Nearly every year since we moved back from Japan, softlykarou and I have made time to go out to visit my parents in October because in addition to seeing them and getting to eat my mother's delicious food, St. Charles's Scarecrow Festival is held that month. We last went two years ago, noting that the scarecrows were better than when we went three years ago, ( Read more... )

I almost slept through the night! Yesterday I was almost completely wiped out from about noon on, to the point that it felt like it did during the dark times in Japan when my sleep schedule was completely off-kilter. Now I feel okay after sleeping from 10:30 p.m. to 6 a.m., with a brief bathroom break around 2:30. softlykarou is not quite so lucky, but at ( Read more... )

The first thing we did this morning after showering, before we packed and before we even ate breakfast, was to finally eat the sakura manjū we bought on Miyajima in the Hello Kitty store.


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After a delicious and cheap breakfast of toast and butter and tea and no soup because it had pork and shellfish despite being beet soup, we left the hotel at 10:15 in order to have enough time to make our 11:30 Sailor Moon Cafe reservations in Shibuya. But we had more time than I thought, so when we passed by Ozz On and softlykarou saw a blue and black dress ( Read more... )

I woke up at 7:30 a.m. and decided not to go back to sleep, since we would be traveling today back to Tokyo for to last phase of our trip. softlykarou and I lay around in bed for a couple hours, packed up our souvenirs and clothes, and headed out to find some breakfast. softlykarou's initial idea of Cafe du Monde turned out to be a dud because the one in Kyoto Station ( Read more... )

Late night, late morning, and the rain that had been predicted nearly every day in the weather report finally arrived. softlykarou went out with a friend to fetch breakfast, and then came back, ate, and we left just under the buzzer to allow the hotel staff to clean our room ( Read more... )

You can tell Japan is a high-trust society with good social cohesion because the elevators hang around forever but close instantly when you press the 閉める button.

I woke up late, so after showers and breakfast again at Lotteria, softlykarou and decided to go to Sanjūsangendō again. But apparently everyone else had the same idea, because when we got to the ( Read more... )

It's not just that our hotel is owned by a right-wing revisionist who thinks that comfort women were voluntary workers employed to help quell the desires of the barbarian Koreans, although he totally does and I read it in the propaganda in our hotel room desk. It's that the shower is terrible. And that's not just because its two settings are "off" ( Read more... )

Finally we had a day where we didn't really have a plan or a schedule that required we be somewhere on time, so we lounged around in the morning, had a leisurely breakfast at the Toyoko Inn--better than Sakura Hotel, not as good as Hotel Active--and then left right at checkout time to head to the train station. Due to the heat and various injuries ( Read more... )

One benefit of staying in a ryokan is that you get both dinner and breakfast, so after sleeping in almost until the last minute, I was awakened by softlykarou with exactly enough time to make it to breakfast after a quick shower. And such a breakfast:


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