jacobblogs

Month: May 2025

  • Tokyo, Japan: 5/4, 5/5

    These two days have also been pretty relaxed. Despite having two weeks here, I’m realizing that I’ve spent a lot of days relaxing. Tomorrow, I plan to take a trip to Mount Nokogiri, which will take the entire day, so saving up on energy isn’t a terrible idea.

    5/4: Just hanging around

    Today, the plan was to go to a cat cafe with one of the other people at the guest house, and then go to an Onsen (a traditional Japanese public bath). However, first I spent some time blogging, and then once we finally left and got to the cat cafe, it was full for the day. So instead, we headed to a sweets shop, and I bought more candy than I’ve gotten in years (my favorite was the strawberry flavored KitKats). After this, we headed to a park and chatted for a while while snacking on the sweets.

    On the way back, we took a route along a little footpath winding through the residential buildings and I took a number of photos.

    The text on this sign translates to “Crime Prevention Promotion District” (top left is “Adachi Ward” and top right is “Metropolitan Police Department”)

    5/5: The plans for 5/4!

    Today’s first task was to figure out what I’m doing for the next few days. I have one free day left – tomorrow, and then Wednesday will be a travel day completely.

    Tomorrow my plan is to take a day trip to Mount Nokogiri (as I think I mentioned at the beginning of this post) – so I packed my bags and planned the route. We will see if I have the energy for 6 hours of train rides tomorrow – or if I stay home.

    However, once I was done with my productive tasks in the morning, I finally headed out to the cat cafe, and this time they had space for us!

    Checking in to the cat cafe was a small process – first, we removed our shoes and put them on a rack (most places in Japan are shoes-off inside, aside from stores). Then, we washed our hands, and went through a small gate. The lady running the cafe gave us slippers to wear, and led us up to a table before taking our coffee orders. Almost immediately, a large orange car sauntered over and flopped down on top of the menu (which we were fine with, of course).

    All around the small room, there were about 8 cats lounging around, mostly napping. The room was quiet and had some soft jazz playing, and there were a few other people around petting the cats. I was quite sleepy (but so were the cats), but it was nice to sit and pet them (or watch them sleep) as we sipped our drinks.

    After an hour at the cat cafe (which cost 1200 yen, about $8.40), we left and headed back to the guesthouse. On the way, I grabbed another vending machine drink (a pineapple soda?) and a green grape flavored popsicle I’d had a few days ago and was craving.

    I also keep seeing these green public payphones – and am tempted to make a call on them, but have nobody to call and no reason to…

    After all this, I headed (finally!) to the Onsen. Japanese Onsen are essentially public baths (IE, you are in male or female rooms with public baths). You walk into the bath room, put your clothes in lockers, rinse off, and then sit in hot-spring water that’s close to 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) or cold water that’s closer to 18 Celsius (54 Fahrenheit). You can alternate between these two, or just do one (most people do the hot water, not the cold water). There was also a sauna, but that cost extra.

    I stayed in the baths for about 30 minutes (I would have gone longer, but had plans this evening to make), but they were very relaxing.

    When I first got in, I accidentally got into the electric shock bath (it had nobody already in it, and being shy I went for the bath that was empty – oops!) It’s apparently supposed to exercise your muscles and help you lose weight, by sending small electric currents through the bath (and you) which make your muscles twitch. It certainly made my muscles twitch! I didn’t stay in long enough to notice weight loss effects, though ;P

    An older Japanese man in the (non-electric) bath next to me asked (probably after seeing my face upon realizing I was in the electric bath) if I was ok – to which I replied yes, and he said, pointing knowingly at the bath, “electric!”

    He then asked me where I was from (“USA”), where I was staying in Japan (“Tokyo, at Makoto Guesthouse”) and (after a few failed attempts of me not understanding what he was asking) what my impression of Japan was. I told him I liked it very much. He asked how old I was (“Twenty-four”, though I don’t know if he understood what I meant), then wished me a nice day before climbing out of the bath and going to rinse himself off.

    I would go back to the Onsen if I had time – afterwards, I felt very relaxed and calmed.

