Mary's Blog Entry

Well, it feels like I’ve told everyone I know about my trip to Japan already, but I’ll try and think of some new and interesting thoughts I’ve had in retrospect now that its been over a month since I’ve gotten back.

I love Japanese food. Seriously, about half of my pictures were of the food I ate. I had really appreciated all the pictures of food that Jane had on this blog before I came because I was most curious about what people eat. The pictures I took of my meals really aren’t any more amazing or appetizing than stuff you’ve already seen on this blog, but they’re still able to jog my sense memory so here’s a couple of my favorites for you (well mostly for me). They kind of make me sad now though, because I miss eating them:

Japanese Ramen (there’s no flavor packet, its just innately better than our ramen):

This was my all time favorite meal from the trip. Its tofu soba. It was delicious.

Here is a picture of me eating it:

And of course the amazing okonomyaki:

I would describe our trip to Japan as a tour of modern Japanese culture, which is exactly what I wanted to experience during our visit. It would have been nice if we had more time to visit more historic ancient Japanese sites, but I guess we’ll just have to go back again some other time for that.

Our modern Japanese tour included: a baseball game, purikura (crazy photobooths), a ridiculous museum (of ramen), onsen spas and shiatsu massage, a day at middle school, shopping at 100 yen stores, getting beer from vending machines, karaoke, going to empty little bars, eating conveyor belt sushi, exploring grocery stores, visiting the peace museum, and arcading. I think Jane covered most of this in her blog already though.

I can’t get over how genuinely nice and hospitable everyone in Japan was. And how all of the bathrooms were clean. And how everyone recycles. And how Jane can speak Japanese.

My favorite part of the whole trip was the time we spent in Osaka. I think I liked it there the most because it was the first place we experienced when we got off the plane. We were immediately overwhelmed by the giant neon city full of great people-watching opportunities. There was good food on every corner and incredible mall/arcades of stores everywhere we went. I’ve always loved cities, but Osaka really made an impression on me as being incredibly unique and totally different from any city I had ever been to.

I’m glad we were able to stay in Japan for an entire two weeks, because it gave us the opportunity to experience everything we wanted to without feeling rushed, or worrying that we wouldn’t have time to do everything. We ran out of money, but I left without any regrets. Thanks to Jane.