) was located via the Seibu Department Store.
• Another 5 minutes inside the Seibu Dept. Store, finding the information desk or anybody that looks like they work in the area to ask where Katsumidori Seibu was in my super basic Japanese (it was extremely conspicuous to the two ladies that I asked that I wasn’t from around the area, and that my knowledge of the Japanese language was quite limited since they gave me directions in Japanese to which I did not understand what they were saying at all hahah – they ended up speaking to me in a little bit of English to show me where to walk to get to the Elevator to where I could reach Katsu Midori Seibu)

After all of that (on the 8F, or 8th floor), I was able to see the conveyor belt sushi place (the one I’ve heard all about from two of my close friends (Tony + Eva), and from one of Paolo De Guzman’s youtube videos aka Paolo fromTokyo). I got there about 4:40pm ish (yeah I know it’s pretty damn early but I was getting hungry!).

Even when I got there at that time, there was a queue (or what we call a “line” here in the States) to sit down at the restaurant, but something was different about how they did queues here that I immediately noticed: instead of having people standing outside of the restaurant waiting, they had a decent number of chairs (about 14, 15 chairs) situated outside for people to sit and queue – also, say if someone gets called in to sit down at the restaurant, the people who are in the queue can move up the queue by sitting to the next chair going towards the entrance of the restaurant – Last In, First Out (like a Stack in Computer Science! 😀)

This isn’t that common in the States since I have been to restaurants before where they only have “waiting” chairs inside the restaurant and not both inside and outside. There are cases where there are at most a few chairs outside of the restaurant, but not 14, 15 of them. It makes more sense in this case since Katsu Midori Seibu was situated inside the department store where having chairs in such a setting is a viable option since the chairs were lined up against one of the wall of the restaurant itself.

Thankfully, there weren’t that many people in the queue (probably 8-9 at the most), the queue was already moving at a decent speed, and it didn’t feel long waiting in the queue since I struck up a conversation with a couple (from London, England) just making small talk about how our trips were going, how many days staying in Japan, and stuff done in Tokyo so far, etc etc.

HELL YEAH. I got a spot at the sushi bar (which is always nice since I get a peek of the sushi coming out of the kitchen and onto the conveyor belt!)

~ Side Note #16: For the record – I WAS RIDICULOUSLY TERRIBLE at conveyor belt sushi places hahah. I remember the first time I went to one of these Kaiten Sushi Style places back in Southern California with friends several years ago – I treated it like AYCE (all you can eat) since that’s what we were used to back then (paying a fixed price like anywhere from $20-$25 USD to eat as much sushi as you can). I kept at it with the seared sashimi (especially the salmon) plate after plate after plate. I was shooting lights out like in basketball with eating like no other….however, by the end of the night, I ended up paying a grand total of $51 USD (NOT INCLUDING TIP lmao)…since then, I’ve been able to keep my kaiten sushi sessions anywhere from $15-$20 max. ~

They say that simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, and this is definitely the case with this seared salmon – scrumptious.

~ Side Note #17: Whilst I was eating, I ended up striking a conversation with another random couple (from Australia) to the right of me – just like the previous couple from London, we were just making small talk about how our trips were going, how many days staying in Japan, and stuff done in Tokyo so far, etc etc. The one thing that differed with this couple was that they were talking about going to a really hyped up baseball game – If I recall correctly, they said that it was one of those MLB (Major League Baseball – the main baseball league here in the states) all-stars vs NPB (Nippon Professional Baseball – the main baseball league here in the land of the rising sun) all-stars game! That’s pretty dope. I’m personally not a big baseball person, but I am fully aware of how huge baseball is here in Japan. I remember watching a Detective Conan episode about how the best Japan high school teams duke it out in a Summer tournament known as “Summer Kōshien” (夏の甲子園, Natsu no Kōshien) – aka the Japanese High School Baseball Championship. It’s ridiculously hype, and it’s the largest amateur sports event in Japan.~

Given that the place was packed + taking only 8 minutes for my first round order to arrive, the sushi was just delicious and very good quality. CHYEAH.

This was exactly what I expected and a bit more – This is what conveyor belt sushi should be! I MEAN LOOK AT THAT SASHIMI TO RICE RATIO. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? YOOOOO CMON NOW. CMON STATES (although Saburo’s in South Portland comes somewhat close to this in terms of sashimi to rice ratio, but the quality right here just ends the conversation immediately).

Even the SUSHI RICE itself is just right – great taste, simplicity, beautiful. THIS IS WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT. I’m so glad that I came here for sushi. I ended up paying around ¥2200 (which is not bad at all given the quality and the SASHIMI TO RICE RATIO. yeah i capitalized that for a reason. TRUST AND BELIEVE THAT.) I enjoyed every bit of the things I had here, and I would totally recommend this place to ANYONE who visits Tokyo.

After fully satisfied with the sushi at Katsu Midori Seibu, it was a three minute walk by a bridge that connects buildings within the Seibu Shibuya Department Store area to hit up my next most anticipated stop – SHIBUYA LOFT! (highly recommended by my close friend Eva – what a find!)

LOFT is one of the secret souvenir stores that not a lot of people talk about, and this particular SHIBUYA chain (they have these all over Japan apparently, and each of them have different stuff! HELL YEAH.) had a plethora of things – from Pokémon Terrarium and “Snoopy’s Balloon Journey – Where to Go in a Hot-air Balloon” mystery box packs, to a wide selection of stationary (which I’ll show pictures in a bit!). If you’re looking to get nice, unique gifts not only for yourself, but for others like friends and family, this is one of the BEST places to do that. Hands down. There’s even a very exclusive selection of MARVEL products (that are only sold in LOFT stores here in Japan). That is pretty legit.

~ Side Note #18: For those who don’t know, I’m a huge sucker for stationery in general – I’ve had phases where I went from using stationery from Poppin (which my cousin Grace introduced to me several years ago), Le Pen (which I’ve heard about from a coworker friend from one of my previous gigs shortly after I started using Poppin products, but I didn’t use their pens until a bit later), back to using Pentel (specifically via the ENERGEL series) and an old school favorite of mine that has been a timeless classic for me – the Pilot Dr. Grip Series. ~

I’ve had the Soft Grip lead pencil one for 9 years now (bought it while I was at a Kinokuniya (Japanese Book Store) with college friends in Little Osaka (aka Japantown in San Francisco, CA)), and it’s still one of my favorite lead pencils I’ve ever owned. I’ve owned previous Pilot Dr. Grip lead pencils since I was a lot younger, and they’ve just been my top choice of lead pencils. They’re very comfortable and smooth to write with, and just the overall construction of this series of lead pencils over the years has just become my go-to for pencils in general.

The ACE lead pencil (since I was curious about what the Pilot Dr. Grip series has been offering as of late) was something I bought at the stationery section (1st Floor) in LOFT along with the following:

Unfortunately, I didn’t take any photos of the stationery floor at LOFT, but you can imagine that there were just a myriad of options to choose from (from different kinds of journal notebooks to the wide variety of pens and pencils available for people to choose from…the selection is insane). I shouldn’t be surprised at the number of options, but I still am since there were just so many brands of notebooks, pens, and pencils that I’ve never seen before (especially the notebooks…damn).

I honestly spent about a good 1 – 1.5 hours just browsing all of SHIBUYA LOFT to figure out what to get (whether it be for myself, or for others back in the states). I was just overwhelmed (in a good way I guess?) at the many things they had to offer here. I was tempted to buy quite a lot of small gifts here, but I told myself that I should just get just enough to be satisfied, and save my money for other places/shops that I’ll be visiting in the upcoming days.

In terms of non-stationery stuff, I ended up getting these for myself. These make for awesome desk toys / decorations (seeing that I’m a big fan of both Pokémon and the Peanuts Series (in this case, Snoopy and Woodstock!)) Something that was new to me was the Smiski, which are described as strange, little creatures that live in corners. It gave off this very trolly, derpy, simple, and aesthetically pleasing vibe all at the same time. OH, did I mention that these glow in the dark? 😀

~ Side Note #19: I don’t know if it’s me (or just by pure coincidence), but when I got these figures from their respective mystery box packs (given the fact that you don’t know what you’re going to get from these mystery box packs until you open them + there’s multiple units per series that you can possibly get (e.g. for the Pokémon Terrarium Collection 4 series, there are a possible six units)), I ended up getting the ones from the front display of each of the box mystery packs (what are the chances?!)… I would think that I would get one of the other possible units (that they show on the side of the package rather than what’s on the front display side of the package). Not entirely sure if I’m explaining this clearly, but you know what I mean? It makes it seem like what I see on the front display of the mystery box pack is what I’m going to get (even though what you get is supposed to be truly random – as a mystery.)…Could just be a big coincidence. I’ll just go with that haha. Let me know if y’all had a similar experience with these sort of random mystery box packs. ~

Next destination – Niku Yokocho (translated as “Meat Side Street” + mentioned from Paolo fromTokyo’s “Top 10 Things to DO in SHIBUYA Tokyo | WATCH BEFORE YOU GO” youtube vid). It was only a 2 minute walk from LOFT.

I zoomed in on which place I wanted to hit up (which you see in the picture just above), and I’ve heard quite a bit about this area (not just from Paolo himself). This was the ideal place to go out with your friends on a casual night out for alcohol and yakitori!

When I got to the 2nd Floor, I was greeted with a lot of people trying to get me to eat at their izakaya (a type of informal Japanese bar that serves both snacks and alcoholic beverages); however, I suddenly had this uneasy feeling of anxiety that just came up on me right when I sat down (after being directed left and right from different employees/proprietors and finding an izakaya that I think might be the one that I was trying to get to earlier). For some reason, the attitude + body language that I was getting from the izakaya owner when he asked me what I wanted to order (I think that’s what he said in Japanese but I wasn’t too sure…) felt too direct, too informal and threw me off completely – what the hell is going on?

There were no english menus on the table, and I felt intimidated to ask for an english menu and just didn’t know what to say or do at that time (granted, I could’ve just relaxed a bit, take a couple deep breaths, and figure out what I want and try to communicate with the employees running the izakaya that I was sitting at…but at that moment, I was getting extremely nervous around my surroundings and it felt very strange to be here…like I just didn’t belong you know? I was just getting paranoid by the second (it felt like someone or some people were watching me from afar, why is this happening?!)…which is very uncharacteristic of me given both my audacity and confidence to travel solo, and just usually being very thick-skinned and tough about my surroundings and not letting anything or anybody get to me in an uncomfortable, intimidating type of way – standing my ground).

There were people around me that were pretty loud and even though that’s quite normal in such an informal, casual setting, I was just flat out not comfortable being there on my own. I literally had a table for myself, with a menu that I couldn’t read, and the loudness, constant noise, and ongoing activity in the background affected my ability to relax tremendously. Unfortunately, I had this tightness in my chest that wouldn’t go away while I was there for the next few minutes.

