Today, we didn’t see any sights. We woke up, checked out, bought some more chan bao, and took a taxi to the airport. The driver talked about the democracy-leaning politics of Hong Kong vs. the authoritarian nature of mainland China. Also about the difficulty of the millennial generation. At the airport, we had a little difficulty printing our boarding passes. We saw a shop in the airport called “HK Homeless.” We managed to get seats together on the plane. However, we were stuck in the last row with non-reclining seats. The good news is that we could take a few steps to the bathroom. We took United Airlines, the same one we took to Japan. Hell, it might have been the same plane. The entertainment programming and controls were the same. I read more of Crime and Punishment on the plane. However, I just wanted to watch more movies. I first watched a movie called “Keyboard Warriors,” a comedy film about a couple of nerds who try to solve the mystery behind a security truck dropping $22 million dollars in the middle of the street in Hong Kong. It was better than the Chinese movie I watched on the previous flight. I liked how pretty and handsome the main cast was. However, all the characters were hackneyed, and the comedy was sometimes just, “Look at us, we’re funny nerds!” I ate a meal during the film, but I don’t remember what I ate. I think there was ice cream after the meal. I took a nap after this, as it was the appropriate time in San Francisco (remember my strategy?) I only slept for an hour or two. Then I tried watching “Blade,” because I knew Red Letter Media had done a re:View on it. It was fun! I actually liked the effects, unlike the RLM guys; they were endearingly cute. I thought the storyline was lame, but the action and effects were cool. Then I went to the bathroom, and took a walk around the airplane to stretch a bit. Finally, and I was surprised that the end of the flight was coming up on me, I watched “Aquaman.” I had to skip ahead sometimes because I didn’t have time to watch it in full. I honestly don’t really know what was going on, wasn’t fully invested in it. Finally, we arrived at the airport. My dad was getting angry about something again. My uncle picked us up (thank you!), and we got back home. I was tired, and while I saw some cool stuff on the trip, I was glad to be home.
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My mom was very happy to have bought some new Clarks’ shoes at a storefront around the corner from our hotel the day before. She seemed like she was doing a lot better on her feet. I was glad she was feeling better, but I don’t know why she originally brought such painful shoes, on our trip where we’d be walking everywhere. Today, we were headed to a meeting place by our great-aunt’s place, to have dim sum. As we were waiting to take our bus, my dad went to buy some chan bao, my sister’s favorite morning bun. It tasted absolutely amazing. Perhaps my single favorite food I ate on the trip. It was sweet and warming like I remember from when I was a child. In San Francisco, the Chinese bakeries don’t really sell chan bao anymore, so I’ve been missing it for a while. We took the bus through Hong Kong. Hong Kong looks so much like the worlds in Blade Runner and Ghost in the Shell. It is truly the most post-modern city in the world. All these tall skyscrapers, but also just dense populations living like people did a hundred years ago. We arrived at the shopping complex. We walked around for a bit first. There was a McDonald’s on the ground level. On the third level, there was a guy who raised birds! The birds were so pretty. They were kept in bird cages. There were some shops of the usual cheap stuff, but there was also a supermarket. It was amazing how many vegetables were in there, and so nicely laid out. I was surprised that no one was inside, but it was probably because it was still early in the day. There was fish and meat as well. My mom said the prices were good. The coolest thing in there were the cages of frogs! My dad said Chinatown used to be like that. The supermarket was so awesome to me. It was the thing that made it click in my brain, that I could possibly live in Hong Kong. I have a few issues still. The weather (it’s really hot, and there is the threat of hurricanes) and the language barrier (I know a little Cantonese, but not to the point where I can fully rely on it) would be tough to deal with, as well as the overly indecorous attitude of the people here. My mom says Japanese people are too rigid, but Chinese are too much the other way, of having no respect for anything. Eventually, we met up with our great-aunt, who took us to the dim sum restaurant. The food there wasn’t that great, we were hoping to get some kick-ass dim sum in Hong Kong. We took a picture with our great-aunt, and then we went separate ways. Now we rode a bus to the mainland in the north to see the flower market. There were a lot of pretty flowers. Here is one of my favorites. I am not a huge pretty-flower guy, so I was mostly bored. When I got to a shop with gardening tools, I was thinking I should have gotten one of these for nai-nai instead of the ramen. Nai-nai has since tried the ramen, and she said she liked it. So, it seems like my choice wasn’t too bad. Anyways, then we wanted to check out the area known as Tsim Sha Tsui, the peninsula that looks out onto Hong Kong Island. Here there is the famous night market, with zillions of stalls selling a bunch of stuff. The key thing here is that you don’t know the quality of the product and haggling is okay, so it is kind of a place to play the fun game of pricing. First we stopped off at a dessert shop where I got papaya with crunchy fungus in sweet water. I’m not a fan of this kind of dessert – it’s too light for me. I also got some egg puffs later on. At the egg puff stall, something bad happened, and I learned to ask the stall owner stuff, not anyone else. We found the Night Market even though it was only 4PM. It was actually relatively busy, despite being so early. I ended up buying a belt. The lady said it was 3200 HKD, and I got it for 1600 HKD. It was a good markdown, I guess. I can’t say how much it would go for in an upright market, and I don’t know if it is genuine leather. Anyways, it’s been working for a week, so there is that. We spent a good half-hour figuring out where to go next. We finally decided to walk around Victoria Peak. We took a taxi up the mountain. We took the 2-3 mile scenic trail around the mountain. Midway around, it started raining! Luck finally caught up to us. We got quite a bit wet. Fortunately, it stopped raining after fifteen minutes, and we eventually dried up since it was so hot. As we came up around the last stretch, there was a beautiful sunset, casting a nice light on Hong Kong. Due to the cloudiness, it looked like Minas Tirith in Return of the King. The trail was longer than I expected, and I was sure glad when we saw we had made it all the way around. Next, we climbed the observatory tower. My dad and I went all the way to the roof, paying the admission fee. We took some pictures of the Hong Kong night view, despite a creeping fog. As it turned out, we could have went down a couple levels and gotten a free view. In the basement of the observatory tower, there was a wax museum. I took a picture with Nicole Kidman and Albert Einstein. We had to pay for more, but it would have been cool to see Jackie Chan, who is one of my movie heroes. It was past dinner time at this point. We found a smoking taxi driver, who overcharged us for taking us back down the mountain to our apartment. We ate at a grilled goose butchery-restaurant just a block away. My dad seemed to really enjoy it, maybe to the point that it was his favorite meal of the trip. I got a chicken over rice. The chicken was really tasty, and it was a good dish. It’s this kind of Chinese butchered meat that is one of the reasons why I can’t even go vegetarian, let alone vegan. My brain gets too happy with meat. We enjoyed a beer, too, and had a toast to a successful trip. The next day we would be going back to San Francisco.
