No.856617
Are you planning a trip to Japan? Are you currently there? Or did you just come back from your journey? Feel free to ask any questions about the trip or share your plans, experiences, pictures and videos.
I went for two weeks back in May, arriving at Narita Airport and taking another plane to Sapporo. From there I traveled south, visiting Hakodate, Takayama, Takamatsu, and Kagoshima before heading back to the Kansai region and finishing in Tokyo. I wanted to visit the four main islands and make the most out of my JR Pass. It was my first time in Japan and also the first time that I traveled alone. I had planned on mostly going to the regular tourist spots but I still managed to visit many pilgrimage sites. Despite getting off to a rocky start with a mad dash through Narita Airport and almost destroying my legs on the first day with what I thought would be an easy hike, I had a very enjoyable and fulfilling vacation. Let me share some of the pictures that I took with my shitty cameras.
No.856620
Japanese culture is proof that fascism works.
No.856621
>Feel free to ask any questions about the trip
Abundance of jk there and how easy is it for a foreigner to talk to them?
No.856624
I'm going to japan with 3 of my friends in januarey for 12 days. We dont have the exact schedule planned out but we are all staying in airbnbs in Tokyo and Osaka. If it were just me then I would want to go to the less tourist trap locations but i'm not complaining. The first place we're staying at is like a 10 minute walk from Akihabara so i'm happy for that.
I would like some suggestions to help flesh it out better and also for future trips to the more rural areas.
No.856627
>>856617
Did you eat an Ekiben while you were there?
No.856630
I am also coincidentally going to visit Japan with 3 friends in January, we're planning on spending the majority of our time in the Tokyo area, especially visiting Chiba since we recently got deep into Oregairu. There's talks too of visiting Hokkaido since it'll be winter, so if there are any good pilgrimage spots there, it would be great to know.
No.856632
Hiking Mount Moiwa. I only grabbed a couple of onigiri and a bottle of water before starting the climb. I think I would have fainted if there hadn't been vending machines with drinks at the top. As I reached the top, I was greeted by the ED from the second season of Konosuba, played by a guy with a harmonica. I think I have a bit on video. It was worth it for the view and the sense of accomplishment, but that was short lived because I had to rush down to check out from my hotel.
>>856621
JK everywhere, and apparently May is when schools do their field trips so also plenty of JC and JS. They're usually talking with each other or on the phone. I only ever asked for directions, they were friendly, especially if you started the conversation in Japanese.
>>856624
You can spend a couple of days visiting the main tourist attractions in Tokyo, reserve a whole day for Akihabara or Nakano Broadway though if you're gonna be shopping for anime goods. There's many day trips you could do from Tokyo, such as Hakone (Evangelion), Oarai (GuP) or the Fuji Five Lakes Area (Yuru Camp). Same thing with Osaka, though I would recommend you stay in Kyoto instead, there's more nice things to see.
No.856642
>>856627
I did buy a self heating lunch from the ekiben lady at Sapporo Station. The rest of the days I traveled very early so I had to get breakfast at conbinis.
>>856630
If you like Love Live Sunshine, it might be worth it to visit Hakodate. I think there's a couple of pilgrimage spots in Sapporo for Working and Silver Spoon.
No.856646
I'll post more after I get some sleep.
No.856647
Been for 11 months in Japan in 2015/2016. Going back next October for 3 weeks.
I'm searching for stuff I haven't seen yet. 3 weeks is long yet short. I think I'm going to venture around Shizuoka/Yamanashi (Aokigahara, Mt. Fuji...), go to Tokyo for Reitaisai. I haven't decided much so far and I have only one month left.
This is kinda stressing.
No.856650
Anyone ever been to Nishinomiya? It's a pilgrimage site for me because it's where Haruhi takes place. How close could I get to North High before the police come to take me away?
No.856657
>>856650
Pretty sure you can go as far as the entrance. I'd like to visit the area as well. Not sure when I will find the time/money though. Crazy how good the attention to detail in the anime is though.
No.856659
>>856630
I wanted to go to Hokkaido too but I was the only one in my group that wanted to. Theres always next winter for comfyness.
>>856632
Hakone looks very pretty during winter and one of my friends is very big into Evangalion so i'll definitely bring it up.
No.856660
Okinawa is certainly a great place to go to.
No.856662
>>856659
Hokkaido is probably my favourite place in Japan. Great choice, especially in winter.
No.856663
>>856662
Woops, my apologies for the third picture, I hadn't noticed the bad quality.
No.856681
>>856617
Just came back from Japan. What a fucking amazing country. Was in Tokyo for a bit, then rode a motorcycle up to Aomori via Akita. It's super comfy country riding and hiking and the temperature isn't a bitch either. I hope to be back soon.
No.856687
>>856681
How much is renting a bike? I want to go on a bike trip sometime, probably mostly Hokkaido.
No.856692
>>856660
I'm going to Okinawa soon, any suggestions for things I should do/see while there?
No.856694
>>856642
What kind of food did you eat when you were there? Was it combini snacks/foods only or did you visit a restaurant too? What about local street-food? フード は 美味しい か
>>856646
On a scale from 1 to 10, how comfy were the train rides? I know I would have spent the entire ride staring out the window.
>>856681
How does the driver's license stuff work out over there? Can you just rent a bike and get going if you have a western driver's license, or do you need to pass a local test? What was driving on their roads like?
No.856699
My trip to Japan was one of the best things ever
No.856700
>>856630
>>856624
What the fuck? I'm also going in January.
No.856701
>>856700
>>856630
>>856624
>inb4 the three fiends all browse /a/
No.856704
>>856701
>inb4 they all share a hotel room
No.856708
>>856630
>visiting Chiba since we recently got deep into Oregairu
If you dig deep enough, you'll find the exact location of the high school, one of the cafés they visited, and even 8man's neighbourhood with the path that leads to that school. And of course there is Disneyland too. I feel especially autistic for writing this.
No.856712
>>856617
I'm going on a journey at the end of October. I'm doing some basic Nip lessons but I know next to nothing. Originally I wanted to hold off and go next year, but circumstance dictated the price of a trip to Japan will continue to skyrocket until after the Olympics, and I was worried that my family would steal my money yet again if I didn't put down the money immediately. Lo' and behold, my family tried to extort $2,000 out of me (on top of all the bills I already pay for those ungrateful shits) literally the day after I bought my plane ticket and first week's worth of hotels. I've decided going as a filthy gaijin was the correct decision. My goal is to be able to read at least a bus sign/subway station map before I get out there.
I'll be spending a little under two weeks in Hokkaido, mainly in Hakodate/Sapporo/Toyako (with a small trip to Shiretoko Shari to go wrestle with brown bears and win obviously) before heading back to see a couple cities in the mainland on my way home.
No.856713
>>856712
Fuck, meant Shari Utoro, not Shiretoko.
No.856718
>>856712
>that my family would steal my money yet again
How does that even work unless you are underage?
No.856721
>>856687
If you're going to be doing a lot of highway riding, I'd recommend something 400cc+ which costs 9000¥/day and above, not including collision waivers. If you stick to local roads, you could easily get by with a cheaper 125-250cc depending on your load (see reply below).
>>856694
Almost all rental companies I've ever dealt with, both car and motorcycle, require an international driver's license. You can obtain it through some auto-association in your home country and, provided you have a full-license at home, it translates to a full-license in Japan. No local test is required, though you will get a manual on some of the road signs you might see. This is assuming you come from a western country; not sure what it's like if you come from a shithole.
Driving Japan's roads was a unique experience. I did not hear a single person use their horn and I never saw any road-rage, even in the Tokyo CBD. The speed-limits are ridiculously low. We're talking 30-40km/h on an empty, 2-lane country road and 80km/h on immaculate highways. In my experience, almost no-one did the speed limit and, talking with other gaijin riders/drivers, this is extremely common in Japan. So, as long as you keep up with everyone and don't ride too baka, you'll be fine.
No.856725
>>856681
>>856721
One more thing I forgot to mention: If you're in Tokyo, avoid Roppongi, especially at night-time. The place is shat up with lots of niggers and sandniggers. Only place I went to in Japan where there were regular "Safety Patrol Officers" which should tell you everything that you need to know.
No.856730
I went to C94 and it was pretty sweet, I was able to meet some cool artists and got a bunch of doujins and some merch. It was remarkably pleasant and pretty easy to get around the first two days considering how packed it was. The third day was noticably worse though, it was the most crowded and there were more unpleasant people shoving groups, as well as more obvious bulk buyers.
>>856725
>avoid Roppongi, especially at night-time. The place is shat up with lots of niggers and sandniggers.
Definitely, Roppongi was easily the worst place I encountered.
I didn't explore too much (Kyoto, Osaka, a day trip to Sendai and the Ueno/Akihabara area of Tokyo mostly) but I spent one night out in Roppongi and it was one night too many.
No.856741
>>856630
>>856700
Small world. Hope we all have a great time while we're there!
No.856746
I'm planning on traveling to Japan this October. I'm kinda having trouble finding accommodations though, because it seems all the ryokans I'm interested in require a Japanese home address (trying to book them on Jalan, none of them are available on the english version though). If anyone with experience could help a fellow gaijin out I'd appreciate it, otherwise I'll probably just book a hotel room.
No.856747
Me and some friends are planning a trip next April for about two weeks and we barely got the spots planned out. So far we have Tokyo, Nagoya, Kyoto, and Osaka while one of the guys wants to see some of the wilderness including Aokigahara Forest
No.856760
>>856718
It's a long story, but basically I'm too poor to move out without being homeless for several months, but my family is more poor than I am.
Polite sage because blogposting.
No.856761
>>856746
I'm using a travel agent but if your trip is in October as well, it might be too late to find one at this point.
No.856765
>>856746
You could try your luck with airbnb and see if there are good prices that arent booked in october.
No.856778
>>856721
I did my own research on the driving licenses. Turns out that Japan doesn't accept the international license of some countries, like Switzerland, Germany, Russia, Lybia, Mexico, Iran, Afghanistan, and some other shitholes, They accept a "translated" driver's license, which is just a legitimate copy of your original driver's license that was translated so a nip cop could read it and identify it as genuine. This translated license only lasts as long as your standard tourist visa. If you want to stay longer and keep a valid driver's license you need a proepr Japanese license.
Though there are many bilateral contracts between the different countries that regulate how you can get a real Japanese license instead of the translation of your own original license. You need to redo the entire test in some cases, and in others you get a local license after having your eyes checked.
Interestingly enough: Japanese driver's licenses have a reward system built in. Well, it's more of a status thing. At first your license has a green stripe. After three years without losing your license due to accidents or traffic violations you get a new license with a blue stripe. And after two years with a blue license and no accidents you get a gold license. I kinda like this system.
No.856782
>>856778
What are the benefits of the gold strip?
Also I wanted to import a JDM car in the US and my family wanted to go to Japan next so I figured I'd test drive the my dream car first. Lancer Evo 5 over there and there are quite a few companies that are established on importing cars before and after the 25th year rule. So where can I test drive cars or do I buy it before hand then test drive it? Any ideas?
No.856799
>>856782
Mostly the bragging rights (and status), but a gold license only has to be renewed every 5 years.
No.856809
>>856692
Indeed I have some.
First and foremost, the Churaumi suizokukan (Big aquarium churaumi) is a MUST see. Take a bus from the city center and you're there very easily. It's a true dive into the aquatic world with hundreds, if not thousands, of species kept in small aquariums with descriptions, lot of reading, and the world's biggest aquarium to behold with its own ecosystem. The glass is 2 meters thick and hosts lots of species that you can watch swimming around while you drink something or eat some ice cream. It's a true experience, trust me.
After that, you have Shuri Castle (shuri-jo) which is definitely something to visit as it has a very specific architecture and the stuff to read inside explains a lot about the former Ryuukyuu Kingdom, which was the former name of Okinawa and the small surrounding island before the Meiji Restauration forcefully made the archipel into a province a Japan.
Kokusai-doori is the main street in the city of Naha, which is the island's most important city and it has a lot of stores. Be careful of scams though, it attracts lots of tourists and the shopkeepers know it. You have a big market just near to avenue in which you can easily find places to eat lots of fishies.
There's also a fun place where you pay a little sum to open oysters to get a pearl which a can keep as a souvenir while the guy takes pictures of you.
I also went to the Valley of Gangala (がんがらの谷) and to Okinawa World where you can explore caves and see Okinawians crafts.
And if you want to rest, I can only recommend you to go to a nearby small island by boat. I went to Tokashiki Island where you see things like the first picture in my previous message. Water is awesome and crystal clear, sun was scorching hot (it was in August), and I just laid down on the beach and climbed on rocks, which could have killed me but hey, why the fuck not. There are several activities like scuba-diving, jet-ski, boat-renting but you need to book a long time before and it's very expensive.
No.856810
>>856799
I imagine if you ended up in a serious car accident, the Japanese courts would take into consideration the fact that you're a gold license carrier.
No.856814
>>856721
>30-40km/h on an empty, 2-lane country road and 80km/h on immaculate highways
>no one did the speed limit
That sounds pretty bad even if I was only riding for fun. 30kph is literally tractor speed.
No.856815
>>856699
That starbucks looks like the place that boy had a long conversation with the guy he kidnapped in GitS: SAC.
No.856816
>>856694
I tried a little bit of everything. I usually bought snacks and breakfast in the morning and then ate whatever I could find during the day before eating dinner at a restaurant. One day I blew most of my daily budget trying out pachinko (Don't spend over 1000 yen on pachinko, it's not worth it), so I just got some cup noodles and a beer. とても美味しかった
No.856820
>>856816
Is it possible to get by mostly on vegetable dishes? I'm not a vegan, but most things I've seen in food anime don't appeal to me very much.
No.856822
>>856820
Why would you do this? Washoku is extremely healthy and nutritionally balanced.
No.856823
>>856820
What kind of faggot are you?
No.856824
>>856822
I don't care how healthy it is when to me it tastes like shit
>>856823
A huge one
No.856826
>>856824
Well you're in luck because it tastes great. Nothing better than some good fish and miso soup from the get-go in the morning.
