Reykjavik Cassandra Edition

Our trip was finally here! Carolanne and I had been planning for our trip to Iceland and Ireland for almost a year. It felt unreal (even to my parents) that I was going to actually go on the trip now. I had been panicking the whole week prior because I realized that I had run out of visa pages (countries require you to have a certain amount of blank visa pages), but I had a few endorsement pages so it was going to have to be good enough. My flight left at 10, so I ended up going to the airport at 7 to make use of my United Club pass (free alcohol and food heyohhhh).

 Soon enough, it was boarding time. I was the only person on my side of the row and the seats were surprisingly incredibly spacious! However, I had realized I had forgotten my extra jacket at my sister's place and my scarf at work, so I was shit out of luck for a blanket and pillow. Ten or so hours of dismal sleep and we were finally there! I didn't really see the flight attendants the whole trip, but it's budget so if they catch you breathing they charge you.

The airport was small, but I still somehow ended up getting lost on my way to baggage claim. The border patrol took extra time looking through my passport for a page to stamp, but I ended up getting through without a hitch! I was quickly on the 45 minute bus ride to Reykjavik. All around were volcanic rocks covered in moss. The autumn colors were enchanting.

The church front doors were beautiful and bright.

Here's one of cool houses near the church.

Once I got to the hostel, I showered, bundled up for the 50° weather, and made my way out to explore. I walked down the main shopping street and mostly just window shopped. I couldn't help but notice how incredibly expensive everything was (an Icelandic sweater was around $180)! So much for wanting to buy my whole family sweaters! I turned down another busy street and eventually found myself at a café advertising lamb stew. I enjoyed some tasty lamb stew (and wifi) before heading back out towards the church at the end of the road. The church was already closed, but it was definitely a place I wanted to revisit with Carolanne. I set off again wandering up and down the main streets. I happened to find a long line for a hot dog stand, so I ended up getting in line to try it out. Hot dogs are surprisingly popular in Iceland -probably because everything else is so expensive. It turns out that Bill Clinton also had visited this stand, contributing to its popularity. It was delicious so I could see why it got all the hype.

More downtown views!

Bundled for the weather and feeling cute!

Soon after dusk, I made my way back to the hostel to relax and sleep. I met two women in my dorm. One was a huge knitter, like me, and the other lives in Sacramento! I became fast friends with both of them and made plans for the following day.

The next day, I woke up early, took a shower, and set off to explore the town until Carolanne was to come in (around 4). I decided I wanted to have an idea of where the rental car place was, so I set out for a nice scenic walk along the water that would take me to the rental district. Across from our hostel was a sculpture called Solflarid (the Sun Voyager). It was a steel outline of a viking ship and looked like it were almost crafted by whale bones. Few people were out in the cool, misty weather and I was surprised to see the amount of morning joggers -it had made me wish that I had brought my workout clothes so I could enjoy the unique morning beauty you experience during a run in a foreign country.

And now a first hand encounter with the universal graffiti of Reykjavik.

I ambled along the path that next led me to Reykjavik's entertainment hall. It has stunning panels that are lit up in vibrant blues and purples to resemble fish scales. After admiring the hall, I strolled along to the small peninsula where our car rental was located. I ended up finding a beautiful path along the water and enjoyed the cool air and peaceful solitude. At one point, I got really excited because I thought I had seen a whale's tail, but once I whipped out my camera, I realized it was just a wave from afar. One thing I noticed as I was wandering around the city is that there is beautiful street art everywhere. Street art is often found on sides of buildings, walls, and anywhere else possible. It was really fun to turn the corner to find a new artistic surprise.

Following the art, I made my way back to downtown and settled in a coffee shop where I enjoyed the wifi and cozy atmosphere. My next hour was spent people watching as I waited for Carolanne's text that she had touched down. Once I heard from her, I made my way back to the hostel and spent the next hour talking to my knitting friend, Elina, who was waiting for her flight back to Israel. She showed me the traditional Nordic needles she had bought on this trip. It made this beautiful knotted pattern that was invented far before knitting was made. Next post -Carolanne arrives and things get wilder!

