i've been in japan since boxing day 2024 and i'm about to head off tomorrow - i really wanted to do something equivalent to my melbourne trip report from earlier this year, but i wasn't anywhere near as particular when it came to taking photos and recording prices over the last three weeks, so this is more of a highlight list of the things that i thought were really cool. it also has some general musings as someone who hadn't been to japan before! my trip went from osaka to kyoto, then to madarao (for skiing) matsumoto and kofu for a couple of nights, nikko once we got a car, then tokyo and back to osaka. getting into the country towns is really really worthwhile for a bunch of reasons - you avoid touristy nonsense, the secondhand market is way better (except for clothes) and you can actually check out some of the fun interesting cultural locations. the cities are best for retail therapy and going to live music, so i'd recommend slapping it on the back of your trip so you're not lugging 40 kilos of books around for too long

also! a lot of these photos kind of stink, i was focusing more on taking photos of myself and my friends but as i like to keep this site more or less anonymous that cuts out quite a few photo options. sorry!

musings

i started doing duolingo four or five months out from the trip. lots of people warned me that it isn't super useful for learning the language compared to some alternatives and while i mostly agree, it does still give you a perfectly fine foundation for the general syntax of the language, reading hiragana and katakana, and for the absolute basic phrases

despite english being taught in schools and theoretically understood by most people under the age of 40, in practice most people know almost none. this is totally fine, since most retail interactions are lubricated by people wanting your money, so you can get away with pointing and holding fingers up if the object doesnt have a loanword name. people not knowing the language doesnt really get worse as you go further into the country - either that, or we just didnt go far enough

two things that you might find missing on the streets are bins and benches. the missing bins is apparently because of trashcan bombings a couple of decades back, which is a reason, although it seems like its been long enough that they could fix it. the missing benches, on the other hands, is a complete mystery. maybe they don't want pepole to sit in pedestrian thoroughfares, but it never looked it would be much of an issue to me? i suppose its not a problem for non-tourists as they all have somewhere to be, but if you've been trotting around on foot in kyoto for six hours sometimes you just want a break while you figure out where the hell your friends ended up

osaka aquarium

this is one of the first places that i went to in osaka. the building is absolutely massive and has a nice 3d model of its layout which was basically just designed to facilitate a bunch of multistorey tanks. the central one is particularly impressive as there are two (2) (!) whale sharks alongside a couple of hundred other fish. the whale sharks love getting right up next to the windows which is a pretty incredible sight. i do feel slightly sad about the dolphins, penguins, otters and octopi in enclosures here - i'm not the biggest fan of zoos for smarter creatures and their spaces are pretty small, but they did look pretty happy as far as zoo creatures go. the massive schools of sardines are probably fine though

osaka ferris wheels

osaka has two ferris wheels, one right outside the aquarium and one attached to the don quijote in dotonbori. the first one is massive and gives you a good view of the city, while the second is more of a pure novelty as the whole thing is pill shaped instead of circular and the capsules rotate to stay level.

tea square morihan kura cafe (matcha cafe)

my very australian experience with matcha is that horrible greenish-brown stuff that takes an annoying amount of time to make, or aforementioned greenish-brown powder mixed with latte foam. it's fine, but has never particularly jived with me. uji is a pretty iconic tea location in japan, housing the oldest tea shop in japan (and potentially the world) and making some really good tea as a result. we went to a cute little tea cafe - tea square morihan kura cafe - and had some locally made matcha, which i was pleasantly surprised to find actually has a lot of umami flavour to it. it was an experience i haven't really got from any other kind of tea, although you dont need to travel all the way to uji to get it - i had proper matcha at a couple of other times in my trip and it seems to be a pretty universal

2nd street

2nd street fills a neat gap between op shop and consignment store in japan. while they do sell some braindead designer shit, it's normally at the front while all the real goodies are at the back. i visited a couple of 2nd streets while in japan and consistently had a good time with their range and prices, with my highlight being this awesome elephant sweater

walden woods kyoto

this coffee shop had a vibe that was hilariously melbourne - the whole thing was all unfinished concrete at harsh angles and a white paintjob over everything else. this is topped off with baristas that desperately wish you hadn't walked in and will definitely let you know with your expressions. the effect is very complete. i bought a silly filter coffee which was pretty nice, and we sat in this art gallery style first floor room as we all sort of blinked ourselves awake

nintendo store

kyoto is home to nintendo (the whole ass company) as well as (what i believe is) their flagship nintendo store. this space is immediately overwhelming and loud, but i was super buzzed to see just how much space was dedicated to splatoon. truly, an enlightened culture. the animal crossing stuff was also really cool, and i grabbed a bunch of it for my friend back home (say a prayer for my suitcase capacity). there's a photo opportunity spot on the roof with a bunch of life sized mario blocks which is a cute touch

tsutaya books

there are a bunch of these all over japan, but the one in kyoto was far and away the best. tsutaya is a somewhat fancy bookstore that stocks a lot of larger pieces - art books, cookbooks, photo collections etc. i went absolutely wild here and picked up like five kilos of books in one hit

otani cemetary

one of the really cool things about kyoto is that if your accomodation is near the city center you can basically point yourself in any direction and find a lot of cool stuff. a friend and i did just that and after finding a bunch of very empty back-suburb shrines, we stumbled upon what is easily the biggest cemetary that i've ever seen. this joint is massive and wraps around the mountainside on the east side of kyoto, and is super quiet to boot. it leads through to kiyomizu-dera, a shrine that is comparatively super not quiet, so hopefully the tranquility of the cemetary will give you the mental reset you need to brave the crowds