No.856827
>>856824
Have you had Japanese food, or did some shitty "Japanese" restaurant run by chinks ruin everything for you?
No.856832
>>856824
Mostly vegetable dishes sounds delicious. Even as a weightlifter, meat is something I reserve more for after a hard workout with how heavy it makes me. I like vegetables too much.
No.856835
>>856694
The rides on the Shinkansen are 10/10, at least on the green car. With all the walking around I was doing, they were the only time I could rest my legs and recharge my phones/pocket wi-fi/camera. But you go through a lot of tunnels so looking out of the window is not really an option. The local trains though are amazing. The ride through the mountains from Toyama to Takayama was beautiful. I got to ride all kinds of trains.
>>856712
You'll be fine as long as you can read at least hiragana and katakana. It would be very hard to get lost considering every station (even in non-JR lines) has Japanese (kanji along with hiragana) and English signs. Just make sure you double check the stations where you are getting off.
No.856837
Please recommend me nice hidden places, knowing I've already been in Japan for quite some time.
No.856849
>>856826
>>856827
I haven't had any "proper" Japanese food since I've never been to Japan, but I already don't like most local meat dishes which are presumably prepared decently.
>>856832
>I like vegetables too much.
Usually people tend to be the other way around. I don't know, even with the meat dishes I'm okay with, I prefer the vegetables/enjoy that part more.
No.856867
YouTube embed. Click thumbnail to play.
Ok, this is getting out of fucking hand. How many of you faggots have been to Japan, how many have concrete plans to go there, and how many only have a diffuse wish to visit some day?
>>856816
>>856818
Most of this stuff looks super expensive. I assume that conbini snacks are not terribly expensive (but not cheap either considering the amount you actually get), and street food is rather cheap, but what about the restaurants. How much did you spend on average on food, and how would you rate the overall quality/quantity? I tend to eat a lot simply because I am /fit/, and I would hate to blow my budget because nip portions are tiny. Did you get to talk to a qt waitress and did you visit a maidu cafe at some point?
それは高価なですか
>>856849
>>856824
>>856820
I don't know what's wrong with you, but you are in luck. Eating meat wasn't part of Japanese culture for a VERY long time historically speaking. In fact Japan was mostly vegetarian (with the exception of seafoods) until the European traders arrived.
Embed related.
No.856877
>>856867
I have my plane ticket for October. Just looking for stuff I haven't done before, though I think I'm gonna go back to Kyoto or Nara at the beginning of my trip anyway.
No.856879
>>856867
I want to go there at some point before I die, but that's as specific I can be. I'm a poorfag and I will continue to be one for the foreseeable future. And even if I somehow get enough money to go to Japan and somehow overcome all the inconveniences that come with visiting Japan from a third world country that isn't the US, what I'll find there after 2020 might be soul-crushing.
No.856900
>>856879
Anon I have a yearly salary of about $20,000 and I've managed to save the money to go in 8 months. So can you!
No.856906
>>856900
That is, it took me 8 months.
No.856909
>>856867
>Japanology
For those anons unfamiliar with it, it's a informational series on Japan. It's supremely cozy.
No.856910
YouTube embed. Click thumbnail to play.
>>856867
Damn it all! That was the wrong video. It's very informational never the less.
This video contains an explanation about when and how large scale consumption of meat came to Japan.
>>856900
He said he is from a third world country. Being a poorfag somewhere like Brazil or Egypt may mean that you will never have enough money to go anywhere.
The internet is a curse and a blessing at the same time. It allows you to see the world, but it allows you to glimpse at what you will never truly see.
No.856911
>>856900
Nigger that's called being rich. I'd say an average yearly salary is the equivalent of $7000 here.
No.856928
>>856867
I hope to travel the beginning of next year, but it's going to depend on how well the next two months go. I want to visit before next summer at least.
No.856965
>>856867
The meals at conbinis are usually between 500 and 600 yen. Snacks like potato chips and onigiri are around 200 yen. I aimed to spend less than 4000 yen on food every day. I did talk to some very nice waitresses but I didn't have a chance to go to a maid cafe.
In >>856816, the first meal was 500 yen including a melon pan, the yakiniku was 3300 yen, the grilled eel set was 3000, the conveyor belt sushi was about 2000 for the 10 plates I grabbed (mixing expensive and cheap ones), and the curry was 900. Everything was really good and filling, but portions do tend to be on the smaller side. I'd say the only thing that is not worth the money is Kobe beef, which cost me over 8000 yen.
For the stuff in >>856818 the takoyaki were about 600 yen, the next three were breakfast buffet included with the room and the last one was at a family restaurant, about 1500 yen for the two dishes and unlimited refills.
No.856982
>>856911
>If you work 52 weeks, 40 hours you telling me you make 3$ a hour?
No.857023
>>856965
Thank you for your information, anon. I appreciate it a lot!
No.857028
>>856982
There are lots of places in the world where people earn that little. How do you think you can buy shit so cheaply in your country?
No.857448
>>856694
If you're on a budget, I'd suggest going to the "fast-food" chain of Japan; Matsunoya. You can get a steaming hot double fillet of tonkatsu with large rice and miso soup for 780¥ which is perhaps one of the better deals I saw whilst traveling there. Also, if you're in a business area around lunch time, there are sometimes various small-time bento sellers who sell fresh lunch boxes (a step up for kobinis) for about 250-500¥.
No.858104
>>856867
Got back about two days ago. Spent two months there. I go twice a year and have been doing so for the last three or so years.
No.858106
>>858104
How can one afford to live in heaven for 1/6th of the year?
No.858130
>>858106
I don't have to pay for a place to stay and I've got 49% ownership of the place I work at.
No.858135
>>858130
Don't tell me you have family over there.
No.858141
>>858135
The best way I'm gonna put it to you is I've had my manga hand translated for the last thirteen years or so and I get in shit for not doing my reps. I have my oddball obligations and relaxation to tend to.
No.858243
>>856809
Neat. I'll only be there for a few days, but I'll try to squeeze at least a couple of those in there.
No.858291
No.858354
I want to go eventually, and my reasons have changed since middle-high school. Anime isn't even my main reason for going anymore, it's actually an afterthought now. I really just want to go because of how goddamn gorgeous and clean it is. I also want to experience the cultural differences firsthand, get to know what it's like to live in a non-fucked country for a bit, even if only a few weeks.
No.858391
No.858403
>>858391
>何ですか？
はい。日本語は難しいです。私はばかです。
No.858410
>>856617
I have no interest in Japan. Japan is not 2D, it is 3DPD. Infact if you consider 2D as a rebellion against the PD of 3D, and consider how Anime is created in Japan, one could even go as far as say Japan is the MOST 3DPD place on earth. All of those tortured otaku, neet, and hikikomori aren't trying to escape the 3DPD of America or Australia or Germany. They're trying to escape the 3DPD of Japan.
2D has no borders or language. 2D transcends nation and culture.
Because 3DPD is PD. Because 2D is love. Because 2D is life.
No.858412
>>858410
>Japan is not 2D
You'd be surprised.
No.858945
To the anons who travelled to Japan, what were your level of Japanese? I'll be visiting Japan during the summer and while I'm certain that I would be able to understand the hiragana/katakana (or the signs in English) I would like to talk to the natives and maybe make some friends. When you visited Japan did you make any Japanese friends or did you just visit the tourist hotspots alone or with your friends?
No.858969
I hope any anons in Japan right now are alright despite the typhoon. Though being in Japan during a typhoon would be cool.
No.858990
>>858945
>level of Japanese
Its so-so.
>make any Japanese friends
Drank with a bunch of interesting folk when I wasn't taking folk around helps the latter are native speakers.
No.858995
Kind of a spoonfeeding question, but is there a general area of Japan that is worth visiting? If I were to go it would be my very first time abroad and I would not like the idea of keeping up with train and planes in a foreign country. If I were to only stay in one or two hotels, where would that be?
No.859005
>>858969
Didn't realize the typhoon was that strong.
No.859006
>>858969
>All those murdered Kcars and trees
No.
>>858995
>but is there a general area of Japan that is worth visiting?
All of them. I've been told Southern Japan is nice in the summer, and Hokkaido is really pretty in the autumn.
>If I were to go it would be my very first time abroad and I would not like the idea of keeping up with train and planes in a foreign country.
Do you want my optimistic answer to this, or my honest answer to this? The optimistic answer is that you can go anywhere in Japan with a little planning and even a foreigner can get around train stations if they speak English.
The honest answer is if you're not willing to start studying right now and put in some serious effort, you really ought to stay in Osaka/Tokyo/Okinawa and not leave one of those three places. In those areas, basically everyone speaks English or can at least give you directions/understand you're a filthy gaijin. Pic related. If you go outside the green zone, you will have to be social and you will have to read signs. Personally I think that's just respectful to be able to put in at least that much effort, but if you aren't, I would heavily advise you to stay in those three areas as your kind shouldn't leave those areas as you will likely have a panic attack from being exposed to non-western culture, ideas, and languages. I'm an idiot and I have no problems being called a fucking idiot, so my first overseas trip to Japan will involve going to one of the pink zones in a couple months in pic related, but that's because I won't be able to go anywhere overseas (of my own will) for possibly 3-8 years after this trip, so I'm willing to put myself through that ordeal to see a true Japan. If you don't have a situation where you can basically never go back/things will have changed dramatically by the time you can return to Japan, I would advise you to go to an English-friendly city for like a week (maybe see two English-friendly cities for a week each) with a pseudo-itinerary of what you want to do each day (keep it relaxed/be prepared to change it once you're there), and then use that as motivation to learn to not be a filthy gaijin/not consider great things like taims as inconveniences.
No.859015
Heat-waves, mudslides, typhoons
Summer 2018 is not good for Japan...
No.859023
>>859006
Hiroshima was a wonderful place to get lost in, I honestly spent the night wandering around eating some of the best burgers and okonomiyaki. Don't know how I got back to the place I was staying.
>>859015
That heatwave was some bullshit. Didn't see any of that mudslide/flooding stuff that had been going on though.
No.859026
>>859006
Anon, you're still living in the stone age. Nowadays everything has a GPS, it's impossible to get lost as long as you have battery.
No.859084
>>858969
What was the strength of the typhoon? I assume they have a ranking system similar to hurricanes.
No.859094
>>859084
Apparently it was a category 2 r 3 storm. Though the Saffir–Simpson scale is not very accurate when it comes to damage prediction though.
I did a quick search and it turns out that Typhoon has it's own Wikipedia article:
>Typhoon Jebi, known in the Philippines as Typhoon Maymay, is currently a weakening extratropical cyclone over Primorsky Krai, Russia. Jebi was tied as the most intense tropical cyclone of the Northern Hemisphere in 2018, and is considered to be the strongest typhoon to strike Japan since Typhoon Yancy in 1993.
>known in the Philippines as Typhoon Maymay
>Typhoon Maymay
This made me chuckle.
Did anybody visit the underground water drainage system in Tokyo? I heard they only offer tour in Japanese. How hard was it to understand what they said?
No.859099
>>859094
>Typhoon Maymay
Meme magic is going too far. Mankind should have never dabbled in things it cannot understand.
No.859116
>>859094
>typhoon maymay
I hope the earthquake yesterday and the typhoon hasn't done too much damage.
No.859173
>>859026
GPS can cause.more harm than good. There's a number of mountains in Hokkaido for instance that have the same English-Spelling names as mountains in mainland Japan and your GPS is programmed to go to the more popular option unless you forcefeed it coordinates.
No.859207
>>858969
>broken window that high up
Wonder if it was flying debris or just sheer air pressure that broke it. If it was air then that would mean >163db sound pressure levels.
No.859244
>>859173
>one crazy specific instance
It's still the most useful thing to carry around in a foreign country
No.859247
>>859207
Human hearing is logarithmic so it really doesn't matter once you reach ear-fucking levels of sound.
>>859244
I know a better solution that doesn't rely on electricity or hoping someone else knows what they're doing. It's called a map.
No.859253
>>859252
I'm reading exactly what I'm writing you post-internet hack. A map never lies unless the mapmaker lied. GPS is shit-tier every time I've relied on it. Whether it was telling me to make illegal U-turns, sending me to roads that don't exist, or trying to take me 50 miles away for the "nearest gas station" a GPS has fucked up repeatedly, but I've never been done wrong by a map and a couple minutes on the side of the road before I start driving to read it.
No.859255
>>859253
>a gps is bad because I can't deal with technology
You're hilarious, grandpa. Blaming the gps for mistakes you made yourself by not paying attention to your surroundings, that's exactly what my fifty years old dad does.
No.859259
>>859255
Using gps absolutely wrecks your ability to orientate yourself using your surroundings and if you use it to go someplace new, it'll take much longer to learn the route than if you look at a map beforehand and relied on your memory and perhaps some notes to go there.
That being said I still use gps myself because it allows you to be on autopilot most of the time. However gps is to a map what a dub is to a sub. Finding the way without any help on your own would be like learning japanese and watching raws I guess.
No.859261
>>859259
>Using gps absolutely wrecks your ability to orientate yourself using your surroundings and if you use it to go someplace new, it'll take much longer to learn the route than if you look at a map beforehand and relied on your memory and perhaps some notes to go there.
That doesn't really matter if you're just traveling somewhere though. Also, who cares if it'll end up taking longer? If you gotta go somewhere that often that knowing the exact route would make a difference then you'll pick it up more than soon enough anyways
No.859299
>>859023
>Earthquake takes out the electrical grid of Hokkaido
Google Hurricane JEBI
No.860023
YouTube embed. Click thumbnail to play.
>>858354
I've come to similar views. At first I was drawn by the glamor of the city and all the stuff it creates. But now I'm largely just interested in the nature and old rustic traditional sites. As I've grow older, the allure of novelty has largely dissipated and I've found myself more drawn towards the timeless peace and calm of the countryside.
No.860081
Anyone been to lake Biwa?
No.860544
>>856617
>eupho hill
Holy fucking shit OP, you did it and you are my hero!
Thank you for the thread.
