Japan

We cover multiple regions in Japan. Hope you enjoy.

For the entire trip's itinerary, go here.

Osaka

Dec 10: Landed, and already a fugitive

Woke up and went to airport.

HKG Amex lounge is mid. Kind of crowded, but they have good cocktails. I had the elderflower one and that was pretty good / sweet. OnlHad a lot of canned oolong teas that you can take away. The food was OK.

Serena's parents are also flying around the same time and they went to the Chase Sapphire Lounge. Despite Priority Pass Lounge's reputation for being stuff and overcrowded, it was quite sparse there and the space for Sapphire was much larger than Amex's. This is ironic since Amex is much more expensive, yet its space is much smaller and much more crowded.

The food in Chase Sapphire is also pretty good; Serena's parents ordered fresh, hot dim sum which was pretty good. Next time, I think I will opt for Chase Sapphire lounge.

Way before this trip, we loaded up a card called "Suica" on our Apple Wallet so we can just tap our phones and go in their metro.

We got through customs and Google Map'd what train to take. The next one's leaving in ~10 mins and so we rushed to it. Tapped our phone at the gate and ran to the train, and boarded. Easy.

Except for some reason, people kept kicking us out of our seats.

Turns out, the train we took based on Google Maps recommendation requires an extra ticket. But too late. We already boarded, and only while the train was moving did we realize there were signs that say all the seats on this train are reserved. There's still ~35 mins left in the train journey.

Nervous that a conductor will check tickets and fine us, I kept refreshing Google Maps to see when we'll arrive.

A conductor walked up the car into the next car and I thought

This is it. Guess I'll have some public embarassment first hour I land.

Then, the conductor came to our car.

But to my surprise, he didn't check anyone's tickets and just looked at his machine and walked to the next car. The 35 nerve-wracking minutes passed, we pulled up to our station and scrammed.

This is very lucky because as we find out during dinner, Serena's parents say that they check every single time. But for some reason, they didn't check during our journey. As Serena's dad said during dinner:

Within the hour of landing, and you guys are already fugitives.

But before I talk about dinner, we got off the train and checked into Holiday Inn. After that, we went directly to the flagship Donki in Osaka and it's the only Donki where there's a freaking ferris wheel built in front of the building. The ferris-wheel is race-track shaped for logistical reasons, so you're basically going up/down a very slow elevator, with turns in between:

The ferris wheel boards facing the building. After you get on, the seat rotates and faces the outside. Saw the Osaka skyline and the colors were calm.

Then we went to dinner. It was great. We went to a place that has all types of Japanese food. It's actually high quantity and quality, and they're pretty big (the restaurant is 5 stories tall):

• Sushi
• Sashimi
• Sukiyaki
• Sobe
• Fried oysters
• And more

So we ordered everything we wanted to eat. And ran out of room on our dining table. Multiple times, even after clearing a bunch of dishes. Here's a spread:

For 4 people, ordering from a Japanese restaurant with high quality food (think uni, otoro, etc). Was only $200 USD.

For dessert, we had Macau's Lord Stow Bakery. Legend has it creator of Lord Stow went to Osaka himself to train people how to make Portuguese tarts.

We wanted creme brulee but they were sold out. Instead, we just got their tarts. Was told by Serena's parents that it is lukewarm and won't be fresh out of the oven and hot like Macau. But we were here so might as well have some.

As I was paying, a fresh batch came out and I pointed "fresh" and she gave me the fresh ones straight out of the oven. Hella hot and delicious.

Very lucky, again.

2 times in 1 day.

Dec 11: Universal Studios

Woke and and went to Universal Studios.

But first, we stopped at their City Walk (their entrance area), and had some McD's. Japanese McGriddles are interesting: they're just like Egg McMuffins except the buns are pancake that is soaked in a little bit of syrup. Also bought some black coffee from a vending machine. Here's what it looks like:

How USJ works is your fastpass gives you a schedule. Unlike US, you can't just spam using fastpass, since everyone will just do that and your fastpass wait becomes as long as a regular wait. USJ has these restrictions on your fastpass:

1. You must visit certain attractions at certain times. Here's our schedule and my review of the rides:

   1. Harry Potter & Forbidden Journey ride 10:30 to 11:00 (fun, and you get to fly around everywhere)
   2. Flight of Hippogriff 11:00 - 11:30 (exciting, but really short, maybe like 20 seconds)
   3. Mario Kart Koopa's Challenge 12:30 - 13:00 (kind mid--just a video game powered by AR so it's sort of like Disney's toy story shooter)
   4. Yoshi's Adventure 13:00 - 13:30 (one of the most fun--chill ride, but you get to slowly see a lot of the famed USJ's Super Nintendo World decor up close).
   5. Spider-Man 4K3D 14:30 - 15:00. We didn't go and opted to stay in Super Nintendo World to do a bunch of eating. The ride's old and spiderman is boring. And we did it already in Florida.
   6. Hollywood Dream - The Ride: Backrop 16:30 - 17:00. This was probably the best ride and most thrilling. Played Michael Jackson's Bad during the ride. Our ride went backwards so you can't anticipate the next turn. The normal adrenaline rush provided by a roller coaster is further enhanced by the feeling of the unknown. Sort of an extreme version of walking with your eyes closed for a prolonged period of time and hoping you don't bump into something.

2. Further, you can only visit these rides once. For example, we can't do Hollywood Dream multiple times between 16:30 - 17:00. Once you use your FastPass once in that time slot, you must line up again in the regular line.

Before we hit any of the rides though, we went to Minions land because our first ride doesn't start until 10:30 and we entered at around 8:30. This was my favorite poster in Minion's land:

Then, we did the Harry Potter rides and had some food there. It was OK. We've had butterbeer a few times before, so nothing to write home about. After, we had some time to kill before allowed in Super Nintendo land, so we went to take some photos with Sesame Street characters. I like this one where I am flexing with Bert after he tapped my biceps and posed that I am strong lol.

Finally, we went to Super Nintendo World and it was amazing. It's as colorful and vibrant as you see on YouTube. The land is so engaging because there's so many goombas, mushrooms, and a ton of other setpieces that actually move. So instead of just still decor, you're put into an illusion that you're actually inside a Mario world. This video from the Yoshi's adventure ride sort of shows what I'm talking about.

After the rides, we had lunch. I didn't really care about the food quality so I just ordered what would look nice on camera. Here's a video walkthrough of all the dishes, up close and personal:

Lunch wasn't enough, so during the meet & greet with toad, I ate him. After that, we went around some souvenir shops and took photos of us wearing funny hats. So I wore a toad hat to commemorate his passing.

We eventually said goodbyte to Super Nintendo / Mario Land and had to kill time before our last ride. So we went through all the souvenir shops and did a bunch of window shopping. They apparently have hats where you can squeeze the bottom of it, and another part of the hat would move. Here's a snoopy one in action.

An interesting thing here is that if I keep it squeezed, the ears stay up. I would have thought that squeezing it pumps some air, it'd only flap up (i.e. goes down in its own due to gravity). But nope, keeping the balls squeezed make it stay up. Maybe it pushes a column of air and inflates something inside the ears to have it stay up, and when you let go of the balls, the air retracts back down/away from the ears.

