i began this travelog when i got on the plane to atl and realized i could make a fun little device with a shell script, ntfy, and a tasker widget. two flights later i had most of what i needed, and some integration in the lobby of a hostel later i was in business. i document my little-over-a-week trip to japan on the occasion of jamie paige's digital stars performance in nagoya, more or less as it happened. the text and presentation are very slightly edited for quality. i hope it's a fun read!
much has transpired.
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orange juice with ramen. what an idea
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ngl that was like. the best specifically vegan ramen broth i've ever had? it was so drinkable. time for round two thank you ramen vending machine
Scully, you're not gonna believe this
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afuri in lumine 1 at shinjuku station: i rate pretty good.
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don quijote is like ikea in that you are induced to follow their winding trail through absolutely every product sold in the store. it is unlike ikea in that eventually you turn a random corner and are suddenly facing more sex toys than you have ever seen in one place before
"チャーリー • チャップリン." idrk what he has to do with it but we don't gotta ask
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okay so ngl this is gonna do hell on the itinerary. gonna be a lot to come back from. tough match to salvage. but at least now i won't feel a moment's hesitation booking my flight for her next show, whenever and wherever it is
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@ dug jazz cafe & bar sipping a gin cocktail perhaps the best possible time, place, and scenario to learn that Jamie will not be performing. i give 5 stars under the circumstances, thank you dug
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finally an oolong tea. we are improving the beverage meta slowly but steadily
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gm
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the story so far: landed yesterday at 2 PM local time. cleared customs with no problems, though man does the japanese government have serious papers on me now, documented to within an inch of my life i was. got my SIM card and my suica at the airport, then immediately embarrassed myself in public by attempting to exit a station through the transfer gate and trapping myself inside the station. an attendant armed with google translate freed me. bless him. walked the rest of the way to my destination in shinjuku, the book and bed hostel, where our story began in medias res.
the only other things i failed to note last night were that i had my first vending machine beverage (7/10 electrolyte drink)...
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...and i went to game panic to dance away my troubles.
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and now it's now. time to get a move on!
huel 1 review: prepared from asahi vending machine water on the side of an alleyway. refreshing in the morning heat.
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the social fabric!!!!!!!!!!
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ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh
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there are a lot of kissa yet to come but. man. that was crazy
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i would spend so much time knowing shit about this metro system if i lived here man. they want you to optimize. google maps tells you which car to board to get to your next transfer fastest. you're supposed to be finessing it
round 1 japan innovations america isn't ready for:
- claw game with food prize
- rhythm game sound barrier
- four floors of bowling
round 1 japan innovations i could do without:
- leaky smoking room that makes 20' radius smell like cigarette smoke
- gambling
the dominant mode of sun protection is apparently the parasol. i approve.
sunshine 60
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they will bring you a menu and a cup of lemon water while you wait in the 90° sun; parasols are provided if you are smart enough to avail yourself of one. then you go inside and it's subway of onigiri (highly complimentary). i did not know you could make an onigiri that big. rating: good
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okay the 30 lb backpack is starting to get heavy. this was completely unpredictable
anyway new hostel. but before i introduce new hostel, just realized i never reviewed old hostel. one moment.
book and bed shinjuku: groovy interior, very nice showers, you could buy better sleeping pads in the home depot outdoor section. not necessarily their win but entering an elevator right off the street has a certain sensation to it. for the price (extremely cheap), it's quite good. 3 stars feels right.
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new hostel is less groovy and slightly less cheap. however, the thickness of its mattresses is not to be underrated.
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chat, i may be up a creek. decided against better judgment to take a nap at 4:45, set alarms for 6, woke up at 7, did more questionable math, anyway now it's 24:15. more on this story as it develops
nm, we're back. gm.
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huel 2 review: prepared with complimentary cold water in the lobby of tokimiya stay. it was kind of room temperature. provided a conversation starter with some fellow travellers who took pity on me and offered me some of their convenience store food.
place your bets now for how long it will take my hair to dry in the--95% humidity? oh god
stay tomariya review: i slept for like 12 hours so it can't have been that bad, but some weird rules around luggage and a pervasive atmosphere of silence made it a little difficult to operate in.
but also, why do all these $30 hostels have nicer bathrooms than 90% of hotels i've stayed in. complete toto supremacy
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kayaba coffee review: veggie sandwich and iced coffee for breakfast, why not. got to walk up so-steep-you-step-sideways type stairs. four stars.
