You fools! You thought I was gone, but I have returned, just when you least expected it! Japan was a blast, and I’ve returned with souvenirs, subway tickets, and more photos than I thought could physically fit onto my phone! I thought for this post, I would go over my Japan trip day by day, outlining what I did and what particular parts of Japan struck out to me!

Day 1

On Day 1, I landed in Osaka, Japan.

…At midnight.

Yeah, our flights got delayed by a few hours (thanks Jetstar), so we had to take an afternoon flight instead of a morning flight. It gave us more time to prepare for the trip, but the catch was that by the time we landed, there was no time for us to do anything. All the shops were closed, because it was midnight, which meant I couldn’t pick up a SIM card at the airport like I’d planned to, and I guess the trains to the airport don’t run after a certain point, so we had to take a taxi to our accommodation. So that was slightly harrowing.

Now, we arrived on the 14^th of August, otherwise known as the tail end of Japanese summer. And as it turns out, summers in Japan are fucking hot. I thought I would be able to deal with the heat, being Australian and everything, but it wasn’t just heat. It was the humidity that truly killed me and would later kill me further. Even in the dead of night, it felt like it was a hundred degrees, and I was regretting wearing long pants.

Important thing to note is that I was travelling with 7 other friends to Japan, with all of us arriving at different times and going to different places. I arrived in Osaka with two of these friends, let’s call them Ghibli Friend and Pirate Friend. The place we had to stay at for our first night was quite small with only two proper beds, so I had to share a side with Ghibli Friend. We turned on the AC (obviously) and went to sleep.

…Well, they went to sleep. Ghibli Friend stole half my blanket while he was asleep, and I was too polite to say anything, so I just endured the frosty room until morning.

Day 2

I guess this would still technically be day 1, but whatever.

We woke up and left our shared accommodation around 8 AM. We were clumsy getting out the door, but somehow we didn’t wake up anyone else. We went to the train station where I learned how Japanese train tickets worked – you have to choose the specific amount that you pay before you get the ticket, calculating yourself how much your trip costs depending on where you go. The tickets themselves are paper stubs with a magnet backing that you slot into a machine at both ends of the journey. So that required a bit of readjusted thinking. In Australia, you pay at the end and the machines determine how much you owe based on that.

I bought some breakfast from the local convenience store (shoutout to Lawson’s), getting an onigiri rice ball and a cup of coffee. I utterly failed to follow the instructions on the packaging, however, and I ended up mangling both the onigiri and the coffee cup.

After that, me and Ghibli Friend bought our SIM cards from a nearby vending machine. Pirate Friend had an eSIM figured out ages ago, so she could just watch amused as we struggled to figure out how the hell we were meant to turn the bloody things on for about ten minutes. The stupid thing refused our cash as well, which we did not expect to see in Japan, so we had to use card instead.

We met up with the rest of our friend group at the Kyoto Pokemon Centre. We were going to check out the Old Imperial Palace, but fictional anime monsters took higher priority. I spent a good fifteen minutes searching for a Turtwig plushie to no avail before buying a pair of keychain acrylics of Turtwig and Snivy.

After that, we had our first proper lunch in Japan, going to a noodle place. I bought some cold soba noodles and learned the ways of the chopstick, after which our group split, with our next group activity being a kabuki play further in Kyoto. Ghibli Friend and I decided to walk directly to the kabuki place ourselves. Turns out that walking 45 minutes in the middle of the day in a country that gets very hot and humid during summer was not a smart decision. By the end of it we were both exhausted, and in absolutely no state to watch theatre (or I wasn’t, at the very least). I had to bail to my hotel during the intermission, which is a shame because it turns out that the actual kabuki, which is a “tell a story through dance” thing, only started properly after I’d fucking left. Up to that point it had just been a very elaborate play told in a language I didn’t understand.

So all in all, it was a pretty productive day.

Day 3

So this was the day we were going to explore the Fushima Inari shrine.

For those who don’t know, Fushimi Inari is, from my understanding, one of the most important and popular Shinto shrines in Japan. Marked by a giant red gate, the shrine winds around and climbs up one of the mountains surrounding Kyoto, with ancillary shrines leading the way all the way up to the peak. We planned to ascend the shrine as a group, with me, Ghibli Friend, and another guy we’ll call Hipster Friend taking a train directly to the place from our shared accommodation.

Ghibli Friend took us on the wrong train.