Anyway, after our last ride, we met up with Serena's parents for dinner at a department store. Had iberico pork. Very good. I especially like their mascot, which is a happy, fat pig, doing karate roflmao.

After that, we went up to the 9th floor at the jump store and I took some photos with Luffy + a JJK poster.

Looked at Pokemon store as well.

Then, we went to eat some Hokkaido ice cream. Went home, typed this up, and slept.

Dec 12: Visiting Sesame Street

Met with Serena's parents at around 10AM. Traveled a few stops to Umeda, where we walked around department stores.

At around 11:30AM, we went to a seafood place where they served:

• A giant fish head
• An assortment of sashimi
• Miso soup
• Rice
• And 6 small appetizing plates (like at a Korean restaurant)

Guess how much this was?

This was only 1000 yen per person, or $6.90 USD (nice!).

Then, we walked around department stores a bit more. At around 2PM, we decided to go to Harbs. Manhattan has Harbs, but the one closest to us shut down so there's no more accessible Harbs for us in NY.

Harbs is a Japanese desserts place and we ordered a lot of cake/set menus. Not the cheapest, but not the most expensive. We got sets because the drinks were included, and they had a rule that you had to order a drink if you ate there. So you're almost forced to order a set, because it is much cheaper than ordering a cake + drink separately. A set is some pasta + drink + a half slice of cake. Here's a sample of a whole slice of strawberry tart (note how big it is):

They also get little details right. Their earl grey tea with lemon has the lemon peel, peeled to prevent the tea from getting too bitter.

Walked around even more in department stores.

Got some small One Piece plushies at the Mugiwara store nearby. One for me, one for my brother since he also likes One Piece.

Later on, ended up at a popular grilled beef place called Yakiniku En. There's the OG place and the new one in the hotel. Not many know about the latter and the former's full always. But we checked the OG place anyway just to be sure; turns out they have walkie talkies and they just sent us to the new place and they welcomed us.

It was delicious. We only had small bites since we booked a crab place for 7:30PM. We had:

• Wagyu beef
• Beef tongue with green onion inside
• Chicken thighs
• Raw beef heart
• Egg yolk with raw beef sushi

The fire's so hot that any drop of fat from the meat down to the fire causes a big flame to rise.

After our first dinner, we walked around for a bit. We went to a store where there's those machines where they dispense a large plastic ball, and you get a mystery gift inside. Serenas went for the Koala March machine and got a mini, pink Koala March box, and inside it is a pink Koala ring.

When we're done with that, we went to this Japanese store called Gelato Pique. They have a crossover with Sesame Street. They sell PJs and they are soft and stretchy. Made of mostly polyester and 1% spandex. But they are cute:

The first one isn't that practical since you can't really go outside with it. The blue makes it hard to pair the hoodie, and the hoodie droops so low that you can't see anything. Looks like a Halloween costume. You can't ever bring the pants outside since it seems like the material that would just absorb dirt and grime. It's also a bit too long so would drag on the ground. And in NY, you can be sure that one trip in the subway with this and you can set these pants on fire.

So the only use case for the PJ pair is at home. And to get the pair gets twice as much as the button up.

The button-up is way more functional. The more navy blue makes it easier to match. And the buttons are Sesame Street characters, which is dope as hell. So I bought that one. About 11800 yen ($81 USD). Can be worn at home during winters and chill, or worn outside on a winter day.

After a good day of shopping, went to eat crabs. Had all kinds of varieties of crab:

• Crabs in cheese sauce
• Crab in steamed egg with a tomato sauce
• Sashimi crab legs
• Cooked crab legs
• Crab siu mai
• Various crab sushi, including crab innards sushi
• Bunch of veggies, like enoki mushrooms
• Konjak noodles

Spread example:

And, at the end, once we were mostly done with everything, they will add egg and rice to the crab soup hot pot to make porridge. This is reminescent of Korean hot pot places where they'll take the rest of the spicy sauce and use it to do fried rice for you.

Once we were done with that, they served vanilla ice cream with matcha. Matcha's done with matcha powder + boiling water--they mix it and then pour it on top of the vanilla ice cream. By liquid matcha's cold by the time you eat it as it cools down touching the ice cream.

You eat it by scooping the vanilla ice cream and scoop some liquid matcha up with it--very nice juxtapose between the sweetness of the vanilla and the slight bitterness of matcha.

Once we were done with that, we walked home as Serena was tired. Serena's parents were more energetic, so instead went on to walk around Osaka some more.

Oh, to be young again.

On our way home, we stopped by Lawson (small convenience store, like 7/11), and got 2 dorayakis. They're like pancake with stuff red-beans, except our dorayaki also has cream in it so it was extra yum.

Dec 13: 3 dinners

Went to Abenas Harukas to eat some sashimi, sushi, nigiri, and other goodies like steamed egg, in Japanese Bento style.

After that, we walked around and hunted around for dessert. We found a place that does Red / White Bean An. Basically, these are anko (red bean paste made from Azuki beans) and some other white paste made from some other beans, put between 2 batters. They'd:

1. Oil the metal masks.
2. Spray batter on.
3. Put bean paste on.
4. Put the wide with cooked batter + bean paste on top of freshly squeezed batter.
5. Flip it and finish cooking it once the other side's done as well.

Steps 2-5 in video:

Walked around some more and hunted down something I've always wanted to try but only have seen on YouTube. It's basically white bread, and in the middle is Japanese fruit and cream. I think I saw some ASMR of some Japanese bakery making it a while ago and have wanted to try it since.

It didn't disappoint.

We then went to a place where you can play games, and it's 7 floors. You can do everything from:

• Boxing combo practice
• Tons of arcade games, including shooting, dancing, and racing games
• Golf simulator
• Batting practice
• Shooting practice
• And a lot more

Here's some photos:

The boxing combo game basically has you punch the number that the speaker calls out. Except they call it out in Japanese. So if you can't count in Japanese (like me), you'll be a bit slow. We also did Dance Dance Revolution, where out of 507,240 points, I beat Serena only by 10 points (so basically a tie).

Having done some cursory exercise, we started to eat 3 dinners.

First dinner, which I consider a snack was yuzu tsukemen. Delicious. They have you mix an egg yolk, along with garlic oil, olive oil, salt, and pepper to flavor the dipping noodles. But this also has the added effect of making the noodles not stick together, which is a common problem with Afuri's tsukemen. The dipping broth is very umame, with a big hint of yuzu and tartness.

We also go gyozo on the side.

Tsukemen = only 700 yen ($4.81) because happy hour (normally 1k yen).

Gyoza = 400 yen ($2.75).

Walked around for a short bit and then we had Osaka-style deep-fried skewers. We had everything from asparagus to eggplant to oyster to beef to chicken. And a plum (choya)-flavored hiball.

We ate a lot more than what was pictured. About 5368 yen ($36.86) for 2 people.

Still, we weren't super full and it's our last night here in Osaka, so we wanted to eat one more dinner. We were feeling Udon and so just went to the same restaurant as the first day, since they served everything. This set was about 2400 yen ($16.48), for one. About double for both of us.

As you can see, the set came with (clockwise):

1. Tempura
2. Bowl of udon
3. Steamed egg with crab inside
4. Bowl of rice
5. Pickeld veggies
6. Assorted sashimi, with a yuzu-infused / soy sauce white fish appetizer.