The next morning, I woke up with the recognition that this was our travel day. We took out the trash, as it was part of our agreement to take the room. It was raining outside! We were unbelievably lucky on our trip, because until that point it had been virtually rain-free. We put on our lightweight waterproof jackets that were brought specifically for June rain in Japan. We said goodbye to our lodging, and rolled our baggage to the station. Then we took the train to the airport. Boy we were lucky, because as soon as we got to the airport, we saw that it was pouring rain. It was smooth sailing to the gate. There we waited for a couple hours for our flight. On the TV was an NHK program about two celebrities (I think a former boy band member and an actress) getting together. It seemed like an old program because the boy band looked like they were from the Nineties. I think it was indeed a current news item, though. I was also continuing to work through Crime and Punishment. I think at this point I was past the one-third mark or something like that. All the while, out the window it looked like the Great Flood was upon us. Right in the nick of time, we were leaving Japan.
We boarded the plane around 11:00AM. On the plane, I was separated from the rest of my family. I felt drowsy, so I tried to sleep for almost the whole flight. I say tried because the lights were too bright, and we kept running into turbulence, shaking me alert. At one point, I woke up, and saw the lady next to me had lunch. I looked around and saw only two other people had lunch. I thought that perhaps the lunch was not free. I was still drowsy, so I decided to try to sleep again. A half hour before we were to land, I opened my eyes, realizing I wasn’t going to be able to sleep. A flight attendant asked if I wanted lunch, I said yes. I asked if it was free. She said yes. She left, but then came back to say she was sorry, but it was too late for lunch. She did give me a drink and a lot of snacks, though. I was a bit hungry, but luckily the pangs weren’t too bad. The snacks were good enough. When we got off, my parents asked me if I ate the lunch, I said no. This caused a huge hubbub where my dad called me stupid. I said, Alright, I’m stupid. To me, the dumbest thing was that the yelling and scolding was ten times worse than my hunger (I wasn’t that hungry). Anyways, my sister had to go to the bathroom so we waited for her. Then we found the bus station, paid for bus tickets and waited in line for the bus that would take us to Hong Kong Island. Hong Kong was hot just like Japan (perhaps even hotter). But Hong Kong was also humid. The humidity does make the weather feel much more suffocating. My mom commented about the people being much more free, not so rigid and polite. The bus didn’t take too long to arrive. We piled in with all the other people with luggage. It was a double-decker! Up on the second level, I was amused to see a screen receiving feed from a camera down below pointing at the luggage area. This was a nice feature, so that you could see if someone was taking your luggage. The only issues were that one, it was hard to tell which piece of luggage was yours, and two, if someone were to really steal it, you might not be quick enough to climb down the stairs and catch him. We got off at our stop, and I turned on my data, under AT&T’s International Day Pass, to use Google Maps to find our way to our hotel. The hotel was nicely air conditioned, and finally we had an elevator to get up to our room! Our room was small. There was the bathroom. The bedroom had only enough room to squeeze two king-sized beds right next to each other. Then there was just enough room to walk at the foot of the two beds to the front door. Eh, it’s not too bad, we’ve been in worse. It was 4:30PM. We lazed around for an hour or two, deciding what to do. We could go around Victoria Peak. But then my mom mentioned we could eat with her aunt and her family. By the time we decided to make a decision, it was too late, we decided to just go to dinner with the relatives. It was good for us that they chose a place so close to our hotel. It was the usual Chinese banquet-type restaurant that I go to once a month. We used Google Maps again, and found the restaurant, on the second floor of a shopping complex of some sort. There we met my mom’s aunt, cousin, niece, niece’s husband, and great-niece. The cousin bore a great resemblance to my grandmother (my mom’s mom). The great-niece looked about 11 years old, and she seemed really capable and independent. She asked for the bathroom for me, and she could get her own food and everything. The restaurant was decently fancy, and food was good, nothing to write home about. I only wish there were more vegetables. I was super stuffed afterwards, and definitely wasn’t worried about hunger anymore. Then my great-aunt and aunt escorted us back to our hotel. That was so nice of them, especially since my great-aunt has trouble walking now. We bought some fruit (gosh darn I don’t remember what they were called!). There was a pear-tasting fruit. We all went up to our room, and we shared our fruit together. My aunt found a cockroach in our bathroom, which my dad killed. I gingerly picked up the cockroach with a tissue and flushed it down the toilet. Our relatives left, and we lazed around some more. I kept reading. I was probably at nearly page 400 of 629. At around 12, I finally decided to go to sleep. There is one other sight in Japan that I totally forgot! On the morning that we visited Osaka Castle, we first went to a temple just a few blocks from our lodging. It was kind of a standard temple, but the most interesting thing was that they had this large pool with dozens of turtles scattered throughout! I saw a couple turtles climb up a rock step from the water to get up onto land. It was really great, and was perhaps my favorite run-in with nature/animals during the trip. We also saw quite a few elderly people at the temple sweeping up. I’m not sure if they had just finished an early morning ceremony, or it is simply what they do every morning. There was also a weird display with over a thousand little Buddha figurines, as well as a prayer wheel in front of a large Buddha statue. On the way from the temple to the JR station, we passed by a parade of little schoolgirls. I surmised that on the temple grounds, there was an all-girls school. I looked at my phone and saw it was about 9AM if I recall correctly. I wondered if they shouldn't run, because the gate might close.