Here are the Nordic needles and the knots. Made from reindeer bones.

Part Two: Two Totoros in Tokyo

The next morning we woke up and went to H&M where we bought matching outfits. We immediately changed into our new merch and matched for the rest of the day. We got some cheap conveyor belt sushi then made our way to the Imperial Palace. Turns out the Imperial Palace is private property (you can't even see the outline of it) and there not a thing you can do about it. We were disappointed, but we were able to see remains of a tower that had connected to the Imperial Palace at some point but had burned down. We gave up and left the capital to make our way to Sunshine City (the mall) to shop around for a bit. We visited the Pokémon Center, but didn't end up buying anything.

Just practicing safety first!

After, we made our way to Shinjuku to eat at the Robot Restaurant, but immediately decided against it when we found out the entrance fee was ¥7000 each (~$70 each)! We bailed and walked around the reddish light district with the host cafés. We finally found a restaurant that provided unlimited food and drinks for a reasonable price, so we decided to go there. The place only really served okonomiyaki, yakisoba, and beer, but it was great. Of course it was a place that expected you to cook your own food. Being idiot foreigners, we had no idea what we were doing, so our waitress had to help us cook all our meals.

Once we gorged ourselves, we decided to do some karaoke.We rented a room at some karaoke bar and proceeded to be a big fat mess the whole time. We sang Anaconda by Nicki Minaj as our waitress was bringing our drunk asses alcohol (we were standing on the sofas belting "My anaconda don't want none unless you got buns hon!!"). Then we sang Wrecking Ball, which was appropriate because we were the wrecking balls. The wrecked wrecking balls.

The closest we ever got to the Robo Show.

 We had to play the dumb foreigner card to get help for these.

Our hour and a half was up and we found ourselves going to a nearby arcade for a bit. But before that, the karaoke place gave us little free key-chains of chibi bread. We played (and sucked at) some Dragon Ball Z game and also some punching game. We grew bored of that and quickly turned our attention to the crane games. The awkward man working at the arcade followed us around and would stop us every once in awhile to open the machine, position the stuffed animal/thing we wanted, then would have us try again. It was cheating in every sense and we loved it. Carolanne ran off to the restroom and I decided to try my hand at a crane game for these huge cat stuffed animals. I ended up getting the cat the first time around and lost my mind with excitement in the arcade. Carolanne came back to me jumping up and down cheering as the cat plopped into the prize box and she gave the awkward arcade guy a huge hug. He looked confused and deeply uncomfortable, so I had to explain to her that he didn't actually help. Sugar mamma over here got it all on her own.

It was our last full day! We woke up late and decided to wear some of our new clothes and the matching witch headbands I had gotten for us the day before. We stopped by our favorite life changing noodle house again and we had the mabo eggplant noodles. I'm posting this entry two years since our trip (finally), but I will never forget them.

We still regularly talk about this amazing place.

After brunch, we took the train to Asakusa, an old, touristy shopping street with a shrine at the end. We shopped around for a bit and I tried to take Carolanne to a cute Totoro shop, but unfortunately it was closed. Carolanne bought some cute scarves and things for a friend. I was dead set on getting a kimono/bath robe and was trying one on when a staff member came up to me and told me the longer robes were bigger. We were both like, 'shut your mouth while you're still not too far behind dude', but he didn't shut up so we left and decided not to go back. At the end of the shopping street was a big shrine where we watched people pray and cleanse themselves with smoke. 

The shrine was super crowded, but it was still relaxing.

After taking pictures at the shrine, we got takoyaki, fried chicken, tofu, and beer at a fast food place next to what I assume was a drag club/host club. It was still two hours before our escape room appointment, but we decided we would stop by Escape Hut to verify our reservations and see if we could go in early. They told us we could do it early, but to come back in about 30 minutes so they could prepare the room. Carolanne and I decided to go for beers while we waited. I was nervous, but Carolanne was ready to get wasted and dive in head first. We ended up only having a beer or two before it was time to go to the Escape Hut though.