Tea is free.

The total for 3 dinners for both of us (so 6 dinners) was about $77.42 USD.

For SIX dinners.

As this was our last night in Osaka, we walked around a bit more and then went back to the hotel at around 7PM. Here's a view of the river next to our hotel.

Osaka's pretty great for eating and playing. Not Vietnam-cheap, but quite cheap, and you don't have to worry about being hit with a moped. Would visit again 10/10.

Arima

Dec 14: Onsen + 200lb milestone reached

Woke up and helped Serena's parents move luggage to Hertz to rent a car. At around 8:30AM.

Once the car is ready, we looped back to the Holiday Inn that Serena and I were staying at and loaded up.

Super spacious car. Toyota Noah.

I fell asleep and woke up about an hour and a half later where we arrived to a place called A Happy Pancake. There's a location in K11 Musea as well, but this one is 1) much cheaper, and 2) gives you a lot more options, and 3) gives you a lot more quantity.

This one's located at AWAJISHIMA TERRACE, Awaji

Super, duper fluffy pancakes, topped with a lot of cream and ice cream. We got:

1. Strawberry flavor
2. Assorted fruits flavor

The restaurant's located at seaside, and there are some instagram worthy photos to be taken there. After waiting in line for a bit, we took these photos:

They all screamed at me not to do a pullup at the end of the stairway that leads to the ocean the 2nd time.

After that, we continued the road trip again. After a while, we ended up at a beef restaurant. Also in Awajishima. And oh my god, was it a lot of beef. In the picture you may think that the volume of food is small for 4 people, but after a ton of cream/ice cream and pancakes, and the fact that it is almost all wagyu beef--it is insanely filling.

We once had wagyu beef from Buy Buy Sashimi before in NY. As big as only half a steak so you'd think you won't be full. I sous vide'd it + seared it. 2 of us at the whole thing. Could not move after, because it's like eating a few sticks of butter.

And in fact, in the picture you see that there's a cube of fat. It's purpose is to literally butter the wagyu. Which already has high fat content.

When we're done stuffing ourselves with beef that melts in your mouth, we walked around a bit to digest. But my greedy fatass bought some milk ice cream (and some instant noodles) from Family Mart and ate it.

I'm lactose intolerant so after a 90 minute ride when we arrived to our first onsen, I dashed to the restroom.

We checked into the Onsen and the room is huge. Everything from:

• Free azuki bean cake snacks
• Chocolates
• Free minibar with beer, vitamin c, water, tea, and more
• Pudding
• Coffee
• Kyoho grapes

Came with the room for free. The room also has its own onsen outside. Here's a rapid room tour:

Then, we went downstairs to the common area to soak. I went in for about an hour. They had:

• Sauna
• A hot soaking tub where the water's clear
• Hot soaking tub where the water's golden / brown--the spring water is naturally filled with a lot of salt/iron; supposed to be good for your skin's moisture
• Cold plunge, which I did for 2 rounds.

They had a scale there and I am now ~89kg, or about 200 lbs. +10lbs from Vietnam, even.

Came back up, rested a bit, and had a gigantic dinner. Words can't really do it justice but as you'll see in the pictures below, it is quite a lot. And it is quite rare to have a meal where literally every single last bite is absolutely mind-blowing. And this is saying a lot because there's a lot of food.

This was the appetizer of appetizers.

This was the seafood / first course portion. It had (off the top of my mind--all sashimi):

• Scallop nigiri (not pictured)
• Shrimp nigiri (not pictured)
• Lobster
• Abalone
• Tuna
• Toro
• Amberjack
• Uni
• Crab (not sashimi)
• Golden sea bream--most expensive sashimi
• Sea whelk
• Special miso sauce to dip sashimi in
• ...And a lot more I am probably not remembering. That's how much variety of food there was.

The attention to details is insane. Even cucumbers are carved to be shaped like a frog. The balance of flavors is done well, and not flavor overwhelms another.

Absolute kaiseki heaven. But the meal continued with shows, actually. For example, they fired up some cotton candy for our sukiyaki before pouring the broth in. And, for dessert, they poured liquid nitrogen into some cream to freeze it.

Final result for sukiyaki:

After we had all the seafood above, and then a ton of beef from the sukiyaki, they gave us even more food. First, they gave us some steamed egg with shirako (cod milt AKA fish jizz) and chives.

Then, they gave us crab porridge:

Finally came the ice cream. No idea what flavor it is, and the colorful spheres are hollow inside and seem to dissolve in your mouth as soon as it touches your tongue.

After that, we went back to the room to enjoy some Kyoho grapes and just chilled, as I wrote this up. I should also note that for this onsen meal, we have the entire room to ourselves and the table was huge.

Kyoto

Dec 15: I gave my phone to a Japanese grandma

Woke up at the Onsen and ate breakfast at around 8:30, and goddamn is it good. Just like dinner, there's a large variety of things to eat, as well as various chefs coming in to demonstrate various culinary activities. Here's a video of all most of the food for breakfast:

They did shows for:

• Rice: They scooped rice.
• The tamago you see in the video. They poured an egg mix into a square pan and cooked it, rolled it up by flipping it, and then added more egg mix to the unoccupied portion of the pan. They repeated this process about 3x

• Roasted seaweed: they slapped seaweed onto a fire.

For dessert was a fruit assortment (healthy)! The persimmon is a highlight.

After breakfast, we took a road trip to Uji, a place known for some of the best matcha in Japan. We went to a place called Nakamura Tokichi Byodo-In. They're famous for green-tea stuff and we had many-layered parfaits, along with a matcha drink. They also gave us 2 green teas. The place is a bit of a tourist trap / expensive though--2 parfaits is like 4000 yen for what's pictured below ($28.23, roughly). You may not think it's expensive because it's just American pricing, but American pricing is expensive in Japan. The view is killer though.

Anyway, it turns out there was a car accident with our rental at the parking lot. Luckily, no one was injured except for the car and a parking lot fence. Fortunately, Serena's parents had to foresight to always purchase fully-insured car rental, so they won't be liable. The process to take care of a car accident in Japan is somewhat similar to the US:

• You call the car rental company to notify them
• You call the cops and have them file a report, and they'll contact the car rental company
• You notify any other parties involved, in this case a parking lot employee

For some reason, even though Serena's parents' phones had Japanese sim cards, they can't call 110 (police number). But Serena and my American T-mobile sim, can. So we just used my phone.

There's a language barrier with the Japanese police though as most Japanese people don't understand English. There was an old lady walking by (reminescent of an old Japanese granny), so we surrounded her and gave her my phone so she can talk for us. She helped us out and gave police details about us and the car. Then she saw the fence and laughed. She went on her merry way after.

Thereafter, we made our way to Kyoto and requested a car swap.

Though that'll take like 30 mins, so we went to the nearby Kyoto train station, which is freaking huge, by the way, to have dinner. We went to this pasta place where you can order:

• Medium, for 1 person
• Large, for 1.5 person(s)
• Large Large (not XL, but LL) for 2 persons

For your pasta portion; all costs the same.

We did 4 large and it's quite a lot.

After that, we got our new car, parked it at the hotel, and walked to a famous street called hanamikoji. It has old infrastructure and was built during the Meiji era.

