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!

I mentioned at the beginning of the trip that I was looking for a rock. This afternoon I had my last onigiri (tuna mayo as always) and took out money one last time. I went to Sakae to walk around so I didn’t spend all day at the center in my room. I bought some snacks for my brothers (which they will eat in five minutes), and decided to go to Yagoto, so I hopped on the Meijo line. I am very confident in my subway skills at this point but I clearly got ahead of myself because I missed a transfer and the Meijo line turned into the Meiko line and I ended up getting lost. I made my way back to the Meijo line and got off at Yagoto because I wanted to go to the temple one last time. It was nice because there was nobody else there. When I turned to leave I found my rock! It’s red and heart shaped and it’s perfect. After that a group of us went to Spice Time for dinner but it was CLOSED. We ended up going to a Korean resturant and I got kimchi with pork and rice which was delicious. After that Ady and I went to the Sento but it was ALSO CLOSED. We ended up at a different one a short walk away in Gokiso and it really cool and definitely much older (it seems like it’s from the 50s or 60s). I really enjoyed getting to know everyone and the culture on this trip. Thank you all!

This final week I did a lot of work on my final paper and presentation. We finished up with class and I was able to go on some solo trips. I also got my first tattoo, which I’d been wanting to get for a long time, and Monday was my 19th birthday.

As I’m writing this it’s late Thursday night and I leave in the morning. I know I’m going to miss Nagoya a lot, and the many freedoms I have here. I’m very very grateful to have stayed in Nagoya, and to spend time learning at Nanzan. I’m not sure whether I’ll be here or in Akita in a year and half, however I’ll definitely be back in Japan.

This week was mostly dedicated to finishing up the class, my presentation and paper; but I was able to have some fun moments! Both of the things I made reservations for happened this week, Collab karaoke, and the Ghibli themed cafe! It was very rewarding to plan out the date and secure the reservation then go to the place and see it followed through on.

Karaoke was fun, I wish we knew how to use the machine better though, it had a lot of kanji we didn’t recognize so it took us a bit to figure it out;; but the theming was fun and I liked getting goods for Hanako-kun at the end cause I haven’t found any nice-looking keychains and stuff for that series this whole trip! The room was themed after a different anime/manga though, Iruma-kun which my childhood friend likes, so I made sure to send her a bunch of pictures and get her some badges. We sang some banger songs, including but not limited to: California Girls and Not Like Us; needless to say, we killed it.

Then there was the Ghibli cafe for lunch, and oh my god it was so cute! We all had to get drinks and desserts to accompany our main dishes. Their menu was so cute too, it had drawings of the food and themed descriptions!

Below are the drinks we got they are themed after (left to right): Arrietty, From up on Poppy Hill, Howl’s Moving Castle, and Ponyo!

I also had to get the Spirited Away food as it is one of my favorite films ever! The spring roll had a clean crunch to it, the braised pork and bao buns were nice and savory, and the cheesecake was light and delightful!

Obligatory Miku of the week:

Went back to my favorite Surugaya to make sure they didn’t restock a gem. They didn’t… it was a shame, but they do restock pretty quickly–there were two new Miku Nendoroids, I just had one and the other one was one I didn’t want, which was also 15000 yen.

So I got the Snowbell Snow Miku that was there last time! I do really like her lily of the valley theming

With this the trip draws to a close, it was really fun and I hope to go again with some close friends in the future. This is the most money I have ever spent in my life.

At the end of last week we went to Ghibli Park, which was pretty exciting. Admittedly it’s been a few years since I’ve seen a lot of the Ghibli movies, so I had to do a lot of piecing stuff together while we were there. Even still, it was really cool seeing Satsuki and Mei’s house from Totoro in person, it was insane how much attention to detail there was throughout. Even all the drawers were filled with what you’d expect the characters to put there.

The main warehouse was definitely the best part of the park, there was so much packed inside that it would be hard to describe it all. I really liked the dioramas in the main exhibit. I didn’t go up any of them but it was really cool to see scenes from those films brought to life (and somewhat to scale too). The special exhibit about food was also really good. A lot of the food on display looked like you could take a bite right out of it, and there was even a little (fake) izakaya you could hop into for a bit. No photos there though :(.

Today is the last day and I cannot believe it. Throughout all of Nagoya, one thing remains to be seen… the Nagoya Castle. I did not go with the group the day it was raining so I still have not seen the castle as of this morning. So I decided, “today is going to be the day I go to the castle”. So I grabbed my umbrella and purse and went to the train station to leave with Mariana to head towards JR towers. The towers were bustling with the shops and I picked up sweets for my family. And after window shopping for a while, I bought myself a dress! For lunch I found a pastry shop and had a matcha filled cone thing and some other thing that was delicious. These pastries fueled me to get ready to walk to the castle. I navigated my way to the castle and got to the point where it was finally in range to see! It was underwhelming so I decided not to enter and left.

The End ✨