Before an employee came over to see what I wanted to order, I just bounced – I walked as fast as I could out of the 2nd floor, went downstairs and exited the building as quickly as I could. The tightness in my chest was immediately gone, and I felt extremely relieved. I think it would’ve been much better if I had someone there where with me at Niku Yokocho – in all of my travels so far in my life, I’ve never had this ever happen to me before. I took a few deep breaths, calmed down a bit, and then just decided to go to a different place to eat that I originally didn’t intend to go to in the first place.

I ended up changing my schedule to hit up this ramen gem – Ramen Kindenmaru Shibuya Honten (featured on Paolo fromTokyo’s “Top 5 Must-Try TOKYO RAMEN | Shibuya” youtube vid) This is one of Paolo’s favorite ramen spots in all of Shibuya, and this was what I needed – in terms of the courtesy and welcome from the employees that made feel more comfortable and at ease after my situation that occurred earlier at Niku Yokocho… (not to mention, I’m totally down to eating more ramen! HELL YEAH.)

The ramen shop has the same setup as the previous two ramen shops I had eaten at in Shinjuku last night – where you order from the menu machine, and once you select what you want and pay, the machine spits out a ticket that you give to one of the employees.

The slight difference here is that I’m also given the opportunity to choose the the hardness of the noodle (soft, normal, or strong), the strength of the ramen flavor (light, normal, or strong), and the amount of oil (less, normal, more) for my ramen. This was really nice too because the employee I gave my meal ticket to was able to communicate to me in some basic English that explained to me these options.

I ended up getting their most popular #1 option – Tokumaru (¥880). It has a pork-based broth with a nice chunk of pork! CHYEAH. Even though it looks heavy and oily, it was surprisingly light and refreshing. The noodles had the firm hardness that I prefer, and the broth had the right amount of strength that I desired. I thoroughly enjoyed this, and like the other two ramen shops I went to in Shinjuku, I wish they had this kind of quality (especially for the price, wow) back in the states (especially in Portland). I was tempted to get extra noodles for ¥100, which is a great deal; however, my stomach said “nanananananananana” lol. I’ve finally reached maximum stomach capacity for the night.

I finished eating and leaving the restaurant at around 7:40pm – even though the Shibuya Station was very close to Kindenmaru (where I just had ramen), I decided to just walk around a bit and take in the busy streets of Shibuya to walk off both my early and regular time dinners haha.

There’s something about Shibuya that just makes me want to do more throughout the night – the liveliness and the ongoing activity of people going place to place (along with the famous Shibuya Crossing); however, after 15-20 minutes of walking around the area, I was finally too exhausted to continue exploring Shibuya – I decided to go back to my AirBnb through taking the Yamanote Line from the nearby Shibuya Station to Shin-Ōkubo Station + followed by a 9 minute walk.

A nice, hot shower never felt more relaxing. Shortly after, I wrote down stuff about what happened today (I started falling asleep halfway through as I recollected what happened today; despite that, I was somehow able to get all of the key notes and certain details I need to be able to write up this post along with the previous 5 posts about Day 2 of my trip).

Man…what a day 2 huh? Hahaha here we are. I know I know… you’re definitely thinking “FINALLY KEVIN, took you long enough…after SIX separate posts of ONE WHOLE DAY.” 😅 what a ride so far though! Such a jam-packed day 2.

For my post(s) in Day 3 (I’m most likely going to split Day 3 up into at least two parts – so at least two posts for day 3), I’ll be talking about the following:

• A few things that I did in Shinjuku in the morning, including hitting up Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden.
• My experience in taking the Shinkansen from Tokyo to my next city stop in Japan – Shizuoka! HELL YEAH.
• The early afternoon + nighttime during my first day in Shizuoka. Super dope and I can’t wait to share this day with y’all in my next post(s).

Have a great rest of the weekend y’all, and until then – deuces for now!

Cheers / Wave

Yodobashi Camera! Finally the place that a lot of people have been raving and talkin’ about. (I think I might have missed out on coming here the first time I went to Tokyo 12 years before this trip just due to the pace of the Japan tour that I was on with my mom at the time – doing all sorts of stuff with the tour group, and not having enough time to slow down and check out some of the places that I would have more interest in…especially with electronics and even just being in the presence of that.)

It was definitely a more magnified experience shopping there than BIC Camera – there was just a lot more stuff. I was definitely a bit overwhelmed; it felt like I could get everything I needed as a consumer (well with the exception of groceries I guess) all in one place! There were a total of 29 places to dine at on the 8th Floor, 9 places to eat in on the 1st Floor (including the Square Enix Cafe that I went to earlier that day), and this one cafe on the 4th Floor called Marafuku Coffee [(丸福珈琲店 ヨドバシ AKIBA店)] (known for their hotcakes, or classic style pancakes – originally from the Kansai Region)

You might be thinking “Wow Kev…how were each of the floors? You must have had a ball with the variety of stuff there. I bet you bought some stuff and eat quite a lot there too!” Jokes, I was just focused on going to the 6th floor honestly hahah – I had my eyes on exclusive video game merch that they might have that I may not be able to get in the States. Also, I was hoping that they had more selection of amiibos (especially since I wanted to see if I could still get the Amiibo Cuby or not – the ridiculously rare amiibo that I mentioned in the previous post).

To my surprise, they only had a small section of amiibo (a lot of which were from the Splatoon series) on the 6th floor. Also to my surprise, I did happen to see this awesome Final Fantasy section with some really neat stuff…like these two cool looking passport cases!

It never dawned on me to have an actual passport case until I saw one of these in person – it was just the appropriate first, cool buy that I would make during this trip; it’s practical, it has multiple pockets of various sizes for both my passport and for other things like ticket stubs, mini brochures, and my JR pass. Best of all, it’s FINAL FANTASY THEMED! HELL YEAH… the only thing though was that I had a tough time deciding between the two….

The blue one had cactuars, moogles, and chocobos (which are creatures from the Final Fantasy series), and the white one had different main characters via throughout the Final Fantasy Series + a sleeping moogle on the back.

After 5 minutes of debating, I ended up going with the latter.

I definitely found stuff here that I didn’t really see at the Square Enix Cafe (which is understandable granted that the cafe was more Dragon Quest focused at the time). I then proceeded to pick up more stuff as shown:

~ Side Note #13: The last 8 pictures were taken after my trip (aka today haha) – Obviously, I didn’t open up the acrylic keychain collection no. 2 mini packs at the time I was in the store, but I was pretty anxious to find out what I got – I did open the mini packs after I was done for the day in Tokyo that night. ~

As cool as these products are, there was a cool kicker that came with getting all of these products.

~ The player’s strategy #3 ~> During the transaction process via these FF merch products, the cashier, who was taking care of my purchase, revealed to me Japan’s tax exemption program (which applies to tax-free stores, and in this case, Yodobashi Camera – Akiba). If you purchase ¥5,000 or more in the store at one time, you’re exempt from paying the 10% tax. In other words, Buy just enough to not have my purchase taxed – CHYEAH No-tax purchase! HELL YEAH SON. (although…the only thing about this strategy that sucks is that if you want to get stuff that might not even be close to ¥5,000 total, it “heavily encourages” the consumer to buy stuff that they may or may not want just to get that tax-exempted purchase.) ~

I ended up paying ¥5,200 for the aforementioned items at the 6th floor. Even though I was happy that I was able to get the tax-exempted price…unfortunately, there was a slight downer that came with this purchase though. I tried to use one of my two credit cards (especially my BOA (Bank of America) travel rewards card that I got specifically for buying stuff overseas so that I don’t have to pay for any foreign transaction fee), but here at Yodobashi Camera…my credit card didn’t go through. I tried my other credit card to see if it would work… no cigar. Sigh, at this point (and as I will realize later on during this trip) – using credit cards in general is like a lottery system, you just never know if they’ll go through or not.

All good though, it wasn’t like my credit cards were blocked or anything – they just didn’t work here at the 6th floor in Yodobashi Camera (spoiler alert: I was able to use my BOA travel rewards credit card in certain places throughout my trip in Japan successfully 🙂 so no worries!)

I wasn’t too down about it in the end because I had cash anyway (but…I just thought it would’ve been nice to use my travel rewards credit card when I can so that I can use my yen when I need to, you know what I mean?) The cashier was trying to be nice about it and I could tell that he was having trouble communicating with me since my Japanese was very limited and I was just trying to understand what he was saying to me about my credit cards and what he was about to do next…

After my purchase went through, he did this thing where he stapled my receipt to one of my pages on the passport. I thought it was really weird when he first did this, but (with his limited English and hand gestures/motions) he explained to me that I’ll need to keep this receipt in my passport and just show this to one of the airport employees (when I get to the airport before I fly back home) as a proof of purchase. Thinking about it a bit more shortly after I finished buying my Final Fantasy merch, it made more sense to me about the receipt situation – Japan probably wants to keep track of how much is spent through tax-exempt purchases, but still…I just thought that the concept of stapling a receipt into one of the pages of my passport was a bit strange because I always thought that those passport pages are reserved for passport stamps (indicating point of entry in another country when traveling overseas and all that jazz)

Anyway, after all of that was done – I went down from the 8th Floor to the 1st, left Yodobashi Camera, went outside and walked over to the Ginza Line, took a 14 minute rail ride from Suehirochō Station in Akihabara to Nihombashi Station in Chuo City, entered the Nihombashi Takashimaya S.C. East Building, took the elevator from the 1st floor to the 5th, and the first thing I saw after I turned the corner was this!

OH. HELL. TO. THE. YEAH. IT’S. GOIN’. DOWN. man…I can’t believe it! I’m at one of the best stores that I wanted to hit up for such a long time in Japan. POKÉMON CENTER TOKYO DX. CHYEAHHHHHH. WHAT WHAT?! YOOOOOOO.

This 5th floor also had the famous Pokémon café that I’ve heard all about; however, I wasn’t able to get in and check out the café because unfortunately you had to book your spot to enter in advance (by the time I found out about it while I was still planning out my 2nd Japan trip back in the states, the earliest time available that I would’ve been able to book was November 20th at 3:30pm, which would’ve been too late since I was planning on being at the Narita Airport at that time, getting ready to fly back to the States).

Anyway, back to POKÉMON CENTER TOKYO DX. Oh man… what a ball – there were just so many different types of Pokémon merch, including this beautiful Detective Pikachu (like the movie that just came out last year in early May, but in an ACTUAL DETECTIVE OUTFIT.) This was probably one of the main, premier things to get in this exclusive store! I’m not gonna lie… I definitely regret not getting one of these now that I think about it – at the time, I just thought that it was more practical to get stuff that were slightly smaller in size so that it would be easier to pack…but that logic doesn’t really make sense in the long run because I know that I was going to get a bunch of stuff in Japan anyway. (I did end up getting a stuffed Pokémon plush though, which you’ll see in a bit).