This is it! Our last real day in Japan, and we finally go to the place that in a way made the whole trip possible – the Ghibli Museum. My sister Cari and I grew up with movies directed by Hayao Miyazaki. My parents had VHS copies of the Streamline dub of My Neighbor Totoro, as well as an English dub of Kiki’s Delivery Service. They also had DVD copies of Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away. Princess Mononoke continues to be my favorite Ghibli film. Later when we got a little older we watched Howl’s Moving Castle, which became my sister’s favorite. As it turns out, the Ghibli Museum mainly was concerned with the films from the Eighties and Nineties, particularly Nausicaa, Laputa, Fireflies, Totoro, Kiki and Mononoke. This might be because the Museum was primarily enamored with the pre-computer, by-hand animation process of those early. For whatever the reasons may be, there was little of main Ghibli works post-Mononoke at the museum. First, we took the bus to Mitaka Station with the JR pass. To get the rest of the way to the Ghibli Museum, we had to take another bus. When the bus pulled up, we were delighted to see it decorated with the creatures in the Totoro opening credits scene, with a bright yellow background. The We got there too early, so we went to get breakfast at Lawson. We got some onigiri and some sandwiches. They had a special “tanuki” onigiri. It had brown rice, and I decided to try it. It turned to just be a fried rice onigiri. We lined up, and eventually they opened. We showed them our tickets, and we each got a map and a little slide with three frames from a Ghibli museum. We went out to a courtyard with lockers to put away our stuff. This was a Kiki like area, with a manual water pump, and the 90-degree-angle staircase where Kiki lived. There were basically three exhibits in the museum. I am not sure if they change every year or something. The first exhibit was about the process of making pictures into a movie. It showed the running cycles of the Catbus. It showed running the film through all the gears to create a moving picture. Then it showed adding sound for a final product. Another room on the second floor showed the artwork, stuff like how to draw water and shadows, especially the coloring of all the shades and hues. The third exhibit was my favorite, and was about modeling and backgrounds. This exhibit walked us through a bunch of drawing rooms, where there were zillions of drawings on the walls, and thousands of books stacked up in the corners. Then there is the model guy that is sold in stores like Flax. There are different plants all around. You could see how this drawing here could have been based on this drawing in this book, or this photo over here. I came to realize that you needed all of these millions of sources in order to make something as realistic as the stuff you see in Ghibli’s films. On the third floor was the gift shop. I slightly regret not buying something there. There were two cool things I saw. There was a puzzle that formed a sketch of Kiki. All the other puzzles looked like something you could get in Japantown. There was also a figurine of the Forest God. That was awesome. On the roof was a replica of the Laputa robot, as well as the Laputa cube. While waiting for my mom and sister in the gift shop, my dad and I went to the restaurant, called the “Straw Hat Café.” I ordered the spaghetti, and my dad ordered the sandwich. Another thing is that we weren’t allowed to take pictures of the interior of the Ghibli Museum. I took one picture inside the men’s bathroom because they had a cool stained glass window, but only because I forgot their rule against it, and no one else was there. My mom and sister later ate something at the takeout window. The final thing we did at the museum was watch a short film! I think the theater was called Teatro Solaris or something Italian. They have a new short film featured exclusively at the museum every year, and this year it was “The Egg Princess and the Bread Dough” or something like that (in Japanese). While I am not 100% sure, it would make sense that Studio Ghibli made the film, not only because it was featured at their museum, but also that a lot of the artwork reminded me of other Ghibli films. The movie opened with a scary-faced witch with big boobs eating twenty sunny-side-up eggs. The image was so scary that a kid in the theater started crying (apparently for the whole movie, but I somehow tuned it out). She was unable to crack one of the eggs open, and somehow the egg became animate. The colors were very bold, much like the colors in Howl’s Moving Castle. This little egg princess was basically like a servant girl for the witch, and there was a depressing montage of the work she had to do. One night, she rolls out some bread dough into a trough. As she sleeps, the moon shines onto the bread dough, and it comes alive. It gets a wormy apple as a nose. She takes the bread dough and uses it to escape the tower where she lived. They manage to get down the mountain to the countryside where rabbit farmers live. The witch finds out she’s gone first thing in the morning, and goes down to find her. The dough and the egg keep hiding from her, until finally the witch finds them in a bakery. Then the egg princess puts the dough into the oven, and it comes out as a buff soldier-like bread guy. Then the king and queen come out, and they are eggs! So the witch just gives up or something. The ending was weird, but I liked the animation, and I liked the dough guy (before he becomes bread). That’s all for the museum. It was pretty cool. So now, we went to see the Imperial Grounds, which Mommy really wanted to see. In particular, she wanted to see the “Double Bridge.” When we got there it was really hot (as usual). We walked to it, and took a quick picture and left. God it was hot. Anyways, we left and we went to Tokyo Station. There my mom bought some socks. Finally we were on our way back to Osaka. On the way, Daddy started getting on my case about finding a job with higher pay. It’s not like I disagree with him, but it’s not like I haven’t tried to get a higher paying job. It’s just really difficult because I have so much trouble with interviews, and, what I feel my biggest problem is, that I haven’t found something to really dig into and be passionate about. Anyways, he was talking about his research into why there were so many people in the service industry. And he found out about how the millennial generation is screwed, and all that, because of globalization and such. Then he started talking about his own history. He worked at the bank. During a couple summers his dad (my grandpa) took him along to learn my grandpa’s plumbing work. Then when my dad wasn’t sure if he wanted to do graduate school, my grandpa convinced him to start a plumbing company. Then he talked about how he was fooled into doing work for no money a couple times, he didn’t have the business sense of my grandpa. Then he bought a building with my aunt and uncle. That building lost him a lot of money. Then he bought a building with his brother. He was sad to have to evict the tenant in #1 because he had to move in. Daddy said he could get me into the plumbing business if I wanted. I just have to get the plumbing license (by taking the test). Once we got back to Osaka, we decided to go directly to Dotonbori, the last spot in Osaka we wanted to visit. My mom actually did more research on Dotonbori than me. She found out that the city Osaka used to extend only up to the river. That is where merchants set up shop. Later when Osaka was built beyond the river, the merchant shops remained. This area is Dotonbori. Dotonbori was great! The first thing we saw was the giant crab decoration, whose limbs moved back and forth like the Blue Badger. We bought some grilled crab there, which my dad liked. Next we saw all the freaking neon signs! It was like Times Square! It was great. There was even a Ferris wheel hidden in a building. We just walked around, soaking in the atmosphere and looking for a good restaurant. I personally was hoping to eat sushi. We eventually settled on one. There weren’t many people inside. We got a table on the upper floor. Then we found the most glorious pleasant surprise of the trip on the menu… horse meat! Before the trip, my dad had continually joked about eating horse meat whenever we asked him what he wanted to do in Japan. Obviously, we ordered the horse meat. We also ordered a nigiri sushi assortment, unagi rice, and tofu. Everything was decent. I remember that the sushi was good. The focus was the horse meat. We were surprised when it was served raw. I tried it without seasoning. The texture was a bit like tuna. It did not have taste, though. My dad was super offended that it did not have taste, but I think that’s normal. You need to season meat! We eventually left, and went back up to the canal. The canal was beautiful, with gondolas coming up and down. My sister heard that the takoyaki was famous, so she went to buy some. It had truly just been made, because it was piping hot! Even my mom, who can eat anything, cried out in pain. I waited a minute, and then tried it. I thought it was okay, not really my thing. My dad said the dough should be harder, though I didn’t think so. I thought, what else could you expect? We took a picture in front of the famous Glico running man. Then we were done! We went back to the hotel, to get ready to go to Hong Kong the next day.