Around there, we stopped by a stall and had a bunch of takoyaki.

After that, we went back to the hotel. The hotel also has a (small) onsen. I checked it out. It was hot, so I only stayed for 10 minutes and my skin was completely red. Though the hotel bathroom's quite nice and is one of those shower + tub combos. So I took a 15 minute lukecold shower + bath to reduce the reddening/very minor 1st degree burns.

Dec 16: Kiyomizu temple and tsunami at the hotel

Woke up and we went to the Kiyomizu temple. About 1600 yen for parking for the whole day.

Expensive if you're only there briefly; a great deal if you're there for a long time.

It's a pretty cool place, where there tons of small streets with vendors selling everything from pastries to matcha-like goods. We went to the temple to take pictures, and it's pretty neat because these are old buildings, yet the entire area have these black, tiled roofs that look like something from a ninja movie.

After looking at the temples, there's a place where you can pour water on yourself for good fortune. And by fortune, I mean financial fortune. So while others poured a few drops on their hand and touched their face with it (or worse, sipping it from their hands), I baptized myself in financial holy water:

If I get rich in ~3 years, this is proven to work. If not, this doesn't work. I say 3 years because there's a fortune that if you trip near the temple, you either:

• Will die in 3 years, or
• Your lifespan is shortened by 3 years

So let's just give it a 3-year timeframe.

Below the temple are little streets, vendors, and small pockets where there's very nicely groomed zen-like gardens. We spent maybe an hour or 2 walking around, exploring shops, trying lots of free food samples, and ate a kaarage. Also bought some fluffy soap. They're super bubbly and have the texture of a water balloon, instead of normal handsoap that is hard / dry.

Then, we went to a cool tofu place to eat lunch. How it works is they give you a hot pot of liquid tofu. And after a while, the surface of it will dry. When it tries, there's a thin layer of tofu that you can then unpeel with chopstocks. And layer by layer, you eat the tofu. Pretty unique eating experience. Here's the spread and how the scooping works:

Post-lunch, I bought some souvenirs (booze) and dropped it off back at the hotel. Then, we went back out to walk around Kyoto. It was crowded, but it was cool to see all the different food stalls. Eventually, we ended up having afternoon tea which consisted of a small pizza and some desserts.

Went back to the hotel's free lounge for a bit to drink some tea/coffee before our 6PM dinner reservation.

At 6PM, we went to a restaurant that the hotel recommended: Manzara. We had a 8-course kaiseki thing, where they served a course one by one:

1. Amuse bouche of veggie, egg, chicken breast.

2. An assortment of veggie, ginger, yam, octopus, and really delicious chicken liver.

3. Assorted sashimi.
4. Thick soup with radish, rice crisps, yuzu, lobster or crab meat, cilantro, and some other stuff. My fave.
5. Moist & tender steak with salad.
6. Tempura of shrimp, shishito, and fish, with mashed radish + ginger.
7. Rice with caramelized steak, miso soup, and a side of pickled seaweed.
8. Dessert of green tea ice cream with mint, a super sweet strawberry, and a mediocre pineapple. Dish is kept refrigerated upon serving. Nice touch.

8k per person. Some highlights, some were OK. Not the best meal, but also not the most expensive ($61.92 USD/person after tax)--but expensive for Japan, so maybe 3.5/5.

There are also reports of the place turning away white people and/or pretending not to have any available bookings. This can be interpreted as racism, but for me it seems like they just don't want to deal with the additional challenge of communicating in English as a lot of them aren't fluent (or understand basic English). And a lot of Japanese culture is really about doing the same thing over and over again, but being really good at it, so asking them to all of a sudden pivot from serving locals to serving tourists is a hard ask. In other words, the Japanese culture seems to encourage people to be really good at some things, but adaptation is not one of them. Asking them to do an even slight deviation from regular protocol is for them probably feels like them asking you or me to do the same exact thing for the rest of our lives.

Culture differences.

Went back to the hotel and went to the hot springs downstairs. All of 7 minutes, because while I started alone 3 other dudes came in, and it's not a big bath. So I left.

Luckily, the in-room bathroom is literally a room for you to bathe in. There's a shower and a hot tub situated in a waterproof room. Meaning, even if you overflow the bathtub and flood the adjacent flooring, none of it leaks outside of the bath room, because the door is sealed to prevent water from going out.

So I turned on the bathtub until it's full, jumped in, and kept the faucet on, while turning the showerhead on also, so there's as much water washing me as possible. Serena describes my bathing activities:

It sounded like a tsunami in there.

Similar activities in other hotels inevitably causes some leakage/flooding outside the bathroom, and I inevitably have to ask hotel staff for 3-5 more towels to soak up the mess.

This hotel?

Not a single drop made it outside the bathroom.

So while adaptation and deviation isn't one of Japan's strong suits, building great bathrooms sure is.

Dec 17: Arashiyama

Woke up early and went to Arashiyama at around 7:50AM. We left early at around 7:30AM to avoid crowds and traffic. Ate breakfast at 8AM at a place that's popular and recommended by some YouTuber.

Lots of carbs. I had a tamago-based bread, Serena ordered a roasted cheese hot dog, and Serena's parents ordered sets with assorted bread. We also ordered the fruit/cream sandwich we had earlier in the journey.

Bread, lots of bread. Hot dog didn't come yet so not shown below. But note that each set has some parma ham / meats that comes with it.

Not only that, a lot of Japanese restaurants force you to order 1 drink per person, which is why we ordered the set as it was more economically viable to have the set include the drink than to order the drinks separately (would be about $5-6 more per person at the minimum). So I also drank 2 coffees and some orange juice.

It was very filling.

Next, we went to a bamboo forest. It looked really nice though I don't really know what its significance is. Quite cool though. Saw a couple do a floor-to-sky canopy shot so I tried to do the same; below's a test shot:

Then, we went to nearby pockets of zen gardens and some temple where if you donate some yen and ring the bell, you get luck (again, in the form of money). This can be easily proven/disproven soon. Will report back.

Others ring the bell once or twice which to be honest is not really trying. I made an earnest effort and rang the shit out of the bell. We shall see if Japanese temple luck is a real thing (i.e. will I be rich soon) or if I can just skip visiting anything religious or cultural going forward.

In the video I'm told to stop. But for science, and in an earnest effort to gain more net worth, I kept ringing the bell well after the video.

We then walked around Arashiyama some more and visited various shops. Took photos with Rikkaluma amongst a bunch of other things. Bought some more booze (750mL). And we bought a snack as well which we eat later.

Serena's dad returned the car for this leg of the trip. Went back to the hotel and ate the snack. This snack is kind of like a big piece of mochi, and you can put soy bean powder on top of it and then dip it into black sugar. I had no idea these 2 ingredients existed before today.

Went out to dinner after, at Hanamikoji again, and found a place we can actually get in. I had a grilled duck set which looked like this.

It was OK but the volume of food was lacking. Small slices of duck, which was then inevitably overcooked by the time it was served. I normally wouldn't mind a small meal but it was also expensive (3800 yen--about $26 USD).