No.860676
I'd do it in a heartbeat if I knew someone fluent in japanese, native or foreigner. I've tried learning it, but I barely made any progress. I want to be able to do my own thing once there so tour guides. I guess I should either meet someone good with languages or spend a fortune on years of japanese classes
No.860829
>>860676
Just join your local "Japanese American Society" if you're a burger and most have a native speaker who will teach you nip for like $20/session. Otherwise just stay in Tokyo/Osaka/Okinawa where like 70% of the population speaks English.
Just do it instead of making excuses, anon!
No.861350
Been planing to go next year in may. To tokyo.
Don't really have money so I can't travel around much, that pass is also expensive as heck can't afford that really. I think. Depends on how many places I want to visit outside of toyko.
So far I only thought about going to akihabara and as a huge higurashi fan shirakawa-go. Haven't looked through the thread yet but maybe I can get some more inspiration.
No.861356
>>861350
If you're planning on visiting more than three cities then the pass is worth it.
>>859299
I missed out on the catfish rolling over.
No.862136
Going to one of their fireworks festivals seems like it would be really fun.
No.862185
>>861350
>Don't really have money so I can't travel around much
I think if I were planning to visit overseas (especially Tokyo) I would save up until I was sure I had enough money to buy anime merch and also experience Japanese culture outside of otakudom. I hope you have fun even if you can't travel much! Maybe you could save up some extra cash since you have almost a year until your trip.
No.862186
>>860676
There's lots of free resources like Hiragana42 that uses mnemonics to help you memorize characters. Personally I've fallen off the wagon because I'm learning Korean but I still remember a lot of hiragana from the program so it must work. 頑張って!
No.862191
>>862186
>learning Korean
なぜ？
No.862197
No.862205
>>860829
>>862186
My sister went there with her husband and kids and she said people in japan barely knew english, and she went to the tourist spots.
No.862232
>>862205
You have to ask them in Japanese if they speak English otherwise they'll act like anyone would to a foreigner and play dumb so they don't get dragged into leading your ass around. Mexicans and Russians are notorious for this even if they speak English or German fluently.
No.862239
>>862232
Yeah, my Japanese teacher mentioned that too. Most are kinda insecure about it and would rather say nothing even if they know a bit of English.
>>862197
>私はそれが好きです
Well, having shit taste is the Anon's way of life after all.
Still, why Korean?
No.862241
>>862239
In my experience it was the older people who were more eager to speak English. I had one old guy approach me just so he could practice his English and another guy ask me "You liku Japanese sake?"
No.862255
>>862239
...Again, because I find it to be enjoyable. I like Korean music and TV shows and I try to cling to whatever meager happiness I can find.
No.862284
>>862255
>I like Korean music and TV shows
No.862482
>>862284
>people liking things that i dont like
No.862507
I never thought about it since I figured I'd spend the day shopping for shit. Which part of Tokyo should I spend my last night in Japan at, /a/? I'm currently thinking about a hotel that's close to Akihabara and not too far from the train stations/skylines so I can make my way back to Narita Airport the next day.
No.862601
And about phone-data plans?
Do you use the roaming rates, buy a sim chip, local plan, local phone?
No.862606
>>858945
I knew juat some basics greetings and phrases, can't write or read moonrunes for shit.
Had little issues.
Everything marked and the locals were always super-helpful.
You're more likely to find English-speaking japs in Ikebukero. Since people are constantly browsing, it's easy to find someone to tag along - after all, if both of you are browsing you might as well chat about the items.
No.862644
>>862601
If you're not planning on making calls buy the unlimited internet for a month.
No.862684
>>862601
I know Verizon has a special "international rate" that's like $30/month extra but you can activate it on any day and cancel it any day (and it doesn't start until you activate it). Can't speak for any of the better phone services.
No.862690
>>862601
Do you really need a phone over there? Unless you are going in a group (in which case it might be very important) you should be able to get by without one just fine.
No.862706
Do any of you have any tips on accommodation? I'll be staying in Nagasaki long enough to not be able to afford a hotel for my stay. Airbnb seemes like a good option but the government put some heavy regulations on the hosts so I'm not sure if I would find accommondation through Airbnb.
No.862739
>>856617
Is this meant to trigger the fight or flight instinct?
No.862740
>>862690
There's no reason not to carry a phone, especially when traveling to a foreign country.
No.862776
>>862690
I don't see a reason to really need a phone/I'd keep it off 99% of the time, but it would probably be good to have a phone for emergencies (or taking pictures, or getting in contact with someone to let them know you aren't dead).
No.862823
I spent the entire month of April in Japan earlier this year. I was in Tokyo for about a week and a half, then used the rest of my time traveling south and back, hitting Numazu, Enoshima, Hakone, and Kawasaki with various short stops on the way. While in Numazu I did a Love Live Sunshine pilgrimage of sorts some of you might remember me posting about it.
I had an incredible time while I was there, and will be returning in March. However, I just haven't gotten around to the monumental task of going through all 4,000 of my photos, even though I had planned to do so in the thread I made back in April. The closest I managed was daily updates on Instagram for my family, taken with my phone. I'll be working on photos bit by bit, and of course won't be posting all of them, but I hope I can finish before my second trip. Unfortunately, I'm a complete novice with cameras and was battling an overexposed sky the entire time, and I didn't learn about HDR until I got home. Now that I look through them, a lot of my early photos are grainy or blurry as well. Embarrassing that my phone managed to capture better images in many cases.
While I visited some tourist areas, I mostly tried to explore "every day" spots that gaijin might not otherwise visit. Every morning I'd simply pick a direction and start walking, and I was never disappointed by what I found. These first few are around Asakusa, where my "home base" was. There was a small Inari shrine next to my hostel. The cow was some sort of restaurant mascot.
No.862824
>>862823
A cat shrine(?) I found.
No.862825
>>862824
I'm pretty proud of these night shots.
No.862918
>>862824
>>862823
>>862825
These look great and I remember your thread!
I plan to do something very similar to what you did, and if I may ask: how much did an entire month in Japan cost (not including the flight).
According to some rough spreadsheet estimates, it should cost around 400.000¥ for a cheap hotel in Tokyo, good Food and transportation for 30 days.
If I left the major cities at the half way point food and especially the hotel should become a lot cheaper, right?
No.862935
>>862918
I went without a budget and my total ended up being $7000. That's flight, rail pass, airbnb, purchasing whatever event ticket I wanted and whatever food I wanted. So without flight that'd be just a little over $6000. As far as places to stay go, the only reason I got a hostel for the whole month was just so I had a place to keep my luggage. Whenever I left Tokyo, I'd book an airBnB and bring a small pack of clothing with me. I'd recommend against hotels, because they will always be expensive. The hostel, in the middle of Tokyo, was about $25 per night IIRC. AirBnB stays were similar prices. If an onsen offers overnight service, you can stay at one of those too (though might be pricey). There are also family-owned inns (Ryoukans) outside of cities that I'm sure you've seen in anime, which can be pricey but come with breakfast and dinner. Chika's house (Love Live Sunshine) is actually one of those inns IRL, and while I would've loved to stay in it you need to make a reservation weeks in advance!
These guys were hanging out around an area of Asakusa apparently famous for its Kabuki history. The sumo wrestler was another restaurant mascot, one that served chanko nabe which is the stew that wrestlers eat to get huge. The wrestler had a mechanism moving his legs up and down to make it look like he was stomping.
No.862937
>>862935
A park on the other side of the Sumida River, early in the morning.
No.862941
>>862937
I also have a ton of photos of backstreets and alleys.
Power lines are cool.
No.863128
>tfw spent over 6000 yen trying to get prize figs and shit in akibahabara without winning anything today.
No.863164
>>862935
>I went without a budget
I envy you.
>a little over $6000.
Sounds about right for my calculations. I don't plan to spend much time in the cities, so spending a couple bucks more on a nice hotel room there wouldn't be too bad.
I was planning to hike from ryoukan to ryoukan from south to north.
Those pictures look super comfy.
No.863184
>>863128
>¥6000 on gachashit
Wasn't gambling recently legalized in Japan? I think you have to spend like $50 at the door to get in though. Why bother with gachashit for figs that you could have likely gotten from some store, anon?
No.865079
>>862941
Some shots from around the shrine seen in the last picture here: >>862937
No.865197
>>865079
The tanukis were outside of a restaurant in an alleyway in Asakusa.
Inside and outside of the Tokyo Station in Ginza.
No.865198
>>865197
Some day and night shots from the top of Tokyo Skytree.
No.865232
What is Japanese country side like?
No.865296
>>865198
Did you visit the Moomin restaurant on the ground floor? I wanted to go but didn't get a chance last time.
No.865305
>>865296
I did! It was a pleasant accidental discovery and it was really cute. The staff fills empty seats at your table with Moomin characters!
The food wasn't bad either.
No.865306
>>865305
Boy that food looks good, I really need to visit the next time I'm there.
No.865314
>>865232
You ever see the sprawling rice-fields featured in Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni or Non Non Biyori? Like that. Super comfy.
No.865316
Going to Japan in 4 days. Haven't got anything prepared. Shit.
No.865317
>>865198
Those shots look beautiful.
>>865316
Where exactly are you going, anon? Would you mind keeping us updated?
No.865322
>>865316
Watch out for the hurricane. Haha.
No.865341
Hyakkendana backstreets in Shibuya.
I only looked into what this place was known for after I had left - apparently it's a cluster of small businesses cluttered in a single area, thus the name which literally translates to '100 stores'. If you live here, you can apparently buy everything you'd ever need to survive in this small block of stores.
That's the family-friendly description. If you actually know what you're looking at however, you'll see that the buildings are crammed with strip clubs, cabaret clubs, and love hotels. Some other shady businesses too I'm sure.
Sadly the Tomboy Cafe did not live up to its name.
No.865342
Anyone see any idols while you were there?
No.865344
>>865342
No idea who it was but there was a musical artist doing a meet-and-greet at an outdoor mall while I was in Kawasaki.
No.865347
>>865341
Some more around Shibuya.
No.865488
>>865341
>Tomboy Cafe
You can't leave us hanging like that.
No.865491
>>865488
>did not live up to its name.
Looking at the place I assume what he means is it's not a themed cafe and it has nothing to do with tomboys.
No.865494
>>865491
Is it possible to sue them for false advertising?
No.865514
>>856617
What time of year is the best to visit? I'm partial to the snow but I know the cherry blossoms are supposed to be outstanding. I'm planning to go to practice fluency and finally see the historical sites first hand that I keep reading about
No.865515
Stuff that disappointed you or let you down there? I for some reason got really interested in seeing/reading the realistic/bad side of Japan in recent days and the best source for this seems to be on 8ch.
No.865522
>>865494
>false advertising
More like shattering my maiden heart.
No.865535
>>865514
Fall/Spring for Honshu.
No.865540
>>856617
>Traveling to Japan
But why? Can't you just stay where you are and not fucking spread your cancerous westacuck shit to Japan?
No.865619
Does anyone here know of a good budget management app? I'd like to track my expenses once I'm in Japan and make sure I don't surpass certain thresholds (meaning I've created budgets for different categories, e.g. a food budget, anime merch budget etc. and want to make sure I'm not accidentally going over budget )
No.865628
No.865632
>>865628
Already made an excel spreadsheet, but I don't really want to screw around with excel on my phone. I was hoping for something a bit less tedious to use. Oh well, I'll probably find something.
No.865633
>>865632
Budget for the day rather than individual things.
No.865636
>>865633
This would be my suggestion as well.
Set yourself at say, $50 per day for food, and then just keep track of what you eat. Put any extra you have at the end of the day towards the next day's budget.
Other than spreadsheets, I guess you could just Google a budget app. I can't imagine the results would be that different from each other.
No.865645
>>865636
>Set yourself at say, $50 per day for food, and then just keep track of what you eat. Put any extra you have at the end of the day towards the next day's budget.
Yeah, that's what I'm planning to do anyway. I just like to make predictions for the whole two weeks I'm staying there.
No.865839
Hey there /a/nons, just wanted to ask if anyone knew if there were any airlines I should avoid for domestic flights during my trip to Japan. Looking for cheap stuff in Asia is difficult.
No.865857
>>865839
Malaysia Airlines.
No.867679
YouTube embed. Click thumbnail to play.
It would be fun to just spend time riding around on their various lines viewing the scenery.
>>865341
It seems a place named Tomboy Cafe would be rather gimmicky indeed. Kind of like those tourist traps with the giant moving crab and octopus statues above their storefront. I'd be more inclined to visit those "hidden" places that locals would recommend. Though that would require a much higher command of the language and deeper connections.
No.867723
>>865839
If you have a choice and live in North America, try to fly Air Canada, even if you have to take a layover flight through Canada. I've heard good things about them from other anons. For trans-pacific flights out of the US, if you don't plan on a puddle-jumper, you only have United and American really. If you fly United, make sure to get business-class, or if you have to fly economy, show up the day of your flight in a business suit/groomed and lie through your teeth/say you're a lawyer or some sort of legal worker so they'll be afraid of kicking you off the plane.
No.868775
Visited Japan about a month ago (Late August-Early September) and only just noticed this tr/a/vel thread. That and work has pounded me in the ass lately. I'm a bit late to the party but I'd love to answer any questions stragglers and lurkers might have. You probably recognize me from other tr/a/vel threads and the r/a/dio thread on the bunker from a few weeks ago where I did an impromptu travel report.
I landed at Narita, stayed in Tokyo a single night while drinking with a friend, went to Morioka two days, took a day trip to Tazawako and Akita, stayed in Hirosaki for two days (hory shet pretty), Hakodate for two days, Sapporo for three days, and actually got caught up in the Eastern Iburi Earthquake. So I got stuck in Sapporo for four days before I managed to catch a flight out to Fukushima. I had a reservation in Fukushima for that particular night, so that was lucky. Still, those few days in Sapporo after the earthquake were not fun. And I missed my day in Aomori and most of the day in Fukushima because of it. Then I spent two days in Hakone but got rained out of my desire to walk around Lake Ashi.
I'll give out a few places you have to visit in Tohoku/Hokkaido if you're in the area, and I have some great advice for domestic air travel along with car rentals, if anyone's interested. Same deal with coping with a disaster on your trip (it'll happen to you!) and the intricacies of filing a fucking insurance claim for your impromptu travel. I can't emphasize just how amazing a JR Pass can be in those situations and the importance of getting a good travel insurance policy.