The rules for the escape room was that we had a limited amount of time (one hour) to solve all the puzzles in the room and escape. The story for our room was that we were samuri under the shogun investigating a death threat the shogun received. We had to solve all the puzzles before "midnight" to prevent the assassination. The room was separated into three areas. We figured out the puzzle that gave us a key to the second room fairly quickly, but got stuck on the next part. The staff came in and helped us for a bit, then we sped through the rest of the room and finished in 45 minutes.

Victory at last!

When we got out, we were told to put on Sherlock-like costumes and take pictures (and drink tea/eat snacks). While we were taking the pictures, Carolanne called me "my dearest Twatson", then she told me she was "Shercock" (or "Shercock Hoes"). We had a good laugh while the staff looked confused, then left.

We took the train back to Hatagaya and got Korean BBQ at JuJu Hut close to our apartment. The food was awesome and our waiter was adorable. We bought a bunch of beers and face masks (Carolanne got one that looked like a cat and I got a dog one), then went back to the apartment to pack our bags and finish watching Civil War on Drugs. We spent the night finishing beers and Civil War on Drugs, then watching Beyonce and Todrick Hall videos. We also tried coming up with witty responses to the shit boys were texting me (but kept coming up with the best responses too late). Finally, we fell asleep at 3am.

Last day train station selfies.

The next morning, we finished packing our bags, cleaned the apartment, then finished the two beers in the fridge. We said goodbye to our little apartment, then set off for the train station. We were looking for a place to eat when some random woman came up to us and started asking about our clothes and where we were going and how long we were staying in Japan. When she found out we were from the US, she got so excited and asked for our facebooks. She grabbed Carolanne's hat and sunglasses and put them on. Then she grabbed Carolanne's cat plushie and asked to take a picture with us. We had some guy from a local store take our pictures for us and I'm sure Carolanne and I looked incredibly uncomfortable. Eventually, we told her we needed to catch our train and bailed.

We had to make a mad dash for Narita airport, but thankfully we were able to make it in time. On the way to the terminal, we took pics with some girls from a maid cafe and also sadly shimmied at each other a few times (shimmymasen).We tearfully said goodbye at Carolanne's terminal and she gave me the rest of her yen for ice cream. We were both a crying mess, but it was a great end to our trip.

Part One: Tumbling Around In Tokyo

We rented an Air BnB for our week in Tokyo. We were supposed to meet the lady renting us the room at 5pm, but we didn't reach our final train stop til 5.20 pm. Carolanne and I were completely lost and wandered around for a while before asking for help from some kind older lady. The host's directions were just too poorly written. The lady was really nice and guided us all the way to our host meet-up spot. At one point, we were all lost, but the woman didn't give up on us and asked a few shop keepers for directions. We found out through broken English that her daughter lived in San Francisco!

Once we got to our host, we thanked the woman profusely and were on our way to a small apartment building around the block. It was a one bedroom with a tiny kitchenette and the smallest bathroom I've ever been in. Your knees hit the door when you were on the toilet, the tub barely fit our ass, and the sink was on top of the tub. Nevertheless, the apartment was cute, cheap, and close to Hatagaya station.

Pics of our cozy apartment! Except another twin bed was crammed into the tiny main room.

We decided to have a low-key night and get drinks/do karaoke. Both of us were tired and bitchy because we had been getting lost /lugging our shit around all day, but we decided to go to downtown Shibuya and look for a nice sit-down bar. We stopped by the 7/11 beforehand to buy our tickets for the Ghibli museum only to find out it had been sold out for MONTHS. Carolanne was absolutely heartbroken, so we Googled our options and luckily found what was probably a scalper. It was kind of a rip off, but still worth it, so we made plans to pick up the tickets the next day.