From all different kinds of Pokémon plushes (from the original 151 Pokémon in Generation I to Generation VII…(and a few from Generation VIII) and exclusive Pokémon apparel, to awesome stationary stuff that just caught my eye so much – I was just overwhelmed and couldn’t decide on what to get – it was just a bliss and me geeking out, wanting most of the things in the store, but I just had to narrow it down to some things including the following:

Most of these things that I got from this Pokémon store are part of the “Pikachu Number 025” collection (the 025 represents Pikachu’s Pokémon # out of the 895 or more Pokémon out there).

~ Side Note #14: My BOA Travel Rewards card worked this time whilst purchasing these awesome Pokémon goods! Phew man I swear I hope this works more often than not whilst I’m here in Japan 😀 ~

Man… that was dope. Both Final Fantasy AND Pokémon Merch! Legit. I’m really glad that I got some awesome stuff already from both Yodobashi Camera + Pokémon Tokyo Center DX – in terms of shopping, I’m off to a great start!

Sigh, y’all know what it is… I gotta cut off day 2 and stop it here. Day 2 Part 6 is coming up (and it’ll be coming up sooner rather than later 😅) – I’ll be covering the last few things of Day 2 of the following – all in Shibuya!

• Sushi @ Katsumidori Seibu
• LOFT
• Ramen @ Kindenmaru Shibuya Honten
• Niku Yokocho

Cheers / wave

My next destination would be an area that I’ve been wanting to visit in Tokyo for a long while now – Akihabara, THE LAND OF ELECTRONICS, VIDEO GAMES, AND OTHER COOL STUFF! HELL YEAH DUDE…oh man I could go off for days on how I had to make sure that I made a stop here to just take it all in – I’ve heard about Bic Camera, the ACOS Cosplay Shop, the Gundam cafe, and the Square Enix Cafe (which I’ll talk about in a bit) through you guessed it…Paolo De Guzman from Paolo from Tokyo via his Top 10 Things to DO in AKIHABARA Tokyo | WATCH BEFORE YOU GO youtube vid! – also, who can forget the well known area that is of Yodobashi Camera (the premier place to buy electronics here in Tokyo and the like); I’ve seen a myriad of youtube vids about this place, and I was just stoked to be able to check this out.

Before I took the Ginza Line from Tawaramachi Station in Asakusa to Suehirochō Station in Akihabara, I had to get a Suica Pass! While I was in the Tawaramachi Station though, I couldn’t find the machine where they spit out Suica Passes, but I did stumble upon another public transit type of Smart Card Pass they had here called Pasmo!

I even paid a bit extra ¥ to have it personalized – pretty dope! With this new Pasmo card, I can finally feel like one of the locals here! CHYEAH – reload this card with some of that ¥ and scan this card in between gates like a pro! HELL YEAH. So convenient too… AND, (and especially later on in this trip) I’m able to use this card in combinis, coffee shops, and other places! I wish we had this sort of system in the States.

Anyway, after I stepped out of the Suehirochō Station in Akihabara, I started to notice quite a number of these gachapon machines on the street – I’ve always been intrigued by these and it reminds me back to the days of my youth at my local 99 Ranch Supermarket where they would have a few of these toy vending “hand-cranking” action machines both inside and outside the place – those back then would have mini action figurines from a range of stuff such as Pokemon and Power Rangers. It’s like a box of chocolates – you never know what you’re going to get! (Quote from Forrest Gump – although, that quote is related to something more with life-meaning moreso than anticipating and feeling anxious about what surprise you’re going to get from a toy vending machine.)

First stop around this area that I went to was the ACOS Cosplay Store to check out some of their cosplay stuff (although, it took me a little bit to figure out how to get to the 5th floor of that building since the entrance to the building (along with the actual elevator to hit up the 5th floor) wasn’t as conspicuous as I thought it would be.)

Going into the store and looking at all the different types of costumes that are available to buy for cosplaying was really nice to see – it took me back to the time I went to Anime Expo back in 2005 for the first time (which was the first time I even heard about cosplaying), and I had a last minute, half-assed Ryoma Echizen cosplay (from one of my favorite sports animes of all time – “Prince of Tennis”). Even though my costume was half-assed, I felt like I was part of the overall crowd back then, and seeing how a lot of other people were cosplaying opened this new world to me of how amazing and serious costumes can be – it’s literally like dressing up for Halloween, but NEXT LEVEL.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a picture of me in that half-assed Ryoma costume; however, I did redeem myself with a much better costume (I first started wearing my Shinsengumi outfit to dress up as part of a Halloween event for work back in 2015) in the form of one of the Shinsengumi (a special police force that was part of Japan’s Bakumatsu period in 1863 + they were featured in one of my favorite animes of all time – Rurouni Kenshin!)

Needless to say, I wasn’t interested in buying a costume to cosplay since I was just there to check it out and browse.

After I left ACOS, I went over to my next location – BIC CAMERA! HELL YEAH SON. There’s a total of 7 floors, and there was only one floor that I was interested in – THE TOP FLOOR. NUMBER 7…which had the toys, video games, and Tokyo 2020 stuff.

~ Side Note #10: For the toy section, I was interested in checking out their amiibo selection, especially since two of my friends (Darrel and Sergio – who I co-host the “Nintendo Jump Podcast” with, which by the way is a video game podcast where we talk about all things Nintendo games and sometimes other games on non-Nintendo platforms as well :D) said that there are super rare amiibo that only exist in Japan that I have the opportunity of obtaining!

For those who don’t know, amiibo are these awesome figures that are a toys-to-life platform by Nintendo – you can use them to store video game data and interact with Nintendo consoles such as the current generation Nintendo Switch! ~

Even though I was aiming to get to the top floor of BIC CAMERA, I took a bit of time just to walk around anyway and check out each and every floor (whether it be phone cases, TVs and monitors, smartphones, and even traveling gear like travel mugs!)

One thing I noticed about BIC CAMERA as an electronic store compared to other electronic stores that we have back in the states is that the lighting is so much brighter (like I’m talking like as if the sun would say that it’s too bright!), and even though it’s so bright, it’s to a level where it doesn’t really hurt my eyes. That was an initial thought that I had when I first entered the store – does anyone else feel that way? Maybe it’s just me, but I mean at this point, I’m just nitpicking.

This was what I saw right when I got to the top 7th floor of BIC CAMERA – a nice “Welcome!” Mario stand thing, along with a TV showing off the upcoming release of Pokemon Sword and Shield (I will cover that later in the blog, not this post!) This floor had your standard offerings of games (via Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft), toys, and other things of the like.

Right after some exploring, I saw this amazing wall of amiibo, including some rare Splatoon (a third-person paint-based shooter video game series on the Nintendo Platform) ones! I went back and forth on this one and other Splatoon amiibo that were here since Darrel mentioned that these sort of Splatoon amiibo are pretty rare to get and virtually impossible to get in stores in the states (unless you order online).

There is one amiibo that Sergio mentioned that I should check to see if BIC CAMERA would have it – Amiibo Cuby! This is a super rare amiibo (oh my goodness, it’s $245 on amazon from when I hyperlinked it) that is only sold/made in Japan.

When I went over to ask a BIC CAMERA employee (in Japanese too! since I wanted to practice beyond my very limited/basic Japanese) about the availability of the Amiibo Cuby, he immediately answered me in English and said something along the lines of “One second, let me check.”

Sighhhhhhhh… even when I try to speak Japanese here, it’s not enough with certain people here that I speak Japanese to in order to receive a response back in Japanese (even if I don’t understand a lot of what they’re saying haha). It’s probably my beginner Japanese accent… don’t get me wrong, I’m not offended or anything – I just think it’s interesting that the gentleman that I spoke to inquiring about the super rare amiibo in Japanese could tell right away that I’m not from around the area and that using English would be a much better way of communicating. They can definitely sniff me out so well – I guess this is a good cue to try to get better and practice speaking more Japanese while I’m here 😀

Unfortunately, the employee said that they don’t carry that kind of amiibo anymore – oh well no worries! It wasn’t a must for me to get a rare amiibo here anyway, but I was just curious. I ended up not getting anything in this BIC CAMERA Akihabara location, which is totally fine because it’s just nice to browse around and check out the electronics store anyway. Even though it could just be a “standard” electronics store to many people who live in Japan, to me it’s always refreshing to checkout stores outside of where I live in general because I think there’s that sort of carefree, exciting adventure that I feel where maybe I’ll come across something that I normally would find unless it were overseas. This also applies not only to electronic stores, but also food as well (which you’ve probably already and will notice throughout this travel blog).

After I left BIC CAMERA, I walked about 5 minutes to get to my next stop – you’ve heard of it, you know it! YODABASHI CAMERA!!! YESSSSSSS. finally. Before I get into the store itself, I happened to see a certain video game themed cafe that piqued my interest immediately…

BOOM. SQUARE ENIX CAFE…like dayeummm, this is actually a thing! I had to stop by before I entered the Yodobashi Camera Akiba store!

I wasn’t surprised that there was a line for the cafe, especially hearing about how cool this cafe is! I mean, my love of final fantasy just spills out and I just wanted to just be here.

I went inside to inquire on how to get a seat in the cafe, and after waiting for a couple minutes (to let the people in line enter the cafe), one of the servers there told me that I need to put my name down for a spot at one of their available times. Since it was almost 1pm (and I thought of maybe going inside Yodobashi Camera first and then coming back to sit and eat/drink at the cafe), I ended up putting my name down for a spot at 2pm.

After a couple minutes, and before I walked out of the cafe, one of the servers actually said that they can sit me down immediately! NICEEEE. Luck has shined on me today!

As I was being directed to my seat, I noticed a couple things: A lot of “Dragon Quest XI | Echoes of an Elusive Age” (which is a game entry that just released not too long ago from a very famous Japanese RPG (role-playing game) series) merchandise were all around the initial entrance of the cafe (pretty cool btw!), and I noticed on my left side as I were going up the half floor height stairs that there’s an exclusive Square Enix Merchandise store with tons of awesome goodies (especially from Final Fantasy…AHHYEAH! THAT’S SO DOPE.)

This is legit! They even use iPads for their limited menu and I could totally understand the strict instructions that they have when in the Square Enix Cafe. I’m glad that they allow pictures though (hence the pictures I have of inside the cafe so far + incoming). It was cool to see the different items on the menu as you swipe right.

I have to say, even though the menu looks really good with appetizing food and unique, exclusive drinks themed after the Dragon Quest XI game… I ended up not getting anything because besides playing a bit of Dragon Quest VI (on the Nintendo DS 9 years ago), I don’t have any emotional attachment or sentiment to this particular series in general (Excuse me in advance Japan, I know that the Dragon Quest series is a national treasure for y’all, and I can definitely see why! I’ve heard A LOT about this RPG series and I’ve been around it for a little bit from friends in years past who’ve played the first three entries).

