I arrived in the evening at the port in Fukuoka.

I decided to walk for a while through the city to my hostel so I could just see the city. Other than the obviously different script, it wasn’t dissimilar to walking around in a Korean city.

And then the hostel sucked and charged tons of hidden fees. For what good it did, I reviewed it terribly on multiple platforms. The hostel also wanted to charge to hold my bag the next day while I walked around, which involved nothing more than putting my bag in the corner. So I walked around all day with my bag until my host was free in the evening.

In that time, I checked out the Hakata Old town

I also saw a few shrines.

Canal City was a must-see on many lists. It was really just a mall, but to be fair, it was pretty nice and had some water shows. There was also a Neon Genesis store with absurd and overpriced merchandise like branded pliers.

In the evening, I met up with my host and met his family. It was a very traditional Japanese family in a traditional home, and everyone was kind and welcoming. They used to live in the USA, so they all spoke English fairly well, but the son was a bit too shy to speak English even though he understood me fine.

The toilets in Japan truly are an experience. They spray your bum and some of them seem to have even more functions. It is all written in Japanese though, so it was quite an adventure clicking random buttons and having different parts of my underside sprayed. Totally recommended!

I checked out Ohori park the following morning. Very serene.

The ruins of the Fukuoka Castle lie in the middle of the city. They believe there used to be a wooden structure on top, but it is only the stone foundation that remains today.

In a land full of fish, it is super hard to eat vegan, let alone vegetarian. I did manage to find a vegan bento box, though, so that was a nice treat.

After that, I went to Nagasaki.

I booked my hostel last minute, and it seems like a combination of places not being cheap there anyway and the cheapest rooms being taken resulted in my having to pay almost 30 bucks a night. So I only stayed for 2 nights.

I saw the Atomic Bomb Museum. I very sobering experience showing the destruction and the painful aftereffects of being a victim of a nuclear attack.

The Hypocenter is right where the bomb went off. It is now the Peace Park.

 

I walked around the docks, walked through Chinatown, and then went to the Crazy Horse café, where the owner would occasionally sing covers of classic 70s songs. I would check out the café/bar if you’re ever in Nagasaki.

I really wanted to go to the Gunkanjima / Hashima island, but it was still inaccessible since the recent typhoon due to the dock being damaged. One can still go on tours, but it still costs about 40 bucks, and you just drive around the island to take photos from afar. Not worth it.

In the end, Nagasaki was kind of small, expensive, and out of the way. It wasn’t terrible, but I wouldn’t highly recommend it.

My next destination was Hiroshima. I could have taken the train or bus. It seems that the train was direct, while I would need 2 buses. Regardless, I took the bus. Even though it took about twice as long, it was still less than half the price of the train. I’ll talk about the JR Pass at the end of this article.

I got to Hiroshima and went to my hostel. I didn’t quite have my private little capsule like I had in Nagasaki anymore, but it was still a nice hostel.

I ended up checking out the city with another couchsurfer. The Atomic Bomb Museum was as sobering as the one in Nagasaki. It really put a damper on my mood, and I ended up watching some comedy movies in the evening to counter the gloominess.

We walked through the Peace Park to the dome, which is one of the few remaining structures from the blast.

We then took the tram to Miyajima island, which is where the iconic Torii gate in the water is. Unfortunately, it’s being repaired right now, so it wasn’t so breathtaking.

We had a late lunch, and I got to try okonomiyaki, although it was super difficult to get it vegetarian as they just seemed to not understand the concept of not putting meat or fish in it.

In the evening, we checked out the Shukkeien gardens and the Hiroshima castle ruins.

Another guest from the hostel and I went to a bar and had some sake. The bartender put a glass in a tray and then filled up the glass and let it overflow, also filling up the tray. She said to drink the sake, and once the glass was empty, we were to refill it with the sake still in the tray. A curious way to drink.

I was thinking about going up to the Shimane prefecture after Hiroshima. A friend recommended it to me, and she said in particular the shrine in Izumo was worth seeing.

I decided to do some research first. I found that hostels in Matsue, the capital, were about 20 bucks a night at least. In Izumo, they were double that. Additionally, it seemed that there were no direct routes from either of those 2 places to Himeji, my next destination. In the sake of not making things complicated and saving money, I figured I would just make an extended stay in Hiroshima, where the hostel was “only” about 11 bucks a night.

Regardless, it also appeared that going between Hiroshima and Himeji was going to be expensive on the train or require 2 buses, but I would at least save money by not going up north and therefore staying in a cheaper hostel. It wasn’t very easy to get around in Japan. I think renting a car would be great. After a few days more of chilling in Hiroshima, I took the train to Himeji.

I took this picture because I found the buses to be so odd. Usually, one enters from the front, pays as one enters, and then exits at the door farther back. The Japanese buses do it completely backward. You enter in the rear door, then go past the driver when you want to get off, pay him, and leave via the front door. I was so confused when I first got on a bus.

