Looking back on my trip the food stood out as something I already miss. I am usually a picky eater so I really surprised myself with how much I branched out (and enjoyed!). Some of my favorite restaurants were Akaya ramen, Volon (pasta place across from the all you can eat place), and Spice Time (of course). I also visited Yoshinoya all the time because of its convenience and how cheap yet good it was. One thing I was surprised to like was ramen. My brother makes instant ramen as his go-to midnight snack, but I never saw the appeal. I had also tried ramen at a few restaurants, but I don’t remember particularly liking it. However, since arriving in America I have been craving the ramen from Akaya (the ramen place by Irinaka station). I can’t wait to go back! (Pictured is dessert from the Ghibli cafe in Osu, Kimchi pasta from Volont and a Kimchi pancake from a shop in Nara.) 

One of the highlights of this trip was our day at Ghibli park. It was so cool to see things from my favorite movies in real life! I was absolutely blown away by the amount of detail all of the areas had, especially Howl’s castle (though I may be biased because it is my favorite movie). I was expecting it to be more of an amusement park, but I think I prefer it the way it is. I will definitely be going back and visiting places I missed last time. I also want to see another one of the exclusive animated shorts next time.

Aside from the park, I was surprised about how much Ghibli merch there was around the city, like the store at Sakae. I feel like there aren’t many opportunities in America to visit stores for a specific franchise unless you are near an amusement park. All this to say, I am missing Nagoya a lot recently, and I am actually applying for my student visa this week!

The last week was a quieter one, as everyone spent most of their time working on their projects. I don’t have any pictures of it, but I definitely spent more time in the arcade at the Osu Kannon shopping street than I should have.

The highlight for me was setting a new record at the all you can eat barbecue restaurant by the Kensyu Center. I’d never felt full to the point of pain until then.

Overall it was a nice end to the trip. I’m really excited to go back, and really glad I came.

The Kyoto trip was a pretty big shift from what we had been doing in Nagoya. It was really interesting seeing how different the more tourist-centric were compared to where we had been living.

I thought it was really cool how many mountains we could see out of the Shinkansen window. The towns we passed through all felt very peaceful compared to the big cities. I’d like to come back to Hikone and meet Hikonyan in the flesh someday.

Another highlight of this trip was our side trip into Nara on the last day. The deer and the temple we visited there were amazing (in very different ways).

The highlight of this week for me was definitely the trip to Magome and walking the Nakasendo. The mountains in that area are probably the most beautiful natural scenery I’ve seen. I’d love to walk some other parts of the Nakasendo someday.

I also really enjoyed seeing the fireworks at the Atsuta matsuri. The fireworks went on for way longer than I expected, and the subway was pretty crazy afterwards.

The last week was hoooot, but to make the most of the remainder of the trip I still wanted to go to new places in the city. Naturally the weather opened the aquarium as a great choice, because it was near the ocean the heat wasn’t so bad (but still pretty bad). Most of it was indoors or shaded too, which was a nice bonus. The aquarium was small but cool, there was a lot of cool stuff to see. The highlights of my visit there were definitely the shows, being able to see them for free (after paying for an aquarium ticket) was really neat. The dolphin show was especially cool, when they would do impressive jumps the entire crowd would erupt with applause.

I also saw spider crabs there, which was cool. I don’t remember the last time I saw a spider crab, but they are very chill.

On the final day of the trip I decided to go to Nagoya station one last time. I had been there before and stumbled across an entire floor of sweets packaged nicely. So, I decided to bring some home for my family. I ended up getting a Baumkuchen, some pistachio cookies, and some mochi. They look so good.

Going on the Nakasendo was the highlight of my trip. It was unreal just the beauty of the trail, town, mountains, and area was just perfect. It had such a good feel to the area and made me want to live there. The town was beautiful and hopefully I can go back there some day.

During the last week I finally decided I wanted to get the fluffy pancakes that I’ve seen so much about. So, I looked up a place called The Moana place and decided to head there it was about a 30 minute walk, but it was totally worth it because I ended up having the best pancakes of my life. They were fluffy came with ice cream, and creme brulee. They were incredible.

Although I am sitting in my hotel lounge writing this, I have been thinking about what to include for my blog posts for a while! Kyoto started out kind of stressful, as I was not expecting the volume of tourists we saw. I would have liked to go down the shopping streets by Kiyomizu-dera again, but I didn’t have the time. Some of my favorite things were visiting ryoanji rock garden, going to the Nintendo store/Pokemon center and our visit to Nara. I had been hearing about all of the architecture in Kyoto for a while, and it was really cool to see it all in person!