pov: 2 weeks in japan (solo)
[Music] hey guys welcome to a new travel video I went on a twow we solo trip to Japan first day I immediately went to sushiro for some conveyor belt Sushi I got some ice cream after I didn't record anything else for the rest of the day because I was so tired the next day I decided to travel from Osaka to coob which is about 45 minutes I think by train to try the famous coob beef I went to this restaurant where this one Chef prepares your meal just for you and it was honestly really good but it's quite expensive so if you're on a tight budget this might not be worth it but it was a very cool experience nevertheless the next day I decided to had to Kyoto because it was my favorite city in my past trip and it's really close to Osaka and while I was standing on the platform waiting for my train I thought it was so funny that this train destination sign actually looked like a slot machine and it even sounded like one but I'll let you judge for yourself now one thing about Japan is that the train rides are so good the train network is really good and people are generally very po light and quiet so it makes for a really Pleasant train journey the trains are clean and they're reliable so whenever I'm visiting Japan I try to take the train as much as possible whenever I travel somewhere it's also much more convenient than flying in my opinion because you don't have to be at the airport super early and you can't really miss the train even if you book the bullet train with a reserve seat if you miss your train somehow you can just take the next train you won't have a reserved seat but in my experience that's not really an issue usually at the next stop people get off the train and you can sit down if there is no space and it's also really easy to know where you have to go because you can just use Google Maps and especially in Tokyo when you take the metro it can be quite a maze to navigate but even the locals use Google Maps and honestly I find it always quite manageable as long as you just follow the signs and you can always ask others for directions and people are generally very happy to help you out I just got such a good ice cream unfortunately the stick is really long and ice cream wasn't but really good like got crispy chocolate cookie kind of ice cream and I thought I had the best ice cream of my life yesterday but so the dude on that bike is a driver for a Japanese Courier Service they can take your luggage from one place to the next and it's really handy if you're traveling with a lot of luggage and you can even use this service from 7-Eleven or Family Mart and it's really easy to recognize them because their logo is two black cats and you see them everywhere so if you're planning on visiting Japan this is definitely something that could be super useful as especially if you do a lot of shopping or travel with a lot of luggage I'm in my hotel right now to my room there's booby traps everywhere in Japan when you're 65 blue eyes so I was just walking around Kyoto when a very friendly shop attendant told me about guon Matsui which is actually the biggest Festival in Japan and it's in Kyoto during the month month of July and while I was there they had a procession where people go through the city dressed up and there are a couple of guys on horses little boys and every year one of them gets chosen to be like the messenger of the Gods and if they get chosen they are not supposed to have their feet touch the ground until the end of the festival so a little over a week I think which is really cool and this was so special that I decided to kind of plan my trip so that I could be back in Kyoto and luckily for me my fight back from Osaka was just after this Festival would end so I decided to come back just before flying back to experience the big parade that would be the main event of this festival and I'm so glad I got to experience this because it was really cool and it felt like a real immersion into traditional Japanese culture so if you're in Japan during the summer in the month of July definitely check out this Festival in my opinion it's super worth it and it's probably the only good reason to come to Japan during the summer because it's just so hot and humid throughout the day before I came to Japan in the summer I thought I knew what real heat was like I've been to very warm places in Africa Australia and even places in Southeast Asia that are really hot and humid but Japanese summer is just on another level so if you can come during another time of the year because it can definitely be really tough to be outside in the heat all day I dipped into these convenience Marts and small little shops all the time just to escape the heat for a little bit for spe fore speeech [Music] [Applause] spee fore spee spee speee [Applause] at night I went to what's probably the most famous Shrine in Japan I'm sure that if you've watched some travel videos or something like that it probably looks familiar which means that it can also get really crowded but not everyone knows that it's actually open 24/7 so you can visit at night and it's really well lit and it's way less hot and humid and crowded it was still really hot at night and I was sweating like crazy just climbing up all these stairs but I made it to the top and I don't think it would have been as much fun during the day because it would have just been way too hot and way too crowded and I went around 1 p.m. there was almost nobody there because I I really think people just don't know it was just a really beautiful Shrine so I get why it's popular but if you have to walk up shoulder toh shoulder with other tourists visiting it just takes away a lot of the magic for me so I would definitely visit at night if you can e so far my favorite spots in Toyo are definitely on the northeastern side and on the southwestern side and then especially the area around sensui which is an old famous temple on the northeastern side and on the southwestern side so I avoided the more busy shin yuku and Shibuya as much as I could I decided to stay near a station called Uka which is on the North side which was an area that I had never been to but it was a bit more quiet and I think in Tokyo as long as as you stay somewhere near the Metro your golden because it makes it just so easy to go anywhere in the city I just got one of the famous filed uh fish cookies this one is with red beans I've never had one before but I've been wanting to try one for a while so it's really good pretty sweet much sweeter than I expected but really good I went to Harajuku to check out some of the Vintage shops there and I came across this small artisanal Cola shop and I thought okay that's really cool I have to check this out see if it's any better than what you can buy from a can and it actually was the lady was super nice and it was just very unique and much more herbal than a regular Cola I spent the rest of the day just walking around going to some shops but I never record inside of shops I just find it harder to connect with the shop attendance and I really try to have a nice conversation with them as well and I want to respect their privacy so that's why you won't see any shots inside shops and things like