Seoul-fies !

Layover from 8am to 6pm at Incheon (Seoul, S Korea) so I decided to brave the (terrible and nonsensical) metro system and visited Myuengdong (spelling)

And took 'Seoul'-fies !

Shopping

Fountain 

Dong-something palace 

Too cheap for a hotel- overnight in Haneda (Tokyo)

It was rough

SkyTree Tokyo

Elevator was super fast

View from the top- cloudy and wonderful 

$20 to go to base platform

10 things I find ridiculous(ly awesome?) about Japan

Dear Japan,

I've been here for the last 11 days, and there are things here that I find ridiculous, as well as things that I find ridiculously awesome. The top 10 (that I could think of): 

1. Your weirdly named drinks. 

'Salt and Fruit' next to 'Pocari Sweat'

Milkpis. Wha?!

2. The fact that there are 2 kinds of toilets : the squatty potty (which is positively primitive, no matter what people say) ...

... And the super fancy luxury bidet toilet, with heated toilet seat. 

Seriously- there's almost no in between.

3. The weird 'sexually frustrated teenage boy' demographic that EVERYONE seems to be gunning for - 

< this is a brochure. For a REAL restaurant. That they were giving to everyone on the street ! Am I really your target audience for sexy steak?

And this:

At Maidreamin the waitresses dressed like milk maids whisper 'magic' on your desserts to make it taste better.

Really? Grown men WANT this?

4. Your love of sumo. Honesty, I totally get this. I don't love the thirty minutes of ritual followed by 30 seconds of fighting- but watching two HUGE hairless Japanese guys slapping each others faces, grabbing each others loin cloths and pummeling one another out if the ring?

My god.

I could watch for HOURS.

5. Sushi, and the fact that you eat it for breakfast. 

In my 'Japan: Culture Smart!' book, it mentions that Japanese people can enjoy the texture of the food more than the taste. This strikes me as gross. 

And that pink slime thing in the photo above ? That IS gross.

6. The obsession with anime. 

I get that it has a lot of followers, but the fact that 3,000 Japanese men, ages 15 to 50, waiting for 2+ hours outside the Tokyo Anime Center just so they could get a glimpse at a new anime and get a large paper bag decorated with the characters faces struck me as super odd.  

7. The fact that when I was at a boutique store near Harajuka trying on clothes, the fitting room attendant asked us to wear these face covers. Is it to protect the clothes from makeup?!

I'm not even wearing any makeup!

8. The 'specialness' of the 'Japanese bath'.

106 degrees (F)+, bathers must shower before entering, can fit a bunch of your friends in with you?

It's a hot tub. You can call it a hot tub.

Except that it's a 'skinny dipping required' hot tub.

9. Your uber confusing, poorly planned public transportation lines.

Like, I don't even want to talk about it. Tokyo has 4 different KINDS of train lines (probably more but I only took 4) and the system made no sense. I literally depended on the kindness of Japanese strangers (god bless all dozen of them) to get me from point A to point B. 

10. The fact that the soda machine had free wifi. The amazingness of this literally brought a tear to my eye.

Why don't ALL soda machines have wifi?!

Seriously though, Japan, it's been real. While I still don't like sushi, and everything was expensive (compared to the rest of Asia) and I was disappointed that wifi everywhere (except the soda machine) was absolute crap, Japan was a wonderful surprise of awesomeness. 

Never before have I met so many kind, helpful, polite people. Japanese ladies have to be my new favorite people. More than once (okay, more than 10 times) when I was lost in a metro station, a Japanese woman walked up to me and asked if I needed help. On my first metro ride, before I could figure out the (bizarre) ATM methods*, another woman even paid for my ride!!!!

And this place felt so safe, esp for a solo female traveler! And so clean!

Love letter to Japan. And to little Japanese ladies, especially. (But not the ones dressed in cosplay costumes) 

*the only ATMs that worked for my visa debit card were in 7-11s. The red machines with the telephones.

Robot Restaurant

Like a teenage boys fantasy

Lady on horse singing Lady Gaga

Clown robot

$60 for a 2 hour show

Most tokyo thing ever

Japanese bath... It got weird

Staying at a 'ryokan'- traditional Japanese house - for a night in Tokyo. Let's start with my bedroom :

Tatami mats ? I don't even know. I know that I paid extra to sleep on the ground 

And then there's the bath...

Mini showers. I think if you have buddies you all shower and get naked together

Then I had a 'bath'. Aka I sat in the hot tub for a while.

I do like these fancy Japanese robes though !

Sumo Tournament in Nagoya

Tickets were $29 for the cheapest seats, but when else are you going to watch a national sumo tournament, if not in Nagoya ?

Bullet train to Nagoya

I was all excited and bouncing around

And all the other passengers - who were Japanese businessmen, because I accidentally bought the more expensive ticket ($58) - were looking at me, probably thinking 'sit down, white girl; we're just on our way to work' 

But dang it was FAST

Temples in Saga - Arashiyama

Geisha-fied

From nomadicmatts website (http://www.nomadicmatt.com/travel-guides/japan-travel-tips/) I learned that you can go pay a lot of $ to be turned into a geisha. (The whole process - turning into a geisha/ getting out of the clothes- took about 75 minutes, and cost $90)- I did it with Maica (http://www.maica.tv/sp/)

Do ALL white people look like Michael Jackson when they are geisha'd up, or just me ?

They took some photos for me, all posed in what I can only assume is a geisha pose:

But then they had better stuff to do so I took selfies:

I'm wearing a full wig- you can see the plaster at my (fake) hairline.

You can't show your teeth, really, since they come out looking nasty yellow contrasted to the white makeup. 

It was fun, at least to see what it's like wearing a full kimono and to see all the makeup involved.

What I look like with makeup, no wig or kimono:

(Like something out of The Grudge)

Also they just COVER your neck and upper back with white stuff. 

And also they give you a nice little photo at the end -