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i am--not the only person who has discovered wearing shorts and short sleeves, but much, much closer to it than might be expected. i would like to know more.
kind of vessel with which i prefer to take my alcohol
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😭
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this one (1) complex in akiba that still sells electronics has more drip than the whole rest of the strip combined
THE RADIO BUILDING!!!!!!!!!!!!
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new drink meta just dropped
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okay nm new new drink meta just dropped. this is like really good
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akihabara review:
- the general vibe is block after city block of stores selling the same five pieces of plastic but with different anime girls printed on them. this is soul-destroying except then you see the anime girl you like and go 👀🥺😊🥲😋
- there really is a maid on every street corner. more actually. i'm still not sure what they're all advertising, my skills of not paying attention to people trying to attract my attention have been honed by years of pretending homeless people don't exist
- it was fun to walk around in but somehow despite spending like six hours doing this they only managed to sell me two CDs. not sure if my skill issue or their skill issue.
come to akiba at your own peril, but that's not to say you shouldn't come. ★★★
i am trying so hard to stay awake until my laundry finishes. 15 minutes... 15 minutes... 😴
gm
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huel 3 review: prepared with fancy drink machine water in the basement lounge of the glansit akihabara. i made several errors while packing for this trip, but this, i still believe, was not one of them.
glansit akihabara review: the professionalism continues to level up with the price, but that's kind of a downside for me if anything. the inclusion of a TV in the pod is in error. i spent kind of a comical amount of time riding the elevator to and from the basement lounge.
...all that said, the shared bath was extremely nice. my god. my legs almost don't hurt any more
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yu review: great old furniture in this kissa. missed coffee hour (7-10) so had to pay 140円 extra for my coffee and jam toast. no photos requested, so i cannot show you the jam toast. i apparently got the last slice. i ordered second coffee while i planned my day and at about 11:30 half a dozen office guys all appeared within five minutes of each other and started smoking. this was relieving because i was worried the kissa may not be well patronized, but they all specified only if they happened to want their coffees iced or hot that day, so clearly my concerns were misplaced. but i did split quickly. i may like the smell of cigarette smoke but second-hand is NOT a man's way to die. four stars.
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anyway now you're about caught up.
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tokyo tower review:
- 🗼 you can just look at it you don't gotta go up it 🗼
- 🗼 (i went up it) 🗼
oh okay
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by spike lee
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the reason the toto-industrial complex exists is to answer the question, what if pooping in public was as good as pooping at home. the answer is, it would be sweet
i'm taking the stairs out of the station two at a time and my feet barely hurt. i'm clearly not working hard enough today.
japan is for if you really like reading signs and following instructions. fortunately,
at meiji jingu
each lamplight has a spider.
...well, most of them do.
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every restaurant gives you a little wet wipe instead of a napkin so you can clean your hands(?) and this may be more than anything my number one desired cultural import
i think of him always
monday night
tonight i would like a hotel with no discernable characteristics actually
spectacular.
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gm
editor's note: image deleted
fuckin spacious in here
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👋 bye tokyo
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new train
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taking my food photos for my silly little web page but shaking my head while i do it so everyone around me knows i disapprove of my own actions
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you thought i was goofing around getting pizza in hakone. frankly i did too. but no. they bring out a top three all time margherita pie. dw my chilled corn soup with yuzu shavings is on the way
i took a bite and almost started crying. i took a picture but i'm not showing you you can go to hakone and order it yourself. 808 monsmare review: ★★★★★
one more train bro. just need to make one more train and then i can relax. just one more train. i just need to make this train and then
(spoilers)
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they're telling us dope train facts over the intercom. apparently this is the steepest grade on which a train operates in all of japan.
i keep getting got by public restrooms with no soap. fortunately this time i asked at a nearby information desk and the guy took pity and let me use the sink in his office. thank you!
i seem to keep confusing people with the amount of japanese i know, which is enough to open a conversation with (i think?) a halfway coherent question/accent and then immediately understand nothing ever again.