~ Side Note #11: I honestly didn’t grow up with the Dragon Quest series as much as I did with the Final Fantasy series, which is why I was a lot more hyped and excited for the Final Fantasy merch that they had in the cafe. ~

With that being said, I got out of my seat for a little bit, and I checked out the merch area in the corner of the shop! Super dope – as you can imagine, they have quite a bit of stuff (I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of the things here are Square Enix Cafe Exclusives!). The soundtrack CDs they had of different final fantasy entries and other games (such as Octopath Traveler – a very good JRPG to play on the Nintendo Switch by the way!) is nice to see.

Both of these creatures (Tonberry + Cactuar) are iconic in the Final Fantasy series, and it’s nice to see that places like the Square Enix Cafe offer these awesome stuffed creatures in person to buy; though… I was tempted to buy one of these (just as a fan of the series), but I decided against it since they were too big to fit into my luggage (plus, I wanted to use that space for other stuff that I thought had priority).

After some browsing, I ended up not ordering anything from the menu or buying anything from the corner of the shop where they had a bunch of Square Enix related merch. I left the cafe shortly after and headed straight to my next location – Yodobashi Camera – Akiba!

YESSSSS…but before I continue, I gotta do a hard stop right here and talk more about the second half of the second part of the day in a next post (I hope that made sense…otherwise, the original intended post about the second half of day 2 in Japan would be WAYYY too long to digest in one sitting). Haha excuse me from the ending of the last post (via “Day 2 (Part 3): Street food in Asakusa + an owl! (11/11/19)“) where I mentioned that I would start and finish talking about the second half of the day in the next post. Sigh… so much for pacing content in this travel blog haha 😅

There’s still quite a bit to talk and blog about for day 2 that I haven’t gotten to yet! I’m talkin’ about stuff including the Pokémon Center Tokyo DX (HELL YEAH YOU HEARD IT RIGHT – A LEGIT Pokémon STORE! CHYEAH), the sushi I had in Shibuya, and last but not least, a shop there called LOFT that was really unique that I’m just dying to share with y’all!).

With that being said, please excuse me for splitting the original intended post (regarding covering the entire second half of day 2 in Japan) into three posts (this one you’re reading currently and the next two posts). You have my word that these next two posts will finish covering the rest of day 2 in Japan! 100%.

~ Side Note #12: from the last post, you’ve probably noticed a picture of some Pokémon and a nighttime picture (of which was taken in Shibuya) – those will be covered in the next posts fsho! ~

Cheers / wave

[Edit Note (1/29/2020): I mentioned two posts earlier, but because of the amount of content that I have to write about in day 2 part 5 that I honestly didn’t anticipate…I had to split that into two posts lol…otherwise part 5 would just be wayyyyyyy too long to consume in one sitting. That’s going to be part 5 and part 6 now. Excuse the split.]

After having those amazing pancakes from Benitsuru, I walked a very short 2 minutes to hit up the next spot around these parts – Yukari!

This is another spot that Paolo from Paolo FromTokyo (as part of his Tokyo Street Food Asakusa Top 10 Hidden Backstreet Tour | Fluffiest Japanese Pancakes Ever! youtube vid) recommended that I had to stop by and try, especially since Paolo himself is a HUGE karaage (aka fried chicken) fan! Since I myself am also a big karaage fan, I couldn’t resist and had to try this place out! FRIED CHICKEN HELL YEAH AIN’T A TIME IN THE WORLD WHERE THIS IS NOT APPROPRIATE.

There were some decent choices right off the bat, and I’m super glad that they have an english menu! My initial thought was that I would order one of each from the menu, but given the fact that I just had a decent sized breakfast shortly before, I gotta employ the following strat (short for strategy):

~ The player’s strategy #2 ~> Try multiple places during the day but don’t get too much of one kind of food/thing from each place – think of the day as a sample platter so that you can eat as much variety as possible. ~

It’s really hard not to eat more of one thing, especially since the quality of food here in Japan is just something else so far.

Anyway, I ended up getting both (1) Kari-Momo (¥240), and (3) Garlic (¥260)! A good ¥500 for a decent amount of karaage? SIGN. ME. UP.

Although I had to wait for about 10 minutes for some FRESH karaage to come out of the kitchen, it was well worth the wait.

As expected, both the Kari-Momo and the Garlic Karaage were delicious! They were fresh, hot, tender, juicy, man… just the whole nine yards. I definitely got my fried chicken fix (for now haha!). The way Yukari made these karaage remind me of 鹽酥雞 (yan su ji – or Taiwanese Fried Chicken), a very familiar style of fried chicken that is really easy to eat, especially with using skewers and eating them like you’re eating Satay or something!

Next stop on the list is Suzukien Asakusa (which is well known for their matcha tea gelato, oh and their green tea!), but before I do – I passed by Don Quijote in Asakusa, which is an awesome discount chain store that is quite famous around Japan. Unfortunately, I didn’t go inside but I could definitely tell that there were quite a number of people shopping there and browsing around.

It was a short 9 minute walk from Yukari to Suzukien (This was also recommended by Paolo from the same aforementioned youtube vid from earlier!). It’s an awesome, old-school matcha store, and they have a collaboration partner named Nanaya (ななや), a Matcha Sweets factory in Shizuoka.

From hearing a lot about how this place is known to have the strongest matcha in the world, I was eager to enter and see what they have to offer! When I entered, I looked to my left and saw the following:

D-D-D-D-DAYEUM… so many different matcha flavors (ranging from No. 1 to No. 7). I was so tempted to get multiple flavors (but that would’ve been quite a lot of gelato to consume). Originally, I had a thought to ask them in Japanese whether I could try a sample of each one…but given that people ahead of me didn’t really do that (and I wasn’t quite sure if that is an acceptable social norm to ask for free samples here via gelato/ice cream places in Japan), I decided to just pick and choose one of the flavors out of the seven.

I figured that choosing the middle ground amongst the 7 flavors would be the ideal option, or as I would usually say – THE PLAYER’S CHOICE. CHYEAH! GET IN MAH BELLY. I was hyped for this! I don’t remember exactly, but I believe it was ¥350 for a single scoop – not too bad, and I would pay a bit more anyway for quality like this.

The kicker to getting a scoop of the matcha gelato was that they provided complimentary green tea! That is so sick. The gelato itself is very nice and delicious – I loved how it wasn’t too sweet (which is usually how I like my desserts anyway), and you can definitely taste the matcha too. It’s not as strong and bitter as I thought a No. 4 would be, but it was strong enough and I can’t imagine how bitter the No. 7 Level is. I also liked how green the gelato is! (Green is my favorite color in general, and it was just a pleasing green color to see).

Onto the next stop! Originally, I was aiming to go to Sharaku (from Paolo FromTokyo (as part of his Tokyo Street Food Asakusa Top 10 Hidden Backstreet Tour | Fluffiest Japanese Pancakes Ever! youtube vid), and I was trying to find it on google maps too, but with a combination of losing track of where I was in Asakusa (while spacing out a bit just because I was a bit overwhelmed at how many different types of shops and things to try and eat here in Asakusa), and just settling for another place that has Tennan Taiyaki anyway, I ended up at this location instead (via the picture above) called Naruto Taiyaki Honpo (Ohhhhh that’s right! it has the name Naruto in it too…like the anime! :D). I figured this place is also a decent option to try Tennan Taiyaki since there was a line for it!

~ Side Note #8: Taiyaki is a Japanese fish-shaped cake that contains filling such as red bean paste! Tennan Taiyaki is taiyaki that is made from an individual cast iron press, which is quite common here in Japan. ~

They had two choices of filling to choose from – Red Bean, and Sweet Potato. The sweet potato is an interesting choice since back in California, given my previous experience with having this similar dessert but it’s a Chinese style cylindrical shape cookie cake thing (I totally forgot what we call it in Chinese to be quite honest haha…) in which shops usually offer either red bean or custard.

I ended up getting the OG flavor, red bean paste! It was fresh, nice, and hot off the iron griddle too! In the theme of how I like my desserts in general, it was just the right amount of sweetness – not too sweet! It also had a nice crispy outside, which compliments very well to the soft inside red bean paste filling that just made this delicacy ever so satisfying. This costed just ¥180, which is a decent price for a quality tennan taiyaki like this.

While I was still around the Nakamise Shopping Street, I managed to pass by this one place called Jungle Cafe Owl no Mori (a cafe and a place where they had a variety of owls that y’all can play and chill with – https://owlnomori.net/about-us). I wasn’t planning on going inside, but I did want to take a picture of this beautiful owl (I don’t quite 100% remember her name, but I believe it was Haruka)

The lady who was supervising Haruka had a sign that said you can take pictures of the owl if you donate ¥100, which I did since I really wanted to keep this as one of my photo memory in my travel here in Japan. Once I donated the ¥100, the lady proceeded to direct the owl to glide/hop onto this small patch of grass as you see here – so cool!

Dang it! it took quite a bit of time to try to have Haruka pose straight into my phone’s camera (and the lady was trying to help me get a good straight picture as well!), but this was the best I could’ve done – oh well no worries haha I still enjoyed taking these pictures. I gotta say though… her feather and wing structure could not have been more majestic (granted that I haven’t met too many owls in person throughout my life). Absolutely stunning.

~ Side Note #9: There were still some places that I wanted to hit up around Asakusa (especially places like Momotarou for their dango [which is a Japanese dumpling and sweet made from mochiko – akin to mochi] + Yasubee for their Yakitori [a Japanese type of skewered chicken] – these places have been mentioned in Paolo’s aforementioned Asakusa vid from earlier); however, given the other places I wanted to hit up today, especially in both Akihabara and Shibuya, my executive decision was to call it good in Asakusa for the day, and take the subway from there on. ~

I am well aware that I mentioned in the last post that I was going to talk about my adventure in both Akihabara + Shibuya as well, but since there’s quite a bit to talk about that part as the second half of the day, I figured this would be a good stop and I’ll talk about that 11/11/19 in the next post!

For now, here are a few pictures as a preview of my next post.

Thanks for understanding, and happy new year + new decade! #2020

Cheers / wave

Given that I got about 1 1/2 hours before I could sit down at Benitsuru later in the morning, and since a bunch of the places I wanted to hit up in Asakusa aren’t open yet anyway, I decided to walk to Sensō-ji temple while hitting up Nakamise-dori Street (aka Nakamise Shopping Street) on the way!

As you can see here, there were some shops that were opened, and some weren’t (since a lot of the shops and stalls here in Nakamise-dori opened at 10am, so no worries there). It was dope just getting a feel of old-school Tokyo at one of the oldest shopping streets in all of Japan (90 shops/stalls too!) – I can see how festive this area can get during the day, and it was pleasant just even walking here. As a quintessential Japanese shopping arcade, this was a nice lead into my next destination for today – Sensō-ji temple!