>Must-visit places if you're up north and have a day (or day trip)
Akita, Morioka, Fukushima, Hakodate
>Must-visit places if you're up north and have more than a day (2-3 days)
Morioka, Hakodate, Hirosaki, Sapporo
>Morioka
Fucking lovely, you can rent a bike all-day near the train station for like 300 yen and just bike around the city. It's quite flat and very bikeable. Lots of cute places and sleepy neighborhoods, along with hidden gems and lots of shrines. Delicious food.
>Akita
You can take a day trip along the Akita Shinkansen if you have a JR Pass and a few hours to burn. There's a castle park that's really quite lovely to walk around and worth a comfy amble.
>Tazawako
Another victim of the 90s crash. It seems kind of morose. Cute, and enough for a trip on the way to Akita from Morioka. The buses are kind of sporadic so time your travel to/from Tazawako station well.
>Hirosaki
Absolutely worth two days. Rentable bicycles (with awful gearing) with tons of fantastic hidden areas and shrines. The countriside is super comfy to bike around, it's a fucking lovely city with a tremendous castle park. Watch Flying Witch if you haven't already.
>Hakodate
It has the usual tourist shit and cute trams. Tons of chinese just shitting up the place. My advice is to visit the Goryokaku to say you did, dedicate a day to just walking around the base of Mount Hakodate, and dedicate a day to drunkenly hiking up and down Mount Hakodate. It was fucking amazing. Don't get ripped off by the ropeway. There's a 400-yen bus up or down, one way.
>Sapporo
Jesus fuck what an adventure. Tons to do in the city and in the area. I rented a car to go to Touyako and Tazawako. Fucking lovely. The people there are also super nice and know how to handle natural disasters well.
>Hakone
You can do the full Hakone loop in a day, including a walk along the east shore of Lake Ashi. Do that. Get a Hakone Free Pass and just bum around on the buses and hiking paths. What a fucking lovely place.
No.868788
>The Language Question
The best advice I can give is that even in backwoods/rural Japan, knowing your kana, knowing basic phrases, knowing basic spoken vocabulary, and knowing the basic ~200 kanji is all you really need. Having a phrasebook with you is super handy (the Lonely Planet one is good enough) along with offline Google Translate. Trust me, even roadside workers who slept through their high school English classes will at the very least try to make hand gestures and shyly do their best to help you if you're truly lost but respectful.
>The Budget Question
My budget this last trip (for 15 days) was such:
$1400 round-trip airplane ticket into/out of Narita from the North American West Coast. It was actually half the price two years ago.
$80/night for most hotels, usually within a few blocks of a local train station. I never paid more than $120/night. I stayed at a super comfy authentic ryokan in Hakone for $100/night, and you really shouldn't pay more than that for a ryokan. Even in Tokyo a ryokan in the middle of Asakusa and five minutes from a major train station didn't cost more than $60. Total cost was $1100.
JR Pass was ~45000 yen for two weeks. That's about $400, give or take. Extremely worth it if you're going to travel on the shinkansen the distance of Tokyo-Osaka and back. I saved something like $400 this trip, $600 last trip, using the JR Pass.
Those were the up-front prepaid costs. $2900 in total. $50(!) for my great travel insurance at student/youth rates. $20 for my international driver permit. Let's round up to $3000.
I spent about $40/day on food, booze, and hydration. Sometimes less. $560
I spent about $10/day on transport, be it bus, train, or bike rental. Sometimes less. Sometimes more. A day rental of a car in Sapporo was $50 including liability insurance, plus $20 for gas.
I also spent about $10/day on souvenirs/tourist pass tickets and spent way too much on cute train station keychains.
So usual daily expenditures were $50-70 or about 7000 yen. I budgeted for 90000 yen and added a buffer of 20%, coming into the country with 108000 yen. I left the country with about 25000 yen, coming significantly under budget.
Total cost was $4000, including a day's car rental. Last time I went, two years ago, I spent about the same but I did eat out like a glutton every day and bought tons of souvenirs.
I did have to spend $500 extra out-of-pocket for my plane ticket out of Sapporo because of the earthquake, but that's covered under insurance.
I'm actually quite surprised at all the anons spending >$5000 on two weeks. No idea just how they're spending so much.
>The Car Driving Question
First of all, get your International Driving Permit. That's simply a version of your driver license that's translated to like 20 different languages and offered for a fee (or no fee) by your local automotive association. For me it cost $20 and a 20-minute trip to my local automotive association.
Second, shop around for rental places where you're going. There's a few places like Toyota Rentacar or Hertz or whatever, those are the big national chains and don't really offer competitive prices, but they do have tons of locales and support for English. One of the best-kept secrets is JR Eki Rent-a-car. Generally every major JR train station, including some in touristy places like Tazawako or Hakone or Touyako, have a JR Eki Rentacar locale. There's lots in Tohoku and Hokkaido. They have cheaper prices, good insurance costs, and even offer a 15-30% discount if you have a national or regional JR Pass. Just not a lot of English support.
Make your reservation online about 1-2 months before you go. Bring along your IDP, cash, driver's license, printed copy of a confirmation email, and passport on the day of. You pay there, usually.
Things to watch out for when driving:
The speed limits are always super low, but generally followed in the cities. In rural areas they are not followed at all, especially Hokkaido. Go 10-15km/h above them if safe, generally the cops and speed cameras don't care if you stay at 10km/h above. Speed cameras require two signpost notices and then a big sign, so watch out for those. If you get local Japs tailgating you because you're going too slow, wait until you get to a rest stop/pull-out station and let them pass. You don't want a speeding ticket.
Expressways absolutely jew you on costs. It's something like 5-20 yen per kilometer, which adds up quickly. Take local roads and highways if at all possible unless you can get a good deal for an all-included highway pass from your car rental place.
Unless you're a britbong or strayacunt, you're driving on the wrong side of the road from the wrong side of the car. You will flip your wipers when you meant to flip your lights, and vice versa. You will.
Parking rates are absurd in urban areas, avoid parking outside of rural touristy spots. Keep this in mind.
No.868789
>>858945
>To the anons who travelled to Japan, what were your level of Japanese?
I was at the level where I knew enough to be shy about it but able to make grammatically complex sentences with several clauses in them. At one point in my trip I actually spent about half an hour talking with a hotel receptionist and getting constantly complimented on my Jap. I had a reputation at that hotel for being the oddball foreigner who knew some Jap. Later on I went to a comfy izakaya and made friends with the chef there. He gave me tons of freebies for knowing Jap and even gave me a quick ride back to my hotel using the izakaya's van. I also made friends with the staff at a ryokan and they gave me a few gifts for being so kind and respectful and knowing Jap. It's definitely worth it to know more than a bit of Jap. I was just shy.
>>858995
All of it is worth visiting as long as you're not someone who goes to nothing but tourist traps and thinks that staying in Tokyo for a week constitutes fun. I always had an amazing time in Japan wherever I went, which is >20 prefectures and something like >20 cities by this point across three islands. I still haven't visited most of Uranihon and Shikoku though. But every single place, town, village, prefecture, etc has its amazing places if you're open to just bumming around on bike and walking around. People-watching is also fun, and Japan is safe enough where you can just walk around random neighborhoods and never be bothered. It also operates on an entirely alien scale - one of my friends best described it as Japan being walkable and the trains/buses merely being there to save you some walking time more than anything else.
>>862601
I never needed it. The only time I needed to make a call or text on my phone was during an emergency, and the calls I made were at my hotel room and covered by the kindly hotel staff. The texts I did make were at cheap rates and I covered that under my travel insurance. Even then it wasn't more than $15. Pretty much every place has wifi, and even during an earthquake/power outage the main city station had some wifi. What I do recommend is a wifi-capable phone along with an external battery of >15000mAh.
>>862706
Pensions and ryokans can be super cheap ($30-60/night) if you don't mind doing your research beforehand and having austere 6-tatami accommodations with communal washrooms. Google Maps is actually a surprisingly good way to find these. I wouldn't rely on airbnb but a coworker apparently had a good experience with them in Japan, but that was before the government crackdown.
>>865839
ANA was comfy. Domestic flights within Japan are well-served by basically every Japanese airline. Try to go with ANA or JAL if you can, but the cheapo budget airlines in Japan are very what-you-pay-is-what-you-get.
No.868797
>>868788
I brought 10k with me when I was there July-August, I just advise people to bring more than needed if something does come up. I am also a sucker for train station loot.
No.871997
This thread filled me with untold wonder and a welcome dose of hope for a brighter future; It's worth to keep going when reminded that such places still exist.
Thank you to all anons who keep the pilgrimage threads going throughout the years.
It's strange to think how a small group of strangers from an obscure website caused me to become fluent in Japanese and conclude that I were a nip in s previous life.
I love you, /a/.
No.872555
YouTube embed. Click thumbnail to play.
>>868788
When driving in Japan, the right side is the right side (migi).
No.872750
>>865348
Harajuku probably ended up being my favorite spot in Tokyo. Sure the main Takeshita street is crowded and full of tourists and Nigerians, but coming from an art background I really appreciated not just the crazy fashion on display, but also just how much personality everything had. Not to mention that just beyond gaudy Takeshita street are the more laid back and subdued Urahara streets, which are ultra comfy and reminiscent of 90's American bohemian culture. It's hard to explain and doesn't really sound that special saying it out loud, but something about the place really clicked with me. I will definitely make it a point to return here in the future.
One anecdote, while looking for some place to take a break I found a cafe in a share space called "Maria House". I guess it's just intended to be a small building with multiple businesses run out of it, but something about how the interior was all simple plywood was really charming to me. https://www.instagram.com/mariahouse_omotesando/
I also found the shop which the Urahara anime was based on, and ended up buying some merchandise.
>>871997
Congratulations on becoming fluent, anon! I've recently decided to make it a goal myself, and I'll be gauging my progress in December when the JLPT tests are held.
No.872753
>>872750
The cool broken building with the gears is an otherwise completely normal hair salon which also has a knight out front for some reason.
No.872757
>>872753
I also found the Kawaii Monster Cafe while I was in Harajuku. Definitely an interesting experience, which goes all in on the "weird Japan" image. Since I went at night there was a geisha show going on at the time which was actually really cool, and the geisha served sweet sake afterwards. I can see why it's a popular tourist spot. The food was okay but let's be honest people don't come to a place like this so they can eat good food.
No.873148
SAGA prefecture
The festival celebrates Saga's 150th anniversary, bringing attention to its traditions, historical contributions, and famous residents.
No.873184
>>873148
Looks pretty dead for a celebration.
No.873590
Anyone been to Oorai?
>>873184
Starts on 30 Oct 2018.
No.874382
>>873148
>The LEGENDARY Yamada Tae!
Man, it'd be great to be able to attend. My sister and her husband have been teaching English over there for a while, not in Saga, but in Japan. And I'm going to finally go visit them. I'm looking forward to it.
No.874436
Figured I'd throw my two cents in/blogpost here since I'm in Japan right now (well, Hokkaido).
Skill Mastery of Japanese: About two months of tutoring (so basically zero kanji, but decent understanding on hiragana/katakana and enough practical experience to ask very basic questions. I have a wobbly grasp of the first 3-4 chapters of the 2nd edition Genki textbook) . Basically the full filthy gaijin experience.
Where I'm going and lodging styles:
1 night in Tokyo | Bugman hotel/Nip-sized western hotel*
3 nights in Hakodate | Guest House/"Hostel"*
5 nights in Sapporo | Western-style hotel with Nip-style western beds*
2 nights in Shiretoko-Shari | Ryokan
2 nights at lake Toya | Ryokan
1 night Hakodate (same as before)
2 nights in Sendai | Motel/Cheap western hotel
1 night Tokyo (same as before)
*=Stayed there already
Tips I can think of that they won't tell you on the website:
1) "Late Check-in" generally means after 8PM.
2) Nips are pretty much split into "hates your guts but likes money" in which they won't/can't speak a lick of English but you can get your point across with hand gestures/wads of cash, and "vaguely curious, slightly afraid" in which they'll try to force you to speak English even if you're trying to speak Nip.
3) Someone saying "nigger" in IRC will cause your connection to crash on the public train wifi.
4) The further north you go, the less you can rely on English, however the better the online English guides become.
5) When connected to Nip wifi, you will be searching Nip google with mixed results.
6) If the laundry machine says "washer dryer" it really means "washer, will bring clothes to level of hang-dry dampness."
7) You will encounter a gaijin more filthy than you outside of the Tokyo central area. I suggest speaking to them in a foreign language to throw them off/make them fuck off when they begin asking you directions because they didn't plan ahead. They're probably some rich kid who didn't even bother learning the barebones basics, so they can eat a dick. Don't let them spoil your trip. In my case, I chose Russian and said Извините, пожалуйста. Я не понимаю по-английски. This phrase works very good when said with a mild Russian accent even if you don't speak Russian (a real one, not a fake one, go see a Putin talkshow video and listen to how they sound). Then just play dumb until they fuck off. If they try to ask you any more questions, just say "Кто?" and "какие?" and "Сука блять!" commandingly until they fuck off.
8) Make sure to print out at least a map of how to get from the airport to your first destination. My internet didn't kick in until I was four hours into Japan, and my GPS didn't work until I connected to the Hotel wifi to give it a basis to work from. I ended up having to ask some wandering Nip policeman for directions because my hotel was in a back alleyway.
9) In major cities you have to wait until everyone is boarding if you're the first stop, but everywhere else, you need to basically shove your way in as soon as people stop disembarking because otherwise you'll miss your train and have to wait an hour or more for the next one.
10) Practice with chopsticks beforehand and know that wet foods are much harder to pick up than dry food/sticky food.
11) Shops close exactly on time, however these Nips don't actually open at the hours listed on their storefronts. The local drug store said it opened at 6AM but they didn't unlock the doors until 8AM.