that when I'm traveling by myself I got my fortune no idea if it's good or bad I guess I'll have to throw it to translate I was about to tie it up because I translated it and had a bad fortune and then I realized there's actually exactly what it is on the back in English I was about to ask if someone could translate it for me so let's TI It Up try it again lucky number 29 yes couldn't leave her with a bad fortune of course so GNA take this one home so because it was raining I decided to pop into a coffee shop and it rains quite a bit during Japanese summer and I had a little accident there which made it look like I peed my pants for the rest of the day but I walked around this neighborhood near C G and came across a shop from a jeans brand that I've had my eye on for a while and it's called Japan blue and I actually went there to buy one of these kimono style jackets but I felt like it didn't suit me so well because it was too short for me and instead I actually ended up buying a work jacket that was hand dyed in Japan from real Indigo with a really interesting Fabric and I thought was really cool so I had to get it to escape the heat the next day I decided to head to okutama which is a small small town in the mountains near Tokyo it's about a 3our train ride but I heard it wasn't so touristy and I thought it would be really cool to swim in the river and stay at a local guest house with a website that was entirely in Japanese so I expected to be surrounded by just locals and as it turns out I was actually surrounded by people that lived in Japan but a lot of them came from different parts of the world they all lived in Japan and spoke Japanese but it was really cool connecting with everyone and this was definitely one of the highlights of my trip we went swimming in the river and at night we actually went out to see if we could spot some fireflies and we did which was a really cool and magical experience they were also preparing for their local festival and I got to capture some footage of that which was really cool as well for [Music] the next I had a big lunch at a really nice place called DPO blue it was run by an old man and it was so nice and his food was amazing so I definitely recommend checking that out there are quite a few really good isayas in this town but I only got to check out one of them at night we had some drinks and we shared food and it was just really nice is getting to know everyone and connecting with others after having solo traveled for the first part of my trip and not really meeting that many people unfortunately all of the beds in the guest house were booked for the next night but they are offered me to stay in the common room however I decided to join one of my new friends to a place just north of Tokyo so we made it to cago late at night and after dropping off our stuff we immediately headed to the temple there and I'm really glad that I joined my new friend to this new place that I never heard of before so this was a super spontaneous trip as well but it was really nice after all the lights were turned off at The Shrine we went to a little isaka which was probably the best isaka that I visited in Japan the downside is that they had a handwritten menu on the wall and it was only in Japanese so without my friend who was able to communicate and read Japanese it would have been very difficult to order anything here but the food was amazing and I mean with translation these days on your phone I'm sure you would have been able to order something as well the next day we got up really early we grabbed some coffee and got some eel which was a local delicacy and then we headed back to the train station and we were both headed to Tokyo we started talking about other places to go in Japan and the same places kept coming up everyone that I spoke to mentioned that these were the places to go if you like mountains and nature and I can tell you right now they weren't lying but right in that moment I had to make the Split Second decision to get off the train to go to that destination because the next stop would be the transfer where I would have to get off and I didn't know that I just saw that like 2 minutes before we got to that stop so again I very spontaneously decided to head in a different different direction and I ended up not returning to Tokyo however I first had to make a stop in a town on the way called Matsumoto they had a really nice castle and I went to an isaka there that specialized in sake this time though the lady spoke perfect English and this spot was recommended to me by the guest house it was really good but way more expensive than the isaka that we went to the previous night so I headed up into the mountain and went to a guest house where they had private on sense both indoor and outdoor the weather wasn't so great and it had been raining the past couple of days besides my shoes were just sneakers and I didn't have any gear for serious hiking so unfortunately I couldn't do any real hikes and I didn't see as much of the surroundings as I wish I would have I decided to head back to Koto to make my way back for Theon festival and to catch my plane I got up super early to catch the first bus out of the mountains and an old lady on the bus actually told me that one of her favorite places in Japan was takayama which the bus would be going to and I would take the train from there to K Koto so I actually stopped in this town had lunch there and went to this old folk Village it was actually a really cool place I wish I had a little bit more time to wander around the streets here but I'm sure I'll come back when I go back to the mountains again one of the main attractions here was actually two old houses on this one street and as luck would have it this whole street Street was actually closed for construction work so I actually couldn't see the houses at all but it was still really nice to just wander around and explore the town I took a train from takayama to Kyoto and the scenery was amazing as usual I also had two old ladies in different little towns wave at me one was hanging the laundry and the other was just waiting for the train to pass I think unfortunately I didn't capture any footage of it of course I had to wave back it was so cute once in Kyoto the G Festival was going on and I met up with my friend that I also traveled to cago with and we grabbed a quick bite in Kyoto and watched the possession the next day I went back to Osaka because I wanted to walk around a bit and try a Ramen place and for dinner I spontaneously joined one of my friends from the guest house who was having dinner with two of her friends and we went to two different isayas and to the umeda sky building in Osaka to have a view of the city which was really cool after that I went to the onen in my hotel one last time before going to bad and getting up early to catch the train to the airport dear passenger thank you so much for watching this video if you have any feedback please let me know I just want to keep improving and make better videos if you like the video make sure to subscribe because I have a lot more content in the pipe L for now though thank you so much for watching and I hope you have a great day
2024-10-20 01:15