~ Side Note #5: Nakamise-dori Street, Sensō-ji temple, Benitsuru, and the other stops in Asakusa that I’m hitting up that I’ll show y’all (with the exception of one, which I’ll get into later) were all recommended by Paolo FromTokyo) as part of his Tokyo Street Food Asakusa Top 10 Hidden Backstreet Tour | Fluffiest Japanese Pancakes Ever! youtube vid – this is one of my favorite vids that he’s done. If you’re ever in Asakusa, or even in different parts of Tokyo, definitely consider his recommendations. He knows his stuff. ~

Known as both Tokyo’s oldest temple, and for being one of the most visited places in Tokyo by tourists, Sensō-ji had this immediate, spiritual aura that just permeates throughout both the area, and into my soul – Even though there were a lot of people there taking photos and exploring the temple grounds, I felt like I was alone in my own thoughts and just taking it all in, with the presence of spirits all around me subconsciously guiding me to do what I’m about to do next that I wasn’t originally planning on doing: drawing an omikuji (a written, random fortune on paper from Buddhist temples and Shinto Shrines in Japan).

I followed the aforementioned directions above, and I just hope that I can get (not the best fortune available) the right fortune that would fit me best at this time in my life. (…okay jokes, I wanted to have the best written fortune available haha I mean c’mon y’all – this is it! I GOT THIS. LADY LUCK BLESS ME JUST THIS ONE TIME DAMN IT! LET’S GO!!!)

I shaked the box, got stick #65, and I’m like thinking “okay! at least it doesn’t have a 4 in it lol (since in Chinese culture, #4 is considered bad luck since saying 四 (which is 4 in Chinese) is very close to saying 死 (which is dead in Chinese)).” Yeah I know, this is a Japanese fortune not a Chinese one, but I gotta play out this scenario to my favor in any sort of reasoning favorable to my chances ya know what I mean. c’mon now!

The above screenshot shows how I first saw the omikuji…and immediately I thought “dang it…might just have to use the google translate app to translate all of the written Japanese, but then before I did that, I was like “na na na na na na na na na… there’s gotta be some sort of English on this fortune – gotta check the back side!” Sure enough, my initial intuition was right, and this was the result:

After reading this fortune thoroughly a couple times, I didn’t know whether to consider this a good or bad fortune – it seems like it’s both. It was quite a bit to read and think about this because of the initial thoughts I had about each point this fortune made (for all I know, I could just be overthinking it and going off the rails for something that may or may not be accurate to how my life has been, but since I’m in a spiritual place like Sensō-ji, I thought about the following for each point):

• “You will be suffering from disease and get depreciated by other people.” ~> I’ve had plenty of moments where I did feel this way about certain people throughout my life, but I think a lot of it was because (especially during my high school and college years + given that I’m usually more of a giver than a receiver) I had a lot of trouble determining who are my true friends, and who aren’t – I think a lot of us go through this sort of thing during a time when we’re still maturing, figuring out ourselves, and how we fit into this world. I struggled with being accepted for a long time (and I still do even today to some extent), and it affected the confidence that I had in making friends and maintaining certain friendships that I valued a lot. I don’t know the name of this disease, but it certainly affected my mental health tremendously until I realized that I only have so much energy and time to give to others, and I have to be more decisive on who I spent that time with, especially for those who really do care about my well being and the friendships we have together. It’s easy to feel like you’re being taken for granted, and especially since the beginning of this year – I just try to do what I can to strike a good balance between what I give, and who I give it to.
• “You are always attacked by danger, so you can’t get through everything.” ~> I’m not sure what the ‘danger’ part is exactly referring to, but I took it as the adversity that I face over the years, and how it’s okay to ask for help and get support from others. There’s a saying that goes “No man is an island.” meaning that “no one is truly self-sufficient, everyone must rely on the company and comfort of others in order to thrive.” (reference: https://grammarist.com/phrase/no-man-is-an-island/)
• “When spring comes, you may meet a happiness. You should make a perfect and good plan and wait for a good chance, with patience.” ~> I hope that happens come this spring 2020 – I don’t really know what kind of ‘perfect and good plan’ I can make to set me up for that other than staying course with the process of always improving (on that daily grind) myself, whether it’s physical progress, my career, or with bolstering my already close friendships with people that are part of my tight-knit circle of friends.
• “Your request will not be granted. The patient will get well in a little while.” ~> Well…that’s a downer lol, and what does this mean? Who’s the patient, or is it referring to people who are patient? I think it’s the latter.
• “Lost article will not be found.” ~> Damn…I hope this doesn’t mean the awesome “Mountain Hardwear” (Dark Zinc Color, aka somewhat of a dark purple) down jacket that I have on today. No way am I losing this.
• “The person you wait for arrives late” ~> How late are we talking about?
• “Building a new house and removal are both well” ~> Not sure how to decipher this to be honest.
• “Now is a good time to start a trip.” ~> Like this second trip (first time solo) to Japan? CHYEAH YOU KNOW WHAT IT IS. I’m way ahead of the game on this one.
• “Both any kind of marriage, and new employment are medium fortune.” ~> I don’t think too much about marriage (especially since I’m still trying to find the one for me). As for employment, the current gig that I’m on is more than just medium fortune – I’m really blessed to be a part of a team (since the beginning of this year) that not only works well together, but also looks after my well being and makes sure that I’m not burning out (given that I have a tendency to put in extra hours week after week because (1) I don’t want anyone to doubt that I’m not working hard enough, (2) I have this tremendous pride to be one of the best contributors for our team for both success and growth, and (3) I just want to win, man…I want to win as a team, I want to win at life, I just… want to win).

From the “How to draw OMIKUJI” instructions, it mentioned that “When you draw a bad fortune, please do not worry. Tie it on a hanger and drop bad fortune off here.” Since I was uncertain whether this fortune was good or bad, I just ended up keeping it since I already had my thoughts about it, and would like to look back at it later on to see if any of the predictions that it made actually came true.

Shortly after the fortune thing, I went over to the nearby kiosk/stall area thing where I paid either ¥100 or ¥200 to get one of these sticks – They were a bit thicker than the sticks that I’m used to using as incense sticks. To be honest, I don’t quite remember exactly what the purpose of this was, but I just remembered that I wrote my Chinese name on it, and gave it to the lady (as we both bowed to each other). I assumed that it was probably a spiritual donation to the temple.

There were a few areas throughout the temple where you can burn incense sticks (where they’re like these big pots containing sand and have smoke come out of each of them due to the burning incense sticks) – I went to one of them to burn an incense stick (while bowing three times). The purpose of this was praying to ancestors + relatives that have since passed + meditating at the same time. Also, there were a couple places where you would throw a coin into the fountain or some other spiritual container – this serves as a way for you to meditate + make some wishes that you want to come true. I won’t say which wishes I made, but they were definitely related to my aforementioned fortune.

Before I left Sensō-ji, I thought that it would be really nice to get one of these bracelets (the timing was perfect since I’ve been wanting to find a reliable bracelet that I can wear on the daily). Deciding on which one was difficult, but I ended up getting B-3 “虎目石” (which translates to Tiger’s Eye).

The bracelet was within my budget, and after doing a google search on the significance behind the Tiger’s eye, I read this:

“Tigers Eye Stone is a crystal with lovely bands of yellow-golden color through it. This is a powerful stone that helps you to release fear and anxiety and aids harmony and balance. It stimulates taking action, and helps you to make decisions with discernment and understanding, and unclouded by your emotions.” (reference: https://www.healing-crystals-for-you.com/tigers-eye-stone.html)

The depiction of the Tiger’s eye really spoke to me – if there are ever times when I would feel indecisive, unbalanced, stressed out, or any other emotion that would have me flustered or off guarded in anyway, I would like to think that in a spiritual sense, having this bracelet would aid me in those sort of situations.

After a nice visit to this temple, it was time to head back to the one, the only…B-B-B-B-B-B-BENITSURU! OH YEAH YOU KNOW MY RESERVATION IS STILL GOOD FOR THE DAY. CHYEAH my body, my soul, my heart, and most importantly, my stomach ARE ALL AT THE READY. y’all know what it is! HERE WE GO.

It was a quick 5 minute walk from Sensō-ji back to Benitsuru. I got there about 9:50am ish, and even though they technically open at 10am, they were already starting to have people sit down and start ordering – I gave one of the employees there my reservation, and immediately after, I saw both Paolo and Celine already sat down and ready to order.

~ Side Note #6: Now here was something that I thought was a bit strange – After I was greeted by the Benitsuru crew and saw both Paolo and Celine sitting down at the counter, there was a spot next to them where I could sit; naturally, I decided to sit next to them since we’ve met earlier and it would be great to continue conversing together like we did while we were waiting in line earlier in the morning. All of a sudden, one of the Benitsuru crew motioned me (a couple times) to sit in the seat one space away from them to the left. I was thinking… “Why?” Clearly I recognize these folks and it was very conspicuous that we knew each other a little bit and it would be fitting for us to sit next to each other. Both Paolo and Celine thought it was strange too, and we didn’t know how to ask if we could sit next to each other. Oh well, whatever I guess – even though I sat a seat away from them, we still were able to converse a bit (just a bit awkward since there’s an empty seat between us where I could’ve sat in…) ~

Looking at the menu (and considering the specials of the day), I already decided on what I wanted to get – the Bacon and Eggs! HELL YEAH. PAOLO’S (from Paolo FromTokyo) RECOMMENDATION, AND THAT’S THE PLAYER’S CHOICE ya know what I’m sayin’? (coincidentally, both Paolo and Celine ordered the same thing! they know what’s up!)

While we were waiting for our pancakes, Paolo, Celine, and I were just watching the chefs make the pancakes – we were just filled with suspense and anticipating how delicious the pancakes will be.

Oh my goodness, these look soul good (and the Benitsuru crew weren’t done with finishing the orders).

There we go. Both Paolo and Celine were pretty excited about these too. They were taking pictures, especially for the gram (referring to instagram). Both really liked it, and they were just oozing about how unreal and delicious these pancakes were. I got even more excited and hyped just hearing them talk about it and gush over them! MAN…I CAN’T WAIT BRUH. DAMN IT I AM READY FOR THIS. LET’S GO!

Several minutes later, my order was ready… BOOM there it is – holy shit. This is way too pretty to eat.

Each order of these “Bacon and Eggs” pancakes contains 2 eggs, 2 pieces of bacon, and 3 LOVELY, FLUFFY pancakes stacked between the eggs + pieces of bacon. Right off the bat, A+ on the presentation. If you were curious (which I was too), the yellow sauce that they put on top of this masterpiece is called Custard Sauce (or their version of hollandaise).

Straight up – these are the best pancakes I’ve ever had. The presentation, the taste, the contrasting sweet and savory notes back and forth with each bite you take. As a fast eater, I definitely tried my best to slow down and savor the flavor in every single bite I took. I honestly felt a bit giddy and just chuckling at how good this really was. Both Paolo and Celine were looking at my reactions and could totally relate, and even a couple of the Benitsuru crew were smiling and laughing with me at my reactions to these pancakes. What a gem. How is this real?!

