Osaka, Kobe, Taipei!

We've been packing a lot into our days in Japan so I'm just going to give a rundown of everything we've been doing instead of trying to remember each day.

Things we're seeing

This is Meriken Park in Kobe. Kobe might be my favorite city in all of Japan. This park is huge, on the water, has a lot of shopping malls and very pretty. We ate pretty good Indian food here and walked around!

We went to a Hanshin Tigers baseball game! Everyone in my family and in Japan seemed really nervous about us doing this? My grandfather has been a fan for practically forever and has never actually been to a game. Despite the HUGE crowds at the game everyone insisted that no one goes to see the Hanshin Tigers.

We had a great time. The woman next to us lent us balloons so we could participate in the 7th inning stretch activities and the end of game celebration. The couple on the other side of us explained to us who the players were and who was a closer and stuff. It was very nice of all of them. And the Tigers won! They beat the Giants, their biggest rivals! Wooooo!

We went to the Osaka Castle. It was hot as hell that day. Which explains Zack's sweatspot. But, when we went inside the castle, it was air conditioned! So much for keeping things traditional...

Right before we went to the Castle we went to Osaka Kaiyukan Aquarium. It was maybe the most crowded place I've ever been. In retrospect, we probably picked the worst day ever to go--it was the Sunday of a long weekend, so no duh there were a ton of people there! We saw some cool stuff, but kind of agreed that people never enjoy your pictures of aquariums. It never looks that cool in pictures. 

We were going to go to the Umeda Sky building after the Osaka Castle since we were in Osaka that day, but it was way too freaking hot, so we went home. In the end if was the right decision because we were able to go back a few days later and see it. 

So here's some crap. The Sky Building is this huge sky scraper and you're supposed to go up to see the "Floating Garden" as the sign above indicates. BUT when you get there this is all you see:

THERE ARE NO FLOWERS OR NATURE IN THE FLOATING GARDEN. Granted, I did think that we got a particularly bad day because it was raining pretty steadily and was super gray out. But for real. This is not a garden. AND they don't let you carry umbrellas up at the top because they're afraid it will blow away. So you just have to walk around in the rain if it's raining. What crap.

This is in Taiwan. Zack is afraid I won't differentiate enough between Taiwan and Japan. This is the Chiang Kai-Sheck Memorial. Chiang Kai-Sheck is a former Taiwanese president. His memorial included a lot of anti-Japanese propaganda inside. That was kind of cool to look at, but I don't really know enough about Taiwanese or Japanese history to get the significance of their words and descriptions.

It's very pretty, but we also went there in the rain, so I don't think we got the optimal experience. I was also very nervous I was going to slip and re-shatter a kneecap. Also I was a little crabby because we woke up at 4:45am, took a train, a bus, a plane, and another bus before we actually got to Taiwan.

This is the inside of that memorial. Very beautiful! 

This is what you see if you stand of the steps of the memorial and look out. Yes, I did use a filter. 

This is the 228 Peace Park. On 2/28/1947 there was a huge antigovernment uprising that resulted in many deaths, a lot of destruction and the beginning of 50 years of martial law. Taiwan has a very interesting history and we saw a lot of  propaganda and there is certainly a lot of contentious point in history. I don't pretend to know much about it, but if you need someone to go more in depth, tweet at @Zackymatthews.

This is the Sun Yat-Sen Memorial. He was Taiwan's first president and is like the father of the nation. We spent extra time in his memorial because he was a cool guy, but also because it was pouring outside and big dumb Bert didn't bring his umbrella.

Also there was a mini sculpture exhibit inside and a bunch of dancers outside. So we chilled there.

After it stopped raining we met Zack's friend Gino at a night market! Taiwan is famous for night markets. It's like if a farmers market, flea market, and a carnival all met up and joined forces every night. Lots of food, games, and trinkets for sale everywhere. 