In his defence, there was another shrine on the opposite side of the city that was also called the Inari shrine. Turns out that Inari is a major Shinto deity with hundreds, if not thousands, of shrines across the country. We figured out the mistake before we could get too far off course and made our way to where we were supposed to be before it could get too busy.

Then, the ascent began.

There were a lot of stairs. But there were also a lot of shrines, so it was still worth the journey. There were a bunch of places where I couldn’t take any photos, primarily religious ceremonies and the like (turns out that Shintoism is still alive and well, which I, ignorant tourist that I was, did not know), but I was able to take enough. The path was given to us by winding “corridors” of stacked red torii gates, some new, many old, weaving through a forest that looked like it hadn’t been touched by people for thousands of years. I didn’t end up making it to the peak, since it was a million degrees and sick with humidity, so I went back down with a bunch of others.

After this, I got ice cream from a local vendor, then went to Kyoto station to get Japanese donuts with a sparkly mango/passionfruit drink that I, despite not generally liking fizzy drinks, quite enjoyed. Unsure what to do with ourselves after this, me, Ghibli Friend, and another one of my friends we’ll call Cat Friend, we all went up to the top of Kyoto Tower. We saw the whole city and took a picture, and somehow I didn’t pass out from being a thousand metres in the air.

I went back to my hotel for a bit, making plans to have dinner as a group later in the evening. After taking a moment to rest up, we went to the Kyoto Museum and learned about Japan’s Edo Period. We then saw an art exhibit dedicated to the surrealist artworks of Kenichi Imai, a guy so obscure that we couldn’t even find him on Wikipedia. During this, a very nice museum guy told us about the Daimoji festival, or Gozan no Okuribi (technically Cat Friend told us first but we weren’t listening). It’s an event where five giant bonfires are lit on the mountains of Kyoto, each in the symbol of a different kanji symbol, signifying the spirits of deceased family members returning to spirit world.

Naturally, we cancelled dinner to try and see it. We’d never seen anything remotely like this in Australia. The closest we’d ever seen of something like this was the New Years fireworks in Sydney, and frankly, I can take or leave those. We wanted to head to a spot near the Old Imperial Palace to see it, checking off two boxes with one since we’d originally wanted to see the palace before. Another one of our friends joined us, British Friend,

There was just one small problem.

It was raining.

Like, not lightly either, it was pissing down rain. The type of rain that would douse any attempt to light a fire, big or small.

Dejected, we went to a ramen restaurant to eat some noodles and lift our spirits. But just when we thought hope was lost, the people running the restaurant turned on the TV just in time for us to see the bonfires being lit on TV. Turns out that a little bit of rain wasn’t going to dissuade Kyoto from this event – they were going to use as much gasoline and gusto as it took to get those fires going. We watched the fires on TV in silence, in this tiny little ramen place, like one of those magical little moments that you only see in movies.

It was great.

Day 4

So this time it was my turn to get us lost.

We were heading to the Saihoji Moss Temple this day, and I was in charge in navigation. We got moving around 7:00 for what I think was an 8:00 entry. And we got all the way to the temple before we realised we were at the wrong place – we were at a different Saihoji temple, which had apparently been confused with the moss temple enough times to warrant them putting up a sign pointing people in the right direction.

…So, we scrambled back onto a bus and got there 40 minutes late. They were very forgiving and it all turned out great. They had us copy out our sutras (that’s sutra as in the Buddhist canonical scripture, not the Kama Sutra) before letting us out to enjoy the garden itself, which was beautiful. It was a small lake with grounds and trees covered entirely in moss, not a blade of grass to be found.

After that, we got separated, then reconvened at a Japanese waffle house. We then decided to check out the Bamboo Forest with British Friend and Hipster Friend, and after a long walk through the streets which almost had us trespassing through a cemetery, we arrived in the Bamboo Forest.

Then we walked forward for fifty metres, and we had left the Bamboo Forest.

It was surprisingly brief that trip. On the way back I almost got heatstroke because I didn’t want to get water at a vending machine (I wasn’t eager to contribute to Japan’s insane plastic waste problem. My will did not hold out, though), then we got Pokemon-themed ice cream at a Baskin-Robbins.

After that, it was all planning for the next few days, where we would go to Fukui, then to Nagahama, both of which required bullet train tickets. We sorted out the tickets with HalfAlieno and his fiancee (who were amongst the friends I was travelling with), then I experienced technical difficulties with my money card and the hotel laundry machine, and then we went to sleep.