I went to the castle but didn’t do much more exploring because I stubbed my toe pretty bad during my last night in Hiroshima, and it hurt a bit to walk. In any case, I didn’t really find all that much to do. I think one could easily do Himeji as a day trip, or even just stop by on the way through to some other place.

I then took the train to Osaka where I was to meet up with an old friend of mine. But before I met up with Matteo, I went to the hospital to ensure that my toe wasn’t broken. It still wasn’t getting better, and I was concerned.

Luckily, it wasn’t broken and just jammed really bad. It still took about a week for the bruising to go down and another couple of weeks for it to stop hurting.

Once Matteo and I reunited, we went to the Osaka castle first. I think it looked prettier than the Himeji castle, although it wasn’t as expansive. The castle in Osaka also had more of a museum on the inside instead of the “normal” interior the Himeji castle offered.

We walked around downtown and went through the famous Dotonbori neighborhood. And we discovered a Pokémon store!

We took the local train to Kyoto. The old Kyoto Imperial Palace was right next to our hostel, so we checked that out first.

We then walked down the road to the Kawaramachi district. We were hoping to catch a glimpse of a Geisha there, since that’s supposed to be the place. We did spot one, but she was speaking Russian with her friend, so I believe it was more of a “fan” than the true thing. Lots of people in kimonos, though!

While walking back, we passed by a pachinko parlor, which is not really noteworthy since they are everywhere. But we decided to go in this one. I blew about 10 bucks over an hour or so playing the slot-machine-like devices. It was kind of fun, but we absolutely reeked of cigarettes afterward. That’s a general oddity about Japan: you can’t smoke outdoors except in designated areas, but it is normal to smoke indoors in restaurants and Pachinko parlors / adult arcades.

We kept drinking that night, and I think I had a couple drinks too many…

The next day (actually 2 days afterward because I spent the next day in bed, nursing one of the worst hangovers I’ve had in years), we went to the Arashiyama Bamboo Grove. It was nice, but also absolutely packed with tourists.

Our journey then brought us to the Otagi Nenbutsu-ji Temple, which has more than 1,200 Buddha statues in various poses.

The Ryōan-ji Zen garden was interesting, but there wasn’t too much to see.

We continued to the Golden Temple. It was also packed with tourists, and I wish we could have gone into the temple.

We were biking a lot that day. There’s a lot to see in Kyoto, but actually very little in the city center, so one has to circle the city all day, which is why we rented bikes. Our last stop was to go to Fushimi Inari Taisha—the path with hundreds of gates. We got there right during dusk, so we saw them naturally lit and then also at night.

We ended the evening by stopping by an arcade. I think that was one of my favorite things in Japan. You just don’t see arcades like that outside of the land of the rising sun.

We took another expensive Shinkansen train to Hakone. We were thinking about renting a car, and we tried, but they all seemed to have no availability for days. Pro tip: if you want to rent a car in Japan, make sure you reserve several days in advance.

Our goal with going to Hakone was simply to see Mt. Fuji. I understood that Fujinomiya or the city of Fuji also afford good views, but we ended up in Hakone. I think it didn’t matter anyway because a rainstorm swept in, obscuring the mountain. We got drenched just running to the hostel from the bus stop, and we never did end up even catching a glimpse of the mountain. The below picture is just a random shot to illustrate the poor weather we faced.

Slightly dejected, we got on a local train and made our way to Tokyo, the otaku’s paradise.

After dropping off our bags, Matteo and I went to Shibuya Crossing and met up with another friend of ours. Us Three Musketeers then watched the mob of people moving across the crossing.

We searched for a restaurant without smoking since she has a newborn baby, but it is really hard to find in Japan. We settled on a place with very few patrons and caught up over some beers. It was quite a nice experience to meet up with friends in such a far-off place.

The next day, Matteo and I went to Ikebukuro where I dragged him to a department store that had a floor entirely dedicated to Gundam gunpla. I was in heaven, and I wished I had lots of money and space to take home half the store with me.

We then went to another Pokémon store. It had pretty much the same stuff as the other Pokémon store we visited.

He and I then went back to Shibuya during the day. An entire floor of a department store had opened with a lot of nerdy stores, the most notable of them being the first Nintendo store in Japan (surprisingly, there already is one in NYC but there wasn’t one in Japan). The store had opened 2 days prior, and we had wholly underestimated how absolutely mad it would be. We couldn’t even get into any store since tickets for just entering had all been given out.

We left and ended up going to the Kawaii Monster Café. They do shows a few days a week, but we weren’t there on one of those days. Nevertheless, it was still a very funky experience. I regret to report, however, that although the food looked awesome, it was really lackluster and expensive.