On this Day 5 we finally visited Tokyo! We stayed there overnight, but kept our Osaka home base at the same time, so we just brought a few extra clothes along. Unfortunately for my dad, he had to carry the clothes bag. Unfortunately for the rest of us, he kept throwing a tantrum about having to carry it. We woke up later than usual, and didn’t leave our room until 10AM. We first headed to Nagoya for the annual Atsuta Shrine Festival, the second largest religious festival in Japan. While researching for places to go on our trip, I wanted to find special, unique things to do that wouldn’t just be the usual stuff like shopping and famous buildings. So I searched up events that would occur during our trip. The Atsuta Shrine Festival was one of the few things I found. More so than the Kobe excursion, which turned out decent, I was really hoping for good things from Atsuta, as it was the other itinerary item specifically prepared by me. Atsuta Shrine is a pretty famous religious site in Japan. It is apparently the home of a famous imperial sword, one of the three royal treasures of Japan that have been around for hundreds of years. However, they don’t let the public see the sword, so it might just be myth. As for the festival, besides the usual booths and food, there were supposed to be martial arts demonstrations and the like. At night would be fireworks. We got off the train at Nagoya Station. At first, we followed some young people, thinking they were going to the same place as us. However, this turned out to not be the case, as they were probably students at Nagoya University. I asked a young person for directions in Japanese, and while I did not understand all the Japanese directions, I got the general gist of the direction. Also, we had Google Maps. We eventually found the shrine, which appeared to be several city blocks big, and corralled around by lots of trees, akin to a Stern Grove type of setup. You couldn’t see through the trees to the shrine because the trees were so dense. Around the outside of this large area there were booths just being set up. They mostly were food booths, and most of the food booths served sweets. There was one hilarious booth selling boba drinks sold in IV pouches, with the tube coming off the bottom. We finally went into the wooded area to find even more booths. My dad commented that there were endless booths. We turned a corner and eventually found our way to a building that was a combo restaurant and souvenir shop. Outside, people were cooking food, so we bought some. We got some stir-fry noodles, a weird egg thing sandwiched between thin rice crackers, and a hot dog. The hot dog tasted weird, and I thought it might be fake vegan meat. This would make sense, since this was a religious location. My dad said it tasted fine. Then we went walking and found the central plaza where they would hold the martial arts demonstrations. Off to one side was a little display room of flower arrangements. See one below. At the far end of the plaza was a fenced off area. The fenced off area seemed like perhaps the most sacred part of the shrine or something. A lot of people were gathered around the martial arts ring. Then, you could hear chanting in the distance. Some kind of procession was approaching! Eventually we saw them come through into the plaza. It was a parade of mostly men holding up big white flags with big bold Japanese characters in black ink. They proceeded up to the fenced off area. There they kowtowed. Then, they came toward the martial arts ring. They then started to come out, four at a time in two pairs, and demonstrated martial arts. Some used fans, edged weapons, staffs, even an umbrella. The most striking thing were the battle cries. They made all kinds of strange whoops that sounded comical to my ears. We stuck around for 15-ish minutes, and then went off to get some more food. We went back to the souvenir shop for the backdoor noodle restaurant. I ordered some noodles that included an egg on top in the picture. My mom had tsukemen. We all got the same noodles. They were on the thick side, and flat. They were like the flatness of Chinese ho fun, but thicker like Italian pasta. My mom seemed to like these noodles so much, she later said it was her favorite meal in Japan. I was surprised to see that my dish was essentially a salad with noodles. Besides noodles, which were mixed with a thin peanut sauce, there were a bunch of cold, raw vegetables, as well as my raw egg. I was hoping for a hot noodle dish. Despite my disappointment at that aspect, the dish did taste good. I am not a salad person, but as a salad, I might say it was one of my favorites that I’ve tasted. After that, we left, and took the long train ride to Tokyo. I am not sure why, but Tokyo didn’t look that good to me, as we approached. It wasn’t that much more impressive than Osaka. We took another train to Shin-Okubo Station. When we got outside, it was nearly 6PM. The sun was almost setting. I saw a girl who seemed to be waiting for someone. Admittedly, I thought the girls here were not as good-looking as they were in Osaka. Anyways, back out in the street, it took me a minute to get my bearings, but then we eventually found our hotel, which turned out to be right next to Okubo Station. We rang the bell for the receptionist to come. We got our room and slippers. We were sharing showers and bathrooms with two or three other families. Internally, I was glad that we would only be staying one night. Our room had two bunk beds. We just lazed around for half an hour. Then we had to get going. We walked to Shinjuku I think? We passed by a building labeled “Scientology,” as well as some homeless people under the overpass. That is when my dad started getting interested in reading about the Japanese economy. We eventually got to Kabuki-cho. We bought a fried-potato-covered hot dog. It was alright. We also saw the Godzilla that moves every hour on the hour. Next, we went to look for Ichiran Ramen, the ramen restaurant that Cari had heard so much about. We found it, but had to wait in line for 45 minutes to an hour. I was pissed, because I was hungry, and Mommy and Daddy were yelling at me because I didn’t want to throw trash into a recycle bin. Anyways, we waited in line for the freaking elevator. Then we waited in line again to order at the machine. Then we waited in line again to be seated. There was an amusing video promoting their pre-packaged noodles and broth that could be purchased. The video was showing people eating the noodles in the freezing snow and at home by yourself, saying that you could now eat the famous noodles wherever you wanted! I wanted to buy some for nai-nai, my landlord, because she eats Chinese ramen for lunch at least three days a week. When we got to the front of the line, they gave us a sheet to ask how we wanted our noodles and soup cooked, as well as a menu to order extra toppings or dessert. I just went for normal everything, and no extra toppings or dessert. Finally, we got our seats. The gimmick with this restaurant is you sit facing a wall, with a divider separating you from the people sitting next to you also facing the wall. A roll-up blind allows you a path of transfer to the kitchen behind the wall. You could get water from a little dispenser in the left corner, and the other corner had a bunch of pieces of paper that you could write your review on. Or at least that’s what I thought the sign said. Thus I had my mind focused on reviewing the meal. After several minutes of waiting, we got the toppings, and finally the noodles. From first taste, I was struck by the soup. It was perfect! So much pork umami, with spiciness and everything. The soup was a 10/10. The next thing that caught me was that the noodles were different from the usual curly ramen noodles that I was used to. I eventually gave them a 7/10 because, even though I wasn’t sure if I liked these different noodles, they were well-cooked. The pork slices were a bit too thick, though they tasted good. Black fungus was fine, not especially good or bad. Finally, they had an egg (which of course is always good), though more cooked than I would like. I drank all the soup, which I normally never do with noodle soup of any kind. When we finally got out, my mom had already bought two packages of the ramen. My dad didn’t like it, to the point that he didn’t even finish it! At this point, we were really tired, particularly my mom. But now, we walked all the way to the Japan Prefectural Government Building, which has an observatory floor at the top. There we saw the skyline. I wasn’t that into it, I liked what we saw in Kobe better. There was the gift shop, with a bunch of stuff. Anyways, I was just kind of done for the day. So next, with Mommy being so tired, we looked for the train station, which we were able to take with our JR passes. Finally, we went to sleep. The next day, we would finally be going to the place that was the catalyst for the whole trip.