I’ve never had pancakes this good before. Also, I don’t usually have hollandaise sauce that often, but MAN WAS THIS A NICE TOUCH. The whole thing just came together as one, and even the seemingly darker orange egg yolks were just right. This is truly top tier and one of the best things I’ve ever eaten in my life.

~ Side Note #7: Usually with pancakes, I would do the following (given that it’s a three stack with a bit of butter in the middle):

I would cut multiple, little holes starting in the middle of the pancakes (where I would cut through all layers – kind of like crevices that you see on mountains and in other hiking areas) and subsequently throughout the pancakes’ areas (while never cutting through to the edges of the pancakes); then, I would proceed to pour the maple syrup into those holes so that the maple syrup can sift into both the middle and bottom layers of the pancakes. This is a great way to make sure that you get a good maple syrup to pancakes ratio so that you’ll get a nice bit of syrup in every bite; otherwise, the syrup would just pour from the top of the top pancake stack, and onto the edges. You’re not going to get an evenly distributed ratio of maple syrup to pancakes per bite that way.

I learned this neat trick from an old man when I was about 6 years old at an inn that served continental breakfast during a trip where my parents took me to San Luis Obispo and other parts of California that I’ve never been to before at the time. During that morning long ago, while my parents and I were eating breakfast together, the old man sitting at the table next to ours saw that I was proceeding to do the whole “pouring maple syrup on the top stack and just having the syrup glide to the edges of the pancake stack” strategy, and he decided to talk to both my parents and me about his strategy on eating pancakes (which is what I just described above). The way he did it was like he’s been doing it for years, and he explicitly said that this is the way to eat pancakes. Brilliant – I’ve never eaten pancakes any other way ever since. ~

Now, you’re probably wondering – “Well Kevin, you didn’t follow your usual strategy this time! YOU CUT THROUGH TO THE EDGES OF THE PANCAKES. You’re supposed to cut multiple little holes that cut through all layers of the pancakes and pour maple syrup into each of them to get that perfect maple syrup to pancakes ratio per bite! C’mon Kev!”

😅 I know! I hear ya! but sighhhhhhh… I couldn’t help it this time since I wanted to take this sort of picture of these aesthetically pleasing, GORGEOUS lookin’, packing heat type of pancakes in such this way. I’m making an exception this time, so you know, all good! Note: I did pour a bit of maple syrup that Benitsuru provided, and man…just love to my soul right now. I love these pancakes.

When I finished and asked for the check, I got the bill and saw that it was only ¥700 (the Bacon and Eggs pancakes is ¥1700)! SAY WHAT?! YOOOO I GET THESE SCRUMPTIOUS PANCAKES AND A DISCOUNT. How can this be?! UN-FREAKING-REAL. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to leave with just paying ¥700 though. I wanted to make sure that this was the right amount that Benitsuru charged, cuz you know, I don’t want any of that bad karma. No way dude.

A minute later (as I contemplated on how I was going to ask the Benitsuru crew about this), I realized that OHHHHHHH…. it’s because it’s taking into consideration the ¥1000 deposit that I put in to make that same-day reservation earlier just to eat at this lovely place. Makes sense haha! 😅

After finishing the meal (and both Paolo and Celine finished theirs around the same time that I did), we decided to exchange instagram handles with each other and hopefully keep in touch. That was really nice, and this was the first time I exchanged instagram handles with people I met overseas. I hope this sort of social interaction can become a regular thing for me (especially when traveling solo like I am now). We walked out of the restaurant together before bowing and saying good bye to the Benitsuru crew (and to the people from Philly who were in the middle of enjoying their pancakes too!)

Before we parted ways, I said good-bye, take care, and wished both of them a fantastic time for the rest of their trip in Japan. They did the same, and I’m now off to doing the following that I’ll be talking about in the next travel journal post:

• Asakusa street food
• Shopping and other things in Akihabara
• Dinner and more shopping in Shibuya

Cheers / wave

12:30am, 2:00am, 3:00am, and 5:30am – these are the times that jetlag decided to wake me up. Jetlag 1. Kevin 0. After waking up the fourth time, I just couldn’t go back to sleep – time to get the day started… with some tap water! Originally, I was going to take the elevator downstairs and use the awesome vending machines that have water, green tea, coffee (both with and without milk), and some apple + lemon drinks that I was not familiar with); however, I did a quick google search to see whether the tap water in Japan is safe to drink. Lo and behold – it is safe to drink!

I went downstairs to the common room, filled up my travel mug with tap water, and drank a bit to check and see if it’s drinkable – I gotta say, I approve! Japanese tap water is DECENT. It doesn’t taste funky or whatever because back in the states, the tap water is not safe to drink unless you use some sort of water filter pitcher (like one from BRITA), or have someone incorporate a water filtration system with your kitchen sink to get clean, filtered water. Growing up, that was always the case, but not in Japan though!

I gotta say that the common room here is pretty legit – I love the wooden decor and it feels like you’re living in a woodshop that doubles as a house with a plethora of manga, tour guide books, and random framed posters of miscellaneous stuff (which pretty much is the motif of the place along with the trinkets, toys, and stuffed animal things spread all throughout the place).

As it is shown conspicuously, there’s a bit of rain this Tuesday morning – luckily, Min placed a good number of umbrellas just right outside the AirBnb entrance. I wasn’t 100% sure if we’re allowed to borrow one of them; I texted him to ask if it’s cool that I can borrow one for the day, and he was totally cool with it – phew, otherwise, I was going to stop by a combini (Japanese term for convenience store, which oh man…I will get into later on!) to pick one up. The umbrellas that Min had were these transparent ones, which apparently are super common to have in Japan.

oh btw, these are the vending machines that I was referring to earlier – soul cool. I definitely took advantage of using these throughout my trip (especially with the water + the occasional green tea!) Whether it’s because there are drinks inside each of these that I haven’t tried yet, or just the fact that they’re in Japan and they have that “x-factor”, I was always drawn to stopping by each one that I come across for a little bit and seeing what each would have.

Don’t mind the current location dot – my google maps app was acting pretty weird when I took this screenshot; but yeah! I walked about 5-6 minutes from my Shinjuku AirBnb and took the Oedo Line (one of the local subway lines operating in Tokyo). Originally, I thought that I could use my JR Pass for this one; but I forgot that there are local subway lines like Oedo (not just in Tokyo, but all over Japan) that operate outside of the JR system.

Totally fine though, I ended up buying a one-way ticket from Higashi-Shinjuku Station to Kuramae Station for 220円 (or ¥220) so that I could end up in the first area that I wanted to hit up for the day – Asakusa! (one of the districts in Taitō, Tokyo).

You probably are wondering from that last screenshot, “yo kev, what is Benitsuru?” Ohhhhh man…y’all ain’t ready. Y’ALL AIN’T READY FOR BENITSURU. CHYEAH… LET. ME. TELL. YOU…later!

~ Side Note #1: The Left is the actual subway train ticket, and the right is the receipt for that subway train ticket – man…the way they print out both the tickets and receipts feels nice in the hand. The paper material and the typefont / lettering that they use is something else. (I know…I’m geeking out on these little things unnecessarily, but I can’t help it sometimes haha). I’d like to know what that specific paper material is, and I’m pretty sure they use this kind of paper material back in the states for stuff.~

~ Side Note #2: Dang it! I forgot to purchase a SUICA card at this moment in time, which is a prepaid smart travel card that allows you to use a lot of the public transport [buses, metro, monorail, and trains] and in Japan. Shoutout to Eshani, a coworker friend of mine who has been to Japan before, for letting me know about these things (even though I forgot to get a SUICA card this time). I wouldn’t make that same mistake later (I would be getting a different card than SUICA card though to use in Tokyo…but it’s just as good!). ~

By the time I stepped outside of Kuramae Station, the rain had stopped: it was still decently early in the morning where there weren’t that many people outside just yet.

You’re also probably wondering, “yo kev, why did you wake up so damn early? Don’t you know that a good number of places don’t usually open until 9 or 10am?” You’re right, but there’s one place that I NEEDED to get there as early as I can just to get a same-day reservation (just so that I can eat there today without having to consider the possibility of not having able to eat there at all.) – you’ll see in a bit!

A bit anticlimactic (I know), but this is Benitsuru! (at about 7:10ish am haha…). Given the fact that this place opens at 10am, Paolo (that’s right y’all, from Paolo FromTokyo) recommended this spot (as part of his Tokyo Street Food Asakusa Top 10 Hidden Backstreet Tour | Fluffiest Japanese Pancakes Ever! youtube vid. He also recommended to get a same-day reservation for this place too, and you’ll see later on that it’s mighty worth). After watching this vid (before I made my second trip out here to Japan), I was sold! This video helped me get a bunch of ideas on what to do for a good half of the day, including (as you’ve already have seen it – eating the “Fluffiest Japanese Pancakes Ever!“) none other than B-B-B-B-B-B-BENITSURU. OH HELL YEAH. (If you already watched that vid, don’t spoil it for others just yet!)

Anyway, point being – I thought I was too early, and I didn’t know when Benitsuru started taking reservations until I checked on TripAdvisor about this place that they start taking reservations at 8:30am. Sighhhhhh… oh well all good – I do want to explore Asakusa a bit anyway, and oh! I do want some coffee.

~ The player’s strategy #1 ~> Get a nice cup of coffee nearby while keeping an eye out on the time and checking back maybe a couple times between now and 8:30am so that I can still be one of the first (hopefully the first still) in line to make a same-day reservation to eat there. ~

I used google maps to check out some nearby places to have coffee, and I ended up finding this one Japanese coffee cafe chain called Doutor – the thing is, this shop wasn’t open until 7:30am…but all good. It was 7:23am, you know what time it is. time to walk back for a bit to check back at Benitsuru!

When I walked back, there were two people that were just waiting right outside of the establishment – I just stood next to them, and one of them decided to walk out of the line a bit after I got there (looked like he was going to take care of an errand or something).

Now here’s the thing – I initially didn’t say anything to the other person still waiting outside because (1) I thought they were veterans, the OGs, the locals that knew that y’all need to wait here as early as possible just to get a chance to eat here on the same day, and (2) they looked Asian, so I made a calculated assumption that they were Japanese and spoke little to no English (yeah I know, probably not a smart, right assumption to make, but I only made that assumption because I was shy as hell initially, and didn’t really know what to say except trying to ask them “Hello, is this place Benitsuru, and are you both waiting here to make a same-day reservation?” in my limited, basic Japanese BECAUSE I thought they were veterans, OGs, and/or the locals here who knew about this place like they’ve been here for years).

Shortly after a couple minutes of not saying anything, the lady turned to me and asked me something along the lines of (in an aussie accent) “Hey! Are you waiting in line to get the pancakes too?” and I was like “Hell yeah! Wait, is this Benitsuru – the place known for their fluffy pancakes?!” She responded, “YESSSSS! my partner and I are waiting in line just for those!”