So far my experience has been you can go anywhere so long as you understand some basic shit like how to read a map offline and how to use a bus system (just stick to trams/subways if you can, they're more reliable than buses), but unless your trip is mostly innawoods like mine is, you'd probably want to get the fuck out of Tokyo because Tokyo is crowded, but stay relatively close to Tokyo because there is less and less English the further North you go (I don't know about the South though). I had a bunch of other tips, but I can't think of them right now and I wanna go eat dancing squid sashimi today at the market.
No.874439
>>874436
Oh right, and 12) If you're a bigger guy, the more expensive JR pass is worth it to get the green seats. I barely fit into the regular reserved seats because I've got a big ass/thighs from weightlifting.
I'll give /a/ a second update with filthy gaijin insights once I'm nearing the end of Sapporo, and probably won't post again until I'm back in Tokyo or America due to questionable wifi in the sticks.
No.874442
>>874436
>Basically the full filthy gaijin experience.
I think you give most filthy gaijin too much credit. You made an effort.
No.874486
>>862706
Hostelworld
>>862823
Were you the one anon I almost met up with on Koya-san? I went to Kansai in April also - there were like three of us there in the country at the same time...
>>862825
Ten out of 10 shots, anon. That whole country is just fucking amazing...
No.874506
>>874486
Afraid not, I was nowhere near Koya-san. Hoping to hit it on a future trip.
I'll second Hostelworld, as well as AirBnB (though I hear the government has been cracking down on the latter, not sure how easy it would be to use now compared to earlier this year).
No.874528
So I came back from Japan 2 days ago. I haven't taken the time to upload many pictures on the internet. I'm about to head to work soon so I can't do it right now either.
Been to Osaka, Shirahama, Tokyo (Reitaisai 14), Kawaguchiko, Aokigahara, Nagoya, Kanazawa and back to Tokyo to take my flight.
Definitely was a very pleasant journey, though I've kinda busted my wallet and I'm mad about it.
Pic related are washokki that I gathered here and there in a few of those cities. I really wanted to have some of them, and some are actually fairly expensive stuff found in specialized shops, not your run-of-the-mill tableware found in Tokyu Hands.
No.874536
Off to Osaka for a small trip next month gonna get a tattoo done at three tides. It will be my second time in Japan this year both trips were solo. I don't do the whole Jr pass thing because I'm an autist and have a tad of a drinking problem.
No.874540
>>874536
JR pass is worth it in most cases from a pricepoint. I don't know what you mean about drinking problems and JR passes since there's no alcohol served (or at least if there is, I don't know about it).
No.874551
I am actually kinda glad that I won't have the time or money for my japan visit until after the olympics.
No.874553
>>874540
I like to take things slow one city at a time last time I got fucked up ended up getting carried by a local had minor injuries and woke up in a supermarket met some people though. Plus I'm only here for like 4 full days this time mostly just there for a tattoo. I will see more of the country just not all at once.
>>874551
Why?
No.874590
Why is Japan so grey, especially the cities?
No.874596
>>874590
Concrete is a better building material than Play-Doh.
No.874737
>>874590
Because red brick is expensive and reminiscent of Chink buildings.
You can find colorful Nip buildings away from the major cities.
No.874757
How do I move to japan like the Swedish gardener?
No.874823
>>874757
Have a good mentor, an honorable profession, be good looking, and probably have wads of cash/free time to work with a lawyer to get citizenship. Also be prepared to renounce your citizenship from whatever country you came from.
No.874838
>>874757
Have a bachelors degree or a decade of experience in a field that is highly sought after.
Or become an English teacher like 99% of weebs.
No.874888
>>874596
Painting a house in a color is a thing that people do, you know.
No.874896
>>874590
Because Japanese cities are soulless meat grinders. The heart lies out in the countryside.
No.874964
https://animetourism88.com/ja/news/882019
Anime Tourism Association announced the selection of the anime spots for the Japan Anime Tourism 88-Stop Pilgrimage's 2019 edition at Roppongi Hills.
Newly added titles/facilities in the 2019 edition:
"Masamune Datenicle" (Date City, Fukushima)
"A place farther than universe" (Tatebayashi City, Gunma)
"as the moon, so beautiful." (Kawagoe City, Saitama)
"Saekano: How to Raise a Boring Girlfriend" (Wakou City, Saitama)
"My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong, As I Expected" (Chiba City, Chiba/Toshima Ward, Tokyp)
"Sword Art Online The Movie: Ordinal Scale" (Tokyo)
"Mitsuboshi Colors" (Taito Ward, Tokyo)
"CHAOS;CHILD" (Shibuya Ward, Tokyo)
"The Idolm@ster (Namco Nakano Store)" (Nakano Ward, Tokyo)
"Digimon Adventure" (Nerima Ward, Tokyo)
"A Certain Magical Index" (Tachikawa City, Tokyo)
"Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai" (Fujisawa City, Kanagawa)
"TARI TARI" (Fujisawa City, Kanagawa)
"Tsuritama" (Fujisawa City, Kanagawa)
"Katana Maidens ~ Toji No Miko" (Fujisawa City, Kanagawa/Seki City, Gifu)
"Hanasaku Iroha" (Yuoke Onsen in Kanazawa City, Ishikawa)
"Laid-Back Camp" (Minobu Town, Yamanashi)
"Waiting in the Summer" (Komoro City, Nagano)
"The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya" (Nishinomiya City, Hyogo)
"Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens" (Fukuoka City, Fukuoka)
"Angolmois: Record of Mongol Invasion" (Tsushima City, Nagasaki)
"Nonnon Biyori Vacation" (Yaeyama Islands in Okinawa)
Tokyo Anime Center in DNP Plaza (Shinjuku, Tokyo)
Toei Animation Museum (Nerima Ward, Tokyo)
Gotou no Kumo Nizo Yamamoto Museum (Gotou City, Nagasaki)
No.874965
>>856725
Agreed. Japan is generally nig-free and I've been all over Tokyio. Amazingly safe place, and probably the bast place to start a trip to Japan, simply because it's easy to get around and there's a LOT to see, and there's train to pretty much anywhere from there.
I could have easily spent my entire trip just there.
>>856746
Honestly, me and my buddy booked about 30 places (all with cancellations possible) and then cancelled the worst ones a few days before the trip.
And buying the plane ticket in advance makes ALL the difference in the price. As easily as possible. We bought ours 3-4 months before the trip
No.875076
>>874965
Why so many in Roppongi?
No.875339
>"So anon, what are you doing on a Friday night in Nippon? Up to all kinds of fun fooling with highschool girls or something?"
<「いいえ。Laundry. Watching the late salarymen get angry as I hog one of only two drying machines for an hour while I do my reps.」
Feels good to be a filthy drunk laundromat gaijin. The ebonics niggerbeats in here on the radio are a nice touch. I think they're pulling them from a web radio station.
No.875342
>>875339
To be fair I had gotten mud on all four pairs of jeans I had from climbing mountains and my clothes were mostly wet from rain still. I wish I had known about the sneakers wash. My tennis shoes are disgusting right now and I'm going to feel dishonorable bringing them into a nice Ryokan in two days.
No.875343
>>875339
Don't lie, you've been looking at high school pantsu the entire time.
No.875366
>>875343
Nah, I missed that window and was following them downhill on the way to the station rather than uphill on the way away from the station today.
No.875382
Anyone go to a region promoted by an anime and live out the things it was promoting?
No.875756
Seriously, why aren't you here, anon?
No.875760
>>875382
Went to Numazu and Uchiura Mito to see some of the scenes from Love Live Sunshine. It was actually pretty cool
No.875788
>>875779
I make an annual salary of about $24,000. If you account for discounted rent, I'm still well under the poverty line.
No.875895
Is japan really that skinny, or is it a lie promoted by the Jap government?
No.875923
I'll post more after work. 8chan is being lunatic right now and shows "parameter incomplete" and I can't be assed to do something about it right now.
No.875924
>>875922
I want to pray with them.
No.875933
>>875895
My experiences have been North where women have more fat but somehow pull it off in a more feminine manner. I've seen lots of fat Japanese men walking around, so clearly they aren't all skinny, but unless you eat a lot of sweets/snacks, it's incredibly hard to gain weight eating Japanese cuisine because it's so filling while mostly not being calorically dense. They don't have many options for soda/juice so most people get tired of them or simply only drink them occasionally. The culture also shits on fat people (with the exception of sumo, in which case ex-sumo's still get shat on), so in general I think it's just one of those "being fat is being dishonorabru" things. Japanese are clearly getting fatter as they eat more American food, and while everyone in Tokyo was tiny, I consider that due to no one being able to afford to get fat rather than anything else. Then again, there's a lot of Nips with Ainu heritage up North so it might just be a matter of how Ainu they are. The fat Nips also tend to have more masculine/European facial structures.
tl;dr- Nips are fatter than the statistics would claim (outside of Tokyo) and are getting fatter, but they are certainly skinnier than most first world countries and their lack of fat people can probably be more attributed to malnutrition.
No.875959
>>875924
>I want to pray with them.
座って下さい。
No.877511
How do I become an employed Hikikomori in Japan? Don't get me wrong, I'd love to travel the country and see a bunch too, but I don't want to be going to some office or something 5 days a week
No.877514
>>877511
You don't. Living in Japan is very different from visiting it, and the last thing they need is filthy gaijin in their society.
No.877625
Studying in Japan for 2 months next year. On one hand I’m happy but on the other hand I’m mad that I’m wasting $1500 on my empty apartment rent
>>877514
>living is different than visiting
Who would have guessed
No.877637
No.877641
>>877635
That smoke cafe was a god send the last time I was there.
No.877650
>>877635
>>877633
Akiba was far too many sighs and sounds when I was there a couple days ago. W-were you the faggot with the big-ass camera I was walking behind who kept trying to take a picture of me?
No.877651
>>877633
>new akihabara pics from anon
>with new raildex and madoka
It's like I'm in 2011 all over again.
No.877652
Well, it's 4AM and the jet lag is real (and I can go in early, but my boss will get mad if I start building Torpedoes earlier than 7AM). I just barely got done backing up the files on my PC (now to back them up on my external hard drive after work), and then I'm gonna work on uploading the best shots & making some videos and uploading them to vimeo or private unlisted on jewtube or something for anons. In the mean time, I'll probably tell a few stories and post some related shots until I go to work. Oh fuck, there's so much to tell and I don't know where to even start or how much I'll forget over the next few days.
No.877656
>>877651
>new madoka
A-Anon that's an announcement for a pachinko machine
No.877658
>Got into Tokyo
>Customs officer yells at me for not including an address
>Try to explain I'm staying at multiple hotels & Ryokans, but finally give up and just put down the one I was staying at the longest
>Had a guide who was supposed to help me get started getting my rail pass redeemed and such
>Had been fighting with the company for weeks because they wouldn't tell me where I was renting a car at a later date (turned out they fucked up everything and I do mean everything like the fucking chinks they are, NEVER let your travel agent use Asia Answers)
>Guy was a Chink and an asshole
>Finally gave me the physical location of the car rental place before booting my ass onto the Narita Express to Tokyo Station
>Tried telling him the car rental place wasn't gonna work and they needed to do something about it
>"lol that's your problem, we already got your money. Call up the car rental place yourself, we aren't canceling it or giving you the information to cancel it."
>Grumpily travel to Tokyo and forget to take pictures of the train ride (it was pretty though)
>Forgot to review actual directions to get to my hotel
>GPS signal still thinks I'm in the middle continental US since I haven't connected to any wifi
>Didn't know about JR East Wifi being publicly accessible
>information maps are confusing because they don't follow proper cardinal directions and instead are based on the direction you should be facing
>Also my hotel is slightly outside the range shown on the maps
>Wander the streets of Tokyo late at night trying to rush to my hotel because check-in closes in about an hour (you get charged for the night but they won't let you into the room even if you show up after check-in and a receptionist is there because APA does everything automated) and I don't know where it is
>Finally decide to just ask a police officer I see on the side of the road
>He gives me proper instructions in his limited English capabilities
>Thank him profusely and make my way to the hotel
>It's the wrong hotel, I went to the APA for the next district over
>Hotel staff gives me directions to the proper APA hotel
>Uses FamilyMart and other reference designation on their directions so I manage to show up alright
>Get checked in right before the cut-off
>Get into my hotel room
>Go and buy some konbini sushi because I'm starving and about five cans of various beer and fruit alcohol since I want to know my preferences before traveling
>Cry myself to sleep telling myself this was a horrible idea and I don't know Japanese and I'm a filthy gaijin
>Tuck in early because I have a morning shinkansen to get the fuck out of Tokyo
This is the only picture I took of that first day because I was way too overwhelmed. I'm not a country bumpkin, but I live in a relatively small city (population of about 400,000 people) so I was a little overwhelmed since we don't even have a subway system or light rail system in my city and the city buses are a shit.
>>877656
I remember that pachinko machine place. They had a lot of nostalgic anime on it and I laughed at the madoka stuff.
No.877659
>>877656
I meant new Madoka "anything"
No.877662
>Woke up at 4AM Tokyo time because of jet lag
>Downed a Yebisu and a Suntory highball to calm the nerves
>Twiddled my thumbs and got my shit together/planned for my trip to Hakodate
>Walked to the station (well, more like retraced my steps and ended up there)
>Got directions from the friendly ticket counter staff on where to go to catch the shinkansen
>Realized the signs all told me where to go
>Felt pretty good, mastered thought I mastered the art of chopsticks
>Hauled luggage up several flights of stairs because I didn't know about the elevator or escalators (to be fair the main escalator for the shinkansen was broken/under reconstruction)
>Bought a tonkatsu bento box at the station
>Caught the Shinkansen alright since I autistically showed up for my taim like an hour early
>Seats were smaller than the airplane
>Didn't get the window seat because the Chink rep ordered the noon shinkansen despite me telling him "no I want the 8AM one" and I had to go back the next morning to order tickets for the 8AM shinkansen (because I was panicking too much the night before to get a ticket proper)
>Regretted not buying the green pass for a couple hundred more
>Sat next to a salaryman going to Sendai
>He got off and a qt salarywoman going to Morioka got on
>She kept fidgeting sitting next to a filthy gaijin the entire taim ride
>Eventually got to her station
>She's desperately looking around unsure of what to do
>I somehow manage to convey "you want off here?" and she nods profusely
>Get up and she bows to me like three times before running off the train
>Stole her seat because no one else hopped in our cabin after Morioka
>Realized the Shinkansen sucks for taking pictures/video up north because of all the walls and tunnels to keep the wind from blowing it off the tracks
>Got into Shin-Hakodate
>Went to catch taim to Hakodate Station
>People are constantly streaming out of this fucking train
>Didn't know Shin-Hakodate was a quick stop, only trains I'd taken were the N'EX and shinkansen at its base terminal
>Conductor waves and whistles before I realize it while people are still streaming out of this fucking train
>By the time I approach the train to get on because people stopped filing out, the doors are closed
>Missed my train
>Had to take the local train to Hakodate like an hour later
Also it seems a number of my Hakodate pictures are missing. My camera got corrupted at this point in the journey so it's possible it deleted some of them, though it seemed to keep other files.