This is a wind damper at the 101. I didn't know what one was until I went to the 101. I still don't super get what it does, other than help buildings not collapse during earthquakes, but you should know, this is a huge wind damper. So I've been told.

This is the 101 from afar. We went up to the top if it. This is the world's second tallest building, but still has the world's fastest elevators! It was a beautiful view from up there. It was a little crowded and kind of expensive, but I'd say worth it! Also you get to walk through a bonus coral museum no one tells you about until you there.

This is the ticket for the metro! It's a plastic coin! Weird.

This is the National Palace Museum! It's HUGE and has a ton of artifacts, that some people would argue are stolen from China. We saw a lot of cool pottery, weapons, jade, and historical documents. We did not look at the Jade that is shaped like a cabbage though. Because there was like an hour long line to do that. We were not feeling it.

This is Chiang Kai-Sheck's presidential residence.

This is also the presidential residence. It was also HUGE and very elaborate. Definitely did not feel like it belonged to a single person, even if that person was the president.

Zack's other friend, Laurent, paid for us to get 45 minute massages. We were kind of nervous since that's kind of a long time to have a stranger you can't really talk to touch you. My massage was kind of rough and was definitely sore the next day. I do think my feet hurt less though. For reference, in the past week we've walked 59.5 miles. So I guess we earned a massage.

We went to Tamsui, which is at the end of the metro line in Taipei. It was beautiful but so freaking hot. There was a British fort there. That was surprising.

After going to Tamsui, we went to the a Beitou Hot Springs. Remember how I said it was hot? It was even hotter at the hot spring.

People we're meeting

This and the picture below it are of my cousin Karin. She's 12, and was born in America. She's been going to "English camp" with us. She's pretty shy, but I definitely think she's understanding more and more English. She's very sweet and is very excited to go to Universal Studios Japan with us.

So I didn't actually meet this guy--I just made him take a picture with me because he's wearing a Princeton football shirt and I used to work with a guy that played football at Princeton. He was uncomfortable.

This is Laurent. He used to work with Zack's organization in DC. Now he lives in Taiwan again. He was very nice to us. He bought our tickets to the National Palace Museum, our lunch, our massages, and our dinner! He got us very drunk and took us to places we wouldn't have seen otherwise! 

This is Gino. He's hilarious. He speaks amazingly good English for someone who has never been to the US. He's sort of YouTube star in Taiwan and apparently had a small role in a movie! There was a billboard for his movie in our metro station so we took a picture of him with his billboard self! He also took us around, helped us order food and made sure we had a good time.

We're also obviously seeing my grandparents, aunt and uncle a lot. They aren't so much into pictures though. They never want to take selfies. Rude.

Things we're eating

 Most of this does not need an explanation. It's all delicious.

There was $5 beer at the tigers game! Too good! Also, it said you weren't allowed to bring cans or bottles into the stadium. Which we took to mean, you can't bring beer. NOPE. There was a line where they took your bottles or cans of beer and poured it into paper cups and you're allowed to have that! Can you imagine how insane that would be in the US?

My grandmother was super worried that we wouldn't have enough to eat so she packed us hard boiled eggs. As we were leaving she told us "It's hot, so be careful!" "There are crazy people so be careful!" "You're cute, so be careful!" And then "Sometimes eggs make you cough! So be careful!" What? So I ran that by my mom. And she was like "yeah! eggs do make you cough! You should be careful!" Is that a thing?

We didn't actually eat this. But it's very realistic penis ice cream in Taiwan. Why. 

This is the dinner Laurent got us. It was SO good.

We both super liked octopus mouth. I guess I'm more surprised octopus mouth is a thing you can eat that I am that I like it? How do you even get the mouth like separated? 

Mos Burger! Instead of a bread bun, it's rice!

That's it for now! We leave Saturday so we're wrapping up now, but I'm sure I'll have another absurdly long blog post to share!

Tokyo!

Which is in Japan, in case you're confused.

