My friend and I visited Osaka for our short break. It’s been 10 years since I visited last time. To be honest, I don’t even remember what it looked like a decade ago lol.

We stayed at the center of Osaka. Naturally, Umeda became our playground when it comes to shopping and exploring the city. What’s nice is, everything is connected by train. This is one of the reasons why I love Japan so much lol.

While Japan train stations tend to also be a huge ass shopping mall, it’s very crowded and it’s hard to navigate around it if you’re not familiar with it. I had my friend guide me for the whole trip. This udon restaurant, which is a 10-minute walk from the station, is the first place I was brought to after we arrived.

The soup has a peculiar taste since it’s infused with yuzu peels. I like yuzu tea but yuzu udon? Uh, not so much. The tempura’s good, though.

We got this katsudon for dinner on the first day. To be honest, it’s not the best. There’s not much taste for the katsu itself. But then again it’s cheap compared to other restaurants, so we can’t complain lol.

This gelato shop is pretty famous. There are always people eating inside even though the space is very small. The price is in the middle to high range. I would come back if I were given the chance to!

These two pictures are famous tourist spots to take memorable pics. There are a lot of shops at Dotonbori. Exploring everything didn’t take us that long, though., since there were only several shops that we were interested in. Just beware that there are a lot of people here, so people like me who hate crowded places, better avoid this one lol.

To be continued Pt. 2

This is the last post for the places I visited during my time in Gotenba. We visited the Shiraito Waterfalls, which is located in Fujinomiya city. It took us around one hour and thirty minutes of train ride and half an hour of bus ride to get there from Gotenba Station.

For this trip, only me and the fountain pen guy went. The others said they were disinterested so we just left them sleeping in the house. We weren’t sure if the trip was going to be worth it at first, but after seeing the waterfalls, we were just ecstatic.

The waterfalls are so majestic that I’m sure the photos wouldn’t be enough to show it.

We stopped by the Sengen shrine on the way home from the falls since we haven’t really got the chance to visit a big shrine during our trip. This shrine is a really famous one and it was once used as a starting point to climb Mt. Fuji.

We visited during day time so the stalls were still being prepared for New Year’s Eve. I would really love to go to this place during new year’s, but too bad it’s so far from Gotenba.

I try my best to visit shrines during or near new years to grab an omikuji (a fortune paper). I got medium luck for this year, which is not bad. I still haven’t read it completely since they use old Japanese phrases inside it. Maybe I’ll ask my Japanese teacher next time. Haha.

This ends my vacation post. I hope you enjoyed reading all three. I’m sorry that it got too long and I don’t have better pictures to show. I’ll keep in mind to take more on my next trip (hopefully)!

We spent the next few days exploring the Fuji Five Lakes (actually only 1 lol) and Yeti Snow Town. To explore Fuji Five Lakes, there’s a 2 day pass that you can purchase which gives you free bus rides around the lakes. We explored the lakes on day one and went to the Fuji Q Highland (an amusement park) in day 2.

When we got to the first lake we visited, we stopped by the mini restaurant and souvenir shop. My friend bought that charcoal karage just because he never had one. It tastes like any normal karage with a more burnt flavor, I guess.

Yamanaka literally translates to ‘middle of the mountain’. This is the only lake we really visited since we had some trouble and ended up wasting most of our time searching for food. This lake is the 2nd most developed after Kawaguchi Lake.

There were rental swan boats where we use our feet to pedal. Each session lasts for 30 minutes and our legs were sore by the time we finished, but the experience was worth it.

While we were in the boat, swans started following us everywhere, which terrified us lol. It turns out that one of my friends bought mixed peanuts from the convenient store for his snack and the swans were going after it. We ended up wasting half the package just to feed the swans, they’re really pretty, though.

The next day, we went to Fuji Q Highland, a famous amusement park. I’m personally not a amusement park person since I get dizzy and nauseous from rides quite easily. To be honest, I think I went there just to try out ice skating because I’ve never experienced it before. It was really terrifying, though. I fell so many times to the point my arms and butt hurts. Nonetheless, it was really fun because it’s the only time where the five of us could enjoy our time in the amusement park together.

We went to a ‘snow town’ named Yeti several days after the amusement park. We got the transport, admission, and rental package for 6600 yen, which is quite expensive for me but cheap for my American friends. I had zero experience in skiing and snowboarding so my friend told me to try ski first because it’s easier.

That’s a lie.

Ski is freaking difficult and scary as hell. It’s like sliding down the mountain to your deaths with nothing but poles (which doesn’t really help me to stop).

I fell down a lot more during skiing than skating. It was hard to get up on my own, too, since the boards were really hindering. After going down the slope once, I had enough and decided to call it a day lol. It’s a waste of money, I know. But at least I’ve given it a try.

Asians are not made for skiing. Lol.

The picture of illumination above is taken at Gotenba Station, which is the main station in the city of Gotenba in Shizuoka prefecture. The town itself is not big, it looks even more countryside than Beppu, but you can see Mt. Fuji from this place almost every day.

I went to Gotenba for my winter vacation along with my other 4 friends from university. We stayed at one of my friend’s relative’s house since they’re running a restaurant in the nearby resort. Our trip lasted for 10 days, but it’s actually 8 days if you don’t count the trip for going and going back.