No.877663
>>877662
>Seats were smaller than the airplane
Whale detected.
No.877664
>>877662
Also anon, you really should do your research before travelling to foreign countries.
When I was a teen I had to read everything about the public transport in places such as Kuala Lumpur and Saigon due to their inability to cope with this simple task.
No.877665
>>877663
I'm six feet tall and have a thick ass/thighs from lifting weights for like seven years, anon. I fit into the seat just fine, but the shinkansen seats are objectively smaller than any of the express trains, and the larger green seats would've been worth the extra money.
>>877662
>Bought a tram pass that day for Hakodate
>Followed the instructions leaving the JR station to get to the tram
>Proceeded to walk for several minutes
>Finally found a map because I swear to god I could hear the tram the entire time
>I was following the tram in parallel two streets out the entire time
>I should have just gone to the bus stop and the tram was right next to it instead of following the JR signs
>Stayed at a guest house in Hakodate (Hakodate Perry House)
The owner is kind of a hippy and a little autistic about reusing towels and such, but he was a really nice dude and he had a much better grasp of English than 90% of the hotel staff I met. All the rooms has locks and it was a comfy place away from the main city but within a two minute walk to the tram. I highly recommend them if you need a place for just a day or two for less than $50/night.
>Have maybe an hour of sunlight at this point after checking in
>Try to locate tram pass
>I have completely lost my tram pass
>Autistically search for it for like a half hour before finally giving up assuming it fell out of my pocket
This became a reoccurring theme in the beginning before I just shoved shit in my breast pockets or wallet.
>Buy a new pass without thinking that I have to use it three times to justify it from the tram driver
>Get lost in downtown Hakodate trying to get to Goryokaku park
>Finally get to the park
>The sun is down and the park closes in like 30 minutes
>Can't see shit or do shit
>It starts raining
>Decide to buy an onigiri and some sake from the konbini before heading back to the guest house for the night
>>877664
I did my research, I just didn't do enough. It gets worse, anon. It gets so very, very much worse. It was god damn beautiful how badly I fucked up in Sapporo with public transportation.
No.877668
>Rest of Hakodate went off relatively well minus some translation errors and being unable to eat wet food with chopsticks
I never mastered wet food, only "dry" food and sticky food.
>Was nearly attacked by crows at 7AM heading to the coast through a cemetary
>Saw the ocean which was beautiful compared to shitty California beaches I've seen as a kid
>Ate the konbini fried chicken while sitting on a bench by the ocean and drinking more sake
Konbini fried chicken is delicious.
>Basically followed the trail map from left to right along the upper portion because living near mountains and parks, reading trail maps is one thing I CAN do correctly
>Climbed Mount Hill Hakodate and trespassed in a few of the "danger, keep out" fort areas
>Paid my respects to the Buddha statues along the path
>Ate a nice lunch of miso soup and dried bonito onigiri
Bonito onigiri is god damn amazing. Absolutely the best, it tastes like pork jerky.
>Emerged in the cemetery on the right side of the mountain according to the trail map
>Paid my respects as I walked through it
>Had plenty of sunlight left in the day so I saw Goryokaku park
>Walked the pier the next day and saw all the local memorials and such as well as exploring all the local parks and finding all the best spots to find little lolis coming home from school/playing in the park that day
>Realized I had one more day in Hakodate but my feet were hurting since I hadn't been walking as much due to shitty weather back home
>Ended up just doing some museum browsing and sitting on the comfy tram from station to station for most of that day relaxing
Hakodate was good because it calmed me down/made me realize I wasn't completely a failure at traveling Japan, and it was friendly to filthy gaijin, so it prepared me for the rest of Hokkaido. Anyways I gotta get ready for work in about 20 minutes so I don't have time to greentext the wild ride that was Sapporo where I angered a kami, scared the Ryokan staff, wandered through some Nip farmer's fields in a rain storm, and saw a high school girl pooping innawoods, among other exploits adventures, so I'll just upload more pictures of Hakodate for now. I'll continue recounting the adventures tonight.
No.877669
Deleted first attempt to post the above post because even though it was in the wind at an odd angle and I was wearing a jacket, I still don't like having even my silhouette in pictures.
No.877677
No.877683
>>877670
>last pic
Now I know where to go if I ever need to summon Pawns.
No.877684
Oh fuck, just saw the time. I don't gotta technically be into work for another two hours but I wanna make up some hours I missed yesterday so I'm gonna head out. Will post the rest of Hakodate alone with Sapporo tonight (assuming I don't pass out).
No.877685
Also those little yellow hobo spikes along the sidewalks in every fucking city suck ass. I nearly lost my luggage several times rolling over them. In every god damn city.
No.877687
Thank you for sharing, I'm looking forward to your next pictures.
No.877698
>>877684
Thanks anon. I'm looking forward to more baka gaijin antics later.
No.877767
Well, I'm back from work.
No.877771
I'm trying to remember which park this was. It was in Hakodate by the elementary school that's hidden by old fort walls on three sides so you can only see it from the front. There was a gang of delinquent high schoolers smoking in the playground when I happened to pass through.
No.877779
Ainu museum. Was really cool and getting the pass for this, the British consulate museum, and the literature museum all at once is worth it.
No.877791
>>877668
>>Climbed Mount Hill Hakodate and trespassed in a few of the "danger, keep out" fort areas
You are in their house, play by their rules. You're the kind of person who eventually gets caught for that kind of shit and makes the rest of us look like criminals when we're trying to be respectful.
Any anons reading, please don't ever do things like this. Even jaywalking is something that only they can do (and they rarely do it) because it's their house - if you walk into your living room you can put your feet up on the couch. If a stranger you've never seen before waltzed right in and did the same, you'd be pissed.
No.877792
>>877791
I kept out of areas where the signs were saying they were protecting the environment or architecture and such, I just ignored the danger signs since I was entering at my own risk.
No.877796
>>877792
The thing about being in somebody else's house is that it doesn't matter what's acceptable to you, nor does it matter what your defintion of right and wrong are. I guarantee you that no responsbile nihonese would cross the sign, so you shouldn't have either, even if you got away with it. It's a matter of principle. It is a struggle to uphold law and order, but they do it very well, which is exactly why their country is as beautiful and safe as it is. If everyone there had the same, "Well, it's fine if I don't get caught and it's just me risking myself" attitude that you do. Japan would be indistinguishable from a nigger-infested hellhole where chaos was the only constant. You broke their fucking rules, and as should be obvious to anyone but a child, punishment for rule-breaking is not because the rule was broken, punishment is intended to correct the thinking which led to the rule-breaking behavior, the exact rule-breaking-in-another-person's-house sort of niggerish behavior that you're defending. There is no excuse for it. You are in another person's country.
No.877797
>>877796
I'm gonna let you in on a secret. I don't care. If my behavior has consequences for other people I care, but if the only potential victim of acting like a nigger is myself, then I'll nig up Japan all day long and there's nothing you can do about it. Feel free to keep lecturing me, though. In any case, that's enough of Hakodate for now.
No.877798
>>877796
>>877797
Also bringing loli into several countries is illegal. Are you going to lecture me on buying lolicon doujins while in Japan too?
No.877799
>>877797
>I'm gonna let you in on a secret. I don't care.
This really made me think. I never would've thought that someone who is both unethical and stupid wouldn't care that they were unethical and stupid! It's the thought-out responses you're providing which must really affirm to yourself the kind of high-quality person you are.
No.877800
>>877771
>He remembers it from the elementary school location.
No.877802
I don't go on the internet to lecture people. I get to laugh at anon for being an absolute mess in a foreign country.
No.877804
Right, Sapporo.
>Got into Sapporo alright
>Super fancy hotel, but it's disgusting western style
>Ended up just eating Mos Burger for the first time that day
Mos Burger is disgusting but you have to eat there at least once while in Nipland.
>Walked around some park in the dark near a subway station that night
>Slept Early
>Woke early
>Hotel served breakfast
>It was actually an intercontinental breakfast
>French eggs, German soups, Korean stir fry, Chink steamed vegetable something or another, Nip raw fish, etc.
>Ate too much and went into the mountains
>Hiked Maruyama and saw the 500 Buddha statues/paid my respects to the shinto shrine leading into the mountain
>Started raining halfway up but didn't give a fuck because I had a raincoat and an umbrella
>Enjoyed the mix of culture and nature
>Came back down
>Wasn't that late into the day since I left for Maruyama at the crack ass of dawn
>Instead of roaming the city, I decided the rain was supposed to be interspersed throughout the day so I'd dry off just staying outside in the cold and could just go to Sankakuyama without a hitch
>Decided to hike Sankakuyama since I had time still
>Autistically took the subway to the nearest bus station before deciding I couldn't read the moon to catch the bus so I'd walk the 45 minutes to the nearest trail
>Umbrella broke along the way due to the high winds
>Camped inside a KFC to warm up/eat lunch until the rain passed
No.877806
>Came out of KFC a changed man
>Walked up the side of what might as well have been the trail with how steep the fucking roads were
>Ended up outside some hospital
>Dogs at some woman's home barking at me
>There's like 20 dogs but don't care
>Climb through the parking lot before discovering that google maps lied to me and the trail doesn't go anywhere
>Begin to climb back down through town while drinking what the Nips call "white liquor"
It comes in a medicine bottle and tastes like rubbing alcohol, but damn is it cheap as beer and warms you up.
>Slightly buzzed, decide to check again
>Walk past dogs again, no luck
>Dejectedly start walking back down
>See an animal trail behind an inner-city shrine
>It's roped off but it seems to lead into the mountain
>Jump the rope in front of about 30 old people inside the hospital and start walking up the muddy trail behind people's houses
>Bugs everywhere, muddy, somehow make it onto the main trail using this route
No.877809
>>877806
>Climb Sankakuyama
>It's basically just a steep hill all the way up with not that much to see, but at least I can say I did it
>Cute little picnic bench at the top of the hill
>Sit down and eat melon bread and drink copious amounts of white liquor and beer despite the steep slope to get up there
>Go to the peak and video a bit before heading back down, taking a different route around the other side of the mountain
>Rain clouds forming
>Sun is going down in about two hours
>Come across a path labeled "8" with nothing else
>GPS says there's a lookout and then it leads back to a roadway leading into the city
>Decide it's a shortcut and begin following it
>Super steep and tiny stone steps and wooden steps along the entire fucking trail
>Mud everywhere
>Starts raining again 5 minutes in and all I have is a rain jacket since I left my heavy coat back at the hotel that day
>Drunkenly decide it's best to just keep following this path that was clearly designed for sober hiking only
>Hike for like an hour or so
>Lost GPS
>Finally got GPS again and realized I was heading towards Moiwa at this point if I continued to follow the trail and it would take me another like 6 hours to get back to town if I followed it
>Took a side trail that allegedly went back to the roadway
>It followed the roadway outside of view of it, but didn't actually go to the fucking roadway
>Cold, pants are soaked because the rain turned into a downpour, wind blowing, sun about to go down
>Finally find a dirt path leading towards the road even though it's clearly not a proper trail
>Follow it
>Nearly slip in the mud repeatedly as I stumbled down the mountain in a drunken stupor
>Emerged in some Nip Farmer's Farm
>He was growing giant fucking cabbages as big as a man's torso, I swear
>He looks at me like "what the fuck is this filthy gaijin doing on my farm!?"
>Try asking him directions to Sapporo in my best drunken gaijin Nip
>Fail to convey my message
>Decide to just fuck off and follow what I think is the correct path after apologizing profusely for intruding on his farm, shivering the whole time
>Find some utility workers laying cable
>They kindly tell me that I am indeed going the correct way back to Sapporo
>Illegally used the highway as a walkway to get back to town, going through a service tunnel and everything
>Got back to town just in time to see the elementary schoolers and high schoolers getting out of school
>Was too cold/on the verge of hypothermia if I didn't find warmth in the next hour or two so didn't care about taking pictures
>Camera was dead
>Phone was dying
>Managed to stumble my way back to Maruyama park where I got yelled at by a security guard for jumping a fence instead of walking the ten feet around the rope line because I was about to piss myself
>Apologized and take a piss
>Gloves are so soaked by the rain that I physically can't get them back on after taking them off (they were runner's gloves, the kind that are tight on your hands when they're dry)
>Hands are freezing
>Thankfully discover a vending machine on my way back
>Some delinquents in front of it
>Nip high schooler looks at me like I'm about to steal his girl and he's gonna pick a fight with me
>Yelled something incoherently at him that I don't remember now, think I sang something
>Bought two cans of corn soup to use as hand warmers
>Made my way to the Subway
>Fucked off back to my hotel where I enjoyed a hot bath after hanging up my clothes to dry
>Thanked whatever spirit was looking after me to make sure I didn't end up hiking through the entire mountainside leading to Moiwa
No.877810
Here's the pictures leading up to the next event.
No.877820
Best damn curry venison soup in all of Sapporo and I can't remember the name of the shop. Only that I walked into the bar next door on accident because it was a basement shop, and that it was quiet, comfy as fuck, and near a McDicks.
No.877821
Right, so after the incident at Sankakuyama, I decided not to hike Moiwayama and instead went to Nopporo Forest Park. Little did I know half the park was inaccessible because of the Earthquake back in August knocking over half the damn forest.