Day 5

If you look at a map, you will see that Fukui is not, in fact, on the way to Nagahama. It’s a bit to the north of it, requiring a detour. And the reason we were going out of our way there was very simple – the Dinosaur Museum.

I went there with HalfAlieno, Mrs Alieno, and Ghibli Friend, taking 2 bullet trains and then a normal train just to get to the museum. Supposedly, the Fukui Dinosaur Museum had some of the most impressive prehistoric displays in the world, and if that’s true, I bloody well believe it. We saw two parts – a special exhibition dedicated to the dinosaurs discovered within Fukui itself, and a general exhibition dedicated to literally everything. We saw dinosaur fossils, megafauna fossils, Cambrian era fossils, and everything in between. It had mineral displays, dinosaur animatronics, the works. I took a conservative 256 pictures and 25 videos of the exhibits, and probably would’ve taken more if we’d stayed for longer. The Alienos were both dead on their feet by the end of it, unfortunately, and I probably wasn’t that much further off. We topped off the visit with a surprisingly good dinosaur-themed lunch, where I got a curry modelled into the shape of an erupting volcano.

After this, it was Nagahama bound. We decided to take a normal train rather than a bullet train, primarily because it was cheaper and we weren’t planning to do anything else for the day. We checked in at a fancy resort by Lake Biwa, and the Alienos wanted to check out the resort’s onsen (basically a hot spring), but it turned out that they didn’t allow people in if they had tattoos – not without shelling out at least 10 dollars for the stickers to cover them.

Our room was small, but nice, styled like a traditional Japanese room with a lakeside view. We went to sleep in futon beds and rested up for tomorrow.

Day 6

The mission statement for Nagahama was “relax”. And that’s exactly what I did. I had a walk around the nearby park, got a microwave meal from a 7-Eleven, and found some public toilets that were essentially just porcelain holes in the ground. After that, I went back to our hotel room and did some much-needed zoning out.

We all sort of did our own thing that day. HalfAlieno went to go check out a nearby figurine, museum Ghibli Friend went to go swim in the lake, while Mrs Alieno swam in the resort’s pool. Turns out that most Japanese people can’t swim, whereas us, as Australians, had to be taught to swim by law. They both impressed the locals with their ability to do breaststroke, and some kids even tried to mimic them.

I had lunch with Ghibli Friend at a cafe that didn’t have an English menu, then checked out the nearby Nagahama Castle. In what would become a trend with Japanese castles, however, it turned out that the entire place had been constructed after it had been demolished during the early 1600s. Only one tower remained, which had been turned into a museum for the Sengoku and early Edo periods of Japan, with scrolls, armours and swords all from the various samurai clans who’d laid claim to Nagahama during those periods. A major focus of the museum was the unification of Japan, and the war between those who were for it and those who were against it. All in all, very interesting.

We also saw a guy applying a hair dryer to a barbecue, for reasons beyond our comprehension.

This was also the day that we realised we’d made a slight miscalculation with our plans. Ghibli Friend had booked accommodation for me, Hipster Friend and British Friend in Hakone, a town that was built into a caldera near Tokyo. The plan was to take the trains and buses between Hakone and Tokyo back and forth while we were doing stuff in Japan’s biggest city. The place we were staying at had an onsen, a great view, everything. There was just one problem.

It was three hours away from Tokyo.

It very quickly became apparent that spending six hours every day going to and from Tokyo was going to be hell on all four of us, so we had to make some adjustments. We tried to cancel our Hakone stay, failed to get a response, and we decided that I, Ghibli Friend and Hipster Friend would spend one night in Hakone before booking our own accommodations in Tokyo and going our separate ways. British Friend decided to go straight to Tokyo,

After we’d done that, we went out into Nagahama to try and have some nice dinner to settle our minds. No nice dinner was found, unfortunately, as half the restaurants were closed and the other half were out of our price range. We were hungry, tired, and hot as hell, and I will be the first to admit that didn’t exactly conduct myself in the most pleasant of ways. We ended up cutting our losses and getting cup noodles, heading back to our room to prepare for tomorrow.