We spent our first few days exploring the city. We entered this coffee shop that was located right next to the station just because we’re itching for something to drink. The interior really surprised us since it was full of vintage photography tools and pictures.

The owner turned out to be a professional photographer. He asked us a lot of questions about us. Maybe it was because us foreigners looked really strange? Lol. Anyways, he’s a really nice old man. He even took a group picture for us and shared some photography tips!

I just realized now that I’ve never really taken any proper photos of the resort near the place we stayed. I brought my polaroid camera so some days I’m just so focused on using it I forgot that my phone camera existed. The picture above is the tunnel illumination in the resort. The photo didn’t turn out nicely because I forgot to turn on the exposure button lol.

We passed this Christmas tree so many times but still forgot to take a picture of it with our phone cameras.

There’s a beautiful bakery right in front of where the Christmas tree was located. I think I almost go there every day during the trip to grab some bread for breakfast. They have assorted jams and even honey. The canned bread caught my attention in particular. They’re so cute … but looking at the price made me refrain.

I love drinking yuzu for winter not just because of the taste but the effects they bring. It helps with throat problems, too, so I figured why not buy one. The price wasn’t bad either. I tried it once I got back to Beppu, and damn, I regret not buying more because it tastes so good!

There’s a huge circus-like tent beside the bakery which has a lot of street food. I got myself a kishimen just because my friend recommended it to me. It’s so good, though. I wonder if it’s because I’m too hungry? Haha. Other than that, they have yakitori stalls and also a shooting game stall. The place is always so crowded at night time, but it really has a nice cozy winter atmosphere. I wish I had taken more pictures, sigh.

Well, that’s about it. I’m ending the first post here since I don’t want the post to be image heavy. I’ll be posting about the Fuji 5 Lakes and Yeti Snow Town on the next one!

This post is going to be about the trips that I made with my friend in Nagasaki and Saga during the beginning of February. I booked my hotel using Booking.com. We stayed at a small hostel named The Life Hostel which is really near to the Hakata station. The featured image of this post is the lobby area of the hotel which I find quite aesthetic and calming (when there are no people lol). I, unfortunately, didn’t take any pictures of my room as it was a shared room with 5 other people. I did take a picture of the kitchen area, which I find really nice as it provides all the cooking utensils for your personal use.

We stayed there for the duration of our trip and I must say it was a really pleasant experience (minus the noisy neighbors)!

We went to Nagasaki on our first day. This is my second time visiting the historical city after my previous visit in summer last year. And since it was almost Chinese New Year, we dropped by the china town to see all the decorations that had been set up.

You can find a lot of Chinese inspired snacks and restaurants in the alley. It’s really recommended that you visit this spot near the CNY since they will put the decorations out for display only during those times.

This is also my second time visiting the Glover Garden since my friend really wanted to enter, so I had no choice but to follow her inside haha. The entrance fee was quite expensive around 6o0ish yen for adults, which in my opinion, is a bit overkill. But I guess the view you get from the top of the house is worth looking at.

We also visited the Atomic Bomb Museum as well as the Peace Park which are the iconic tourist sites for Nagasaki. I didn’t take any pictures of it since I did during the previous visit. I did post it on my Instagram so you can check it if you’re interested.

We visited Saga on our second day. Saga prefecture wasn’t really well known within the Japanese community and thus was not a lot of people visit this place for tourism. We visited Kashima, a city in the prefecture which is famous for their Yutoku-Inari Shrine. I alone have never heard of this shrine but I must say that it’s a really majestic and beautiful shrine.

You can access the shrine by first taking the JR train that stops at the Hizen-Kashima station. From there you can purchase a roundtrip ticket for the bus that is bound for the shrine. Beware that the bus only comes once an hour so you may have to do some planning if you hate waiting that long. After you get off at the bus stop, you must walk around another 5-8 minutes to reach the shrine.

Kashima city is even more rural than Beppu (the place I’m living in Japan). There are literally no skyscrapers and you can see the whole city from the top of the shrine. As I do not possess a super expensive camera to take the view, I tried to take a panorama from my iPhone.

I always try to go to a shrine every year to take one of this omikujis (a.k.a Japanese fortune-telling paper). These papers will tell your luck for the whole year which you can read more about here. I got a ‘future blessing’ for this year. Unfortunately, due to the lack of Japanese understanding, I thought that it was a bad luck lol. I did understand the rest of the contents written in the paper, but I did not know that those two characters in the middle meant a good thing.

Normally only people with ‘bad luck’ written on their paper would tie the fortune on these ropes. But as I misunderstood the words, my friend told me to tie my paper. Lol. Good thing I’m not a type of person who believes in these kinds of superstitions that much otherwise I’d be rolling over my bed knowing that I had sent my good blessings away by mistake.

Next time I’d be super careful and Google everything up before making mistakes again. Haha.

While my trip to Nagasaki and Saga wasn’t smooth (rain ruined it all), I was glad that I made the decision to step out and explore more about the places around me. I hope my post somewhat entertains you and motivates you to explore Japan too!