now to start off, this is a VERY VERY late post!!! but regardless, during summer i had the wonderful opportunity to live in Japan for a month and a half, and not only that but also meet one of my best buddies from this site, Phil!!! I happened to be studying abroad at the same time that Phil (T) was visiting, and we got to do a whole buncha cool junk! i've been wanting to make a blog post about both our silly misadventures, and overall how awesome Japan was!

So, first of all, I got to visit a buncha places! Osaka, Sotonbori Nishinomiya, Tokyo, Kabukicho, Matsuyama, Imabari, the whole shabang, and that's not even all of 'em!! Some of those places are within one another, but you get the deal!

Phil and I for the most part hung out in Osaka, but the majority of our REAL stories come from getting to fuck around in Tokyo for a single day! We wanted to do it more, but trips from Osaka to Tokyo get real expensive. We took the cheapest option, a night bus, and good God was it an experience. Personally, I love night busses. They're weird, comfy, and like a ten hour drive starting around 10pm-ish to like 6am, with a few stops. To me, they're magical. I loved 'em, and was asleep for the most part, though Phil wasn't so lucky. Got an uncomfy seat, and I knocked out within the first 30 minutes so I kinda left him hanging. Sorry, Phil. (but seriously, if you ever go, try a night bus. i love them!!! nothing like 6am tokyo/osaka)

We arrived at an empty Tokyo at 6am, and kinda had to kill time, since everything only starts opening around 10!! We actually spotted a cool DVD store, and thought "hey, maybe they'll have some cool movies." It was a porn store. We walked in and were trapped in a labyrinth of porn upon porn on every wall, and it was pretty awesome! They even had a bootleg Gohan mascot, who I have since dubbed "Goonhan".

After that nonsense, we killed some time, went to Denny's cause it was one of the only places only and we got to have a good meal!! Menu is obv a little different from the US, but it was still good. Somethin' weird I didn't expect is that they actually enforce lunch and dinner food being only available at that time, which isn't big, but whatever!! Was overall p good, Phil almost got charged three times as much for his meal but I ended up settling it for him :3

after that, the day was pretty much just us just fucking around in central Tokyo, visiting anime stores and snacking on random shit, and Phil spending way too much of his money on gach. I think the highlight of the day though was visiting a really cool American old-school arcade with stuff like some good 'ol Namco classics and Punch-Out!!

tokyo so beautiful :3

I actually recorded a large majority (not all) of our day/the stuff we did with a 2007 handicam; and the video of it is HERE if you want to watch it to see a time capsule of Phil and I's tokyo misadventures

Other than that, a lot of our time together was spent in Sotonbori!! Sotonbori's an absolutely massive place; and Yakuza fangirling aside was a genuinely super dope place to mess around in. One of our favorite things was visiting an area like five minutes away from it, America-Mura; which is a whole area that's heavily inspired by and sells stuff of classic American fashion, cartoons, etc. It's mostly inspired by the early 2000's, but it was super awesome regardless! Incoming Sotonbori photo dump:

this one's fucking awesome.

AND here's a very short montage of Phil and I hanging out in his hotel! i feel like i sound kinda stupid looking back at these videos but haha whatever

also phil proved to me he's a freaking fnaf god. I did not believe him.

We only got to hang out a handful of times since I was super busy with studies, but damn it was a lot of fun not only getting to meet a NG buddy, but also roaming around Japan and getting lost a bunch with 'em!! One of my favorite memories is finding out firsthand that trains stop running at midnight, and Phil and I were hanging out around 11PM, which is when I realized. Phil was alright since we were a 20 minute walk from his hotel, but I was 30 minutes away from MY crib. By train. SO, Phil ended up accompanying me as we walked around Osaka until about 2-3 am, and after he left I had to thug it out with a phone at 10% and no charger until about 6am, when the trains begin running again. One of the scariest experiences of my life, but Phil was a real one throughout it, and I also got one of my favorite pics of the trip out of it:

ain't that just avant-garde, baby?

overall, Japan was SO fucking cool -- and it's hard to properly write a blog post talking about everything, since I was basically having a new adventure every single day for 8 weeks!! Some of the highlights though were definitely Tokyo, hiking a mountain to visit a monkey park, the Nintendo stores, and meeting this random girl who wanted to get in when I asked if she could take a picture of me with an Ashita no Joe statue outside of Steak-Tei.

Hope she's doing well. One of my favorite bits about Japan is you get really cute and fun moments like this with random people even through a language barrier, just cause everyone there is so nice!! Especially the younger folk. Never be afraid to try and start a conversation with broken Japanese, or google translate, or even charades. Led to some really fun moments that'll stick with me for a while!!

and obviously, I got to do a lot of nerd shit; I bought an ungodly amount of merch, got to visit both Mother/Tobichi stores several times, went to a large majority of the Pokemon Centers, etc. I even got my first tattoo, dedicated to Lupin!!

this'll probably sound like r/thathappened r/whoosh whatever but there were at least seven instances of people seeing me with an undershirt (it was hot as hell), walking up to me and going "Rupan Sansei?" and it was so, so magical, man. Even while at the tattoo parlor in the process of it, some artist passed by my booth and did it!! I had no idea Lupin was that popular.

Japan's also fucking crazy when it comes to food. Some of the most delectable meals of my life have occurred in that country, and I swear to god some niche joints make burgers better than America do. It's scary. One of my favorite things to tell people about is what I swear is the best ice cream I've ever had; that also doesn't look real. It was so, so fucking good, and I'm coming for that little vendor that sold it whenever I go back.

I'm running both out of things to say, and also running up to the image limit (I had no idea blogs had a limit!), so I'll wrap things up here, but Japan's a fucking awesome place, and I'm super glad I was both able to experience it as much as I did -- and with a bud from this site. I'm not really good at writing how I feel, but I think there's genuinely something beautiful about exploring the world with a creative friend and getting to see the world through y'alls lenses, especially a place with so much art and influences for both of y'all like Japan. NEVER GIVE UP ON THOSE "we should go to japan" HYPOTHETICALS!!!!! THEY'RE WORTH IT GUYS I PROMISE

phil and me the night before he went back home posing in front of anime jesus

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i definitely plan on going back when i graduate, lovely place and even lovelier with a friend! that's all for my ted talk, if you didn't catch in earlier in da post peep this video of a small portion of my hijinks with phil. peace!