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I was in Japan for over two weeks, so now I am entirely broke but here are some lovely pictures for you all to enjoy.
Akihabara all lit up at night
Lil Inari shrine hiding in Akihabara
Kana Myojin, the “IT shrine”
Pokemon center in Ikebukuro
Owl cafe in Ikebukuro
Shibuya on Halloween night!
Temple in Sugamo , they have great street markets
Frickin’ Totoro would not cough up the tickets…no such thing as scalpers in Japan apparently!
Meiji shrine
Pagoda in Ueno park. The crowds were out in Ueno park for pokemon hunting, an amazing spot!
On the bullet train to Kyoto
Inari Shrine in Kyoto
Nara Park
Shojin Ryori meal at a temple. Sorry, it was even prettier but I dug in before I remembered I wanted a picture! The native vegan food of Japan, and it was amazing.
same temple’s gardens
Yasaka Shrine in Kyoto
Zao fox village. Totally fed them, petted them, and held them.
Wow! Thanks for posting these great pics!
My family vacationed in Japan for 3 weeks when I was ten, and I would love to go back some day.My keyboard is broken. I keep pressing "Escape", but I'm still here.
Beautiful!! You went to all the places I’ve been planning on lol, especially Fox village, that’s big on my list! Any chance you went with PacSet tours? That’s who I’ve been planning to go with when I visit Japan!
*Formerly meowmix101
Not currently open for PYO commissions.Hey Landipan,
Zao is worth the taxi ride! If you pile in the taxi it’s only about 10 bucks a person each way. We found some nice New Zealanders (are they really called Kiwis?) to share our ride with. The big enclosure is amazing, they walk right up to you, follow you, sniff your shoes, photo bomb you. We went with no tour group, my sister and I put it all together ourselves. Saved thousands doing it our way. We tried talking to a travel agent and she failed to understand we know how to ride trains and google map locations and didn’t need her hand-holding and ugly limo buses. Business hotels for the win; they are cheap considering Tokyo is a huge city and you don’t need space anyway, you won’t be in your hotel room much But get your Ghibli tickets before you go, no matter the cost. The loopi machines in Lawson are a pain and even after we found a non-speaker cheat sheet the tickets were sold out in Japan for over a month in advance. You cannot enter even the Ghibli gift shop without a ticket! We literally stood outside the gates and whined.
Those JR passes are amazing. If you are doing more than one bullet train ride it pays for itself. Zao is up in Miyagi about 2hours and some each way by bullet train. It’s a nice ride if you have reserved seats. Feel free to message me if you have any questions. I did it as a strict vegan with very limited kana reading skill, so anyone can do it!
When are you planning to go? Tokyo gets the Olympics in 2020, so the yen is only going to get stronger.
How lovely, I hope you had a nice time! And those owls (especially the Snowy) and foxes are just gorgeous!
Finding happiness again.
Hey Landipan,
Zao is worth the taxi ride! If you pile in the taxi it’s only about 10 bucks a person each way. We found some nice New Zealanders (are they really called Kiwis?) to share our ride with. The big enclosure is amazing, they walk right up to you, follow you, sniff your shoes, photo bomb you. We went with no tour group, my sister and I put it all together ourselves. Saved thousands doing it our way. We tried talking to a travel agent and she failed to understand we know how to ride trains and google map locations and didn’t need her hand-holding and ugly limo buses. Business hotels for the win; they are cheap considering Tokyo is a huge city and you don’t need space anyway, you won’t be in your hotel room much But get your Ghibli tickets before you go, no matter the cost. The loopi machines in Lawson are a pain and even after we found a non-speaker cheat sheet the tickets were sold out in Japan for over a month in advance. You cannot enter even the Ghibli gift shop without a ticket! We literally stood outside the gates and whined.
Those JR passes are amazing. If you are doing more than one bullet train ride it pays for itself. Zao is up in Miyagi about 2hours and some each way by bullet train. It’s a nice ride if you have reserved seats. Feel free to message me if you have any questions. I did it as a strict vegan with very limited kana reading skill, so anyone can do it!
When are you planning to go? Tokyo gets the Olympics in 2020, so the yen is only going to get stronger.
I’m not sure when I’ll be able to go, right now I’m saving up to go with the PacSet group since I’ll be on my own and I don’t want to be all alone lol. It’ll probably be another year or two, but I definitely want to avoid going during the Olympic year since I imagine that’s when Japan will be it’s most crowded and most expensive!
Was the Owl cafe hard to get into? I read somewhere that Owl cafes have a long waiting time since so many people want to go in?
*Formerly meowmix101
Not currently open for PYO commissions.Was the Owl cafe hard to get into? I read somewhere that Owl cafes have a long waiting time since so many people want to go in?