Notes
Introduction For most people who have played the trilogy, the usual play-through order is first PW, then JFA, finally T&T. However, I personally played JFA first, and got to PW and T&T later. Playing JFA the first time, I knew I was missing something because of the way Phoenix would talk about Edgeworth, but besides that I never had much of a problem in enjoying the game. When I got around to playing PW, I enjoyed it, and I remember loving Redd White as a villain. However, as the years passed and I played all of the other games, I realized there were problems with PW, especially as an initial game in the franchise. From here, I will explain why playing JFA before PW leads to greater enjoyment of the trilogy. Again, beware of spoilers in points 1 and 8. Arguments 1. First of all, to the Ace Attorney veterans, you may be protesting that you wouldn’t be playing the game in the right chronological order. May I remind you that Trials and Tribulations has two flashback cases, and I am sure you aren’t protesting about playing those in the order presented. The only things that you are missing from starting at “The Lost Turnabout” are the circumstances surrounding Mia’s death and Edgeworth’s character arc. The former is superfluous to the enjoyment of “Justice for All.” As for the latter, I make the case that ultimately, the player does not need to know Edgeworth’s backstory to enjoy “Justice for All.” In fact, it barely changes any of the emotional payoff in “Farewell My Turnabout” to know what Edgeworth has gone through. This is because Edgeworth doesn’t play a character in JFA so much as a plot device that urges Wright to realize something about being a lawyer. The player simply needs to know that Wright and Edgeworth have a long history together, and that Edgeworth had to deal with his traumatic past. This is all stated in “Justice for All” by the writers without spoilers for “Turnabout Goodbyes.” In this way, Edgeworth’s presentation in “Justice for All” doesn’t differ much from that in “Phoenix Wright” until “Turnabout Goodbyes.” As a result, one can think of “Justice for All” as an extended lead-up to “Turnabout Goodbyes.” Certainly, knowing the events of “Turnabout Goodbyes” wouldn’t hurt, as it helps explain where Edgeworth is coming from in “Justice for All.” However, not knowing is not pertinent to the playthrough of JFA. 2. The cases are more trite (no pun intended), like Spiderman-ey. This sets a grounded tone that the other games don’t embrace as much, even though that “normality” feeling remains a core aesthetic pillar of the series. In PW, the middle cases (other than the tutorial and the final cases) involve a megalomaniacal, worldly data-and-information dealer and a popular TV show celebrity. In contrast, the JFA middle cases involve a secluded mountain village and performers in a traveling circus. JFA’s settings and characters aren’t rich guys who have no lifestyle similarities to that of Maya or Phoenix, the main characters. While they are still quirky characters, their lifestyles are more relatable and similar to the lives of the main characters, and indeed, the people playing the game. The player can more easily envision themselves in a scenario akin to the ones experienced by characters in “Reunion and Turnabout” than “Turnabout Sisters.” The only exception is Franziska’s whipping, but I mean grounded more in terms of the dialogue, story and characters. But just like the channeling ability of the Feys, the court whippings become simply a bizarre-for-us but normal-for-them trait of the Ace Attorney world. They, again, provide a stellar foundation for the dealings with normal people, and the very real impact of the legal system, that keep the Ace Attorney series feeling so thrilling and significant. Like Star Trek, there is that underlying nature of ethics and ordinary human nature that secures the fantastical elements present elsewhere in the fictional universe. For a case study in how unbelievable the first game is, nothing exemplifies the abrupt shift from normal to fantastical quite like the transition from “The First Turnabout” to “Turnabout Sisters.” “The First Turnabout” concerns a crooked newspaper salesman, and “Turnabout Sisters” concerns a man who has the entire world in the palm of his hand through his control of information. If you didn’t get the dramatic shift from teacup stir to tsunami, you have to read that sentence again. It is jaw-dropping to me that this choice to go from 0 to 100 was made by Shu Takumi and company. This shift would throw a zillion players off of playing the rest of the game, let alone the rest of the franchise. In contrast, JFA starts the player off on three relatively grounded cases, before throwing in a megalomaniac in the fourth case. 3. This idea of ramping up appropriately, and the sensible flow of writing, is very important to me. Normally, things go gradually from 1 to 3 to 6 to 10. They don’t go from 0 to 100. While PW has 0-to-100 moments, JFA does not. Starting at JFA means the player gets gradually used to the world of Ace Attorney, instead of diving into the deep end right away. 4. The final case, “Farewell, My Turnabout” is a perfect summation of the main theme of the entire franchise – to discover and reveal the truth. 5. Admit it – Edgeworth becomes a more likeable character after he deals with his traumatic past. After “Turnabout Goodbyes,” Edgeworth becomes much more tolerable in a conversation. So when you see later on what a big bitch he was in the first game, you are amazed at how far he’s come. 6. “Rise from the Ashes” isn’t such a cognitive hurdle. “Rise from the Ashes,” the fifth and final case in the updated 2005 version of “Phoenix Wright,” is arguably the greatest case of the entire franchise. However, a common complaint even among fans of the case is the placement of the episode in the chronology of events in the Ace Attorney universe. Due to some of Edgeworth’s actions feeling pre-Turnabout Goodbyes and some feeling post-Turnabout Goodbyes. If you play “Justice for All” then “Phoenix Wright,” then you will be okay with the episodic nature of some of the cases, and the placement of “Rise from the Ashes” won’t bother you so much. It will simply feel like a great case taking place around the time period when Maya is gone, rather than a contradictory moment in Edgeworth’s arc. 7. “Justice for All” is a better starting point to get used to the leaps in logic of the series. The fantastic twist in “Reunion and Turnabout” regarding Ini Miney is the perfect way to gain perspective on the kind of out-of-the-box thinking expected of players working through the series. Once this twist is out of the way, the player understands where the creators of the game want the players’ heads to be, and the bizarre nature of revelations in other cases, including in “Phoenix Wright,” can be more easily taken in stride. 