television heaven with you

Been a busy few months but here are my Japan photos! We spent 9 days there in April, just past peak bloom but before the weather started getting nice again. This was my second time visiting but in many ways it felt like my first because I caught a bad cold right before my last trip in 2017. Aside from Tokyo, every place I visited during this trip was new to me, and even then I feel like I barely scratched the surface of things to see and eat in Japan. 

George and I spent the first night in Tokyo before heading to Hakone, a mountain town by Lake Ashinoto near Mount Fuji, the next day. Hakone is famous for its onsens (hot springs) and by the time we got to our resort via train then bus we promptly extended our stay at Hanaori by an extra night. I get very bad jet lag whenever I travel overseas, but waking up naturally at 5am to watch the sunrise over the hills while soaking in the outdoor baths was a great way to spend those early morning hours before everyone else started waking up. 

We bookended our only full day in Hakone with trips to the onsen before and after heading out to explore Hakone; we saw the floating torii gate at the Hakone-jinja shrine, the view of Mount Fuji from the Hakone Ashinoko Narukawa Art Museum, and the sculptures and art at the Hakone Open Air Museum. 

From Hakone, we headed west to Nagoya, Japan's fourth largest city. Nagoya is not as popular of a tourist destination compared to Kyoto and Osaka, but we stayed here for a couple nights because neither of us had been before. George wanted to do some industrial tourism on this trip but because the Toyota factory was still closed for tours due to COVID restrictions, we stopped by the Toyota Techno Museum instead where they had an English-language tour through the history of the company and a live demonstration section for the machinery.

For our day trip day, we took the train to Nara in the morning and Osaka in the afternoon. We got to Nara Park quite early in the morning (day four and jet lag was still going strong) so there weren't many people around. The deer cracker vendors were out though, so we bought a few packets to feed the deer that wander the park and are considered a national treasure. They were hungry. I was struggling to get them to do the little bow that they're famous for before a crowd of them descended upon me to serve them their breakfast. 

We took the train to Osaka around lunchtime and spent the rest of the day there. Even though I stayed in the city for a few days on my last trip, my mum and I didn't see anything in Osaka aside from the train station and used it as a day trip base instead. We wandered the city for a bit and saw Osaka Castle and Dotonburi before heading back to Nagoya for the night and returning to Tokyo the next morning.

In Tokyo we met up with six other friends and stayed in an Airbnb together in Taito. I noted most of the things I did and places we ate at (or considered eating at) in my map of Tokyo and Seoul is here. Most days were a mix of doing things in smaller groups of two to four before meeting up with the entire group of eight for things like teamLab or karaoke or dinner. It was a fun change of pace to travel in a large group and make new friends, especially since most of us don't live in the same city back in the U.S. 

xoxo, vivian