While my sister was at work today, I ventured towards Kobe to do some hiking - I had instructions on how to get there wit my Hiking in Japan book, and two bottles of water, but it ended up being over 90 again today and just really too hot to be hiking, which sort of came back to bite me later on. It wasn't hard to get to Ashiya-gawa station, though I did get lost trying to find my way up the residential backstreets to where the rock garden officially started. Why are these things NEVER clearly marked anywhere?! So that took up some time and a lot of my water, because it was swelteringly hot and I was lost, but eventually I did find what I was looking for. There was a nice waterfall and ... read more

Since my sister is down in Osaka for a summer internship, I waited patiently until the only national holiday in June and August, and then took a week's vacation down to see her. I'd only been to the Kansai area once before, and only for 2 days, so I was very excited to see more of it this time around. And to see my sister, of course! The problem was that I had not anticipated the DEMAND for shinkansen tickets due to the three-day weekend, and as such, when I bought my tickets Friday night after work, I could only get a non-reserved seat. The shinkansen ride to Shin-Osaka from Shin-Yokohama is 137 minutes, and I stood in the CROWDED non-reserved section for 80 of them. It was HOT and pretty miserable, haha. Luckily, I grabbed ... read more

I had yesterday off in a RARE shift swap with the head teacher, who needed a Thursday worked for him at the end of August, so I managed to get a day off with Rani, who I never have similar off days with. We decided to make the most of this and go to Tokyo Disneyland together - she hadn't been there yet, and I hadn't been there when it wasn't cold outside! We got up early and made our way out to the bay on the crowded, crowded trains (I'm continually glad I don't have to deal with that in the mornings) and ended up getting a really great day for it, weather-wise, particularly since today is raining and blech. Our first order of business was buying ears, because we were determined to wear the ... read more

It's been awhile since I updated with anything, but I'm back with a great new adventure - baseball! Now, if you know me and my immediate family, you know that baseball is practically our religion, and therefore, seeing a baseball game in Japan was definitely high up on my to-do list. Unfortunately, it's also something that's slightly difficult to do a) alone, and b) with my god-awful work schedule. FORTUNATELY, the guy I'm currently dating ended up making this possible, so I got to see a great ball game! Obviously, the Giants are Tokyo's most famous team, and often are compared to the Yankees, and seeing as how I am a Yankees fan, it only made sense to go and see the Giants play. I'd never been to Tokyo Dome, so I was pretty excited to ... read more

Day three in Seoul was another early morning, because we didn't want to fight with our hostel mates over the one bathroom. We started, once again, with Dunkin' Donuts - because you don't waste that opportunity when you have been jonesing for it for so long - and decided that we would head towards Changdeokgung Palace because supposedly there was a changing of the guard every hour, and we thought it might be cool to see. However, while we were sitting in Dunkin' Donuts, we had our first encounter of the day with how outgoing Koreans are in contrast to Japanese. A young man came over and started with, "Excuse me, ladies," and then proceeded to talk to us about Dokdo Island, and how it's Korean territory, not Japanese. He did the entire thing in English, ... read more