8. I think Ace Attorney veterans can all agree that Mia’s character gets more development and screen time in death than in life. In “Phoenix Wright,” we see Mia pretty much only in the courtroom and defendant’s lobby before her life abruptly ends. We actually get more time to spend with Mia in JFA as a channeled spirit than in PW alive. We actually get glimpses into her personality in JFA, whereas when she gets killed in “Turnabout Sisters,” all you know is that she was your mentor and she has a little sister. Mia’s death actually gets a bigger emotional payoff after playing JFA! As a result, JFA is a superior starting point simply due to the ample time having Mia as a side character to talk to leisurely during investigations, as compared to only getting informational briefings and advice in “The First Turnabout.” Not only that, but since the player plays as Phoenix, Mia is just a blip on the screen of the other dozen things to worry about, with Larry’s case being his first case and all. Mia being such a significant aspect of the trilogy, her abrupt death in “Turnabout Sisters” doesn’t make much sense from a storytelling aspect. Conclusion I have made my case that JFA is a superior starting point for the Ace Attorney trilogy than PW. For people who have played the games already, this doesn’t matter. But there are people who haven’t played the games, and Ace Attorney continues to slowly grow in public awareness. The fans need to promote JFA as the first game to play, so that the potential fans are more likely to enjoy the game. Thank you for reading, and let me know your thoughts in the comments! As it turned out, we walked more than average on our “take it easy” day. Before going to Kyoto, we decided to check out Osaka Castle first. We ate onigiri for breakfast again. I had this idea to try all the flavors. Flavors include normal-for-Americans ones like beef and chicken. Others include normal-for-Americans-through-osmosis flavors like bonito flakes, tuna, salmon and seaweed. Other weirder or simply bizarre ones were spicy fish roe and mayonnaise. The train station stopped on the outskirts of the vast Osaka Castle grounds. We had to walk another 15-20 minutes to get to the actual castle. Along the way, we passed by the giant moat that surrounds the castle. The funny thing is that the moat was only filled with water on one side. The moat at the backside of the castle was dry and filled with greenery. We also passed by lots of trees, which helped alleviate the heat of the day a little, and made the castle grounds more inviting than the Todaiji grounds we walked through the day before. The long walk made me imagine that I was a soldier in an enemy force, trying to take control of the Castle. Seeing as we had to pass the moat and climb uphill, all while being in view of the castle, made me feel insanely vulnerable and weak. This made me very impressed by how much of a fortress Osaka Castle must have been back in the Edo period. Once we got to the castle, the sight made the long walk worthwhile. The castle has gold plating at several spots, and is several stories high. My dad liked it so much, he called it his house. The castle sits atop a hill on the hill with no visible entryway, making it difficult to understand how people used to get into the castle before elevators and large-scale construction equipment. The castle was surrounded by pretty trees. We did not go inside the castle, as a fee was involved, and we needed to get to Kyoto. My sister was complaining the whole time, since her feet were still hurting. Anyways, we eventually found our way to the train station to go to Kyoto. At Kyoto Station, we managed to find a train to Arashiyama. There we walked around quite a while for a lunch location. My sister was using Google Maps to find a specific place. She was unable to find it, but we happened to find a small restaurant in a back alley. The restaurant had a sign saying, “Sorry, we are chartered out for today!” That sounded like a tour bus was taking up the whole restaurant or something. I was thinking we should find another place, but thank goodness my mom went in to see if we could get eat there. As it turned out, we could! We waited for just a few minutes, and then we sat down at the table. We saw that the menu they gave us had only a few limited options. We ordered one of each. We ordered a chirashi dish, which has sashimi over rice. The chirashi also included a really fine fish roe that tasted really sweet, almost like sugar. We also ordered sashimi, which was good. We also ordered unagi rice which was gloriously tasty! The most special item we ordered was a tofu soup. The soup was served in a paper sheet, which was placed into a metal flame holder. The flame was lit, and that is how the soup was boiled! I was amazed at the paper. It felt so thin, yet the soup did not break it down, and the flame didn’t even leave any charring. The tofu wasn’t particularly tasty, but the texture was good, and it was nice to drink some soup. This was probably my favorite meal. Not only was the food great, but the atmosphere was also good. There were just three other tables of people, and they all seemed like local Japanese people. One was a table of two young women, the next was a table of six elderly women, and the last was a family of three with a small baby, To summarize, the meal and restaurant felt authentically Japanese. The only issue was that the restaurant runners, who seemed like a husband and a wife, were really busy and it was hard to flag them down for the check or more tea. We went out back to the main street, where we found a food stand selling a cucumber on a stick. What an intriguing street snack! We got one. It was quite salty, meaning it had been pickled. My dad seemed to eat a lot of it. I don’t know if it was because he didn’t get full at lunch. I don’t think my dad can handle meals without meat, which we had a lot of since it was Japan, the land of fish and rice. If the cucumber had been colder, it would have been quite a refreshing snack on such a hot day. Next, we walked to the Moon-Reflecting Bridge. My mom seemed to be really infatuated with the idea of it, perhaps because it reminded her of an old folktale told to her by my late grandfather when she was a child. Next, we went looking for the Zhou Enlai Peace Monument. I was starting to get a lot of heat rashes by this point in the trip, and my mom kept putting some wet towels on my neck. I bought some soda to cool down. We found the monument: It was a rock plaque with some declarations of peace between Japan and China, as well as a poem by Zhou Enlai. My mom kept looking around for an image she found online, a piece of wood with “No more war!” written on it. We did not find it, and I thought it bizarre that she knew of something that no one else did. I suspected she found the image from her various WeChat groups with other Chinese people. After researching it a bit later on, I found an article about bad tourists in