So the day after Monkey Mountain, we went to Nara to go see the cool deers and ALSO the amazing temples that genuinely blew my mind. So
I feel like everyone knows Nara because of the cute little deer that can bow to you when you approach them. Unfortunately as it turns out, they are actually huge assholes. I expected them to be cute,
polite little creatures that would tentatively walk up to you and bow for a little treat. TURNS OUT, if these rude ass mfs realize you have any food at all, they will SWARM you, nipping and bumping at you
until you hand over the goods. THEY'RE SO MEAN!!! But still that was the hardest I'd laughed in a while, having us and other tourist getting harrassed by these deer. It was such a great time. ALSO in Nara,
there are some SICK ASS temples. They've got their biggest indoor buddha in one of these temples and its NUTSSSSSS. We saw a load of cool little temples while in Japan, and holy crap this one blows them
all out of the water. My expectations were pretty low, like "oh it's a Big Buddha, whatever, I'm sure he's pretty big" but it's actually fairly overwhelming how large this fella is. Not to mention the GIANT
wooden temple he's housed in, which had burned down twice at this point and is now the smallest it's ever been. Like woah mama. Nara's pretty freaking amazing. Here's some photos from the trip :)
Also this is really funny but my mom bought a matcha latte and one of the shithead deer bit her to make her spill a little bit then he licked up the spillage the absolute bastard LMAO.
ALSO I forgot to write but I got another scrimblo bimblo here in Kyoto, a very adorable and nice Pikachu from THEIR Pokemon Centre who I popped onto my fanny pack and dragged around everywhere :)
This was a really restful stop, we took these couple days pretty easy, just seeing the local sights, admiring the town and nature and stuff :) there was also a cool festival of lights sort of deal happening while we were there as well, so the river in the Old Town district was lit up with cool umbrellas at night, which was another very pretty sight, huge w's for Kurashiki. Nothing too noteworthy happened while we were here, but I wanted to bring it up because I thought it was a cute little place and the house we stayed in reminded me of my grandparent's house with all their little trinkets everywhere :)
Hiroshima was next on our itinerary, and after another quick train trip, we managed to squeak a visit in on this super cool island, Itsukushima, aka Miyashima island, the one with the big Torii gate in the bay. I didn't even think we were going to go here, but I am very glad we did! I love exploring cool islands and stuff and this one didn't disappoint :) There was lots of fresh little seafood restaurants, the Big Torii Gate was BEAUTIFUL, with the water underneath and everything, I saw a bunch of cute deer that WEREN'T assholes, and the nature was very very very peaceful. I love walking around areas like these, I know they're horribly touristy but at least they're really well taken care of, it feels like theres so much effort and love put into these places. I also got to order some Okonomiyaki at a local place near where we were staying, and it was horribly embarassing because they didn't speak any english and my Japanese is so bad, but AT LEAST it was super quiet and we could both laugh about the absurdity of the situation. It was also delicious, no picture but I'll give ya'll the Google Maps link if you ever want to hit them up.
We also managed to make it to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. I don't want to say too much because I don't want to tarnish its very professional and emotional presentation, but I will say it's very effective in its messaging and some of thoes images are gonna stick with me for a while.
And then we were back in Tokyo for our last day and a half :) We mostly just shopped for cool souvenirs and stuff LOL, we hadn't really bought anything (except me LOL) so we just chilled and went around checking out cool shops. I managed to use this ime to hit up Shibuya and go to motherflipping
JOJO WORLD
JoJo World was so freaking cool. I love JoJo and this was such a love letter to the whole series. While YES it was a completely overexpensive fanboy trap, I think they did such an amazing job with it I
couldn't be mad (do not ask a mf how much he spent at JoJo World fr). They had little Hollywood stars for each of the JoJos, they had pictures of each main Villain and JoJo (from parts 1 thru 6)
on pillars throughout the shop, they had a BUNCH of cool toy and collectible setups behind glass, they obviously had so much love and joy put into this shop. I do feel really bad for people working in themed
shops like these though, even in Don Quijote or Family Mart, they play the EXACT same music day after day and you'd hear the same jingles over and over again, I just know I'd go absolutely bananas listening to
the same stuff thing a million times so I assume they would as well :/ HOWEVER I LOVE JOJO so the music just repeating hype tracks from the OST was amazing and I loved it. Like I mentioned previously, I bought
some items from JoJo world, including a super sick deck of playing cards with individual characters on each card, a bunch of buttons Araki did custom art for specifically for jojoworld, a cool magnet,
a sick mug, I REALLY wanted the Iggy Cafe mug, but they literally stopped selling it like THE WEEK before we got to Japan, I was so miffed, omg how DARE they :(. But I still got some wicked stuff,
PLUS they had this wicked cool arcade gambling game where you got to be Will A. Zeppeli and try not to kill a frog :) I lost the gamble on that one, while the frog was unharmed, the stone beneath it was not,
so I got the worst prize. REALLY wanted that top prize though, it was a JoJo World BIG mousepad featuring all the Jos. Either way it was amazing and I took some cool pictures here u go :3
Since we had limited space, the only other crazy souvenir I managed to bring home was a Space Dandy - The Best BBP soundtrack CD. Most of you would NOT know Space Dandy, but it's an anime series I really enjoy, and the soundtrack is absolutely killer. I'll put one of my favorites on the website for when this is posted, but I am genuinely so happy to have it dawg this shit is my JAMMMMMM. Now my only chase is the second volume, Space Dandy Volume 2: Boobies Wonderland.
We also hit up
Don Quijote, and while I had (by myself sneakily) popped in to one or two
while the rest of my family were sleeping, my parents and sibling had NOT, so it was extremely fun being with them to
marvel at ALL of the stuff you can find in Donki. If you haven't been, it's basically a giant department/discount store where you can basically buy anything and everything? Like a cooler walmart, cause instead
of being a giant warehouse, it's like a 7 story, shelving packed wall to wall type deal with signs and music and flashing lights at every corner. It's found a really good spot where it's ALMOST too stimulating
to be in there for too long, but not so bad you actively WANT to leave. It's great :) We got some cool souvenirs there just for family and friends and stuff, it's such a funny store.
And so after a Chill Day of shopping and goofing, I had to say goodbye to my parents again. I'm not gonna lie it was a little sad, while sure it wasn't perfect, it was still really nice travelling with them, and it was odd being alone again after so long. I know I've always more loner leaning for lack of a better term, but after living with close friends as roommates for a year, and then travelling with family to then being ALONE? It hit different. Don't get me wrong though I still had a really good time by myself heeheheheehee but I'll finish that up in the next update.