No.877822
>>877821
That's a damn pretty clearing.
No.877823
>Get up late because still hurting from adventure the day before
>Hop on the subway to Nopporo Forest Park
>My autistic ass decides, once more, not to take the bus since I can't read Nip, and to instead walk the 45 minutes to the park
>Saw a few raindrops
>Smartly went into the nearby Seicomahto and bought an umbrella because I wasn't being a faggot out in the rain and soaked twice in a row
>Passed by a cute high school along the way
>Made my way into the park via an access road
>Ended up following the main road, but consumed too much beer and had to take a piss when no one was around because the nearest toilet was several kilometers away and I couldn't hold it
This happened about 12 times in Nopporo and might have been why the kami was angry at me.
>Took a side road that had a notice but it was in Japanese only
>Came across a little damn
>Took lots of videos of the damn, not sure if I took pictures (I'll check while posting pictures)
>Crossed damn and walked up super slippery slope
>Laughed that the log bridge across the river was closed, but all these stupid slopes you could die on were open for walking
>Got up the trail
>Brush everywhere
>Take path #1
>Tree in the way
>Take path #2
>Tree in the way
>Drunkenly stumble down the muddy, slippery slope and head back to the main path after taking piss #2
No.877824
>>877822
I really, really liked it. It has a beautiful little stream nearby with those old Nip stone walls on either side of it in traditional Hokkaido fort fashion.
No.877825
>Found a beautiful clearing off a ways
>Took a rest there and downed a flask of whiskey and two more tall cans of beer
>Continued walking along for a while
>Emerged out of the forest park at what appeared to be a museum
>It's a historical recreation of frontier Hokkaido using actual structures that were donated from around Hokkaido
>Entered to check it out real quick and take a piss inside a building instead of in the forest because I didn't want to do that unless necessary
No.877827
>Drunkenly walked the entire village museum
>Each and every building is enter-able
Of course it's all old tatami so you have to take your shoes off.
>Most of the museum staff has been to America and speaks English
>They're all dressed up like ancient peoples too
>Super excited to see a gaijin at their museum who's actually interested in their culture and history
>Got to have a nice conversation with several Obaa-sans
>Ended up spending like four hours walking around this museum because it was so fucking cool
>Didn't feel like a wasted day, learned a shit ton because most of the signs have English translations
>The ones that don't have English translations actually do if you download some app to play the museum audio files
>Didn't even get to really fully explore it near the end since I was in a hurry and it was gonna get dark
>Walked through and saw the monument tower, but it was getting dark at this point
>Saw all the high schoolers get out of school and headed to the train station with them
>Forgot my JR pass since I thought I'd take the subway back, so ended up paying the local train fare which was like two bucks so not a big deal
No.877828
But seriously guys, go to the Historical Village of Hokkaido (Kaitaku-no Mura) if you're in Sapporo. I think I paid $12 to get in and I would have easily paid $25 to explore this amazing place. They're constantly expanding it too.
No.877830
On to the original story now before I get side tracked by this beautiful museum again.
No.877835
>Came back to Nopporo Forest Park a second day because I was so impressed with it
>Came by taim this time so it was only a 20 minute walk
>Got to see a bunch of elementary schoolers on a field trip in the tall grass portion of the park
>Drank myself into a stupor again while my heart was warmed by all the grade schoolers passing through
>Significantly more people the second day since it was sunny and not raining on and off
>Accidentally walked onto the floor of the visitor center because I didn't see the shoe pile and there was nothing to indicate you had to take off your shoes OTHER than the pile in the corner
>Just used the toilet and ran away out of embarrassment upon realizing this fact on my way out of the toilet
>Walked the Northern and Eastern half of the park expecting the great scenery I saw on the Southern and Western halves
>Turns out only the Souther and Western halves of the park are any good and the rest is just bland forest without water ways or that many fallen over trees or anything really fun to see, and it was autumn so there weren't many bugs around either
>Spent the entire day in the park
>Sun is gonna go down soon
>See a high school girl off the path
>About to yell at her that she shouldn't walk off the path and she should be in school right now
>She's squatting
>Realize she's taking a poop
>Nearest restroom is a couple kilometers away so I understand her pain
Her pantsu were yellow and white striped by the way.
>Stare at her for several moments
>She stares back in absolute horror at being caught
>Wigger part of my brain kicks in for a moment and realize I could probably sexually harass or assault this girl and no one would be around to find out
>Rational white person part of my brain reminds me that pooping girls are stinky/unclean raping people is bad and she's 3DPD
>Finally say "Konichiwa" before continuing on my way
>Realize the sun will go down before I can exit the forest
>Gonna take a path that cuts through the middle of the forest
>Find a path that's been temporarily blocked off until Spring for repairs due to the Earthquake
>Jump the rope and take the path anyways
>Climbed over exactly 82 trees and had to wander off the path repeatedly to get around them
>Got lost in the forest for like 30 minutes with no way out because fallen trees all around me/can't find path
>Backtracked just enough to find a new path forward
>Got out, but only after soaking my shoes in mud from falling into a giant water pond made from uprooted trees
The spiders along this path were cute. I made sure not to disturb them.
No.877838
>Managed to get unlost and made it out approximately where I wanted to be
>Walked back up to the clearing, which was beautiful again
>Took a slightly different route as I headed back to the tower memorial
>Saw high school girl who I saw pooping in the woods earlier off in the distance, but I decided to leave her alone
>Saw someone take an elevator to the top of the tower monument
>Approached the tower base only to be told by construction workers that only authorized personnel could go up to the top of the tower
>Pissed since it would have a fantastic view, but decide to head back to the station
>Catch all the high school girls on the way down the slope back to the train station
>Can't talk with them but they seem like they're nice
Sorry, falling asleep here and only woke up because of a nightmare, I'll try to wrap up Sapporo and discuss Abashiri for tomorrow.
No.877850
>>877668
>Germanic Futhark runes: M, S (or A?), D
>pentagram pendant
>he lifts
>he can afford to go to not just Honshu Japan but Hokkaido as well
Starting to think weebs ain't what they used to be. I hope you know what your pendant actually represents.
No.877852
>>877835
>Drank myself into a stupor again while my heart was warmed by all the grade schoolers passing through
Your heart or your penis?
>Her pantsu were yellow and white striped by the way.
>Wigger part of my brain kicks in for a moment and realize I could probably sexually harass or assault this girl and no one would be around to find out
Definitely your penis.
>Rational white person part of my brain reminds me that pooping girls are stinky/unclean raping people is bad and she's 3DPD
USO DA!
No.877861
>>877852
My benis does not activate for little girl, not unless you refer to the benis of my heart bursting from my chest out of love for their purity and uncorrupted nature. Only 2D loli is for lewding, anon. Of which there is a lot of that, that came back with me. There was enough that I was scared of going through customs on my return trip back.
>>877850
<he can afford to go to not just Honshu Japan but Hokkaido as well
It's cheaper to fly into Narita and take the Shinkansen via JR pass than it is to fly into New-Chitose airport and have to purchase the exact same JR pass anyways since trains are cheaper than cars. Also I saved up for this trip for quite a long while/abused many financial loopholes to earn up the money for it, and would have waited another six months to learn basic Japanese if not for the fact that various factors more or less forced me to go as a filthy gaijin. I could have saved roughly $1,000 or more if I had waited another six months, too. I think in total this trip cost me about $2,100 for the plane ride out to Japan (even though China, Thailand, and Korea next door are only $400-$700 round-trip right next door), about $750 on transportation fees including JR pass, subway fare, and the rental car in Abashiri, about 1,300 on hotels over the course of 17 days (mostly because my travel agent fucked up near the end and cost me an additional several hundred due to procrastination), and then I spent maybe $500 between food and booze, tops, because food and booze are dirt cheap. If you include tourist fees to enter a lot of places, you could add another $200 to that figure I guess). My trip would be considered on the upper end of budget tripping reaching into the expensive side of things, too. If I had made several choices differently (not going to Abashiri or Toya, not drinking copious amounts of liquor, having planned the trip 6 months later, etc.) I could have reduced my entire costs by about $1,000.
No.877866
Well, for some reason I can't sleep so I'll keep posting pictures while recounting the last story in Sapporo I almost forgot about.
No.877869
>Travel agent fucked up and scheduled me one night short at the hotel in Sapporo
>We fixed it, but I had to take my shit to a different hotel about ten minutes away by foot
>Other hotel was a Ryokan
>First Ryokan experience
>Checked in alright and went about my day
>This one had a very at-home-in-the-city feel
>Got a free little green mochi thing that they called "cake" and they did the whole pretty girl serves me green tea thing and everything
>Felt super awkward but that's ok
Did I mention that the girls in Hokkaido are much bigger boned structure-wise and definitely pudgier than mainland Nips (probably due to being mixed race with the Ainu people), but they're also 10x more feminine despite this and tend to wear a tenth of the makeup that the mainland whores wear? They're really cute in an "I want to take responsibility/turn her into a good wife and raise six or more children with her in the countryside" sort of way, even if they're 3DPD. Truly the residents of Hokkaido would win if they ever went to war with the residents of Honshu.
>Dropped off my keys at the front desk and went out for a bit because that was required at this Ryokan
>Went and explored Sapporo's Rat Tunnels
Basically half the damn downtown city is interconnected underneath via an admixture of underground shopping malls, walking tunnels, and subway systems. I like to refer to this part of Sapporo as "the rat tunnels" for all intents and purposes because it reminds me of those 80s/90s dystopian future movies where people have made civilization underneath the ruins of cities.
>Had amazing curry bread from a bakery in the tunnels
>Walked around for a while
>Threw recyclables into the combustibles bin because it was the only trash bag I found in the entirety of the rat tunnels/subway systems
>Went back to the Ryokan like a half hour early
>The girls on my floor of the Ryokan freak out that I came back early
>"Ah wait, don't enter room yet! Uh... Bed! Not made!"
>"Oh that's fine, how long do you need?"
>"Need ten minutes!"
>"Ok, I'll go walk around the city for another half hour, it's ok."
>"Ok? Ok."
>Go to head back downstairs
>"Ah... Wait! Wait!"
>"You said you needed-"
>"No! You go to room, then we make the bed in ten minutes! Ok?"
>"...Ok?"
>Go to go into room
>"Ah, wait! The bed isn't ready! Umm... Umm... We'll make in ten minutes!"
>"Alright that's fine."
>Enter room
>Start getting changed since she said ten minutes
>In my boxers and a wife beater, was trying on the Yukata
>Hear a knock on the door
>Don't really think about it because I've walked around outside in the snow in my underwear and a jacket to get the mail plenty of times back in America
>Open the door with an open-faced Yukata wearing only my underwear
>Girl who came to make my bed freaks out and starts screaming sorry
>"We aren't that kind of establishment, sir!"
>"Eh?"
Apparently the way I opened the door in the clothing I did is interpreted as something people do when they want a comfort girl.
>Apologized profusely
>She kept apologizing profusely as well
>We're both bowing repeatedly and apologizing while I stand in the hallway wearing only underwear, an open yukata, and slippers
This is the simplified version of the conversation. The real conversation involved both of us trying to communicate for several minutes to very little effect in each instance.
>Finally get bed made
>Wore a yukata for the first and last time since this was the only Ryokan with sizes that fit both my height and my shoulders
>tfw thick shoulders from years of push press
>Girl who thought I was gonna rape her proceeded to tell me I put on the yukata correctly/didn't put it on ghost-style, and it looked nice
>Took my first public bath
>Basically like using the gym showers back home except you relax in a scalding hot fountain afterwards
>No milk to drink afterwards
>Had beer instead
>Everything went better than expected
The Nakamuraya Ryokan in Sapporo has my Filthy Gaijin seal of approval. With the exception of that incident, this particular really does give off the impression that it's a high-class whorehouse which I know sounds bad when said aloud, but it actually means it's really comfy/down to earth and you can enjoy the atmosphere and drunken salarymen stumbling around the place while pretty girls run from room to room making sure everything is daijoubu.
No.877876
>>877875
These pictures were taken at Hokkaido University's botanical gardens.
No.877879
In any case, I really will get a couple more hours of sleep and post about the rest of the trip tomorrow if I can make the time.
No.877909
>>877835
>a bunch of elementary schoolers on a field trip in the tall grass portion
A wild loli gang appears!
No.877916
>>877861
It would be a miracle for six months to make Japanese click in your brain.
No.877918
>>877869
>"We aren't that kind of establishment, sir!"
No.877919
>>877916
Yeah but it's the difference between mumbling "I don't understand" and "could you repeat that/I only understood part of that."
No.877977
YouTube embed. Click thumbnail to play.
>>877511
You really want to end up like these guys?
There is serious problem where people work and still cant afford an housing
>>874757
>>874838
>Swedish
Read that apart from US from where they accept 2000 teachers a year for Europe and rest of the world its like 2-10.
No.878325
Right, I owe you some more stories and we're riding this thread to the bottom of the catalog anyways. Pictures of Abashiri/Utoro onwards are limited since my camera button broke on my camera/it could only record video consistently, and I only took a handful of pictures with my phone, but I'll post what I have.
>Arrived in Abashiri
>Walked to the Toyota rent-a-car because travel agent fucked up/the chinks who did this portion of the trip refused to use the JR station rent-a-car service (likely because they're fucking Chinks)
>Arranged to drop the car off like 10 minutes before the place opened on my return
>Lady behind the counter had no fucking clue what I was talking about
>Spent about a half hour arguing with her before finally using google translate to ask "are you opening that day?"
>She laughs and says no, tell her "then just list it as me picking up the car when you open."
