I am so jet-lagged.

Apr 26, 2012 19:15

I was planning on actually posting some stuff about the trip, but I've apparently descended to a level of mental function at which I cannot even correctly pet the cat. She got offended and left. So, I'm posting this email I sent to my parents\siblings while I was there.

Parents\Siblings,

I just got to Kyoto, but am feeling kind of gross and might take a nap instead of going out. Though the guest house staff gave me some extremely detailed hand-drawn maps of the area, and apparently there is "really good soy pudding" down the street. I assume that this is a restaurant and not merely sort of a mound of pudding that formed naturally.

In Tokyo I went to Tokyo Tower (which is silly), a temple called Zozoji (which was very nice but full of two busloads of tourists because it's right next to Tokyo Tower), Harajuku, Shibuya, Ikebukuro (shopping districts aimed at hipsters, sociopathic fashionistas, and otaku, respectively; I only ended up buying anything at Harajuku, where I got a cheap coat because it's cold), Jimbocho (shopping district devoted specifically to used books; couldn't find any of the ones I was looking for), Jiyugaoka (shopping district specifically devoted to cake; I had ice cream instead), and Rikugien (my favorite landscape garden).

I went to Jiyugaoka with Mo's youngest cousin Rei; she just came back from studying abroad in Australia and wanted to practice English, and is interested in Judaism. I was unable to help her with the latter part, except that when we had lox-and-avocado pancakes for dinner (this was good), I was able to explain to her that the lox was a pretty Jewish thing to eat. We also went to a cat cafe, where the movie Kiki's Delivery Service was apparently on permanent loop, and everything was decorated with pictures of Kiki's cat or Totoro.

At the station, we ran into a girl handing out fliers for a "rabbit cafe" (place where you can hang out with rabbits for an hourly fee) called "Rabbit And Grow Fat." The girl had an extremely-well-behaved bunny in a baby carriage with her. The place's logo is a picture of a bunny having a bowel movement.

Rei informed me that bunny cafes are pretty trendy right now. It looks like this place is actually a chain; the original branch is perhaps unsurprisingly in Harajuku.

- Sarah

Second email a few minutes later:

I found an article about that bunny cafe. I'm 75% sure that the girl on the right in that photo is the one we met at the station.

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japan, personal

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