JAPAN ! ft me hehe
Hiiii, my loves!! If you weren’t already aware I was in Japan for 10 days from the end of April to the beginning of May! Here are some photos from my trip and my overall thoughts <33 (sorry it took so long to get to this lmaooo) i will also be posting a vlog on my yt channel !! (hopefully before the month is over) + a face reveal !!!!!!
our first destination was tokyo !! we stayed in tokyo from thursday (when we arrived) until saturday. (to be more specific we stayed in shibuya)
it was pretty cloudy but I had such an amazing time ʚ(꒦ິ ꒳꒦ີ )ɞ♡ i literally kept telling myself "...i'm in japan." for the first couple of days bc i couldn't believe it !!
we did a lot of walking around, there were sooooo many people especially at shibuya crossing. also i got lots of matcha hehe.
i think my favorite city was akihabara for obvious reasons LMAO i had a blast at every anime store i walked into. i got a few figures and a lot of misc merch. it was quite literally anime/nerdy heaven.
we went harajuku and shopped (which i really enjoyed) takeshita street was super cool, but i have to say i was not a huge fan of all the exotic animal cafes i saw. even with proper care those babies (like the capybaras and otters) should be in the wild (っ◞‸◟ c)
i loved how affordable the food was and how nutritious and delicious it was too <3 the curry meal i had in that picture was $6 usd !!!!!! for the whole meal.
i was also quite worried about racism, being black in japan, but i saw plenty of people who looked like me !! and while i did get looks here and there, it wasn't anything i wasn't used to living in a small redneck town :')
our next destination was nagoya :D
nagoya was a nice change of pace from tokyo !! we only stayed for one night so i didn't really get to experience too much, but we did go to the noritake garden which was beautiful and the history behind it was rich :)
as you can see in the first image we also visited the nagoya castle <3 there were multiple infrastructures of importance within the walls which i found super amazing.
before going inside of the castle walls we happened upon a school festival (which made me geek out and think of slice of life animes where they have the school festivals) it was really cool because some of the teenagers came up to ask us if we'd buy some of their items hehe !! (i need to lock in on my japanese, so i can understand them better next time) some of them even put on performances on a stage.
and now, i will say it seems that the japanese are really inspired by african american culture, but i wasn't sure if all of it was appropriation or appreciation.
some of the kids performing were dressed in 90s hip hop inspired attire and their performance was a dance to a notorious big song (with the head scarfs and chains and everything) honestly i thought it was pretty cool, but i was like... "this is them appreciating us right..?" because as someone in the gyaru community i often see some japanese women tanning superrrr dark and wearing african american braided styles and it seems odd to me.
getting off topic i know (っ╥﹏╥ς) but i did see quite a few japanese guys (that did not have texturized hair) wearing cornrows and locs and i was a little bit shocked. i even saw this japanese girl wearing a durag like it was a hat !! some people have told me this is them admiring and appreciating our culture but i'm a little iffy about that idk (⚆_⚆)
anyways !! our final destination before heading back to tokyo was kyoto and it was SO beautiful. i was quite literally in love when we got there <3
kyoto was so pretty, the nature was astonishing. i remember just becoming lost in thought, it was so blissful. since i really like matcha, i tried hojicha, which is a type of green tea similar to matcha, but it's roasted !! it was very good, i don't know how to describe it, but it had a pleasant almost deeper flavor where regular matcha is light in taste !!
i went to a pop up shop hehe (baseyard tokyo in kyoto for anyone wondering) and i had the best time geeking out over the culling games. i still can't believe they put the naoya cardboard cut out right next to my hubby choso (¬_¬")
i was pleasantly surprised to find out that they had some mha merch too so ofc i grabbed a few things for me and my friends. i got some jjk culling games pins and i pulled higuruma and yuji so im VERYYY happy about that :D
also, in that area was onitsuka tiger !! my uncle loves shoes and he says onitsuka no longer has stores in the us so he was pretty excited to check them out. they had some super cool shoes, i was blown away, honestly.
i happened to also notice how packed the shopping area was in kyoto and while my uncle and i waited in line to get into onitsuka tiger, he was telling me about his first trip to japan. (this trip was his third and my first) he was telling me about how none of this stuff used to be there. it was back in the early 2000s before japan was seen as a popular tourist destination. he told me about how grateful he was to be able to see the country in multiple times of change !! (i was just like damn why couldn't i have been born sooner AGHHH)
back to nature !! we went to the golden temple which i have to say, i didn't enjoy it as much due to how crowded it was. (not nearly as crowded as the inari fushimi shrine, but still crowded)
as pretty as the inari shrine was there were just SO many people walking through it that it just felt pretty meh to me :/
back to tokyo, shall we?
the last few days were spent in roppongi hills <3 my uncle told me he had the opportunity to live in japan in 2019, and he would have lived in roppongi hills !!
whilst back in tokyo we did some more shopping ofc !! we went to one of the aquariums and the atmosphere was super cool, i enjoyed seeing all the cool aquatic animals. my favorite had to be the shark that swam right up to us >.<
i also went to chiikawa park since i got into chiikawa maybe two years ago ? it was super fun but definitely not an amusement park of any sorts. you kind of just take your photos with the different props and move on and buy merch at the end. (my favorite character is momonga !!)
after i left chiikawa park i walked back to sunshine city where they were holding some kind of cosplay event. i literally thought i was seeing things when bakugo and izuku walked past me LMAOO !! i took a picture with them (along with some haikyuu cosplayers) but i will not be posting them for their privacy !!
the last two pictures are of the tokyo tower observation deck and the tokyo skytree !! the skytree showcases just how LARGE and VAST tokyo is but i much preferred the tokyo tower due to actually being able to see a good amount of things vs everything looking minuscule.
all in all, i had an amazing trip and was truly grateful to be able to go to japan after wanting to for six years. i think if i told twelve year old me that i went, she wouldn't believe me at first, but after that, she'd be super proud and happy.
i didn't make any friends their like i had hoped too, but it's okay because i plan to save up and go back with my friends some day. maybe i'll meet cool people then !!
there are so many other places i would love to visit and this is only the beginning !!
note: omg this might as well be like a journal post for me to come and look back at years down the line lmao
divider by: @strangergraphics