>Drive out of parking lot the wrong way
>Go get breakfast at some sukisomething place that had alright curry
>Realize my "English GPS" is really "Japanese GPS with an English voiceover while driving"
>End up just using my phone
>Got the hang of everything except right turns almost instantly
>tfw no left on red in Japan
>Proceeded to do triple digits along the coastline with ocean on one side and mountains on the other as soon as I got out of Abashiri
>Speed limit was like 40km tops
>Other Nip drivers saw me blazing down the road and followed in my footsteps
>Got to hotel in Utoro just in time to climb some Ainu sacred rock to see Gojirra Rock from a top-down view
>Laughed at my superior height as compared to Gojirra Rock
No.878328
>Hotel staff were assholes and stuck me in the far corners during meal times even though I used proper table manners since I was a gaijin so I was out of sight, out of mind
>Public bath was standard water, was a little disappointing
>Open rooftop bath was inaccessible because it was women-only even though it was advertised as having a separate male and female section
>Construction outside my hotel room
>Wifi didn't work and the hotel staff basically told me I was shit out of luck
>"I paid how much for this Ryokan?"
>Didn't care since I came here to climb mountains
>Got incredibly drunk that night while on the Ainu sacred rock
>Like three flasks of whiskey and several beers drunk
>Only thing on my stomach was breakfast that day in Abashiri and what I ate for dinner that night after getting intoxicated
>Sat in the bath too long trying to sober up
>Stood up in the bath too quickly
>Everything became a blur after this point
I fucked up, /a/. Not a little bit, but a lot that night.
No.878331
Oh right, storytime is still going.
>I guess I decided to drink fruit milk, go back to my hotel room, and get changed into mountain hiking clothes
>Went back down to the lobby to hang out with the Salarymen
>Met this Nip girl with great tits
>Perfect C-cups, holy shit
>Apparently she saw me looking her up because she came over and said something to me in Japanese
>Drunk brain can't process, remember drinking some grapefruit alcohol drink and shouting "NIHONGO WAKARIMASEN" in my best gaijin accent
>She kind of gave me that faint smirk/uninterested-but-interested expression
>Blacked out/don't remember much
>Wake up to an earthquake at 4AM still drunk
>6.3 magnitude quake
According to my phone when I checked later, that is. Thankfully it was in the middle of nowhere so it didn't damage anything.
>Turn over to go back to sleep while the world is shaking/hotel is creaking
>"This isn't my room."
>Something shuffles under the covers next to me
>Sleeping Nip girl from before
>Assume I'm going to be arrested anyways in the next 24 hours
>Start feeling her up while the Earthquake is still going on
>She wakes up
>Ended up doing things that shouldn't be talked about on Christian Family Planning Billboards
>Still not sure how I got to that point when I didn't even speak the same language and was inebriated
>Still somewhat drunk, remembering saying something like "taking responsibility"
>Gave her tit one last squeeze as she went back to sleep/whispered "oyasumi" in her ear
>Realized it wasn't a dream as I sobered up staring at her back
>Realized I didn't use a condom
>Proceeded to autistically go back to my hotel room after collecting the breadcrumbs from the scene and stumbling through her room drunk
>Stole her pantsu
>Concerned that they say "made in Australia" on them
>Took several hours for reality to sink in the next day
>Never saw her again
No.878332
>Rest of Utoro trip was ok
>Shiretoko Five Lakes was closed because of a bear sighting
>Went to the nature center nearby and saw the waterfall posted in >>878328
>Proceeded to hike a trail that said a bear had been sighted the day before
>Found various markings of a bear nearby and heard a deer shrieking in the distance
>Decided to reflect on life walking around town the rest of the day
>Climbed the Ainu sacred rock again and stared at the ocean for a while
>Made enemies of the 70 or so crows on a bridge
>Felt sick to my stomach when I saw the elementary schoolers coming home from school that day
>Returned the car the next day
>The staff at the rent-a-car center were not only there early, they drove me to the train station for free
>Reflected on poor life choices and how I was returning to America soon as I rode trains for approximately 11 hours from Abashiri to Toyako
No.878335
>Lake Toya was shit, everything is closed after November 4th
>Town was trashed, trash all over the place, litter everywhere
>Probably some Kami punishing me for my fuckup in Utoro
>Spent like $50 on transportation that day/sprained my ankle and accomplished almost nothing other than buying a few souvenirs for family members
>Couldn't even climb the volcano or visit the island
>Toya a shit. SHIT
>tfw I'll never go back to Toya after that horrible experience there
>Spent the next day back at Hakodate Perry House and told owner-san about my adventures
>Went and saw a bunch of hidden monuments among the mountainside town portion of the city like the Old Russian Consulate
>Prayed at the local Orthodox church for forgiveness
>Stayed clear of the Shinto shrines lest I get cursed/only took pictures from outside of them
No.878336
>Went back to the mainland to Sendai
>Sat next to a Japanese Salaryman from Aomori onwards
>He looked absolutely haggard like he'd been up for three days straight
>Kept leaving the cabin at stations to make phone calls
>Looked like he was going to cry at any moment
>Offered him some caffeine gum
>Called it "American cohe gum"
>He looked at the gum, looked at me, and with the biggest thankful grin I've ever seen he starts laughing as if he'd entered a state of mania
>Thanks me repeatedly and gives me some of his Japanese gum as a thank you
Xylitol Japanese gum is kinda shitty but I was thankful and accepted his gift.
>Waved goodbye to him as I left at Sendai station
>He waved back before making another phone call
>Checked luggage into hotel
>Visited Yamadera that day
>Absolutely fucking beautiful, better than anything else I saw in the mainland
>Walking the 1000 stone steps is supposed to end worldly desires
>Instead I said konichiwa to an elementary school teacher only for her band of 20 or so lolis following her to call out to me "Konichiwa" or "Hallo!"
>Said hello to every single one of those cute elementary schoolers and their neon hats while climbing up the steps, damn it
>Watched numerous guys slap their wife or girlfriend's ass while climbing the bodily desire-ending steps
>Tried numerous Japanese snacks at the base of the mountain later
>Went to the Basho museum and the art museum to kill time
The art museum isn't worth going to unless you know Japanese since the only thing in English are the names of the western artists (and the museum costs like 800JPY whereas basically all the museums I went to in Japan cost all of 300-500JPY). The Basho haiku museum I thought I wouldn't like, but it was very relaxing and enjoyable, despite being small. The English pamphlet was chock-full of information that made it very enjoyable and I could have probably spent an extra hour there if I knew Japanese.
No.878337
>Visited Sendai Castle (ruins) that next day
>Only researched Hokkaido, not Sendai
>Didn't know Sendai Castle basically doesn't exist
>Visited the Sendai Castle Museum
>First Japanese museum that is exclusively anti-Gaijin since coming to Japan
>Not a lick of Engrish to be found anywhere
>Ate the grilled corn
>Nip grilled corn is a shit compared to Nebraskan grilled corn but I still said my thanks
>Visited the Mausoleum to pay my respects to Date for what he did
>Everything was a recreation because the Americans firebombed all their relics
>It finally dawned on me that the reason Sendai hates filthy American gaijin is because we firebombed all their culture and history into ashes
>Only relic I could find that wasn't a recreation was the cemetery for concubines and children who died before coming of age
>Paid my respects and left
>Had lunch under a bridge while drunk
>Proceeded to fall 15 feet from the ledge I was eating lunch from because drunk
>The slope designed for water management combined with all the plants below and being relaxed from being drunk managed to cushion my fall somehow and I survived with only mild scrapes
>Stumbled back up from the waterway and decided not to do that any more
>Wandered the city drunkenly for a few more hours before using the international center as a public toilet and heading back to my hotel for the night
No.878340
Oh right, on the train ride home I got stuck on the rush hour train with all the high schoolers and was surrounded by a bunch of JKs. They smelled nice, one of them pressed up against my arm to stay upright while she played some shitty mobile fighting game, and another physically held onto my other arm when she realized I wasn't wobbling around much from the train shifting while she kept looking away out of embarrassment. Conductor-chan got mad about me videotaping the front of the train while it was moving though and closed her door/pulled down the drapes so I couldn't see as much.
No.878341
Oh right, I went and saw the birthplace of figure skating in Japan while in Sendai (pic related). I got really pissed off while visiting a different Sendai museum because there was some American faggot who was trying to pick up two girls at once while I was trying to enjoy the history of Sendai.
No.878342
>>878341
The story goes that some German University professor saw the pond frozen over and made skates for all of his students so they could go ice skating, and the spot + his ice skating lessons eventually went on to form Japanese figure skating culture. There were far too many people in Sendai, and seriously way too many Americans.
Funnily enough, Hokkaido's infrastructure/signs were more English-friendly than the mainland, even though very few people in Hokkaido spoke English.
No.878345
Oh right, I also saw the Mediatheque or however you spell it in Sendai (the big glass building) and some other local stuff. All-in-all, I couldn't dedicate more than a day to the city because it's not worth much more than that.
No.878346
The rest of my story was kind of meh.
>Got back to Tokyo
>Had post-Hokkaido depression at the lack of trees or mountains
>Tokyo wasn't pretty or natural or some combination of architecture and nature
>It's just a shitty city and everything smells like poo
>Went to Akiba and walked around
>Visited the giant multi-floor department store near the station
>Enjoyed looking at all the Nip washing machines
>Tried to get into a Kamen Joshi concert
>Receptionist tells me to go to the 8th floor
>8th floor receptionist tells me to go to the 7th floor
>7th floor staff tell me I'm not allowed to be there and need to go back to the 8th floor
>8th floor attendant gets angry and starts yelling "No! No Alice Girls! No Kamen Josh! Not Here!"
>Ended up leaving without seeing them
>Dropped off shit and went back to Akiba
>Meant to just look at some book stores
>Ended up buying $200 worth of loli doujins while drunk
>Some clerk gave me a free cowtits card of some hentai girl and a tan bottle
>Drank it not knowing what it was at the requests of the Anima Yell anons
>Thank god it wasn't lube
No.878347
>>878346
I clipped my nails when I got back to America.
>Flight was that next night
>Went to the Imperial Palace that morning to check it out
>Imperial Palace was closed on Mondays
>Walked around Tokyo for a bit before hitting up Akiba one last time
>Drunkenly walked around M's tower and bought an onahole
>Caught my train back to the airport with like three hours to spare
>Got through security in like 10 minutes compared to the hours I spent trying to get through the American airport
>Didn't know what to do
>Bought expensive booze for my boss from the duty-free station and some toys for my nieces
>Plane was a late
>Sat next to some lady who'd wake up every hour or two and scream incoherently for like 10 seconds not knowing where she was before she'd fall back to sleep
>American flight attendants were complete shit compared to the Nip attendants on the way out there
>Binged Kuma Miko
>Ignored the autist next to me who kept trying to ask me anime questions until he fucked off to sleep
>Old Hag American flight attendant was a complete bitch
>Made the mistake of going to work the next day
That's why it's taken me several days to get this story to you, anons. I've been falling in and out of consciousness since Monday and it's Thursday night now. Yesterday I accidentally fell asleep in the back of my van during lunch for like an hour and 15 minutes (lunches are 30 minutes).
No.878349
Oh right.
>Got to America
>Customs agent was about to send me for bag search and would have discovered loli doujins
>Called the customs agent who was like 50 "bro"
>Got my ear chewed off for ten minutes about how I needed to address him as "sir"
>He sent me over to inspection for too much booze because he couldn't convert milliliters and only understood I had "seven bottles of alcohol"
>Inspection asks me to take out my booze on a table
>Grapefruit booze exploded in suitcase
>Make a mess of his table throwing it away
>Proceed to pull out booze
>Listed onaholes on my customs declaration form
>He starts reading through declaration form while looking at the mountain of booze I brought back
>"So that's like $12 in duty fees, right?"
>He looks at me in disgust after counting the bottles
>"Just get out of here. And repack your things... Carefully..."
>"Yes, sir!"
>Got out of customs fees or searching by basically making them hate my guts
I'm not sure how I pulled it off, but I'm back in America with my lolis and able to snuggle my waifu once more. See you this Saturday for r/a/dio, /a/.
No.878351
>>878325
>sukisomething place
>Got curry
It's like you don't know Japanese food.
No.878352
>>878335
>told owner-san about my adventures
What'd you tell him and how'd he respond?
No.878353
>>878335
>Pray at church
>Flee from shrines
Looks like one of these are more sacred to you.
No.878355
>>878346
I found out that Kamen Joshi were in Nagoya at the time.
No.878356
>>878352
Mostly about how I almost got mauled by a bear and how I saw an Ezo Red Fox that followed my car along the mountain roadway for a bit (thing was fucking huge and had a huge fucking head too with very emotion-filled eyes, makes me wonder if perhaps that was related to the Kami I angered). Told him a bit about Toya since he was born there apparently and he laughed about everything being closed.
No.878420
Here's a question for the travel-man: Was there a point when you weren't drunk?
No.878433
>>878420
When I had a hangover from drinking too much or when I had to drive a car I was sober. I was sober when I had to take most of the trains since swapping trains while inebriated is difficult.
No.878475
No.878476
>>878475
I have more proof he posted in IRC that night.
No.878511
>>878475
Was linking that many posts really necessary?
No.879259
>>878476
There are many ways a man can acquire panties in japan.
>>878511
For my 'tisms? Yes. For you? Yes.
No.879402
>>877820
So this is that journey you were talking about, eh ebolanon? I'm sure Ebby enjoyed watching the show.
No.879725
>>877796
This attitude really annoys me.
I live in a country with a bunch of really fucking stupid laws (eg. loli is illegal). I'd be genuinely upset if foreign visitors felt compelled to obey those laws out of some kind of misguided belief that it shows respect.
Respect is a matter of how you treat the people you interact with. Adhering to arbitrary rules is a completely different thing and does not necessarily show respect.
TorpedoAnon fucked up in plenty of other ways, but that wasn't one of them.
No.880114
I feel like I missed the window for best Japan experience and its all going to shit from like 2015. Like I just read that they moved the fish market to some sterile warehouse thing.
No.880252
>>880114
Fish market was outside and anything but sterile when I was there going to a place that served squid sashimi right there. An ojii-san made me molest a crab, and I had to catch the squid I wanted with my hands and a net if I wanted to eat it.
No.880450
>>880252
Yeah the old place. New one restaurants look like generic mall ones.
No.880891
Traveling in Japan is great, but being stationed there sucks (Unless if you're an officer).
No.881372
>>880891
How does being an officer matter?
No.881554
>>881372
If you're in the enlisted ranks, you wouldn't be allowed to leave the base.