After Nagoya, my boyfriend and I took his car and we went to Ise city in Aichi prefecture. Our first stop was the Ise Shrine. Apparently, it’s supposed to be the best shrine in all Japan. When we arrived at Ise shrine, I could understand why. This might sound a little cheesy… but there was something really sacred about the place. It had lots of animals running every where (but mostly roosters for some reason) and everyone was very kind.

After Ise Shrine, we drove to Toba. Toba is the city beside Ise, and it is famous for its pearl museum and aquarium. I didn’t get to go inside the pearl museum, but I did get to go to the aquarium. It’s been a long long long time since I’ve stepped inside an aquarium, so I was really really excited. The fish in Toba were beautiful!!

After the Toba aquarium, we finally arrived to our destination, the Toba hot spring resort. This hot spring resort was unbelievably beautiful!! I’s right beside the ocean, and our balcony overlooked the ocean. The resort had about 7 different hot springs, varying in size, temperature and different types of minerals contained in the hot spring. I tried all of them, and each one of them was very very relaxing. The best thing is… our room contained it’s own private hot spring!! nice eh… =)

The hot spring was super nice, but so was the dinner. Every luxury dish you could imagine… was put out in front of us. To start of, Ise lobster (Ise ebi), kaki, awabi (different types of oysters), matsutake gohan (very expensive mushroom cooked with rice), matsuzaka gyu (the top grade beef in Japan) etc. etc… omg… the list continues.

I was really sad to leave the resort, and I definitely want to go back!! I’ve been to few different hot springs around Tokyo, but nothing compares to this one in Toba!

For the last part of our vacation, my boyfriend I, we drove through Matsuzaka to eat more of the famous Matsuzaka beef. Although it was very expensive, even for lunch, I was glad we paid the money. MMMMmmmMMMmm!!

Anyways, I’m not back to reality… and it sucks.

So I took 5 days off of my work and I went to Aichi Prefecture (Nagoya) and Mie prefecture (Ise, Toba, and Matsuzaka) for my summer vacation.

I’ve never been to any of these places so I was very very excited.

My first stop was Nagoya. Initially, I wanted to take the bullet train as it would save me a lot of time, but after considering the cost, I decided to use the night bus (in my case, very very early morning bus) and I convinced myself that I’d be able to see lots of things along the way if I road the bus. Well.. actually.. I slept for half of it, and for the half that I was awake for, I could only see farms.

But I was very surprised to learn that Japan had so much nature!! It’s really really beautiful. I might sound really ignorant and stupid, but for the longest time I really though Tokyo = Japan.

Anyways, my purpose to Nagoya was food!! Nagoya is famous for dishes such as hitsumabushi (bbqed eel on rice). miso katsu, miso nikomi udon… and everything else miso. As I only had 2 days in Nagoya, I couldn’t satisfy all my hunger pangs and I only got to try hitsumabushi and miso nikomi udon. They were really really delicious!! But really over priced I thought.

My impression of Nagoya was that it was a very strange city. Almost everyone drove a Toyota (go figure) and there were so many pachinko shops! (apparently pachinko originated from Nagoya).. but people were a lot nicer than the people in Tokyo I thought, and overall I had a really good experience and a lot of fun =)

to be continued…

my lawyer friend came and for a moment she and her friend talked, and blurred out something like “i cannot be as 瀟洒 as you, threw away/let go of everything and just left …”

it all started when she all of a sudden talked about “air-ticket”, saying it was cheap and it cost her only $900 for a around trip ticket, so i told her “wo, that is not bad, consider i paid $800 f0r my one-way ticket~”

then her reaction was, “wo! one-way ticket ah~, why not buy the open tickets?”

i answered, “because it is only good for 1-year …”

yes, cause when i bought the ticket, i did not know when to go back anyway … no other choice but to have to choose 1-way ticket.”

but of course, in american english, one-way ticket is used to show “determination”, so i guess it sounded determined to her.

she also asked me, “have you gotten used to living here?” (since her another friend also lived here but not like it here, but rather live in houston, wow, ok …)

i told her right away, “i got used to it even before i came.”

and she was laughing a little. haha. but it is also true, u know.

sometimes, actually, most of the time, i forget that i am in tokyo, a place that i NEVER even thought ONCE before 2008 that i would be living in …

a few years ago, actually almost started from 8 years ago, my japanese uni. friend already asked me, “if you like japan so much, why don’t you just come here and take some courses? study the language so maybe you can get a job here …”

i was like … “ah, .. that is a waste of my precious money, if i want to study, i can study by myself  (in my own present country).”

i am not disputing now that one cannot study on their own, but, … how to say, it is really different.