On our way to Shibuya, there was another foreign traveler who was bent over a trashcan on the side of the street. It seemed like he was talking to it, but what he was saying? we don't know. Right after we walked by, he spun around to shout after us, "Hey big booty girl! You stay thick, don't go small!" Normally when I get catcalled, I am offended and upset. However, this time I couldn't stop myself from quietly agreeing. We immediately devolved into fits of masked laughter, and Carolanne turned to me and said, "He stopped talking to his trashcan girlfriend when he saw an even bigger trashcan walking by."

When we got to Shibuya, some Senegalese guy started talking to us and hitting on me (and I got to practice my French again!). We told him we were looking for a bar instead of a club, so he took us to some place called "Gas Panic" (though we read the sign as Gas Picnic as first). It was a smokey dive bar that looked sketch as hell -but was on the main street! Carolanne and I decided to use the word "shartroom" (because we're gross and immature and bathroom humor is funny to us) in case one of us needed to bail. We bought some drinks at Gas Panic and decided to give the place a chance. However, at some point the dude touched my butt, so I turned to Carolanne and furiously started whispering "shartroom!!" in Carolanne's ear. Unfortunately, Carolanne didn't understand what I had said and ended up going off to the bar to get us more drinks. I met her at the bar and told her we needed to bail, so she handed off the drinks to some random cool women and booked it out of there.

Our next bet was to try a karaoke room to avoid the creepy dudes; however, karaoke and fun just didn't seem to be in our cards as we would have a 30 minute wait. Both of us were disappointed from our night and moody and we ended up getting into our only fight of the trip. It was dumb, didn't last long, and we ended up working it out on our cab ride home.

On our night walk back to the apartment -the streets are so clean!

Determined tomorrow would be a better day, we got up, got dressed, and took one of the worst showers of our lives in the smallest bathroom ever. You couldn't stand up, so you just had to sit in the fetal position and spray water over yourself.

Doesn't get cozier than this.

We decided to spend our first full day of Tokyo shopping in Harajuku. It was a Saturday, so the shops were super crowded. Still, everything was as cute as I remembered it to be. Unfortunately, most of the clothes were "one size fits all" which really means "one size fits most except you fat lazy Americans", but we still managed to find some cute things. Our pick of the day was definitely our wide brimmed fashionista hats! After we finished shopping, we trekked to the Aoyama Flower Market. Along the way we saw a bunch of really cute black lab service dogs! The Aoyama Flower Market was one of the most beautiful shops we visited in Tokyo. We took an outrageous amount of selfies while we waited in the 45 minute line (worth it).

After flower fun and picking up our Ghibli tickets, we set off for an expensive nice sushi place. It had 5 or 6 courses and unlimited beer and was so delicious! Thanks mom and dad! We ate to our hearts' content and head back to the room to get ready for clubbing in Shibuya.

It was so deluxe and so good!

We arrived in Shibuya and were immediately stopped by some drunk Japanese guy who hit on us while his friend stood there looking a little embarrassed but mostly done with his friend's bullshit. They led us to a club called T2 and we decided to go in. The cover charge was ¥2500 (about $25), the music was just okay and the drinks were dismal, but we made the best of it. We ended up dancing until 2am and ended our night at a nearby noodle house on the way to the apartment.

Suddenly it was late next morning and we were worse for the wear. Our Ghibli tickets were for the afternoon, so we got ready and ventured over there. On our way to the subway, we found a Chinese noodle shop that looked divine and immediately beelined over. It was hands down the best noodles and Shanghai dumplings of my life (and our favorite meal in Japan). Think handmade noodles in the best hot and sour soup you've ever had (there were other flavors too). We left considering our lives changed for good and made our way to the Ghibli museum an hour early. Since we were so early, we stopped by a little cake café across the street and ate some crème brûlée with warm milk and tea.

It was finally time for us to enter the museum and we were ecstatic!

This nearby cafe was perfect for our wait!