Day 7

Minor tidbit about me – I am a morning person. My friends are not. So while my friends were sleeping, I was up at 5:30 waiting to head to Hakone. This was where I split from the Alienos as they were going directly to Tokyo, heading off with Ghibli Friend. We took a bullet train to Odawara, where I learned that I could (thankfully) eat on them, unlike the other trains in Japan. We tried to get a look at the local castle, but we couldn’t get through the front door before having to rush off and catch a bus to Hakone. We were able to have some sweet rice balls called mochi, so that was nice.

Hakone took a bit of an adjustment. It was a volcanic region, so the air smelt of eggs and sulphur. All the restaurants were closed, unfortunately, so that was another night of cup noodles. The view from our room was gorgeous, which made our decision to leave the next day somewhat sad. Still, it was for the best. The bus ride had proven itself to be uncomfortable, and doing that every day for three days would’ve just sucked all the joy out of Tokyo.

I ended up chickening out of the onsen since you had to do it naked, and with Ghibli Friend heading to it too … well, it just wasn’t going to happen.

Went to bed that night dreaming of Tokyo …

Day 8

Did not get a good night’s sleep this day. I had a horrible stomach ache that woke me up at midnight and I didn’t really get back to sleep. Possibly the sulphur in the air, or the thinner air.

Anyway, we took the bus down to Odawara, then took the train to Tokyo. I knew ahead of time that the city was enormous, but I was still unprepared for the sheer scale of it all. I believe this was also the day that I learned that the Imperial Family of Japan is still kicking around. I always assumed that they’d gone the way of most other monarchies, but it seems to be a situation similar to the British royal family, just less publicised.

Our first stop in Tokyo was teamLabs Borderless, a digital art exhibit in the heart of Tokyo. It’s one of those things that’s impossible to describe, being a trippy maze of light shows and optical illusions, but it was very fascinating. I bowed out before it got too overstimulating and ruined the experience, but I still had a great time.

Then we went to the Rainforest Cafe.

For those who don’t know, Rainforest Cafe is a chain of themed restaurants that originated in America, designed to make it feel like you’re eating in the middle of a jungle. They are infamously mid, and we decided to eat there as a joke. In fact, when we got the pasta and the drinks and found that they were alright, we were kind of disappointed. The chips they gave us put our fears to rest, thankfully, for they sucked. They tasted and felt as if they had been microwaved into an edible state ten minutes before they served it to us, and they most likely had.

Then came the burgers. Sweet mother of god, the burgers. I don’t think I have seen anything so sad, and never will again. The bread was floppy, it had a single onion ring instead of onions, the cheese looked as plasticy as you could get. Ghibli Friend would later describe it as worse than a burger from McDonalds, which is a low that I didn’t know we could even reach.

It was great.

After that, we got the chocolate volcano cake, which I will maintain should’ve been called the “Vol-CAKE-no”, but whatever. It was basically three large slabs of brownie topped with cream and ice cream, which is just as well, because it was basically inedible without the cream. The outside of each slab was drier than a brick, but the inside was gooey as anything. It’s like it didn’t know whether it wanted to be a cake or a brownie.

We took a group photo in the nearby photo booth to “commemorate” the experience, which took twice as many photos than it needed to, then a few more for good measure. Afterwards, we went our separate ways and I went to my hotel room, which I had to myself for the first time in the whole trip. I had a bit of technical issues with my room key, but everything worked out fine.

Day 9

I took my time with breakfast today, since I didn’t need to worry about waking anyone up. Once I was good and ready, I planned my day, then headed out.

The first step was buying a birthday present for my dad, which ended up being a packet of matcha tea, described to me as being about as strong as coffee and then some. Afterwards, I bought myself some sweets, a pink ball that kinda tasted like honey, and a pancake stuffed with sweetened red bean paste.

Afterwards, I went to visit the Meiji Shrine, dedicated to Emperor Meiji from the Meiji Restoration. The whole thing with this period was Japan opening up from its 250-year isolation and embracing rapid industrialisation and urbanisation (and imperialisation as well, which would unfortunately lead to them joining the Axis in WW2). The shrine was beautiful, surrounded by an enormous garden that I unfortunately did not have time to explore properly, as I had to rush off to join the Alienos and Pirate Friend at Ninja Kabuki.

Yes, you heard me right. Ninja Kabuki.