I hate goodbyes and had to do a lot of goodbye-ing the whole week. Monday I had lunch with my boss. Tuesday was an office going away party. Wednesday was the going away happy hour. Thursday I ran around to find my birth control before our trip, and Friday I had to officially say goodbye to my coworkers.

One of them surprised me with this picture frame! It's hard to tell but it's the entire ACS Staff with RBG! I think I'll use it as a way to humble brag in my new apartment. "Oh yes...in the course of my nonprofit work I got to meet two Supreme Court Justices...social justice is just soooOOOooooOO rewarding...blah blah blah."


Also on my last day we got burritos at my favorite burrito place in DC! I can't think of a better way to go out than that! Then walked to the White house and ate lunch there. Later my coworkers brought out wine, cheese, grapes and crackers and we had another little mini party. I was actually pretty busy though helping tie up loose ends, but that was a welcome distraction from all the people trying to hug and cry over me.

This is how goodbyes make me feel.

After work I went to CVS, went to Walmart, went to CVS again to get my birth control and finished packing. It was a pretty unceremonious exit to DC, but in the morning when I woke up, there were prostitutes outside! I'd never seen them before. And it was warm and raining so they were kind of like splashing around in the puddles in between trying to entice people. It could've been a lot sadder.

I flew to Toronto, met up with Zack and then we flew to Tokyo! It was a pretty uneventful flight and Zack even managed to sleep a little--good work Zack!

Zack wearing a bib to prove to the waitress we
understood her instructions

Then we had to make our way to our hotel, which, according to google maps, looked really difficult. It wasn't that difficult, but it did involved three separate trains. Also, I  asked for instructions to Yotsuya and it turns out we wanted to go to Yotsuya Sanchome. They're only about 3/4 of a mile apart, but we had all of our luggage, so we asked a police officer how to get to the right place and he showed us. But, in the course of asking him, I left my directions with him! It was a only a little bit of a bummer though because we knew we were close and the map kind of sucked anyway. BUT, when we got off the train at the right stop, the police officer was there on his bike and gave me back the directions! He biked to the next stop just to return basically useless directions. Very Japan.

 Then we got to the hotel, showered and went out to dinner. we were so tired we just stopped at the first restaurant that advertised an English menu. It turned out to be sukiyaki, which is sort of like what they do at Benihana, but smaller. The waitress made us wear bibs. At first I was not about that life, but it turned out to be a good plan because a lot of the fat/grease popped up and would've gotten on our clothes otherwise. It was really good and there was a group of families getting absolutely wasted next to us. They gave us some of their fried rice, and probably would've given us some shots, but we were too tired to stick around.

 We struggled to make it to 8:30pm before going to sleep, and ended up waking up at 5:45 and leaving by 6:15 the next morning. we were too early for Starbucks and had to walk around a little bit to find somewhere selling coffee. In the end it turned out to be okay that we woke up so early because we walked around this shrine in the middle of Tokyo called Meiji Jingu that's really beautiful, but would've been way too hot later in the day.

After walking around there we walked around Harajuku, which you might remember from Gwen Stefani. It was full of a lot of cool shops that were closed. We're probably going to go back when we're in Tokyo at the end of our trip.

After that we went to the Tokyo Metropolitan Building, which is really tall so you can get a good view of the city. And, unlike the Tokyo Tower and Tokyo Skytree, it's free! And, we were also super into that it was air conditioned. It was also really nice because they labeled all the buildings we were looking at. This is a picture of the Tokyo Metropolitan Building Number 2. And if you follow we on snapchat, which I mean, everyone should, you got to see a video from the top as well.

not Niagara at all

After that we walked around another park, which advertised "Niagara Falls Tokyo." We thought that was hilarious, and we were correct in expecting it to be underwhelming. It was. It's a fountain. A pretty decent fountain, but definitely just a fountain. Then we went and got lunch. It was actually a Chinese restaurant, which made it super difficult to order, because it's like Japanese translations of words I don't know. Finally the waitress just asked us "chicken or pork?" and brought us what she thought we wanted. It worked out.