Japan, including talks of vandalism. This led me to my current belief that the picture she saw online was a work of vandalism near the Bamboo Grove by Chinese tourists. Since the time the picture was taken, the vandalism was erased and removed. Next, we went to the Arashiyama Bamboo Grove. I was too hot to really enjoy it too much, but it was nice. There were just too many people taking beauty shots and clogging up the area. Finally, we found our way to the street, where we flagged a taxi down. The taxi was driven by an elderly man. We told him we wanted to go to Kinkaku-ji, the Golden Pavilion. The cost would be $30. My parents encouraged me to talk to him in Japanese. I felt nervous, but was determined to try. I wanted to ask him what his hometown was, but I didn’t know how to say “hometown.” Our Wi-Fi was down, so I had to dig out my old pocket dictionary from high school. I used the word furusato. The driver replied that he was from Kyoto. My sister asked me to ask him his top five sights in Kyoto. He said that Kinkaku-ji was number one (ichiban). He might have also mentioned Kiyomizu-dera, the clear water temple. He also mentioned how on top of the mountain once a year, they lit a fire, to light the way home for spirits. It would have been cool to see that. I related this all to my family. Anyways, we got to Kinkakuji. The admission fee was $4 per person, not too bad. The pavilion was nice, but it was not anything more than what I could see in a publicity photo. Along the pathway around the pavilion, there was a game where you try to get a coin into a bucket from 5-10 feet away. It was a fun reimagining of the wishing well. I commented to my dad that it was just an easy way to get money from tourists. Anyways, we soon took another taxi to Kiyomizu-dera, the temple that Cari most wanted to see. This time the taxi was driven by a middle-aged lady. We talked to her about the cost of living in Kyoto. She told us she was lower-class, since she only made $2,500 a month (and apparently that was the cost of her rent). We told her about the insanely high rents in San Francisco. She also told us she was unmarried with a son, and was trying to buy a house. The road to Kiyomizu-dera was a couple blocks of tourist-y shops. The first thing you see of the temple is an orange pagoda. It was super bright orange, making all the Torii gates we’ve seen very dilapidated-looking in comparison. Everything about the Kiyomizu-dera looked really… new. So many bright colors and smooth, sleek surfaces. So that is why I call Kiyomizu-dera the “yuppie” temple. It’s the most modern and contemporary out of all the temples we saw. Inside the temple, we saw a many-armed Buddha in a dark display. I really liked the big lantern in the middle of the room. It had an intricate design that looked cool. In the back of the temple, we saw tourists behaving badly again. Cari took a picture of them. After a moderate walk down the side of the heavily forested mountain (I took a nice picture of the sunset), we got to the clear water. I had the impression it would be a waterfall, but really it was some gutters spitting out “clear water” into a pool. It was just a tourist attraction where people catch the water being spit out and clean their hands and mouth with it. The water represents things like success and examination success and all that talisman stuff, but I didn’t really care. Next, we just started walking around. Cari started leading us to the geisha district. That got me irritated. We had decided to only see the three sights in Kyoto (Arashiyama, Kinkaku-ji and Kiyomizu-dera) the night before. Why now were we going somewhere else?? Because Cari thought we were hungry, we found a soba restaurant, which was filled with Korean and Chinese tourists. There was some weird rule that we had to order one of the specialty matcha soba noodles. We didn’t get a chance to ask about this because Mommy (like usual) wants zero discussion. So I got the matcha soba. They were actually pretty good, except I was expecting some chicken, too. Daddy just broke into a rage, which kinda ruined the whole experience. Anyways, it turned out we were just a couple blocks from the geisha district. And we didn’t see a single thing there. The architecture was different, but it’s nothing you can’t see in Japantown in San Francisco. It just confirmed to me that the whole endeavor to go to the Geisha District was pointless. At this point I just wanted to leave. There was a temple brightly lit with lanterns, but we didn’t go in. We just walked along a touristy street filled with every sign mentioning geishas, and we got to the train station. Then we just went back to Tennoji. Here, we finally bought the cake that kept catching our eye at the convenience store. We thought it was the soufflé pancakes that have been making a splash in San Francisco, but it actually turned out to be cheesecake. I don’t normally eat cheesecake (since I don’t like cheese), so perhaps my opinion doesn’t count for much, but I liked the cake. It still had the cheese taste, but it was more tolerable than usual. Jaa, oyasumi nasai.
The next day’s itinerary was Kyoto and Osaka Castle. Before I dive into that, there are a couple things to go back and talk about. First, the jet lag. Japan is sixteen hours ahead of California, which you can also think of as eight hours back. For example, if it’s 10PM in California, almost time to sleep, then in Japan it is only 2PM, the middle of the day. As I said in the Day 1 post, my strategy to circumvent jet lag was to sleep on and off during the flight to confuse my brain’s internal clock. This ended up backfiring because it made me unable to sleep at the required time. Once we got back to the hotel, I was not sleepy, and I knew that I had messed up. As it ended up, jet lag did not ruin the trip for me, but there were a lot of moments of waking up in the middle of the night, as well as getting sleepy in the middle of the day. This was piled on top of inadequate sleep due to the fact that each night we would get back to our room at 11PM, have to take turns using the washroom, and then get up at 6AM the following morning. My body only just started to get used to the new time zones when we were in Hong Kong on the seventh day of the trip. On the return trip to San Francisco, I employed a different strategy – I stayed awake throughout the flight – only attempting to sleep at the time that would be normal in San Francisco’s time zone – so that I would be ready to sleep at the appropriate time in San Francisco. While it is true that I wanted to take a nap upon arrival at 9AM, it was much easier to work my way back to a normal sleeping schedule knowing I was already sleepy. And this turned out to be true, as I got back into a normal rhythm within two days. So, to travelers moving through numerous time zones, I would recommend trying the second approach. If it fails, try out your own ideas to see what works.