I mentioned kabuki before, and this event promised to be more of that. In all honesty, it was more of a tourist trap than anything else, and the story they put on was basically airlifted from the plot of Samurai Jack, but it was still a fun experience. The highlight of the show was when the showrunners invited people up on stage to play with some basic kabuki poses, and my friends ended up getting up to do it because no-one else was willing to volunteer. There was this one girl there who just looked completely unamused by the whole thing, which I personally found very amusing.

Afterwards, we went to the Pokemon Centre in the Shibuya district. There was still no Turtwig, unfortunately, so I decided to head back to my hotel and plan for the next day.

Day 10

We were all doing our own thing today, so I went to some art museums by myself. My first stop was the Sumida Hokusai Museum, primarily because Google lied to me about the admission price (told me it was 500 yen when it was actually 1000). That turned out to be a very engaging experience. You know that famous Japanese painting with the crashing waves, with Mt. Fuji in the distance? Yeah, it was a whole museum dedicated to the guy who painted that. I wasn’t allowed to take pictures, but I was very impressed with the whole thing. I picked up an artbook and an acrylic stand-up of one of the artworks, then went to the next place.

The National Modern Art Museum was next. I accidentally saw the exhibits out of order, but it was still a great experience. I took another 300 photos or so of the artworks, mainly just the ones that impressed me. I debated whether or not to visit the Imperial Palace while I was in the area, as it was just across the road from the art museum, but I decided against it. There were police checking everyone who came in, since the Imperial Family still lived there, and I didn’t really want to be under surveillance while I was trying to relax.

On my way back to my hotel, I bought some cold soba noodles with a side of pork and drenched in a very salty broth. I got some ice cream (which I had been getting basically every day since I’d arrived because Christ it was hot), then rested at my hotel room. I sorted out my next bullet train, as I was heading to Nagoya after Tokyo, then went to bed.

Day 11

I woke up at 6 in the morning, ready to take on the world.

My bullet train wasn’t going to leave until 1:30.

While waiting for the train, I set out to relax in the Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden, yet another beautiful Japanese garden that apparently has these crazy cherry blossoms in spring. I also accompanied Hipster Friend as he bought an old Playstation 3 decorated with a character from Final Fantasy XIII (which will apparently explode without the right power input, so I wish him luck with getting that thing working). After that, it was time to ride to Nagoya.

Nagoya was very hot. Hotter than Tokyo. I think it was because Nagoya was much further south than Tokyo was, so I just forgot what the heat was like. My hotel was a direct line from the train station, and heading there I saw banners for no less than three of those Japanese “hostess clubs”. One of the banners had pictures of girls that were almost certainly AI-generated, which got bit of a laugh from me. I checked in, had more cup noodles, then went to bed.

Day 12

I was at Nagoya with Pirate Friend. Ghibli Friend was still in Tokyo, checking out the Ghibli Museum (hence the name), while most of my other friends had headed to Osaka, to prepare for the end of our holiday. We had a bunch of things to check out in Nagoya starting with, of course, the local Pokemon Centre.

There really is just a Pokemon Centre in every major city in Japan. It’s that big of a thing.

There was still no Turtwig, unfortunately, barely any of the Generation 4 Pokemon in fact. I bought a plush of Serperior to cope, then followed Pirate Friend around as she did some shopping at the local equivalent the 2-dollar store.

After this, we went to Nagoya Castle to learn some history. It was another reconstruction, as the original castle and palace had burned during WW2, but it seemed to be a faithful rebuilding of the original. They had the blueprints and everything. We weren’t allowed to explore the main tower or the gardens, so we just explored the palace and the nearby museum. What was cool was that they had wandering actors dressed as samurai and ninjas, supposedly based off of real historical figures (but you know how that usually goes).

Then, we went to the pig cafe.

No, not a cafe where we ate nothing but pork. I mean a cafe with piglets that would swarm around you and you were allowed to pat and cuddle them.

That was a very cute experience. Piglets are one of those animals that do not sound as cute as they look. They fought amongst each other to sit in our laps, squealing and shrieking all the time, but once they settled down it was quite nice. We weren’t allowed to feed them for some reason, which is what I would assume half the experience would be about, but whatever.

We got dinner at the shopping mall we’d found ourselves in and explored the nearby shops. We went to one of those gacha arcades, an anime shop where she bought some merch from Jujitsu Kaisen and One Piece, and a whole shop dedicated to the toys and games published by Bandai Namco. It was about 9 in the evening by the time we made it back to our hotel, upon which I went to sleep and prepared for another bullet train for tomorrow.