🤫
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this is very strange. I'm not sure why they did this. but i'm not mad
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i guess i knew this already, but these are a people who are truly dedicated to their use of an umbrella. i almost wish i had an umbrella just so i could participate, but unfortunately my gender is "periodically gets rained on"
turns out when you bathe three times in one night, that's too many times for one towel. you know what solves this? when you've been CARRYING A SECOND TOWEL AROUND ALL WEEK LFGGGGGG
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anyway yeah the spoiler was ryokan ofc
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the attendant who brought me to my room (who was completely lovely, and spent like twenty minutes helping me figure out if i had the time to do some sightseeing around hakone, through the language barrier, with both of us furious typing into google translate on our phones and with infinite patience for when i would understand like one in ten words and try to figure it out instead of just using my dang phone) stopped us at the non-medium yukata rack and asked me "size L? LL?" and i said i wasn't sure, but that medium seemed like it might be right, and she laughed and insisted i take the LL. joke's on her medium fit great and now i have second yukata
i'm a bit behind on my reviews, so lightning round:
- komaki shokudo (wed): vegan curry was good, if very hot. i spent ten minutes staring at the water pitcher across the room hoping to convey it to my table with my mind. three stars.
- masaka (thu): love an attempt at vegan izakaya, but unfortunately by my rights it was just not very good. two stars.
- hotel ginza daiei: it was exactly what i wanted. also, props to the front desk for seamlessly pulling out his phone with live translation running when he (instantly) said something i didn't understand. plus they gave me pajamas. unclear if the bathroom was worse or better than the last, really more of a side-grade. strong contender.
- huel 4 review: prepared with bathroom tap water in my room at the hotel ginza daiei. this bottle of room temperature huel did little to quench my sense that i was running late for something. should've turned the tap colder i guess.
- kinosuke: i thought it was going to be another bust until i was reminded by a fellow diner to put soy sauce on my food. changes the game, really. three stars, hard to follow the 808.
noooooo not the baka gaijin futon
i wonder if they have any real futons. you fly to tokyo, take the train out to hakone, stay in a ryokan, all to sleep on a real futon on a real tatami mat and they hit you with the damn, egg carton memory foam futon
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...it's a lot like sleeping on the ground, really
gm
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huel 5 review: prepared with kirin water in my room at yoshiike ryokan. ...
ALMOST got all my shit hauled away by station police. but we're good
getting crunk at digital stars actually. yeah you should've been there. they played radiant revival and we all pretended jamie was here (no we didn't). anyway i met another white boy crazy enough to come to japan for this but i still win because he works for an airline
okay that was fuckin dope. it was not legendary, which it would have been, but it was fuckin dope.
coming to you live from a net cafe, where i am chilling waiting to meet aforementioned white boy for dinner. it feels perverse in some sense to dream of paying $3 for somewhere to sit down and plug my phone in for half an hour, like this is in some sense maximally late-stage capitalist alienation or commodification or something, yet dream of it i have.
it was like $2 actually
continues to astonish how much leg room the shinkansen has. anyway, coco ichibanya review: they let you order up to 1.5kg of rice with proportional quantity of veggie curry. it tastes good. enough said. we cannot import this fast enough.
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implausible quantities of fast casual curry rice aside, hooray for the friendship-kindling capacities of being approximately the only two people who speak a language in a room full of otherwise like-minded individuals. amen.
i may have overplayed my hand slightly. i think i just reserved the last hotel room in all of kyoto that was going for less than 100000円. now we will see how much money this cab driver wants to get me there
chat let me tell you what events have transpired. but what's important is that i am in my hotel room and i can now go to sleep.
gm. don't ask
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huel 6 review: prepared with water from the water cooler in my room at the, uh, in my room at the, ah,
sunday mornings are for old ladies biking around town, apparently. that's nice for them. also i knew this but turns out most of japan is just america (cars on roads and if you try to walk anyplace, don't)
i am very much still somewhere, but i've finally started to achieve the feeling of, "where in the name of god am i"
huel 7 review: ibid. much to do today.
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wait who cooked. i can't drink this calpis fast enough
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bro i wanna go to coco ichibanya again
FINALLY some good fucking food
this gacha line put me in danger lol it was good that i'm basically out of cash
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uno ramen review: tasted a lot like eating vegan ramen. idk why they put gyoza in with the ramen but they were kind of good at least. kind of
pic unrelated
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oh yeah i never reviewed last night's hotel. [deleted] review: subscribe to my patreon to see my review of [deleted]. sponsor me on github for exclusive access to my review of [deleted]. subscribe to me on twitter to see my locked [deleted] review account. blaze this post on tumblr and you'll receive a link to my review of [deleted]. buy my review of [deleted] on gumroad for instant access. join my members on bandcamp for unlimited streaming and high quality downloads of my [deleted] review. buy me a kofi to g--
gm. last full day 🥲
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smart coffee review: good to be back at a kissa, even if it was busy and a lil overly done up.