The other issue for us travelers, which turns out to be quite related, is leg weariness and foot pain, which became a big topic of discussion among the other members of my family. Due to the immense amount of walking required by our itinerary (an average of 10 miles a day), this was bound to come up. However, I didn’t expect that it would come up so soon. By the end of the Nara-Universal day, only the second day of sightseeing on a 9-day tour, we had to have a group sit down and talk about how tired and painful our feet were. My mom, who has chronically swollen feet, had brought bad walking shoes and was getting blisters. My sister is not a very physical person; once she gets tired, she does not openly complain, but one can tell she is having problems because she starts lagging behind. My dad, though not the weakest of us, is the biggest complainer; he leads a relatively sedentary lifestyle, and is nearing sixty years of age. As for me, I am a young guy that has to walk at least six miles a day at work, and I am in probably the best shape of the four of us; I would have probably been A-OK for the duration of the trip if it wasn’t for the jet lag and short nights of sleep, weakening us further. This all came to a head after dinner on the Nara-Universal day, when we all agreed that we should take it easier on the next day in Kyoto. We set out for Nara the next day. When we arrived, I was designated navigator, though that lasted for about a minute because everyone else started wandering in their own direction. As soon as we got there, we saw the many deer, though they weren’t as exciting since we had already seen them on Miyajima Island. There were little kiosks selling senbei cookies to feed to the deer. In Nara Park, they were holding a music festival on the weekends, which it would have been cool to see, but we had come on a Monday. Nara Park was a green place: grass, meadows and trees. It had a couple of zen garden/pools, too, to spice it up. It was very pretty, and I am sure that the emperor used to come to the park a lot back when the capital was in Nara. I would have enjoyed the park more if it wasn’t so goddamn hot! We went first to Kasuga Shrine, which is famous for its pathways lined with what seems like hundreds of stone lanterns. This was our first time seeing the “bad tourists,” of which there were numerous during our trip. There were Chinese tourists that had entered a zone that had a sign saying “No Trespassing.” Actually, there was more than one such zone here, where Chinese tourists wanted to take a picture. For Japanese people, most of whom are religious, it is a particularly offensive slight to mar their shrines and temples, where their deities seek refuge. These tourists made me embarrassed to be Chinese; they showed no respect for places where they are just visitors. We also saw a camphor tree, which looked like the tree from the anime about a little god who lives in a tree and grants wishes. This is also where we saw a bunch of Torii gates, rendering going to Miyajima Island, where we saw the “floating” Torii gate, totally pointless. I liked the shrine. There were so many lanterns, it was very pleasantly overwhelming. I was thinking that the shrine would look really nice at night, and on a special occasion where the lanterns are all lit.
Next, we went to Todaiji Temple on the other side of the park. Here, there were people eating ice cream… and a LOT of deer. You had to pivot your body sideways to get past all the people feeding deer. I took a picture in front of the replica of the two hands of the Big Buddha Statue (Daibutsu) that Todaiji is famous for. In the gate, behind a netting, we saw the two angry Buddha gargoyles. My sister loved those guys. They were pretty cool, their faces looked so real. One of them, perhaps due to the lighting or the netting, looked positively 3D and alive. Unfortunately, we found out you have to pay $6 per person to get into the Daibutsu’s temple. My parents were tired, so only my sister and I went inside. Before going in to see the Daibutsu, off to the right was a little deity, with a note saying that if you rub part of your body that is injured and the same part on the deity’s body, that part of your body would be healed. There are candles lit in front of the Buddha. I loved the big Buddha. He was really big. He looked a gentle giant that was pretending to be asleep and meditating. He looked like he would come alive and start moving, asking who was disturbing his beauty sleep. There were some smaller Buddhas and protectors around the Daibutsu. I donated $1 to the cause of restoring the Notre Dame Cathedral in France, which caught fire recently. My sister and I left, and met back up with my mom and dad. We went walking around for a lunch location, and eventually chose a place down an alley. It turned out to be an artsy Japanese restaurant. The food choices were meal sets of vegetables that tasted like the forest, and looked like they would be served at a Michelin-star-type restaurant. It was interesting to go to such a restaurant, but the serving size was too small, and the food just tasted okay. My dad hated it, I think because he doesn’t like food that tastes game-y or forest-y. My sister ordered noodles, and she said she loved it. I tried her dish, and thought it was just okay. I think she liked it because one, she loves noodles, and two, being a vegetarian dish it was light. After this we left Nara and traveled to Universal Osaka, Japan’s version of Universal Studios. We got there half an hour before 3PM, which was the start time of a discount rate for a day pass. Surprisingly, my mom was okay with heading in at the full price. It was only until we got in a 65-minute line for Godzilla vs. Evangelion that I understood what the game plan was. My sister (the main planner for the trip) decided to go to Universal in order to see the special Japanese attractions that are only at Universal Osaka. The special attractions are mainly shows, with the Godzilla show being one of them. My sister’s idea is not inherently bad, but when I realized that all the lines were going to be 1-2 hours long, I was not happy. It just felt dumb to be at a theme park that we paid hundreds of dollars to be at, where surely not every ride had a 90-minute line, and spend the majority of our mere half-day there standing in line, even if it was for Japan-exclusive shows. While the shows were good, I did not feel like they were worth the $200 admission price. I think I would have preferred doing something else with the rest of our day, even if it was outside Universal. While we were in lines, I read a little bit of Crime and Punishment, and also went out to buy snacks and drinks. I got a Sailor Moon-themed smoothie, and an Attack on Titan-themed churrito. The smoothie was good, but when I got back to the family in line with my smoothie for them, we were told that we had to get rid of the smoothie. So unfortunately, my mom had to quickly slurp it all, and I am sure that wasn’t pleasant. The churritos actually weren’t too good. They were chocolate and orange-flavored, and were too sweet and weird-tasting. They tasted like pure junk food. To back out to the larger picture a little, it actually surprised us during the trip how many sweet shops and sweet products were sold by Japanese. Walking around, it felt like 50% of shops were sweets shops. I feel like Japanese people are largely not obese. So, why are there so many sweets shops? I’m thinking that sweets are offered as gifts, but maybe the sweets aren’t used for much more than that. And maybe the gifts aren’t even consumed. Anyways, we also rode the Lupin the Third ride, after a two-hour wait. Unfortunately, it required VR, which could not sync up with my terrible eyesight, so I couldn’t see the ride too clearly. The final thing we did there was watch the night parade. The themes were Harry Potter, Transformers, Jurassic Park and one other thing I can’t remember. It was cool, because the buildings along the route were also used as screens for image projection. There must have been a hundred performers in the parade, it was an impressively big undertaking. By the time the parade was over, it was 8:30PM, and we hadn’t had dinner yet. When we got back to Tennoji Station, we bought dinner at the convenience store (called konbini in Japan) to be eaten at our room. I got an eel bento box and a cup of ramen. The bento box was really good. However, the ramen was too salty. That concludes that day. |
AuthorI was born and raised in San Francisco, California. I am proud of my Chinese heritage, and I think my background gives me a unique edge on this vast field of opinion. As a self-proclaimed music historian, I have loved pop music ever since I first heard it. These are my opinions on some of the recent albums and songs that are making a splash in the industry. Archives
December 2020
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