    The rest of the evening has been spent in the common area of the guesthouse writing this post and eating dinner. Tomorrow, if I’m feeling up for it, I will head to Mount Nokogiri!

    All for now!

  • Tokyo, Japan: 5/3

    The day before, I and a couple of others decided we wanted to get up early to head to a flea market. It was an hour away, and started at 9AM – so we planned to leave by 8AM, and I woke up at 7AM (which in retrospect isn’t that early, but for my sleep schedule here, it was).

    We managed to stick together on the train, but once we got to the flea market we mostly split up. Inspired by my Gameboy find the day before, a couple of guys went off to look for Gameboys. Micro (a German guy staying in the guest house) wanted to find a Gameboy Advance SP (the kind that looks like a little square and flips up) – and managed to find a Gameboy Advance (not SP) with Pokemon Ruby inside, all for 5000 yen (about $35 USD). After some fiddling with the power switch it worked! And now I want a Gameboy Advance . . . 😅

    We spent about 5 hours at the flea market, and I got a few things:

    • A vintage mechanical watch with an auto-winding feature, which cost 5000 yen ($35 USD), but (as it ends up) runs about 2x faster than it should – something I think can be adjusted?
    • Four Gameboy games:
      • Super Mario Land, 900 yen (in English!)
      • Dr. Mario, 500 yen (Also in English!)
      • “Hamster Club” (translated from Japanese) – as best I can tell this is a game about taking care of hamsters? I got it because it looked cute and was only 500 yen.
      • Pokemon Green (Only available in Japanese, no English version was produced) for 1700 yen.
    • A US Eisenhower $1 coin (for $2.10, which I thought was funny)
    • A couple of old Japanese coins
    • One other item that is a gift for a friend who might read this blog 😛

    After five hours of the flea market, I and another guest-house friend headed to an all-you-can-eat okonomiyaki place.

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    On the way I finally stopped at a vending machine to try it out. I don’t know why I was expecting something more dramatic than what happened – I put two 100 yen coins in, pressed the button for the tea I wanted, and it clunked out of the machine into the tray with my change.
    Japanese architecture is not made for people my height… I occasionally need to duck to get through doorways. I always need to duck on the metro exiting or entering the train, and a few days back, I was in a shop where I needed to hunch over most of the time!
    Okonomiyaki is done a few different ways, but here it comes in a bowl, a mix of greens, meat (optionally), an egg and some other ingredients. Once mixed together, you pour it out onto a hot griddle and shape it into a pancake of sorts before letting it cook for about 10 minutes on each side.
    Once finished, you drizzle them with okonomiyaki sauce and mayonnaise, then cut them up and eat them in little bites.

    I first had okonomiyaki with the Petersons, since they loved it when they went to Japan. I’ve never had it otherwise, so I was glad for the chance to try it in Japan!

    After this, I was very sleepy – so I went back to the guesthouse (arrived around 7:30) and slept for two hours (till around 9:30) before getting up, grabbing a few snacks at the closest convenience store (convenience stores here are actually quite convenient! They have the normal junk food seen in the US, but also a number of decently inexpensive premade food that’s pretty similar to what you’d find in a grocery store deli in the US). After spending a little time downstairs socializing, I headed to bed.

    All for today! More to come, of course. My time in Japan (and thus my time abroad) is coming to an end.

  • Mending jeans in Tokyo, Japan: 5/2

    Today was a pretty relaxed day. As I’m writing this, I can’t remember what I did most of the day, which probably means I didn’t do much.

    However, I did mend a pair of pants I’d brought! I brought only two pairs of jeans, and realized in Malaysia that they had formed holes at the upper inner corners of the back pockets!

    I’ve been wanting to learn visible mending recently (a technique for mending clothes where the mend is visible and is designed to look neat), so the day before I’d grabbed some sewing supplies at Daiso (a 100 yen store).

    I ended up deciding to use a technique where a thick thread (or sometimes yarn) is used to make a weave over the hole in the fabric. First, I had to rip up the corners of the pockets, since the holes formed right at the place where the pocket corner meets the base fabric of the pants. There was no good way to rip up the stitches, so I resorted to using a kitchen knife. It was slow, but worked!

    A finished mend on the right, the other hole on the left.