Day 13

So, this was my last day in Nagoya. I was heading back to Osaka today, but again, the bullet train wasn’t until the afternoon. So I killed some time by heading to the Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology. As you might expect, it was basically an enormous advertisement for Toyota, but it was also a very interesting history of the company. Apparently they got their start in manufacturing automatic looms (as in cloth and tapestry machine loom), and then moved into automobiles basically when they got popular.

After this, I met up with Pirate Friend again and took the bullet train back to Osaka. We split ways when we arrived, each going to a different place. Of course, I went to the bestest place on earth.

The Pokemon Centre.

The one at Osaka had a Grotle, which was the closest I got to Turtwig over the whole trip. Deciding this was obviously a conspiracy against me personally, I headed off to my hotel. I got lost around on the way back, but I eventually found where I was staying, which was a joint place with the Alienos. They’d gone out to see a Japanese movie, so I arrived before them, had more cup noodles, then went to bed.

Day 14

This was the last leg of my holiday before I headed back to Australia with the Alienos, so this day and the next I spent “winding down” instead of doing anything too exciting. Most of my other friends went to Universal Studios Japan, a theme park that I knew for a fact was going to be stupidly busy, so I decided to go to the nearby Osaka Castle instead.

That turned out to be stupidly busy as well. There was a giant line to get into the castle, far longer than I was willing to wait for. So, I decided to check out the neighbouring shop and figurine museum. I bought some chopsticks from the shop and saw some pretty cool figures of monsters and animals (and decidedly not the anime girl ones).

After that, I met up with British Friend for lunch, as he was just arriving in Osaka. We tried out some takoyaki, which turned out to be balls of fried dough filled with minced octopus. This was not to my taste, as it turned out. Something about it didn’t sit right with me. I don’t know if it was the meat or the dough or what, but they were just not to my taste.

After that, the day was done. I went back to my hotel room, accidentally locked the Alienos out, and got ready for tomorrow – my last day in Japan.

Day 15

I woke up at 7 o’clock to get my baggage organised and to check out. Me and the Alienos departed together, but we split up since they wanted to do a couple of last-minute things before they departed. I had already gotten what I wanted out of this trip by this point. I enjoyed Japan immensely, but I was ready to come home.

I went to a park in the city and sat down to do some writing. Around 12, we met up as a group and had a brunch at a surprisingly good Italian restaurant. After we’d had our pizzas, we split up again and I went to Namba station to wait for a train to the airport. I went into a nearby bookshop to search for a Japanese translation of A Game of Thrones (I can’t read Japanese, but the covers for those translations are sick). Navigating the book store proved too difficult, however, so I went back to the station and got an iced chocolate.

I took the express train to the airport, met back up with the Alienos (as I was on the same flight as them), and we took the overnight flight out of Osaka and back home…

Day 16

… After a brief stopover in Cairns.

For those who don’t know, Cairns is basically right next to the Great Barrier Reef, pride and joy of the state of Queensland. Our next flight wasn’t until, like, 7 o’clock or something, so our first stop was to speak to a flight attendant to try and get an earlier flight. Thankfully, we managed to get one at 4 instead, but we still arrived at 6 in the morning, so we had to find a way of killing the other 8 hours until our flight.

We took an Uber to the pier, since Cairns doesn’t have proper transport out or into the airport, where we sat down on a shady bench and had a much-needed nap. After that, we had some good old Australian pies for lunch and some ice cream. Then, we took another rest and watched a warship sail into the nearby harbour. Finally, we took another Uber back to the airport, had some burgers, then took our last flight back home.

And then, finally, our adventure was over.

My Thoughts

Japan is a fascinating place, and just dripping with history. Australia is a much younger country by comparison, so we don’t anything nearly as old as what’s in Japan. It has shrines that have been basically unchanged for hundreds of years, and people are still performing rites and rituals that have existed since the middle ages, probably even earlier. With the exception of the big cities, it’s a very quiet and reserved place, with people placing such a big emphasis on politeness and respect. It’s still got problems, to be sure. Between the minor things like a lack of public bins and the crazy amount of plastic waste that gets created, I’m not sure that it’s a place I’d ever want to live in, but it was a beautiful travel destination, and I feel like I’ve definitely grown as a person being there. Perhaps I’ll even return someday, probably during a cooler time of the year.

Anyway, that’s that. I’ll see you guys in two weeks with another blog post!