itinerary / update
The trip is getting closer and closer. 23 days remaining!
I have the itinerary nearly complete at this point.
1. march 21 - april 2: tokyo
i am returning to beautiful hatanodai, the same place i stayed at last year. i miss it every day, and i am looking forward to seeing it again. theres something truly magical about a quiet corner of a megacity like tokyo. in a way it feels impossible for it to exist. it is very possible that a large portion of my love for hatanodai is that it was my first experience in japan. i wonder if i would feel the same way about a different part of tokyo if i’d stayed there.
for this leg of the trip, my mom is coming with me! i tried to get her to come along last year, but this time it is actually happening.
2. april 2 - 5: kanazawa
this is northwest of japan, along the opposite coast from tokyo. i have heard great things about kanazawa. a cool castle, a preserved samurai district, an amazing food market, and a bunch more.
3. april 5 - 7: nara
i really wanted to visit nara last time i was in japan, but i never found the time. it is right next to osaka, and is famous for wild deer that roam around free and are friendly. excited to finally get to go.
4. april 7 - 11: osaka
returning to osaka again, largely due to something that fell through. in japan, a lot of tickets to events or attractions are done on a lottery system. if you want tickets to a concert, you cant just buy them. you have to enter into a lottery for a chance to win the opportunity to buy them. i wanted to visit the recently opened nintendo museum in kyoto, and entered a lottery where i picked 3 days i was willing to go, the 8th, 9th, and 10th. i hoped i would get in, so i preemptively booked the 7th-11th in osaka just in case. i dont want to stay in kyoto, because that city is incredibly overwhelming to me. but i ended up losing the lottery. there is still so much to do and see in osaka that i am not at all upset at my choice here, though.
5. april 11 - 13: okayama
i really struggled to decide what to do from the 11th to 14th. i knew i would be leaving osaka on the 11th and need to be in fukuoka on the 14th, so i tried to find something between those two cities, and i was torn. on the one hand, okayama sounded like a fun place to visit and i knew i wanted to go. but i also missed out on seeing miyajima island when i was in hiroshima last time, and wanted to see that too. i ended up just doing both, choosing for 2 nights in okayama and one night on miyajima due to price.
6. april 13 - 14: miyajima island
i totally missed out on seeing this last time, and i am going back to hiroshima just for this, and actually staying on the island. apparently, most tourists stay in hiroshima and take a ferry in the morning straight here and then spend all day here. the advantage of staying on the island means that i get the photography opportunities before any of the tourists show up and after they all leave, since they are stuck with the ferry schedule. but the place i am staying was ludicrously expensive, $580 for one night. most expensive accomodation i have ever and will ever pay for, i think.
7. april 14 - 17: fukuoka
i passed through fukuoka very very briefly on my way to nagasaki last year, and decided i wanted to come back just based on the view from the train. i have heard fukuoka called the “nightlife capital of japan” before, so that will be interesting. maybe i will go bar hopping or something.
8. april 17 - 20: beppu
i am, of course, returning to my beloved beppu. i cannot recommend this place enough, its a beautiful city and i think i de-aged like 3 years in the 2 days i was here last year.
9. april 20 - 21: ???
this is the final piece of the puzzle. i fly home on april 21st. the place in beppu was not available on the night of the 20th. so i have to decide if i want to fly back to tokyo and stay somewhere in tokyo for my last night, or find a different place in beppu and fly to tokyo before my evening flight home. i still haven’t decided what i am going to do about it. i am leaning towards flying back to tokyo for one last night, but i may change my mind. i think i may wait until i am in japan to make this decision.
i plan to follow largely the same structure as last year with regard to this website, but this time i intend to be better about posting on time. ive made some efficiency changes to the upload process that should make that easier… but i am on vacation. this isnt my job. im not going to lose sleep over it (i literally will lose sleep over it, i usually do the website post right before bed). this website is largely something i am doing for myself anyways.
o t h e r u p d a t e
so this is totally unrelated to the website or japan trip, but it is related to photography.
i have had a raccoon living on the roof of my house for many weeks now. it causes the dog to bark in the middle of the night nearly every night, and it has been a real pain to deal with. turns out, its harder than i thought to find a way to make it go away. most pest control places dont have whatever licensing you need to be able to deal with “large” animals like raccoons.
when i first saw it, i thought “wow that is the largest raccoon i have ever seen” and “i wonder if its pregnant or something”. despite multiple attempts, i was only ever able to get this terrible photo of it in the middle of the night:
then i realized that i have a really nice camera and a zoom lens. i have the tools to do better than this. this looks like a photo of bigfoot. so i kept my camera set up with the zoom lens on, ready to go at a moment’s notice. i would run out the door, camera in hand, every time i heard it up there. it took a while, but i finally got a good photo of it:
my fears were correct, it was pregnant! and now it has children. there is a single mom raising a family on my roof.
now, normally id feel a lot more compassionate about something like this. but this little demon has been causing me (or more specifically, the dog and by extension me) to lose sleep nearly every night for months. all compassion for this creature has left me. i have someone coming out tomorrow to remove them. i believe that involves trapping them and relocating them. but i would not be upset if the answer was murder. you could say i wouldn’t lose any sleep over it…… because i would gain sleep over it. they aren’t even paying rent!!!!
i am just really glad at the improvement i got from cryptid photography to a real photo. and i am kinda proud, its a good photo too.
anyway thats the update, bye!