    Once done with the weave, I re-stitched the corner of the pocket back up, then began ripping up the other pocket.

    At this point, one of my guesthouse-friends wanted to go to a local cafe, so I went along, and we brought our sewing projects (they’re crocheting coasters for the guest house) and drank lattes (mine a hazelnut latte, theirs a creme brulee latte) while we worked.

    Somehow, the second weave turned out worse than the first (I struggled quite a bit with the first couple rows – I was pulling the needle through a loop the wrong way which resulted in a less defined weave pattern and was messing me up).

    Still, I’m pretty happy with the results! I may try something more adventurous for the future mends, since these are really just woven patches of another color. Some people weave flower designs, or go for full-blown embroidery. I didn’t have the confidence for that this time, maybe next time!

    The coffee shop also had these cute little ceramic animal pins. I really liked the hedgehog one!

    As it turns out, these jeans will need more mending soon – there’s a hole quickly forming in the crotch area, and smaller holes beginning to form in the other two pocket corners, with signs of imminent holes at the belt loops… Oh well – at least I know how to do it now!

    And yep, that’s basically all I did! I think I also took a nap somewhere in there …

  • Tokyo, Japan: 5/1

    Today I did a lot!

    I woke up early for my interview (for real this time), which went well!

    Then I headed back to the guesthouse to drop my luggage off after checking out of the hotel. I wasn’t allowed to hang out at the guesthouse till after 5PM, so I headed back out to Akihabara, the “Electric City” district. I’d already been, but I wanted to do more exploring, and potentially buy a piece of retro technology for myself.

    On the way to the subway station, I saw two little dogs sitting out in the sun in front of a shop. Seeing me grin and stop to take out my phone for a photo, the Japanese lady who ran the shop waved me over, so I stooped to pet them.

    They were so soft!
    The subway was actually quite empty at this time of day! Normally there are so many people around that I don’t feel comfortable taking photos.
    There are a lot of really cool old neon signs in Akihabara, which I imagine would look awesome at night.

    After getting to Akihabara, I explored another set of electronics department stores I hadn’t gone into yet.

    I did find a shop with a bunch of older digital and analog cameras, and was very tempted to get some – but most weren’t that interesting (or were overpriced).

    I did find the same model as the camera I’d originally brought that stopped working (momentarily)! But it was like $65, which is far more than I want to pay.

    It is in muuuch nicer condition than mine is though…
    Of course, there were Nintendo consoles also.

    I didn’t end up buying anything – it turns out some of the shops I was thinking of buying from were closed (It’s Golden Week here in Japan – the longest vacation most Japanese people get, so a lot of places are closed while the owners take vacation). That was better anyway – I wasn’t super excited about anything I saw, and I’m headed to a flea market on Saturday, so need some spending cash for that.

    Next I headed to Ueno Park, a large park in the middle of the Ueno district in Tokyo. In the middle of the park is an old Buddhist temple, but it’s surrounded by ponds and other greenery.

    DUCK BOATS! I told myself that if they were less than 1000 yen, I’d get one…

    The duck boats were 800 yen (for a swan one), 700 yen for a basic covered boat, and 500 for a rowboat, all for 30 minutes. So I got a covered boat!

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    My legs did not fit in the boat well, but I managed regardless to make a decent loop around the lake. It was fun, though would have been a little easier with another person (and shorter legs).

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    After this, I walked over to the Buddhist temple, and explored around it a bit.

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    After this, I headed across another bridge across the pond and stumbled upon a small flea market. And I found a lot of cool things!

    • An Original Gameboy for 800 yen (About $5.60)
    • A Gameboy camera for 500 yen ($3.50)
    • A Japanese Yoshi game for 500 yen (Still $3.50)
    • A cute ceramic cup for Mo for 300 yen ($2.10)
    • A pair of vintage sunglasses that I’m hoping don’t make me look too much like a serial killer for 2000 yen ($14)
    • A brass whistle with a Nissan label on it (gonna carry it on my keychain to get people’s attention if needed – another guy tested it for 500 yen (STILL $3.50!)
    I’d forgotten how difficult the Gameboy’s screen is to see, let alone photograph. Anyway, trust that the photos from the Gameboy camera look a little better in real life. Only a little.
    Unfortunately, immediately after getting the Gameboy to turn on and boot the Yoshi game I had to relinquish control to Izara, one of the other guesthouse guests, who has become very invested in the game. The sound doesn’t work, but if you plug in a pair of headphones it does.