Matteo and I left and decided to check out Shinjuku. It didn’t really seem much different from other Japanese downtown areas. Unbeknownst to me, a friend of mine that had moved to Shanghai was in Tokyo for the weekend. He spotted my hair as we walked down the street and thought that it looked like my hair. It was indeed my hair, and we were both shocked to randomly bump into each other in Tokyo. We all went out for drinks and kept laughing about the coincidence.

The next morning, Matteo and I met up with Mari again, and we went to a small town called Koga to tour a sake brewery. There is a lot more to it than I had previously known, and we were enlightened into what makes a solid sake.

Of course, we also got to sample many of these delicious varieties of sake.

Upon our return to Tokyo, Mari went home and Matteo and I continued exploring Shinjuku.

We explored the Golden Gai, which is a neighborhood with tons of tiny bars. They seemed very interesting, but they were also rather expensive. I guess it’s more of a tourist trap.

On my last day in Tokyo, we went to Akihabara—the name I kept butchering. This neighborhood is supposed to be a mecca for nerds, and it didn’t disappoint. That being said, most of the themed bars and cafes had overpriced food and drinks, so we didn’t really eat in them, but they were still cool to visit and check out the merchandise.

We then made our way over to the Sensō-ji temple.

After that, it was time for the attraction that I had been wanting to see the most in Japan. The life-size statue of the Gundam Unicorn. It does a light show a few times a day, so we made sure we were on time to see that. It was awesome!

I had really wanted to visit the Studio Ghibli museum, but one needs to reserve a ticket months in advance. I tried looking up some last-minute options, but what is normally a 9 USD ticket would have cost me 120. I didn’t want to see it that bad. I would like to visit Japan again someday, and I will make sure I plan appropriately.

I also would have liked to have experienced the show at the Robot Restaurant, but it costs a lot. Next time when I have deeper pockets…

The next day, Matteo flew back home and I went south to visit my friend Josh. He was working in Yokosuka for a few months, and that just happened to coincide with when I was in Japan. What a surprise seeing 4 friends in Japan!

He showed me the Navy base, and then we just hung out for a couple of days.

It was then time to leave, so I took the train back into Tokyo and caught my flight to Australia.

I liked Japan. I was somehow expecting it to be a little more quirky than it really was. You see people sharing pictures of odd vending machines and people all dressed up oddly, but I didn’t really ever see that. Sure, there are more arcades and a lot of anime merchandise, but it was really remarkable in how unremarkable it all was. Don’t get me wrong—I still enjoyed it and want to return someday, mostly to visit Tokyo some more and then go up to Hokkaido island, but it just somehow fell short of expectations.

One peculiar thing I noticed while in Japan was that there seems to be absolutely no convention on walking on the left or right side of the path. People just walk wherever and flow around each other. I noticed that by my second day and asked my Japanese couchsurfing host, and he didn’t really have an answer for me. Even in train stations where the up and down paths were marked, sometimes it was on the left and sometimes on the right.

On a final note, I want to discuss the JR Pass. The JR pass is a well-known option for visitors traveling in Japan. You can’t buy it in Japan—you have to buy it abroad and have it shipped to you, so it requires some planning. It allows you to have unlimited travel on the JR Shinkansen lines (which are a lot of tracks, but not all).

For a 7-day pass, it costs about 265 USD. It does allow unlimited travel on those 7 days, but it’s also 7 consecutive days. You can’t just punch it on the days you use it and use it on 7 various days. If you started using it on the 1^st, it would no longer be valid after the 7^th. That means that if you are flying through Japan like a bat out of hell, then it might be worth it. I prefer staying in each city for a few days, so that would have meant that I would have gotten 2, maybe 3, uses out of a 7-day pass.

In fact, it cost me 2,500 yen to go to Nagasaki on the 8th. It then cost me 2,620 to go back to Fukuoka and then another 4,250 to continue to Hiroshima. I then went to Himeji on the 15^th, but that would have fallen outside of the 7-day period. So that is 9,370, which is about 86 USD. Much less than 265. Yes, I could have gone quicker between destinations, but I didn’t want to do that. Regardless, had I gone on the train, I could have drastically shortened some otherwise long bus trips. It comes down to money vs. time. This article goes into it in more detail, but it’s my belief that the JR Pass really isn’t worth it unless you are trying to see as much in as little time as possible. I actually kept track of all my long-distance fares. It ALL adds up to 307 USD, which is barely more than a 7-day pass, and I did all that in about 3 weeks. The 3-week JR Pass is about 791. You can buy individual tickets on http://www.hyperdia.com/ and it will likely be cheaper. You can also just buy tickets the day of and use that site for timetable info since the prices don’t get higher the closer you are to the travel date.

Another option a friend told me about is the Seishun 18 ticket. This seems to be more intended for residents of Japan since you have to buy them in one period and use them in another, so I never benefited from that offer.