We started our visit with seeing a cute short film about a preschool's class slowly transforming into a boat out at see. The boys were trying to catch a whale! You didn't have to like animé to appreciate how well they capture the perfect essence of a kid's mind. Throughout the museum, there were concept art and sculptures demonstrating stop motion. At the end, we went to the beautiful gardens at the top of the roof and took a picture with the robot from The Castle in the Sky. Finally it was time for us to go, so I went home for nap time, and Carolanne went off to visit the Calico Cat Café.

And now for some bonus pics! My prime cosplay snaps of the day (as seen in Howl's Moving Castle):

Hangover in Hakone (Fart City)

After we made it off the train in Odawara and boarded the bus to Hakone, we sat on the bus for quite a long time. We got off the bus and our noses were immediately assaulted by the fart air of Hakone (caused by the natural hot springs in the area). I was still very hungover, my stomach was furious with me, and I needed to go to the bathroom, so I assumed the worst from the smell. We were both still tired from not getting much sleep the night before and nauseous from the rocky bus ride up the hill, so we were grumpy and ready to get to our hostel, Hakone Tent.

Unfortunately, I picked the route on Google Maps that required about 15 minutes of walking. But what Google Maps failed to mention was that the 15 minutes of walking was up a narrow steep mountainside path with hundreds of feet of stairs. Carolanne and I started making our way up because we had no other way up. We had no choice. We bitched and moaned the whole way -and I considered diving into the bushes.

At some point along the mountain, we stopped to catch our breath. We were sweating profusely and panting loudly, so we decided to hitchhike. We joked that we should hitchhike and I hesitantly put my thumb up. A guy stopped almost immediately and offered to help. He was Chinese, but spoke English and Japanese as well. He called our hostel, got directions, and drove us to the door. We thanked him and went inside to check in. The hostel was cute and beautifully done with tatami mats -and cheap as well! The room was a traditional style room with futons and tatami mats. It was so charming. We were supposed to share the room with one other person, but luckily no one checked in so we got it all to ourselves.

You could say it was pretty close quarters.

Once we dropped off our stuff and settled in, then went downstairs to the onsen (the hot spring that was really hot and smelled like farts, but was great). We hopped into the tub and enjoyed the basic (2.2) water. At one point, one of us said, "Ohhh that was a sick burn! You should soak that in the onsen." and that became a reoccurring joke throughout our trip. After about 15 minutes, we got out because it was too hot and we were starting to get dizzy. Our skin felt great after, but we smelled like farts the rest of the day.

Soon after, we tried to find a few restaurants that the receptionist suggested. Unfortunately, we couldn't find any of the places and got increasingly hangry as we searched the entire town for any place that was open. Eventually, we found an Okonomiyaki place and bought two pork pancakes and an order of sausage. We returned to the hostel much happier and a lot less likely to kill each other. When we got back, I rented a few yukatas (summer traditional garb) for us to wear for the night.

Crafts inside the Hakone Crafthouse!

We woke up early the next morning, took another dip in the onsen, the walked around the town. We were in much better spirits after a day of rest. We visited a cute place called the Hakone Crafthouse. Carolanne bought a set of adorable cups that didn't seem to be for sale, but they let her buy them. The Crafthouse had some gardens attached so we got a few more videos for the music vid and met a lemur.

"I want to Break Free" always plays in my head when I see this photo.

We wandered around the city a little longer buying souvenirs -I was able to buy some nice looking clip-on earrings (my right ear was still recovering from plastic surgery and was unpierced). When we were satisfied, we went back to the hostel, packed up our stuff, and hopped on the train to Tokyo.

Train views!

Bird Shows and Karaoke in Kakegawa -the Dan and Eve Edition!

Shinkansen time! We got up early, then took a cab to the railway station so we could activate our JR passes and catch the Shinkansen to Kakegawa where we'd be staying with Dan and Eve. I had met Dan the first time I had visited Tokyo. As new English teachers in foreign countries, we became fast friends. Carolanne and I were so excited to to stay with them and finally meet Dan's girlfriend -Eve.