Lol nope. We showed up at 12:30 and they asked if we have a reservation, we said we wanted to make one. They said okay, for when? We said how about now? They opened at 1pm and we got a reservation for 1pm and so just waited for 30 minutes for an hour long cuddle fest with the lil hoot hoots. They only let small groups in, but just plan a bit in advance and you shouldn’t have any trouble. This was at Ikefukuro in Ikebukuro like a 10 minute walk from the station.
Your trip looks so cool! And it’s reassuring to hear that you did the whole trip as a vegan, I was thinking that if I ever went to Japan I would be subsisting off of ramen and plain rice the entire time for lack of any food which doesn’t include fish. I’m not vegan, I’m vegetarian, but it seems the safest way to travel Japan would be to just go vegan there too. Jealous of your hangout times with the foxes and owls! So cute!
Check out my finished artwork at http://falcolf.deviantart.com/ and my sketch/studio blog at http://rosannapbrost.tumblr.com/
Excellent!
People tried to scare me about not being able to eat there, but it is a huge international city. There are a ton of vegan only places and a million veg options. I found the BEST ramen there at a place called T’s Tan Tan. 8 to 9 bucks gets you a huge ramen bowl with all sorts of different flavors and add ins and everything there is completely vegan. I and my non-vegan sister ate there 3 times during our stay. We also found an all vegan traditional sweet shop and binged on manju and soy ice cream. Ate some weird curry flatbread pizza. There was the 2016 vegefest going on at Yoyogi park while I was there so we went both days and stocked up on all sorts of things like veggie nigiri sushi and kebabs and apple pizza. Tokyo also has a Loving Hut with a killer all you can eat Saturday brunch special. Just check out the Happycow site and you will see all the delicious noms that await you in Japan, it just takes a little planning and some plain or ume onigiri to fill in the gaps.
Lol nope. We showed up at 12:30 and they asked if we have a reservation, we said we wanted to make one. They said okay, for when? We said how about now? They opened at 1pm and we got a reservation for 1pm and so just waited for 30 minutes for an hour long cuddle fest with the lil hoot hoots. They only let small groups in, but just plan a bit in advance and you shouldn’t have any trouble. This was at Ikefukuro in Ikebukuro like a 10 minute walk from the station.
That’s great to hear! So were there any English speaking employees there to explain it all you you guys or did you know enough Japanese to get by? Right now I’m learning really basic Japanese, but I imagine it wouldn’t get me too far if were dropped in Japan right now lol.
*Formerly meowmix101
Not currently open for PYO commissions.Cool Dream Vacay!:D
I’d Love to visit Tokyo someday – it’s one of my Bucket list countries along with China/Tibet, United Kingdom, Australia and Africa. Perhaps one day I may get lucky enough to some of those places if I not too old.Love those cute little foxies!
Great photos! Thanks for sharing 🙂IN SEARCH OF MY NEXT GRAILS:
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*** Come visit me on deviantArt at http://ela-hara.deviantart.comThat’s great to hear! So were there any English speaking employees there to explain it all you you guys or did you know enough Japanese to get by? Right now I’m learning really basic Japanese, but I imagine it wouldn’t get me too far if were dropped in Japan right now lol.
At the owl cafe there was an English-speaking lady from Russia. but mostly, no, there is very little English speaking going on, but there is high English comprehension. Lots of people will understand you, but good luck understanding their response in 100% Japanese. If it is in a touristy place or somewhere with lots of people, they know how to handle English speakers. Some places have English menus, lots have signs to help, we went to a special sake tasting bar one of the days we knew they had an English speaker working (from info posted on their website). We went to a haunted house and their gave us our mission book in English (Japanese haunted houses are way more interactive). My favorite was at one of the big arcades where I won my figure from the UFO catcher but had coins already in the machine for additional tries. The arcade worker had a flip book of responses to show me to my questions. Such as, “money is not refundable” then he flips to another one that said “but extra tries can be played on any other machine” so he transferred my credits to another machine of my choice. Never did he speak a word of English, but he knew exactly what I was asking. Speak slow, and get ready to write it down.
We know very little Japanese (sumimasen, kore wa desu ka? arigatou gozaimasu, ikura desu ka? nihongo wa wakarimasen biggies like that) but I can sound out the kanas and we lived with Google translate to translate signs and ingredient labels and things like that. But learn as much as you can. The biggest regret of my trip was not studying harder; I hated being illiterate.
That’s great that the people there are so ready to compensate for the tourists, I’ve heard that from a few different people too! Hopefully by the time I go I’ll have better Japanese skills than I do right now, I’ll also have to work on my listening comprehension skills too! But in case all else fails I’ve always got the tour guide people to help me out lol.
Did you buy any cute souvenirs from fox village?
*Formerly meowmix101
Not currently open for PYO commissions.Zao has a good sized gift shop. At Zao, I got a bunch of fox charms to give out, fox statues, and a scrunchie for my hair with fox ears that stand up on the back. There were fox noren curtains and my sister got some of those. There were these really cute chibi illustrations on display but I don’t know what they were, there was nothing to buy with those on them. The best souvenirs were the photos though!
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