So, went back home and had a crab instant ramen we bought at Family Mart after our wagyu meal at Arima. It was really good. The soup became really thick after 5 mins of soaking in the noodles. And the noodles aren't like most instant ramen noodles that are hard--these are bouncy and has a really fresh, ramen texture to it. Serena had this to say about the quality of these noodles:

If you served it on a different plate at a restaurant, I wouldn't know it is instant noodles.

Then, went to the boiling sauna downstairs for 10 mins and did a tsunami shower like yesterday again.

Fuji

Dec 18: Taking pictures inside the onsen

Woke up early and took the taxi to the Kyoto train station.

The taxis are crown vic, and are old. Though they have a TV at the back of the seat playing commercials. Not sure if you can toggle it to play something else, but since I don't understand Japanese, I didn't mess with the screen much.

At the end of the ride, you can navigate with the screen to pay with Apple Pay.

Inside Kyoto station, we ate McDonald's. Same as what we ate at Universal Studios: McGriddle + Hash Brown.

Boarded the shinkansen (bullet train) and went towards Odawara. I used an app to see how fast it went, and its max speed was about 175mph (280 kph). We saw rain, then snow, then sunshine. Cycled through seasons in about ~20 minutes. Here's a timelapse of us running through a storm system with snow in it, and then transitioning to sunshine by the time we hit the next stop (Nagoya).

To save space, the time-lapse video's sped up and so the rail/tracks can be very wobbly/hard to follow. But pay attention to the sky and see how it changes across these 20 minutes in the bullet train.

We arrived about 2 hours later to Odawara and got a car.

The Toyota Serena. After much prodding, I finally convinced Serena to take a picture next to the car.

Before we set off to Mt. Fuji, we went around to find lunch. We found a place that serves all kinds of food. Off the top of my head, we got:

• Grilled set with 2 scallops and crab innards with egg. Plus 2 mackerel and shrimp, and squid
• Assorted sashimi.
• 2 x 5 kaki furari (fried oysters)
• Karaage.
• Fried soft chicken bones.
• Monkfish liver.
• Chirashi bowl.
• Ginger highball (tastes like ginger ale).

It was tasty & filling, but we didn't go all out because the hotel we're about to go to has buffet dinner.

Our hotel's next to Fuji Q, an amusement park with many of the world's scariest rides, but half of the scariest ones were closed so will be skipped. And Fuji Q's right below Mt. Fuji, so as we drove toward our hotel, we saw Mount Fuji:

And even in the hotel lobby and the onsen at their top floor, you can see Mt. Fuji. I don't have pictures of the onsen's view because unlike this one gaijin, I didn't take my smart phone into the onsen area and start snapping photos/videos (big no-no, and signs everywhere telling you not to take your smartphone to where other people take off their clothes) because I'm not an asshole. Instead of using lockers, this guy also just hung all his clothes in the common showers.

But the view's OK. The inside area is fogged up so you have to splash water at the window to get a clear view of Mt. Fuji. The bottom 3rd of the window is completely greyed out so you have to literally stand up (and thus be not soaked in onsen water) to see Mt. Fuji and Fuji Q. The view's quite magnificent. But if you sit down, you'll be angled to see only the tip of Mt. Fuji. The visibility outside's even worse. Above the greyed out panels are not windows but a very heavily tinted window, so even the tip of Mt. Fuji isn't seen very clearly.

After soaking in the onsen (or rather, standing), went back to the room and rested for a bit before dinner. For dinner, we grabbed almost everything the buffet has to offer. Here's the initial spread:

I can't name everything we ate for dinner because honestly I put too many things in my mouth to remember tonight.

Post-dinner, went back to room, showered, and typed this up.

Dec 19: In-room kaiseki

Woke up a bit later today and had breakfast buffet. Mostly ate eggs, mashed lotus, mentaiko, and some udon. And a bunch of tea/coffee. I tried not to eat that much because I knew I had a big dinner coming.

Then, we went to a nearby glass museum. It's mostly Italy and Venice / Murano-themed, but Chihuly also has some works displayed there (the latter being the least impressive). There's glass artwork that changes its color when displayed in UV light, and artwork that have hundreds of super-thin threads.

The above artwork kind of looks like one of those sushi rolls. Would be cool if they sold these and you could just put rice / sashimi and scoop out of it and eat it.

But anyway, before you enter the museum, the courtyard's decorated with a bunch of crystal trees / bridges. They sparkle whenever there's any wind because the sun's reflection changes.

And in the case of cloud cover, they turn on floodlights from the ground, pointing towards the crystal trees so they have the same effects.

They also have large, intricate outdoor gardens where all the leaves and flowers are made out of glass. And, in addition, they have crystal trees look like they're covered with snow becasue its trunks and branches are meticulously wrapped to give it a white/snowy look.

We then had a pasta lunch at the restaurant inside this museum/park area. The pasta's actually pretty good. And the bread was nice and warm too. The dessert's a chestnut "cake"--where the cake's made out of cream and meringue.

After lunch, we walked around the area a bit more and found a cool shop where they have a Santa climbing up a chimney as decoration. Pretty cool.

We originally wanted to spend more time to look at either some sulfur geysers or at another park, but ran out of time so drove back towards Mt. Fuji and went to the hotel: Shuhoukaku Kogetsu. The check-in area leads to a patio area which looks at lake kawaguchi (a lake made by a crater), and Mt. Fuji. Unfortunately there's cloud cover today so the mountain couldn't be seen, but the lake and the bonsai trees are pretty incredible:

Went to the onsen almost immediately after checking in, and it is pretty good. They have:

• An outdoor onsen, looking the lake kawaguchi and Mt. Fuji (if no clouds).
• An indoor onsen, where you can see the same thing. Has jacuzzi.
• A sauna, at around 90C, and has a 12-minute clock. Pretty hot, actually. And dry enough to hurt my nose.
• A foot massage machine in the drying area.
• 3 full body massage machines in the common area.

After onsen, they have free drinks (yes, beer and wine included) until 6:30PM. I mostly drank water/tea, but poured a beer because they had a machine that did this:

Went back to the room after drinks to prepare for our in-room onsen. How it works is someone comes to our room and serves us dinner.

But before I talk about dinner, a room tour. The room has a foyer where you put your shoes. Our hostess put our shoes in the shoe closet for us. After the foyer is a little hallway with a toilet room and a bath room. The toilet is special because not because it's a Japanese bidet, but because it flushes itself when you close the lid. The bath is special in that the room is similar to an onsen bath--except there's also a mist machine.

The little hallway also has a fridge, and other items for drinks, including:

• A boiler--not the ones you have to press a button to boil water with. This one holds 2.2L of water and keeps it at 98C. So if you need tea or instant noodles, you get hot water instantly.
• Tea set.
• Tea leaves.

After the little hallway is our room which is as big as any living room. It's tatami style, so only a dining table's put out. They also have intricately placed live flowers in a vase as decoration.

Past the living room is our balcony, overlooking the Mt. Fuji + lake kawaguchi area. We also have a own private foot bath, whose temperature is adjusted to ~40C. Surprisingly, despite it being cold, dipping your foot in keeps you quite warm. The water goes almost up to your knees when you're in a seated position, so it's quite deep. There's a foot bath for commoners downstairs but you are quite cold if you use that one because it only goes up to your ankles.