We bought some crappy bento boxes for the train then made our way to the platform. Across from us was the skinhead guy from our hostel who continually was creeping us out. He had a shaved head and torn black jeans and a spiked belt and chains with what I assume were fascist red patches on his black jean jacket, but they were in a language I didn't understand so maybe he was just punk. Either way he was creepy and made fashion decisions that could easily get him labeled as a Nazi. It creeped us out even more so because he seemed to be everywhere we were and each time he'd creepily stare at us. Luckily he went on a different train to God knows where. Both of us tried to catch up on journaling and blogging as we took a smooth two hour ride to Kakegawa. As you can see from my two year late post, that catching up didn't do much good. Shout-out to Carolanne who actually finished her journal in a timelier manner (one year later)!

The view from the Kakegawa castle.

Dan and Eve picked us up from the train station and took us to the Kakegawa castle and museum. We had the opportunity to see the scenic view of the city from the tallest tower in Kakegawa castle. Afterwards, we were hungry so Eve suggested we go to a conveyor belt sushi place. She said it was kind of trashy, but we assured her that she could roll these garbage cans (us) to trash town. At the sushi place, they had these adorable Shinkansen style trains that would bring you whatever special order sushi you wanted.

Eve had to jet out because she had work, but Dan took us to the Kakegawa bird park, which did not sound very inspiring, but was in fact very much fun. There was a large room full of parakeets that you could feed. I didn't have any small change, so I ended up dropping a bunch of cash (about $10) on feeding the birds. We had bird food for days! I had one parrot friend who hung out with me for awhile (until I eventually ran out of food).

My friend!

Afterwards, we went to the bird show where they had different types of birds performing cute tricks with audience participation. The MC asked for someone in the audience to come up for the eagle's portion of the show and I excitedly threw my hand up yelling "ME!" impulsively. I was surprised that I was the only one who wanted to participate, so they quickly chose me. I ended up holding a hoop for the eagle to fly through, and was given a cute sticker at the end for my participation. I was literally the only adult to get a sticker though, so I quickly drew the conclusion that I was the token dumb foreigner of that show (which was fine by me). Dan had the opportunity to feed a toucan, then we headed outside to feed the emus.

'Hey there!', he seemed to say.

Back inside, true to the cute Japan nature, there were costumes and props so people could dress up and take pictures around the bird signs. Carolanne and I dressed up as pumpkin witches and forced Dan to do many takes of us making a heart for our music video. Carolanne threw her magic wand at him after the 5th take where he made fun of us and told us we made nothing close to a heart.

This picture has literally been my desktop picture for two years. It is always Halloween themed on my laptop.

We stopped by the grocery store where we picked up some wine and food, then found a beautiful table flipping game. I was the first to try it out and broke every single one of my beautifully long nails that I had spent so long growing out. It was incredibly worth it. Dan ended up getting the high score for the game. We all left feeling very accomplished, then went home to play Mario Kart while sipping wine like the classy people we were.

Eve came back and their friend Ian came to join us for a night at the karaoke room. Before we left, we all decided to wear silly hair clips or hair bands -I was wearing my dinosaur headband. Dan had a chihuahua clip that he and I had gotten from Everland, Carolanne had bunny ears, and Eve had cat ears. Carolanne, Dan, and I all got unlimited drinks at the karaoke room and used it to our full advantage. Carolanne and I sure put on a good show of Call Me Maybe and Let It Go.

On the ride back, Dan, Carolanne and I were in the back of the car still not over singing. We continued to sing into Eve and Ian's ear for the entire car-ride back not noticing that Ian was taping the entire thing. At one point in the drive home, Carolanne exclaimed, "Dan, I fucking love you. But I love Eve at least 12% more."

Dan and Eve went to bed shortly after, but Carolanne stayed up to cook (at my drunken request) some scrambled eggs on the stove and rice in the water heater. Needless to say, we bought Dan and Eve a new water heater. Luckily, Eve was very nice about it and cooked us breakfast the next day. We watched trash reality tv as we recovered from the night before (but not enough), then she dropped us off at the train station where we waited for the next train to Hakone.

Thank you, Eve, for loving us even though we destroyed your water boiler!!