Phew, (1) she spoke English. (2) when her partner came back with some pre-breakfast snacks, we formally introduced each other – Paolo and Celine! They’re visitors too and they’re from Australia (both of them had aussie accents – hell yeah!). I instantly felt relieved that we could have at least a decent, friendly conversation about each other through small talk. They’re pretty cool, and they were super nice enough to hold my spot in line because I wanted to get a cup of coffee (as part of my original plan from earlier).

I walked a short 2 minutes from Benitsuru to Doutor (and they just opened by the time I got there at around 7:30am). I ordered their large sized iced coffee for ¥320. They gave me both “gum syrup” (sugar syrup!) and a “coffee fresh” creamer singles to use for the iced coffee. As an important note – I’ve heard quite a bit about the iced coffee culture here in Japan (primarily from Buzzfeed’s hit series “Worth It” [Andrew, Steven, Rie, Adam, and the rest of the production crew] with their $1 Coffee Vs. $914 Coffee youtube vid – I’m a huge fan of your show, and shoutout to y’all!)

Short backstory before I continue: I used to love drinking coffee straight up (just black, without any sugar or milk/cream); however, since I moved up here to Portland last year, I’ve started first using unsweetened almond milk as a creamer (since I’ve starting hearing that drinking coffee black stains your teeth), and why not? Still pretty decent, but what made this beyond decent was the eureka moment of using oat milk. Oh my god – oat milk is fantastic. I love using it in coffee because it gives this subtle, nutty flavor to the coffee. CHYEAH.

Conclusion: the player’s choice – coffee with oat milk. soul good – take that to the bank!

Anyway, I was very curious (and going against my usual of how I like my coffee); I put in both the sugar syrup and coffee creamer singles into the coffee, and originally, I thought that it would be quite sweet, but nope! It was just the right amount of sweetness that I liked. It instantly took me back to the times when I was a lot younger when my mom would take me to Curry House in Southern California on occasion to have both Japanese Curry, and… their signature Tropical Iced Tea (which was this DECENT tea that was accompanied by this sugar syrup that they gave in a small glass open syrup server type thing [ahaha that’s how I describe it…I don’t know the exact term for this, but y’all know what I mean] on the side that you can put in). I gotta tell ya, that was my soda – that was my drink. That was the OG, the go-to, the myth, the legend, the captain of drinks (y’all know what I’m sayin’?) – I loved it. I’ve had this kind of similar awesome sweet tea drink before at cantonese cafes in the form of Lemon Iced Teas, but it was still fascinating to me to see that sugar syrup can blend in so well in an iced, cold drink (contrary to using sugar packets that you could use to put that sugar into your iced tea, but the sugar wouldn’t blend into the tea that easily).

~ Side Note #3: Before I forget, something that I instantly noticed when I ordered iced coffee at Doutor (which will become the norm during my travel here in Japan when purchasing or ordering food/goods etc) – the cashier/employee will average four bows per transaction + interaction with the customer – in the same fashion, I average the same number of bows too with them!

• The first bow together occurs when I give them the money for what I’m purchasing (or ordering in this case, a large iced coffee)
• The second bow together occurs when they give me back my change and what I ordered
• The third bow together occurs when I receive my receipt from what I purchased
• The fourth bow together occurs when I’m about to leave the shop, waving good-bye at the same time.

Crazy right? But this is how they do things here in Japan, and it’s honestly refreshing and super humbling to me. I wasn’t used to it at first, but after a few times of this happening, it became second nature to me. ~

I took my iced coffee to-go, went back in line with Paolo + Celine at Benitsuru (thank you both for saving my spot! much appreciated. NUMBER THREE FOR THE DAY. CHYEAH. STILL EARLY RISER WIN), and I met a few others in line who are from Philadelphia (HELL YEAH AMERICANS. THE STATES. CHYEAH) who found out about this fluffy pancakes place too! Dang it…I totally forgot their names though, but they were real nice people to talk to for a bit.

From when I got back around 7:40am ish to when Benitsuru started taking reservations at 8:30am (on the dot.) We were all talking as a group discussing what each other is planning on doing in Japan, and when it came for me to share, I just pulled out my notebook and showed the following pages right off the bat:

All of them (including both Paolo and Celine) were in amazement and super surprised that I had something like this with me – the fact that I would handwrite down a bunch of things that I’m planning on doing in Tokyo instead of typing up a list (to be fair, I just wrote down a bunch of stuff that I want to do and I was planning on doing some of them and leaving the rest of the time up to the “see food diet” + winging it) was what they thought was impressive. I guess I was a bit surprised that they would think that honestly because to me, this is a normal thing for me to do – I’m old school when it comes to planning trips as a first pass – I like to write stuff down (instead of just typing it out on the computer) and use it as a reference that I can pull out of my backpack anytime I needed to. Paolo liked it so much that he took a couple pictures of these.

~ Side Note #4: In terms of writing down things to eat and do in my notebook, I did the same treatment for the next few cities that I traveled to that I’ll talk about in my travel journal later. I’ll show later when I start talking about those cities later on. ~

I talked to both Paolo and Celine a lot more – we shared quite a bit about each other’s lives and what we planned to do in Japan, which is always nice because that’s a great way to converse and pass the time while we’re waiting for same-day reservation bookings to eat THEM FLUFFY PANCAKES THOUGH.

We even talked about sports (especially Paolo with basketball when he mentioned the Blazers (and Damian Lillard!) and asked how they’re doing in the NBA this season so far).

Both Celine and Paolo recommended me a few places to hit up when I get a chance, including this awesome coffee cafe spot that they’re planning on hitting up (see screenshot above) called Koffee Mameya. (sadly… I didn’t get a chance to go, but if y’all get a chance to do so in Tokyo, let me know how it is 😀)

8:30am came. Celine + Paolo got their same-day reservation set up, and I got mine set-up as well! I was slated to sit down inside Benitsuru at 10:05am, and it was required to put down a ¥1000 deposit (which Paolo from Paolo fromTokyo warned me about already in the aforementioned Top 10 Street Food Asakusa youtube vid, so all good!)

This worked out, because for the time being, I’m free to explore more of Asakusa (including the Sensō-ji temple) until 10:05am when I had to be back by to eat these pancakes that I’ve been hearing so much about! HYPE!

For now, here are a couple photos as a small preview of the next travel journal entry.

My body is ready. LETS GET IT. but first, more exploring!

Cheers / wave

NRT (Narita International Airport) – I arrived a bit earlier than expected. Going through customs, grabbing my checked-in luggage, setting up my JR (Japan Rail) Pass, & retrieving my pocket wifi went really smoothly.

Also, seeing the “Welcome to JAPAN” sign held by both Mario & Luigi (Nintendo Characters) was awesome (there was another “Welcome to JAPAN” sign held by Rosalina, Luna, & Daisy (also Nintendo characters) that was just as dope too! Love the Nintendo usage here.

Oh, and it was nice to see the Tokyo 2020 posters up at the airport (showing both anime-like mascots!) Man… can’t believe the olympics is coming around the corner. There’s a Nintendo Switch game associated with the upcoming olympics that I’ve been going back and forth about getting (“Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020”) – we’ll see! For now, I just enjoy seeing stuff that are related to the Olympics anyway.

Just like my passport, I had to make sure that I kept my JR Pass close to the chest (literally) – losing this would suck… as I would have to fork over the same amount of money that I originally paid to replace it – (no worries, because “spoiler alert” – I did not lose my JR Pass at all throughout the trip! :D, great). Even though my trip was only 11 days (technically 10 since I lose a day from flying), I got the 14 day pass instead of the 7 day one (there were 7, 14, and 21 day pass options) since I wasn’t sure how much I would have to pay (& what I would do as an alternative at the time) for those three days without it. Better safe than sorry!

Before I continue further, I just want to give a shoutout to one of my brothers from another mother – Tony! Including the fact that he and his fiancé (Eva, who is another close friend and shoutout to her as well since she helped me with ideas on what to eat and see in Tokyo) have been to Japan in the past, when it comes to logistics, Tony’s my guy – he’s very reliable when it comes to organizing and preparing for things, especially for international trips like this where having a JR Pass is a must-have when traveling in Japan. He helped me with the JR Pass stuff, and he also suggested that I get a Pocket Wifi too, because you never know when you’re in certain areas in the country where the mobile network connection can be spotty (Having that Pocket Wifi man…what a save).

Anyway, after getting both my JR Pass + Pocket Wifi – I went to the front desk (that handles JR stuff. I showed him my JR Pass, and I told him that I was heading to Shinjuku (one of the more popular boroughs within Tokyo). He asked me if wanted a window seat, and naturally, I said “CHYEAH MAN YOU KNOW IT BRUH WINDOW SEAT ALL DAY.” (jokes! I just nonchalantly said “yes.”) Taking the Narita Express train (from Narita Airport Terminal 1 to Shinjuku, which is where my AirBnb is) was really nice – assigned seating + DECENT amount of leg room (when I say that…I mean it was a good amount of room) – just overall a good experience.

It was relaxing and nice just to look out the window (even though it was nighttime), and to actually be in the country. Even though I’ve already adapted to taking the MAX Light Rail (our light rail system here in Portland), there was something about taking trains in Japan that just had that x-factor (maybe it was the precision timing of the train arriving on the dot, the different stops and places that I was unfamiliar with that the train conductor would announce every so often during my train ride that I was curious about, or maybe it could be just that I’m just super hyped and get excited even for the most little of things (which I can say that I do get excited about certain things pretty easily haha).

Train ride: [departure time] 20:44 (8:44pm) ~> [arrival time] 22:09 (10:09 pm)

After stepping out of the train & going outside of the Shinjuku Train Station, I was surrounded by all of these lighted up buildings in Shinjuku – HELL YEAH. THE CITY! Some of the buildings that I saw already gave me this initial feel good impression of the ideal modern metropolitan look. I missed this side of urban Asia… forreal.

As I was admiring the urban environment around me, I was getting super hungry! What would be the first meal that I would have in Japan?! You guessed it ~> RAMEN.

First stop ~> Misoya Hachiro Shoten! It was a 7 minute walk from Shinjuku Station – not too bad. Here we go!

When I first walked in, I knew to expect to order from the menu machine right beside the sliding door entrance (shoutout to Paolo de Guzman, a super awesome dude / tour guide that has a youtube channel called “Paolo fromTOKYO”. I’ve gotten a lot of ideas from him & his youtube vids + he recommended this Ramen shop as part of his “Tokyo Ramen Top 5 Must Eat at Shinjuku | Japanese Food Guide” youtube vid.)

Anyway, I ordered the Kara (Spicy) Miso Ramen (¥920 + recommended by Paolo). The miso is a special blend from Hokkaido (the northernmost of Japan’s Main Islands).