Here's a video tour of the room:

Anyway, back to dinner. Here's the menu:

The hostess explained each of the courses to us like a Michelin meal. And in fact, the ingredients and even the techniques of some of the dishes are Michelin level, especially the dessert where they had a pear+apple gel, and submerged pieces of apple/pear in it. Underneath this concoction is some kind of custard. I really like these kaiseki-style meals, because you sample a bit of everything just like a tasting menu, except it isn't pretentious and boring like most Michelin-starred French restaurants (just fancy ingredients made into cream form).

Here's a video of our hostess explaining the first courses to us:

And here's pictures of all the food we ate.

Here's the appetizers, as well as soup (in teapot), and some meats laid out for the next course.

Here's the assorted sashimi course, along with the wagyu beef course (main course of the meal).

Here's the fish course, along with some dumpling course (grilled dish / warm dish in menu above).

And finally is the rice course + dessert.

After that awesomeness is over, we went downstairs to take a look at some souvenirs. I bought a towel and some grape jelly drink that I'll consume later.

Went back to the room and heated up some curry cheese instant noodle with the water boiler. And then ate it at the foot bath, while overlooking the lake.

When I was done, I went and took a shower; tried out the mist thing but it turns out it's kind of cold as the water loses all of its heat when it's dissipated.

Then, spent an hour writing today's entry. Gotta sleep now and wake up in 7 hours.

Dec 20: Mt. Fuji Pictures

Woke up and the clouds were finally gone. We can see Mt Fuji even at 6AM in the morning.

After a bunch of pictures, went to eat breakfast, in which case we went to the balcony and took even more pictures and videos.

For breakfast, I ate:

• A couple of soba bowls
• 2 tempuras
• A bowl of curry rice
• Pressed croissant
• Some pickled appetizers (on the left in picture)
• A bunch of assorted food, like grated yams, eggs, fish (on the right in the picture).
• And probably a bunch of other stuff I forgot.

Like the previous onsen, the breakfast is buffet-style and is in a common area.

After breakfast was over, we took even more photos and videos. Here's a photo of Fuji from the common foot-bathing area and a video of me skipping stones in a yukata, with Mt. Fuji as backdrop, and it skips 4 times.

After the photos were done, we took even more photos of our balcony with foot bath + Fuji. And then went to a viewpoint where there's a temple and Mt. Fuji in the background. I don't know the temple's significance but there's a lot of people there. So below's a photo of me photoshopping people out and also photoshopping some of the temple in.

Then we headed to an outdoor museum where there's tons of sculptures and displays from different artists. There was tons to see there, from giant, 3D windmills to Hercules statues, to a giant lopsided head crying. But this tower with glass-stained windows was pretty cool, and the walk down was also pretty badass.

Headed towards a sulfur site near Mt. Fuji where they sell black eggs. I had the black eggs, along with some black curry bread, as well as black ice cream. Was great. The black egg is a reaction from cooking it in the sulfur-based water. No idea why the bread/ice cream were black though. The black ice cream's just vanilla but seems stickier/mochier than normal ice cream. In a good way.

Then we went to our onsen hotel: 玄 箱根強羅. No English name unfortunately...

Each room has its own onsen, though while warm isn't extremely hot like some onsen. The bottom onsen has a regular onsen, cold plunge, and sauna. Though my nose has been bleeding due to dryness so I'll avoid sauna for the rest of this trip.

Here's the room tour:

Had dinner in our room. Instead of just a menu, they straight up gave us drawings. Here's the drawings and a couple of the real food for reference:

Otsukuri + Wanmori:

Konabe + Shizukana:

Kanmi:

After dinner, we went downstairs to take some ice cream and milk. There's free drinks 24/7 downstairs that's non-alcoholic, and 8PM to midnight for alcoholic drinks. So we sampled a bunch of soju-like drinks. One potato and one barley. Those were the best. The sake was sour and is OK.

A lot of these booze is difficult to just straight up drink without food since it just reeks of alcohol.

I also learned today that the yukata for the hotels don't have normal pockets. Instead, they have traditional pockets where the area under your wrists is very big. Then, you just put items in your sleeve, like a magician, and it'll just fall into the baggage area that's under your wrist (if your forearm is parallel to the ground). When you put your arms down, the items just become adjacent to your arms. So as long as you don't raise your hands, the items won't fall out. Simply genius.

Went back to the room and wrote this up and watched some YouTube while Serena tried to get the hot tub to be hotter by spamming the hot button (there's a cold/hot water button that'll dispense hot/cold water to adjust the temperature of the hot tub, but to no avail).

Tokyo

Dec 21: Shopping

Woke up and went to the common onsen. This dude came out of the sauna and jumped into the cold plunge with all his sweat. I wanted to use it after soaking in the hot bath, but I ended up just dipping my feet in instead because it's kind of gross.

Took some free nitro cold brew from the lobby and went for breakfast in Serena's parents' room. Quick video showing the spread. The covered pot is tofu.

The menu--the picture is too blurry so this is my best interpretation of it.

• Fruit juice
• Assorted dish
  • Lotus root dumpling / fried egg
  • Fish paste with pickled Japanese horseradish
  • Grilled fish / Amberjack sashimi
  • Mushroom with seasoned soy sauce
  • Cubes of pork / steamed wild atlantic salmon
  • Squid guts pickled in salt
  • Something else pickled.
• Salad
• Cooking stove--Homemade tofu
• Grilled dish--dried fish
• Rice--kettle cooked rice
• Pickles--assorted pickles
• Soup--Miso soup / littleneck clam
• Dessert--Yogurt/fruit.

After breakfast, we packed and left. After I took a bunch more free nitro cold brew from the lobby.

Drove to an outlet where we walked around and did shopping for a bit. I only was able to take home a pair of lululemon red shorts. Normally, it'd cost $70 to $80, but here it cost $36. It has zippers for pockets and fleece lining for warmth so you can wear it even in the winter. Serena got a lot more stuff.

I wanted to get some Loro Piana jacket but they didn't have my size. Normal cost: $3300. Here: $2200. But even with $1K+ savings I shouldn't buy something that's too big / too small just to force a "good" deal.

At this lunch at the outlet:

We also got matcha / vanilla ice cream after for dessert (not shown).

Then, Serena's dad drove us to Tokyo. From this point onwards on the trip, Serena and I won't live in the same hotel as Serena's parents. And this is also the final leg of the Japan trip, as well as this epic 5.5 week journey. The drive took about ~2 hours so it's impressive that Serena's dad was able to maintain his ability to drive us around everywhere throughout. Especially because I can't help but fall asleep in the car.

After we checked in, Serena & I got matching Adidas at a nearby department store about a 33% discount. Then, met up with Serena's parents for a pasta dinner at the same department store. Their sets were ~2500 yen ($17.57/peson) but included a pasta, a drink of choice, and a large slice of cake of your choice. Here's the spread:

After dinner, we all went home.

Dec 22: Shoes, lots of shoes

This morning, I woke up and went to the hotel gym (first hotel with gym).

It is very small and had limited dumbbells. But I just recovered from straining my back recently anyway so I just did biceps / triceps for a few sets, and then 20 mins of cardio.

After, Serena and I took a taxi to Takeshita and ate McDonald's there. Yep, the classic McGriddle + hash brown + latte combo I've had the other 2 times.

Got some crepes after. One was an assorted fruit crepe and one was a chocolate banana crepe.