Then we walked around Shinjuku and the department stores. There was even a Krispy Kreme. After that we were pretty much dying so we went back to the hotel and took a two hour nap. Then we woke up, went to Ginza, and had some pretty mediocre Thai food. We managed to stay up til 11, but that was only because of the nap.


Tuesday we went to the Edo Tokyo Museum to learn about earlyish Japanese history. I used my excellent Japanese skills to lie and say I'm a college student so I could get a 120 yen discount. I mean...I will be a student in like a month. So it's not really a lie. This is a part of Japan's history that I'm not sure familiar with. I've never really committed to keeping my Shogunates separate--I only know about the last one that collapse and made things change. The museum was interesting, but I still haven't really internalized the history at all. Oh well. I'll just watch the Last Samurai a few more times and hope that straightens me out.

The museum was really good for reminding me of CART though:

Here we have Taylor teaching some young students in Edo era Tokyo

Here we have Ashely helping a woman give birth.

The last sentence of this description shows that Ashely's techniques at this time probably would've hurt about as much as they helped. Get it together, Edo era Ashely.

This is a list of epidemics that hit Edo. I can't tell what they are, but they made me think of Teeners.

This is Zack on two ridiculous bicycles. 

One woman told him he was "the coolest" while I took his picture on this bike. What. 

This is Zack as a sumo wrestler.

After the museum we went to Asakusa, which is a more old-timey part of Tokyo. Mostly it was an incredibly touristy and crowded part of Tokyo. the main attraction there is Senso-ji, a buddhist shrine, surrounded by a ton of cheap, crowded shops selling stereotypical Japanese stuff. I was too hot to care a ton about it. If you follow me on instagram, which should be everyone except Taylor, you already saw a picture of the pagoda there. We ate lunch, walked around, and then got moving onto Akihabara.

you weren't supposed to take pictures, but I did!
I'm a real rebel.

Akihabara is called the "electric city" and has a ton of video game/electronic/sex shops. Definitely a weird vibe, but worth seeing. A lot of the video game and manga stuff was lost on me, but it was all unique and would be hard to find in a different city! We went into a 6 story sex shop, but I was only allowed on the first four floors and had to send Zack up to the top two. He said there wasn't much interesting except those fleshlights and a bunch of nervous dudes. I'll pass.

Then we wandered into an arcade. I think they're too whelming. There's music from like 19 different games, lights all over, and just generally too much going on Also, probably my lack of interest in video games makes them less interesting. But, we did play air hockey though and I beat Zack! Worth it.

Zack was so into his big toast.
And it was HUGE.

 After that we went to Ginza to see the imperial palace. First we needed a snack though so we stopped at this fancy French cafe. It was overpriced, but pretty worth it since we were so hot and tired. Also this ended up being our dinner, even if that wasn't the plan.

 Then we walked to the imperial palace and managed to find like five exits, and not a single entrance. I guess that makes sense. You don't want a bunch of ways to get into the castle?

Then we went home, collapsed and rested out feet. Tuesday we ended up walking around 32,000 steps. Which is like 14.5 miles. Props to Fitbit for keeping those stats. It takes an hour and a half to get to the airport so we had to wake up pretty early the next day anyway to get ready to come to Osaka.

While we were at the airport this absolutely wasted man walked up to us and tried starting up a conversation. He told us how we used to live in Finland with his wife. But that was too cold. So they moved to Japan. But then he decided to move to Melbourne for three months, and his wife wasn't happy with that. But then he came back after 10 days and was going to surprise her. But she said she wanted a divorce and that he friend was staying at their house so he shouldn't come back. Then he passed out on the seats and almost missed the flight.

Then when we landed we heard him yelling into his phone that he was going to "fuck someone up." So yeah, he's really our new best friend and it's sad we didn't get to know him well.

Now we're in Osaka with my grandparents and things will probably move a little slower. And that's not necessarily a bad thing!