a few days ago, i happened to flip through a small japanese language book that i used to try to “study” a few years ago. i am really surprised, how much words on it now seem so familiar to me, like 80% … while, at that time (a few years ago), there is just no way i can put those words in my head …

i have to admit the progress seems very natural, as i only study less than 2 months since i came to japan, never able to concentrate in class and all, and still … just looking at this old book i realize, i have already made such a progress (STILL VERY POOR OF COURSE compare to the students’ standard here), but comparing to a few years ago, so naturally, the progress has already been made … and, i have to admit, it did really surprise me, and make me a little happy .. because of the satisfaction, the progress … it is not completely futile …

language is a curse, but it is interesting to be able to use it as a tool to talk to my chinese friend, since i cannot speak Mandarin; and use it as one more way to speak to my hong kong friends, on top of our fluent cantonese, sooo interesting, really, there are something, you just HAVE to say it in japanese and it will make a huge difference in meaning, yes. convenient!

amazing, i always thought i MADE myself to be here, i thought it was not natural, in a way, like i pushed it … but now, i think back … no …

especially yesterday, my lawyer friend from US came to tokyo and we met, and after i spent a whole night with her and her friend, i am starting to realize more …

actually, as scary as it may seem, it is almost like GOD made tons of obstacles for me in US, then … pushed me to break down and had to leave … why would i think so? because now i am so much more wide awake, and start to realize, it was so powerful that it made me, such a thrify person, to overlook the money issues, and “learn the language”? something that i always find so “what the heck!”, and now i am doing it …

because if i want to leave US, the place i like to go is japan, but since my job field is not in high demand and my native language not english, so i cannot work here, so the next thing that i can do is to make myself a student, even though, i really have not much interests in learning a language start from the beginning … sigh, troublesome leh!

so that is where i am now … don’t know for what, when i wake up i have to go some silly language school, then a few months ago, know about these public exams, oh mine … then, it makes no sense not taking them, cause then i would leave and take nothing with me if i have no certificate of any kind … -_- … and then, level 1 can give you a chance to work in japan …

so all of a sudden, is like, … wo, hold on, so now, there is a way, and seems not very far-fetched that, you might be able to work here for real … and then it came the money problems, ok, maybe you do not have enough money to stay, there is no way i am going to sacrifice so much! cause managing my crap small investment in US, really distract me from studying, … but then, all of a sudden, a month ago, i started to have part-time, it was GOD-given … since my japanese so poor … then today, these days, the US stock markets went way back up … so … maybe, it is possible …?

wow, so what the heck is going on?

The other week my girlfriend and I had a week off so we decided to head somewhere. We at first thought it’d be a good idea go to Hokkaido because it’s apparently quite nice there in the summertime but seeing as none of us had done much planning we ended settling for going to Sendai to stay with our friends family for a couple of days.

The trip up there was kinda interesting.We bought one of those JR train tickets that lets you go anywhere.It was a 9 hour trip with about for4 transfers on the way. Every time the train would pull up to a station where we needed to transfer there would be a insane dash to the next train with people scrambling to get a seat for the next leg of the trip. I ended up standing most of the way being unaware  of this wacky occurrence at the time.

When we finally got to Sendai we had a lovely ferry ride to a secluded island to visit our friend’s grandmothers house. It was really nice as had a real wafu (old school Japanese) theme to the place. We let off fireworks in the evening and had breakfast on the beach the next morning.

Life in Tokyo moves at a well-oiled clip, with an energy that borders on mania and an obsession with newness that seems to make all ideas quickly obsolete. Fashions begin to fade almost as soon as they are plucked from clothes hangers, and keitai (mobile phones) are traded up for each latest technological advancement. But even while throngs of tech-savvy, smartly styled Tokyoites trot through subway stations, there is a traditional side to this hyperurban cosmopolis, which may not be immediately evident.

Beneath the conspicuous consumption of its shopping districts and shiny façades of the latest architectural achievement, Tokyo throws out unexpected glimpses of its cultural core. At a Shintō shrine across town, a young man purchases a fortune and, after reading it, ties it to a strung frame whose many paper fortunes rustle like leaves in a breeze. In a neighbourhood sentō (public bath) in Asakusa, an old woman bathes with her tiny granddaughter, much as she once did with her own grandmother.

Tokyo’s unique vitality springs from this intertwining of the new with the time-honoured old. While it’s the wellspring of Japanese pop culture, it is also a place where the patrilineage of its imperial family is a tightly held institution. It’s the city to which Japanese nonconformists flee but where individuality is often linked to an older form of small-group identity. It’s a metropolis where the pressure cooker of traditional societal mores and expectations explodes into cutting-edge art, music and inventions like the ‘boyfriend’s arm pillow’. Even pop culture like manga, as it takes the world by storm, is rooted in the tradition of Edo-period ukiyo-e (wood-block prints from the ‘floating world’). And so, as its modern gears keep turning, the basic machinery of this intriguing city remains true to its origins.