Done with the crepes, we went to a 7/11 to buy instant noodles. I saw this Japanese woman rush into the aisle and crab the "chili tomato" flavor and so I thought

If the locals like this one I'll also try that one.

Serena got the curry flavor I got a few days ago.

The instant noodles can be cooked right at the 7/11. They have water boilers that dispenses 98C water and provide chopsticks. I ate it and it was pretty good. Very...tom yummy. Pun intended.

Met up with Serena's parents afterwards and went shopping. My haul consisted of:

• A goretex asics for around $60 USD.
• 3 Uniqlo merino wool shirts. About ($28 each--4K yen).
• A Jujutsu Kaisen tiny figurine you get at one of those toy dispensing machines for 400 yen. It's random so you don't get to pick. I got Nobara which sucks because she's been dead in the story for so long so it's a pretty irrelevant character.

After some shopping, we took a break for lunch at around 2PM. We had the kind of sushi where it comes in a conveyer belt. But you can also order sushi that you don't see on the belt.

Ate about this much:

In the middle of shopping, we saw a Jujutsu Kaisen exhibit, so I took some cringy pics in front of very large JJK character posters.

21K steps later, we settled into dinner. We literally walked around and window-shopped/shopped for maybe 6 hours. For dinner, we had a pasta set, similar to yesterday:

• Salad
• Tomato soup inside a bread
• Mentaiko pasta
• Iced tea

Went home after dinner, with a fuller closet.

Dec 23: I proposed

Woke up early and went to the Tsukiji Fish Market to meet up with Serena's aunt and uncle. Went to a place called Unitora Nakadori. A long line, and we waited for about 45 mins to get in. Our reward was tons of uni:

After that epic uni meal, Serena's aunt/uncle went to line up for the next epic meal, which is an omakase. They went to line up for the 10:30AM session, and told us to walk around Tsukiji. So we did. I got:

• A coffee from a vending machine, but it was too sweet. About 100 yen.
• Another coffee from a vendor for about 390 yen. It's not that good and pretty expensive for what it was (still way less than the even more expensive garbage in US though).
• A soba with a ~5 large oysters. About 1200 yen. Pretty good.

I was afraid to eat too much because I knew Serena's auntie and uncle has something even more awesome planned.

And something awesome it was. They took us to an omakase where each bite is better than the last. And the chef had a funny laugh. He would say stuff like:

This fish only winter, ha-ha-ha.

And it was hilarious to me. I also got the same sake as Serena's uncle, for about 6000 yen a glass. Pretty awesome. Nice and smooth. I don't really like the dry stuff, so this was perfect. Just smooth enough, but not sweet so that it ruins the balance of the fish.

The sake's name is translated to "clean heart."

It was really tasty and I'm not sure what I had but one of the most memorable for me was a tougher white fish that he sliced very thinly, topped with cod liver:

Here's the menu in case you wanted to know what was served (because I don't).

After, we can order whatever we want for about 15 mins. So we ordered:

• Shirako (cod sperm sac) for 2 rounds. Normally you eat this as is, but he torched it.
• A round of the hard white fish + liver.

Gouchisousama deshita!

After 2 bouts of epicness, we did another epic meal: at the same franchise (Nakamura Tokichi Byodo-In) as on Dec 15. Each location is different though, and in this location instead of only focusing on basic matcha drinks, they had a super dense matcha drink and hojicha parfait (roasted green tea instead of regular green tea or matcha).

I love hojicha.

After that, we digested by walking around Shibuya a bit. Then, we ran into Serena's parents and had a room to ourselves for a beef-roasting tasting menu. Here's the menu, and a video of how awesomely juicy the meats are. It catches fire really well, and you might notice that there are ducts to suck the smoke out on the sides of the grill. This prevents the meat smell from perfuming the room, and consequently, your clothes.

After this wonderful dinner, I proposed in one of the most ridiculously epic ways. It's been about 4.5 months in the making and I want to do it justice when I write about it. So here's a section dedicated to that.

She said yes, by the way.

Dec 24: I didn't know coffee could be like this

Slept in because the night before we stayed up a bit later than usual.

Went meet up with Serena's aunt/uncle to eat a ton of beef tongue at around 11AM.

On our way there, we had to pass by the now famous Shibuya station. It's popularized recently by Jujutsu Kaisen season 2, where they cover the Shibuya Incident arc (a bunch of cursed spirits massacre civilians). To celebrate this, they put a bunch of decorations up at Shibuya station for JJK. Additionally, I noticed a spot that they took for the anime where Gojo came crashing in.

Though most of the zeitgeist / decorations is based on the anime, and not the manga, it ends up being kind of mediocre. Most of the characters are already dead and thus irrelevant for those that follow the manga. So it feels like a lot of the decoration is old news. Still, pretty cool that they decorated the landmark where the story takes place.

The beef tongue came in 3 "classes"--from least to best quality. Think toro, chu-toro, and o-toro, but for beef tongue.

We each got an assortment and they were all good. But the best class of beef tongue was really oily/creamy like wagyu, yet had the bouncy texture of beef tongue. We also got some tongue that's marinated in a semi-sweet sauce, kind of like KBBQ style.

Overall delicious and about 20K yen per person, even after drinks. (About $35).

For what this was, it's actually a pretty great deal. Think of a way you can eat beef tongue and/or actual Japanese wagyu quality meat kind of a mouthfeel for $35, let alone platefuls of it.

Anyway, went to another department store to look around.

On our way, we went by Shibuya Crossing. This is the famous Japanese crossing in tons of media: Fast & Furious, and more recently Alice In Borderlands (where the main characters and his friends met before everything exploded). I took a video but this is what it looks like:

When we arrived to the department store, we noticed they had a Christmas market but Serena was pretty tired so we just walked around the mall a little bit before we gave up and wanted to sit down at Harbs. They were really full so instead we bought 3 slices and had it next to the Christmas market.

We had:

• Rare cheesecake (tasted sour so I guess some kind of lemon cheesecake)
• Mille crepe
• Strawberry tart (middle one, already destroyed by the time we took the picture)

At around 4PM, Serena's aunt and uncle took us to a holy mecca of coffee:

Koffee Mameya

Mame means beans, Ya means shop.

So this place is just called coffee bean shop. But they basically have a tasting menu for coffee.

We had a bunch of courses but one of my favorite courses is the below:

The prep is basically a milk brew, which is made like cold brew, but instead of ground beans + water, it's just ground beans + milk, refrigerated for ~8 hours.

The beans matter a lot though, and they use some ultra-high quality geisha beans for this milk brew.

Next to it is some cocoa vinegar, honey, camomile, peach juice mixture. He mixes it all together and the milk brew curdles.

It should be noted that milk brew in and of itself was a separate course and it was amazing. It's like an ultra-elevated latte. Very creamy/milky, yet had a great tinge of geisha coffee flavor / herbal smell. There's a punchy after taste that's reminescent of sriracha, even.

Anyway, after the milk curdles, he mixes it thoroughly and puts it in a funnel. It's then dripped for about 30 minutes before it's ready. Once it's ready, he uses the curdled paste as topping for a cookie. And the juice is poured on a large ice cube topped with jasmine flower.