This bowl uses this special burnt garlic black oil (that sits on top of the broth) that just added this nice, heavy touch to the dish. It also had this soft chashu, as well as ground pork.

The noodles were thicker & more straight than I would typically taste & see in Ramen (comparing to ramen back in the states) – I liked it a lot! Although… for some strange reason, my bowl didn’t include the soft-boiled egg that was illustrated in the menu machine (I thought about inquiring on it, but decided against it since I was just too hungry to care & at the time, I wouldn’t know how to ask about this in Japanese). Overall, what a good first meal to have in the land of the rising sun!

Before I headed to my Airbnb in Shinjuku, I was still a bit hungry – there’s one other stop that I wanted to hit up that was only a 6-7 minute walk away… ANOTHER RAMEN SHOP! CHYEAH. LETS GO.

Next stop ~> Hosenka! Ordering food was the same way as it was from Misoya Hachiro Shoten – from a menu machine (I hope that’s what you call it haha… correct me if I’m wrong). This (& the ramen I got) was also recommended by Paolo from the same aforementioned youtube vid.

I ordered their Tokusei Ramen (Special Ramen in English. ¥1,000) – oh. my. goodness… I’ve never had this kind of ramen before! The broth is made from a premium sea bream called Kinmedai (金目鯛) or “Golden eye snapper” in English. With rare pork shoulder chashu, bits & pieves of Kinmedai, bamboo sprouts, chopped red & green onions, AND this delicious half-broiled marinated egg, this bowl of ramen was quite exceptional. I loved every bit of it, and I couldn’t believe that ramen can be soul good like this ~> it must be the fish broth. Also, the whole wheat noodles paired very well w/ the broth.

Something that I didn’t order shortly after I finished this Special ramen is the “Kinmedai Chazuke,” which Paolo did recommend & which was eaten afterwards w/ the leftover ramen soup. This dish consists of an additional bowl of rice w/ the soup topped w/ 2 small pieces of Kinmedai chunks & a bit of mild wasabi. I decided not to get it at that time because (1) I was too full, & (2) I didn’t know how to ask for that in Japanese… (in hindsight, I could’ve been resourceful & showed Paolo’s video on the “Kinmedai Chazuke” & hand motion to order this).

Man… not one, but two bowls of ramen – what a way to start off! After finishing up at Hosenka, I started walking to my AirBnb in Shinjuku – even at around 10:30pm, the streets were still crowded w/ people left & right. Originally, the walk from Hosenka to the AirBnb was supposed to take 10 – 11 minutes – it ended up taking at least 20 – 25 minutes. I relied on Google Maps to find the place, only to realize that the address that I input into Google Maps was a bit off… I then re-input the address (straight from AirBnb just to be sure) & thank goodness… I was able to find the place (along w/ help from Harumi’s (AirBnb host) directions from our 1v1 AirBnb chat.

The AirBnb was at OMORI BLD via the 9th floor. When I first came into the place, I was met by two gentlemen:

• Min (Harumi’s Husband)
• “Ratis” (Latvian tourist, who has been to Japan 5-6 times prior) [I think that’s his name… at least that’s what I remembered]

An interesting moment happened after we greeted each other w/ handshakes – both commented on my handshake & how strong it is – I’m not joking. I was surprised that they would comment on something that I considered to be a norm in my everyday life when meeting people for the first time. Min told me that having a bold, strong handshake is an American thing, and that in Japan, the standard, normal handshake is just a mild grip (as he demonstrated to me shortly after). Both Min and Ratis were pretty friendly & we talked a bit about each other’s backgrounds & our prior experiences in this country.

Shortly after, Min showed me his nice, unique place, (& from the pictures I saw on the AirBnb website) and the room I was staying in was pretty dope – it had all of these trinkets, toys on display, & old, framed posters (such as one about Pasadena / Rose Bowl… whoa! that’s pretty much a 5-10 minute drive away from my hometown back in Southern California. What a small world).

A couple other things to note that Min showed me about his place:

• The Shared Bathroom – the toilet doubles as a bidet! HELL YEAH. I remembered using the bidet quite A LOT back during my first trip to Japan 12 years ago. I’ll definitely be making good use of using the bidet whenever I take a deuce. The shower was cool – there was this flat, grounded platform that was dedicated to showers, & a separate bathtub (all in the same area). Both are controlled by this built-in mini machine thing on the side wall that configures the temperature of the water Honestly, I wish I had this setup at my apartment. (I know that a lot of houses nowadays have that sort of thing where you have a small, enclosed shower area + a separate bathtub, but with this one at the AirBnb in particular – it just had this x-factor of a design, and the built-in mini machine attached to the side wall was something that I’ve never really seen before in households.
• Throughout the place, there were tons of action figures & other stuff that Min + Harumi had collected as tokens of appreciations from prior AirBnb guests – that is really nice to see.

The view outside of my window is quite nice – 9th floor view & there’s a shared balcony next to my room. Time for some shuteye, & hopefully jetlag won’t do be too badly tonight.

Cheers / wave

Flight from PDX -> LAX: caught up on some sleep; not bad of a flight! (especially with the aisle seat! (my preferred option).

Flight from LAX -> NRT (Narita Intl. Airport): even though it was a 10 – 11 hr flight… honestly, it was decent – it’s been a long while since I’ve flown on Singapore Airlines, and man…they’ve definitely upgraded some stuff:

The built in monitors are a lot bigger now than when I remembered back when I used to travel with my family to see relatives + extended family in Malaysia + Singapore.

They even have a menu! (and for Economy!) Times have changed, and (as a usual economy flyer) we’re starting to get some of the perks that business + first class are getting! (I hope haha…obviously, they’re going to always have the better perks and stuff, but still!)

I ended up catching up on some Luigi’s Mansion 3 (a very good game on the Nintendo Switch) + the following films:

• “Kings of Beer” – Nice documentary about brewmasters competing for the championship of best brewmaster (through who can make the best version of the American Lager – Budweiser). In the film, I got to see my old professor (Dr. Charles Bamforth) talk about beer for a bit (I took his “Introduction to Beer” class back in my college days at UC Davis. One of the judges, Jane Killebrew (that’s a pretty awesome name btw) is a brewmaster who graduated from UC Davis! I spent time watching this documentary even though I don’t drink beer anymore… AND I was drinking red wine thru it… haha the irony. Vina Borgia (2018). Not bad.
• “Against All Odds” – Second documentary that I watched from the plane. Really good one about Team OG from DOTA 2 (aka Defense of the Ancients 2 | PC game). Good underdog story.
• “Detective Conan – The fist of blue Sapphire” – YES! Detective Conan! I’m a big fan of the anime, and it was dope to watch this on the plane – interesting plot, and I should catch up on the other Detective Conan movies!
• “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”: Star-Studded cast! Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, & Margot Robbie?! Hell yeah! Decent film overall. This was the last thing I watched right before the plane landed in Narita.

Fortunately, I was able to catch a little bit of sleep in between watching films and the airplane meals. For those who don’t know – I’m notoriously known to be the worst at sleeping – I usually wake up early in the morning (anytime between 5-6am on work days… AND even on the weekends: yeah I know, what is wrong with me hahaha); I can’t sleep in for the life of me… I usually average about 5-6 hours a night, and that’s just how my body has gotten used to for a while now. I know it’s not healthy… and some of my immediate coworker friends have teased, joked, and got on me for it (which I’m glad they are, because I’m starting to get better with it).

Anyway! Enough of that side tangent haha…back to Day 0 – I didn’t show it externally, but internally, I was very excited and super hyped to be in a different country. Before we touched down in Narita, I thought about the times when my parents saved up enough money for us to make trips overseas (whether it be to visit family in Taiwan, Malaysia, and Singapore, or to explore unfamiliar territory like some of the countries in Europe such as England, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, and France).

They never explicitly said this, but they made it a point to me that traveling to other countries is important not only to meet, hangout, and get to know extended family, but also to experience how people live their daily lives in different cultures, and how we can take bits and pieces of that and better our own lives. Sure, the different kinds of food is always exciting to experience for the first time, but seeing the world in different perspectives (through the eyes of many) helps broaden and open our worlds to become more accepting and empathetic with people.

To be honest, I did not think much about how seeing the world in other peoples’ shoes would ultimately help me to be more accepting and empathetic with people until I was more mature enough and older to understand that concept – when I was a lot younger (and especially when seeing extended family for the first time), I was just focused more on being accepted and hope that people would actually like me (given that I had this anxiety of thinking that I’m too much of an oddball for people to even like).

With that being said, I hope that this trip can help me continue to get a glimpse of life through the locals’ lens, even if it’s just through something like small talk.

Cheers / wave

Eight years since the last time I flew outside of the country, living in a city as an adopted local, priorities shifting left & right throughout the years, & the non-stop daily grind to be a better person everyday. After yesterday’s 13-hour fiasco of a workday, I was finally able to breathe a sigh of relief – travel mode activated.

Although there are still parts of my personal life that I’ve been struggling with (a work-in-progress), I feel like I’m in a decent spot at work where I can travel, knowing that my job is secure & that the anxiety of not being able to hold my own at this time in my career is at the bare minimum.

I spent the last couple hours here at LAX deciding (from my big bucket list) what to do right when I arrive in Tokyo, & for the next day ahead. Just a bit more time before I board. Ready. Set. Go. 

Cheers / wave

What’s good y’all? Oh man… it’s been a hot minute since I’ve thought about blogging forreal – it’s one of those things where I felt that this is the right time to put thoughts onto print, and it could not have come at a better time where I just came back from my second trip to Japan.

The first set of posts will pretty much be about that trip – not only will it talk about the usual – food, desserts, bullet train rides, scenery, food, the locals, food, more food (obviously eight different things right? haha), but also I’m going to get more into the little things that may get swept under the rug – the little stories that happen during the days, and just the memories and thoughts we feel and think about whether when we’re enjoying exploring a place that we’re unfamiliar with, or something you’re eating that just brings you back to a time where you feel carefree and without any immediate responsibilities and obligations to tend to.

It happens too often when I travel somewhere, and I just completely forget about these little stories and memories that I always wanted to remember and share – I did not make that same mistake this time with this most recent Japan trip. Being able to treasure these thoughts and things is what makes traveling such an invaluable experience. You’re probably thinking, “Well Kevin… what about culture? Isn’t traveling about experiencing, embracing different cultures, and learning from them?” Absolutely, which is why treasuring and remembering these little stories and interactions with the locals is so important to me. Embracing different cultures is already in my mind and heart by default – this is one of the beauties of traveling.

I know that talking about my traveling experience in such this manner may sound grandiose and unnecessary to some of you, but I just want to be able to share my traveling experience with y’all through my lens, in a genuine, upbeat and reflective spirit that embodies everything I am as a person. Also, it helps that I’ve gotten a lot of comments and requests from people about living vicariously through me through my Japan trip. Let’s do this.

Hope y’all enjoy, because I can’t wait to get started with this.

Cheers / wave