nagoya new years

i rang in the new year in nagoya with a visit to osu kannon (kitanosan shinpuku-ji hoshoin), a buddhist shrine in the centre of town. as a solo endeavour i think it's nice enough - i support leaning in to elements of a culture that you're just not going to be able to experience elsewhere, but it was also just for the novelty. the bulk of the experience was waiting in the cold with a buttload of people - could have been improved with some friends, and if it was an english speaking country i might have made some, but my travel buddies all fell asleep at 11.30

madarao

uh oh!! i went skiing for the first time here - i wasnt initially very interested, but hire is so cheap i thought i'd just go in for a day. i should have listened to my gut because i hit a massive bit of powder and went head over heels, dislocating my shoulder. oops! for a brief look behind the curtain, i have dutch heritage and i climb very regularly, so i am almost two metres tall, and i have pretty big arm muscles. this is all cool and good, but if you do manage to pop your humerus out of its socket, your tiny japanese doctor is going to need to push his foot under your armpit in order to get enough leverage. this hurt like hell but also got me one of my favourite photos of the trip

⭐ sioribi 栞日 (matsumoto coffee shop)

now this is the platonic ideal of cute coffee shop. the upstairs is a bookstore for cute local publications with tons of natural light and some of the better coffee i had on the trip. i was getting pretty tired pretty quick with my arm injury so this was a delightful spot to recuperate midway through the day

hard off

these secondhand stores are EVERYWHERE in japan, especially further out in the country, and theyre an absolute treasure trove of weird electronics at crazy prices - i got a gameboy color with a busted screen for 40 bucks and a psp for 100, and my friends bought a million cameras and records. i even got a gameboy camera! again, the country ones are where the hidden gems are, so get out of the cities if you can

fuji

when my friends started talking about mount fuji i didnt really understand the immediate draw. i've seen mountains before and they're cool, but what's so special about this one? turns out that fuji is absolutely gigantic, almost to a cthuluan horror degree. it is markedly bigger than any mountain ive seen in australia and truly blankets your periphery, especially in the towns closest to it

oya quarry

this subterranean quarry in utsunomiya was a pretty impressive sight to behold. the mining operation is all underground, and also huge, which leaves you with these massive geometric stone corridors. it's definitely not a whole day affair, but its pretty cool to check out on the way to something else

e-earphones

this joint is so cool as someone with a passing interest in audio gear. the one in tokyo was six stories high (which, side note, if you've never been to japan before someone might refer to a store as X stories of Y and the image in your head is like four stacked walmarts, but that usually just means that the store has the footprint of a three bedroom apartment). in any case, each story was dedicated to a specific type of audio gear, meaning there was this awesome room with rows of headphones and people plugging their digital audio players into them to test them out - truly a level of nerdiness that you wouldnt see in australia. tech prices in japan are more or less at parity with tech prices in japan so i didnt buy anything, but honestly that was probably for the best

bolbol persian

this was an extremely nifty find near shinjuku. i found getting fresh vegetables was sometimes a bit hard in japan, so we went absolutely crazy for the salads on offer. the owner had a delightful little budgie and the food was up to the standard that i've found from other persian restaurants in australia

pokemon center

this had a pretty similar vibe to the nintendo store, but i was honestly a little disappointed that they didnt commit to the bit a little bit harder. there is a massive semicircular shelf with plushes on it that was definitely emulating a pokeball, but is it too much to ask for the cashier's counter to look like it would in a pokemon center in the games? and for the cashiers to all be dressed up like nurse joy? is that really too much to ask?

cibi tokyo

i was honestly a little disappointed by cibi in tokyo! i was pretty excited to try it after going to the australian counterpart in melbourne, and while the food was pretty good there wasnt much of a commitment to the cultural exchange bit. the knick-knacks were mostly japanese and the coffee was just fine (although i gather that darker filter coffee is more in vogue in japan, but isn't really my personal taste). they did sell coopers pale ales though, which was cool

⭐ spread shimokitazawa

i was sick for a big bit of my japan trip and missed a bunch of the gigs that i wanted to see, but i did manage to get into an interesting variety-type shot at spread in shimokitazawa. the location is a basement level concrete cube full of smoke and the most eclectic gamut of people id seen in japan thus far - i felt very at home. the three sets i saw were an indie rock band, a noise set that transitioned into a more mellow techno show, and an ambient / drone set by the lovely dreamcrease

keyboard store

i went in here quietly hoping they had a pain27 so i could flex some internet clout points, but no such luck. seeing a physical keyboard store was still super cool as it let you try the option out before you buy it, as well as letting you skip the postage and handling. i grabbed a split keyboard that i am yet to build, but i'll make a big fuss about it when i do

⭐ brooklyn coffee roaster

im writing this post from here!! its a super cute waterfront spot, their coffee tastes good, they serve cortados, they're open late and the server said they liked my outfit. a lovely experience!

⭐ taqueria la fonda

it feels extremely shameful to say so, but this osaka mexican restaurant this was one of the most memorable eating experiences i had in japan. japanese food is done perfectly well in australia because actual japanese people will move here and just do what they were doing over there, but there aren't quite so many mexican people in australia. to be fair, these guys also weren't mexican, but they'd done their research, as well as the very japanese thing of focusing on doing only one thing and doing it well. i accidentally spent 40 bucks here, which is really saying something in a country where most meals are 15 aud at the very most

conclusion

my main takeaway is that japan didn't feel anywhere near as foreign of a place as i expected. there's obviously loads of quirks - i'm glad to be back in a country that doesnt require the use of paper currency - but the people are nice, and the same flavours of dork exist in both australia and japan.