The taste has hints of the milk brew we just had, except it instead of just a creamy, sweet coffee with some complex flavors, it's further balanced by slight tartness from the cacao vinegar, and somewhat subtle sweetness from the peach, and the smell is further enhanced not just by the jasmine, but with the camomile infused cocktail.

And here I thought coffee was just either a range of bitter and sour.

And that was only one of the courses in the tasting menu.

No longer a coffee pleb, we headed to eat our final dinner in Tokyo, and for this whole trip together.

After, Serena's aunt/uncle took us to an extremely fancy beef place. But taxi was really slow. We had a reservation for 7:15PM and it was 6:40PM, and the driver's GPS read 7 minutes.

20 minutes later at 7:00PM, the GPS read 9 minutes.

While there was heavy traffic, the taxi driver is also at fault here. taxi drivers in Japan are extremely cautious. The right lane (fast lane here) was completely open, but the driver would basically refuse to take a faster path to the destination. Instead, the drivers here are perfectly content to wait for traffic.

Anyway, we got off the Uber at around 7 PM and walked 1 mile to the restaurant.

I really had to pee so went to a convenience store. No avail. Then ran to the next one. There was a bathroom but some girl was about to get in. We were already running late and I really needed to pee. I guess my face had piss written all over it so she offered to let me go before her.

This was the first time this has happened to me, so I went. After peeing, I arigato gozaimasu'd her ass and ran out of the store to hopefully make some time up.

We were maybe ~5 minutes late but it was OK. What followed was high-quality meat after high-quality meat. I had no idea what I was eating but it all tasted like the type of wagyu that you don't need to chew, and unlike a lot of fatty wagyu that doesn't have a lot of beef flavor, this type was really fat and had tons of beef flavor.

The waitress was also very anal about which cuts should be dipped into what sauce. This is how you know they care about the product.

This was a multi-course meal, followed by a bunch of a la carte meats. Serena's aunt and uncle did all the ordering and we did a few cheers for the proposal went well the day before. Here's what one of the spreads looked like:

One of the main highlights for me was a sukiyaki beef that is served with a Japanese egg yolk (in Hong Kong, these are like $1+ per egg)--only to be topped with black truffle.

We're then told to only eat the beef, which seems like a waste of the sukiyaki/egg yolk sauce + truffle, but this is later served with rice where everything was mixed together.

The rice soaking up all the beef oils and egg umame, alongside with the sweet/sour contrast of the sukiyaki sauce, enhanced by the fragrance of black truffle was a life-changing event.

For dessert, we had shaved ice. I thought it'd be really sweet because it was a brown shaved ice, and thus my thought was chocolate. But it was hojicha shaved ice, so it tasted very tea-like and wasn't too sweet.

Also a bunch of red beans at the bottom to balance out the taste.

Serena's aunt asked for some candles for celebration. Instead of candles though, they gave us a free shaved ice with sparklers--like at a freaking night club. The Hong Kong people next to us kept muttering:

Why do they get sparklers and not us?!

After dinner, we were to go to Serena's aunt/uncle's hotel to have a conference call with her family about the proposal, how it went down, etc.

I was helping Serena do her seat belt but accidentally got elbowed hard in my right eyeball. Felt like a sharp, stabbing pain in my eyeball and it gave me a headache in the back of my right eyeball.

Though no visual impairments though, so I think I'll be fine. Will wait a few days and see.

Went to the hotel, and everyone said I was tired for some reason. Maybe it was a lot of food, or some alcohol + food that caused me to look tired. Or maybe getting elbowed hard in the eyeball also had something to do with it. Or a combo of all of the above.

Anyway, we stayed for about 30 mins and went home so we can pack.

We packed our stuff and went to sleep.

Dec 25, two times: American Express Refugee Camp

Christmas is experienced twice this year due to time difference. Once in Japan as we depart it. And once in California as we arrived at around 10AM.

Ate a final lunch with Serena's aunt/uncle this day. They wanted to line up for sushi early in the morning but Serena & I were too tired after 5.5 weeks and just opted for a random place near Tokyo Station.

Our plan was to meet at around 11:30A and do a bag drop at Tokyo Station, eat lunch, then walk around before boarding a train to Narita. But the taxis here suck.

Taxis here drive really slow for some reason--think old grandma with bad vision slow, but then twice as slow as that. Open lanes are ignored. Turns are very slow, like a student driver.

And taxi drivers here, unlike in Hong Kong or Vietnam don't really know where anything is. Even when we ask to go to Tokyo Station, or Shibuya Station, they look confused as hell as it's the first time someone's mentioned that request.

They try to make the interior of the cab very luxe, like a Toyota Century and it looks really nice and all, but I'd prefer a fast taxi that looks dirty than a plush taxi that's slow as all hell.

Anyway, the Taxi arrived after a 15 min delay and he had to make a U-turn. Instead of making a U-turn, he spent 3 extra minutes going around a few blocks and making 3 extra turns before picking us up.

We literally saw him. And he just ran off to do a bunch of extra turns. The U-turn is legal as other taxis and cars were doing U-turns where the hotel was. And in fact, a previous taxi did the same U-turn to drop us off a couple nights before.

TLDR: Plan was to arrive at 11:30A. We arrived at around 12.

Didn't really have time to drop our bags at the station since the line is really long, so we just found a random restaurant that would give us a 6-person table and leave our luggage there while we eat. The good news is, it was really good. The bad news is, all other items (presumably better) were all sold out. The egg was really smooth and chicken very moist. The soba was also delicious, though the lack of wasabi to put in the soba made it mid. Though all the other parts of the meal were kind of spectacular. I guess for the most part, anything you randomly pick in Japan will be pretty good.

After taking the train, Serena's Star Alliance set in. At the counter, her ticket was printed Silver Status, while her Gold Status expires 2025. Gold status = you get priority luggage tags for faster pickup.

The counter lady looked at it and could simply not comprehend that the system was wrong. So she just stood there for about 5 minutes looking confused, before asking her manager what to do. Her manager simply prompted to add the priority luggage tag to our bags.

We went to the ANA lounge without similar issues; Serena just showed her account's Gold Status and we were let in. The regular food was actually kind of bad, so I had none of it. But there's QR on the table where you can order noodles. So I ate a ramen noodle, and then a bowl of udon.

Ironically, this is the first time I had proper ramen in Japan after 2 weeks. (I had tsukemen earlier as the only ramen-like meal in Japan, but nothing with a regular broth). Udon not pictured.

After a 10 hour plane ride, it was the next day in Japan but still Christmas in the US. Upon getting our luggage and checking in again, we walked ~20 minutes from domestic terminal to Tom Bradley terminal to get to the Amex lounge. Only to find a gigantic ass line, like a refugee camp.

We found a seat, but the food variety was lacking and not appetizing. And it's crowded. There's also no cocktail menu at the bar. Probably the worst centurion lounge I've been to and one of the worst of any I've been to. 1/5. Not worth taking a picture.

There's wifi for me to type this up though.

After a whole month of almost daily journaling, it's bittersweet to end this series here. Since the rest of the day will just be time spent with family in California, it's no longer an Asia 2023 trip. After 24k+ words, not counting the proposal series that I'll type up, I covered a lot. I'll try to condense the lessons I learned here, and as I reflect upon things, I'll add more.p

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