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finally got nihongo jyouzu'd. thank you ma'am but it really, really isn't
personally i see a direct spiritual throughline from hyakunin issho karuta to dance dance revolution but idk if the world is ready for that
standing on the shinkansen ✌️
i do not recommend this
got a seat. i lived
tsukimi hotel review: this was kind of stay tomariya but more blindingly white. they had a conversation pit though which is not to be overlooked. i also learned of a new shower head failure mode here, which is that if the water pressure is high enough the force of the water escaping from the shower head overpowers the friction keeping it in its socket and it attacks you while you bathe. this happened two (2) times before i understood what was going on. anyway they had a kitchen area which allowed me to embarass myself in front of half a dozen people while preparing my huel. oh right my huel.
huel 8 review: prepared with a mixture of suntory water and water from the fridge in the tsukimi hotel kitchen, in the tsukimi hotel kitchen. should've gone full fridge water, that baby was warm. possibly the worst huel of the week, though carrying it around for thirty minutes surely did not help.
good to be home (tokyo)
i'm in love. back pain i love you
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gm. It's been swell 🥲🫡
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huel 9 review: last huel. huel did not sponsor this trip to japan, but huel, if you're reading this... 🤙. it really was indispensable, though. idk how many kelp onigiri i would've had to eat, or how i would've gotten any protein whatsoever. (well, i do know that, i would've had to try my luck with the japanese protein shakes.) travel huel an unmitigated success!
house ikebukuro review: maybe it's just a reaction to staying in so many hostels and therefore having no privacy, but i keep falling in love with tiny poorly lit hotels. there was so much space! it cost like $25! it was really perfect for the last night of the trip; i needed to do laundry and i needed the room to spread out, organize, and repack. i also managed to fall asleep on my back instead of my side (never sleep on your side on the ground, you probably all know this, i sometimes try anyway) and i'm not sore at all, which is deliriously bad for my plans to stop hyperfixating on buying a futon and sleeping on the ground. alas. four stars, the lighting really was terrible
bought six volumes of manga i already own ✌️✌️✌️ where am i going to put them ✌️✌️✌️
at the airport. i want coco ichibanya. i don't wanna leave
there's not gonna be vending machines... there's not gonna be train that goes anywhere in 20 minutes... there's not gonna be extensive network of tunnels...
*sniffles* this airport vegan pizza does look kind of fire though
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nm post cancelled i wasn't thinking straight. it's *vegan* pizza. this vegan cheese is basically slime. lord deliver me from evil
ok let's try this again
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on the plane. the strategy is to stay awake the whole time, but i seem to have a cold, so we may be in danger. that said, with what time i have, my last few catchup reviews:
- morihei review: this slapped actually. huge bowl of hot veggie soba in the train station? the broth is almost as good as the afuri ramen broth? hard to lose.
- mermaid coffee review: meh. their interior was groovy but you gotta have good coffee first.
- vegan friendly or whatever they called it review: vegan pizza one stars i almost died. other cheese pizza and fries... it was fine. it was airport food. 😔
- japan review: hard to say you should do tourism anywhere else, if what you've decided to do is tourism. great built environment, great nature, great food, great novelties, great shopping, great amenities, great price. if you're able to use hostels aggressively and aren't tied to a specific location you can kind of just show up in tokyo with no plan. knowing the language at all certainly helps but isn't necessary even slightly.
- tourism review: ...all that said... i wish i coulda talked to people more. if you wanna do tourism, look no further than japan->tokyo, but i still am not really sure there is any point to doing tourism. i checked a lot of boxes on this trip, and i was here to do something, and even though i didn't get to do it i still got to check the box, and i'm glad i checked all the boxes, but i don't think i learned anything i didn't already know. maybe that's a skill issue, maybe that's what happens when you go someplace where you've spent 1000+ hours watching their television, maybe i'm just bad at paying attention to what i don't know. idk. i'm sad to leave, which has to mean something, but i was never going to stay; not my place. i'm glad i was here, though. thanks, everyone!
🛬💫
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