    On my way back to the subway station, I snapped a few more photos in the sunset glow.

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    I tried drawing this flower later in the evening. There is a reason I have not posted the drawing.
    A majestic tree and gate
    An older metro car that was sitting in the neighborhood I walked through.
    This kindly-looking old man was taking a smoke break when I walked by. The streetcar above was behind him and I tried to sneak a photo of him, but it looks like he noticed (and didn’t mind)
    Little planters of flowers outside people’s houses are really common here, which is really cute!
    A lot of Honda Supercub mopeds around! I’m pretty sure driving a Moped would be illegal for me here, but I also haven’t seen any places to rent them.

    After this, I hung out in the common area and shared my finds with the other guests. I also got sushi at a conveyor belt place down the road, but forgot to take photos.

    All for today!

  • Hotel Meigetsu, Tokyo, Japan: 4/30

    I did very little this day.

    1st) I slept in

    1.5th) I thought I had an interview, but it was actually on the 1st, so I went back to bed

    2nd) I slept more

    3rd) I walked to a local cafe, and got curry & rice for breakfast (at 2 PM)

    4th) I walked back to the hotel, but on the way, stopped at 7-11 to grab snacks

    5th) I was sleepy so I went back to sleep

    6th) I woke up and ate my 7-11 snack, and worked on something, I think – I don’t remember

    7th) I went back to bed.

    That’s all! 😀

  • Tokyo, Japan: 4/29

    Today was a nice day! First up, I met up with Joyce Peterson for brunch.

    I had an acai bowl. For Japan, this was pretty expensive – almost $10!

    After this, we walked around Yoyogi Park, which is a large park with lots of picnic space. Next to the park is a forest with a large Buddhist temple in the middle and multiple large Japanese gates. It’s a big tourist attraction, so we started exploring, then when Joyce had to make another appointment, I kept exploring. It was really nice to see her!

    Within the forest there was a botanical garden which cost (only 500 yen!) to enter. Lots of flowers, ponds, and even some bonsai!

    One of the entrances to the gardens.

    (I do wonder how old these are… Some bonsai take years to perfect, and still require maintenance. These looked quite impressive!)

    This one wasn’t part of the gardens officially – it was growing along the path.

    There was an ancient well (spring) inside the park too that was less impressive than it was made out to be – just a little circular pond of water flowing into a creek that fed one of the ponds in the park. Before I could see the well, I had to wait in a line of people for about 5 minutes 😛

    Outside in the forest there were a number of (attractions? things? monuments?) including this one with a ton of large paper lanterns.

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    Outside the park was an area of food vendors and a young Japanese guy beatboxing – I didn’t get a picture of him, but the sounds he was making were actually quite impressive.

    I can’t tell for sure, but it looks like this guy was smiling towards me as I took the photo.
    This little weird electric car was next to a restaurant outside the park. It’s a single-seater, probably for doing food delivery.
    This little blue Kei car was cute.
    Mariokart? O.O
    I forget the Olympics are this old!

    After the park and exploration, I stopped at an “American Burger” place to see whether it lived up to the name.

    I got a chicken based sandwich, and it was actually one of the best chicken sandwiches I’ve had, probably top three. It doesn’t look it, but with the jalepenos and fried chicken, it was delicious. (Maybe I was pretty hungry too…)

    I was pretty tired of walking around (and just tired too – still catching up on sleep), so I went to my hotel (not the guesthouse – I had only booked for 6 nights, and when I went to extend my stay, the 29th and 30th were booked – so I got a different hotel for those two nights and booked the guesthouse again from the 1st through the 7th).

    It was a private bed, but unfortunately it was also a very basic room, the bed squeaked each time I moved a centimeter, and the only light in the room made me feel like a lab rat. But, it was a place to sleep!

    All for today! This post was kind of low effort, but honestly so was half of this day, so…