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[time-in-tokyo]

28.10.2018

Went hiking up Mount Takao with mam! 

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28.10.2018

Look who I picked up! 

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26.10.2018

One of my favourite lunches to date. Wandered into a place right by uni and got this insane meal for just ¥850 and a ¥100 discount for the next time. Honestly incredible what you get for that price and I was so stuffed after. Will definitely come back!

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24.10.2018

Went for a hike with Lewis to Koburi Pass. It was so nice to be in the mountains and as it was a Wednesday, there was nobody in the area. We did run into a group of people who were cycling up the mountain, presumably businessmen, who helped up order our lunch at a small soba place with just one old lady running it. It was good. After, we met up with Kevin, Ed, Camerin and Fazil in Shinjuku to have dinner at a Korean Barbecue. Luv-ly. 

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22.10.2018

I always love the sunsets when I’m on my way home from uni. I then realise the sun is setting at 16:30 and I love it less. 

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20.10.2018

It was absolutely beautiful. 

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20.10.2018

So, that night there was supposed to be a fireworks show that was the third in all of Japan. Not sure who rates those, but alright, sounds good! So we went and when we got to Enoshima beach (the island is seen in the photo) the weather was still... decent? It’d been good all day, but rain had been forecast, so we’d brought raincoats and I my trusted poncho. But before the show started, clouds rolled in and we saw distant thunder... We ended up getting very wet buts and sand everywhere because it started pouring before the show and during in irregular intervals. Still, it was so good and we had a fun time watching the show with our beers. 

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20.10.2018 

Kamakura was good, even for the second time. 

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19.10.2018

Maybe my favourite night out so far. We were planning on doing a daytrip the day after and leaving early morning, so we couldn’t go wild. So we went to an izakaya, got wrecked on three beers by ten thirty, because I’m an absolutely lightweight when I try eating dinner and drinking at the same time, decided to go to the club for one hour, came home singing Scottish songs, got tears from laughing in the stairwell, had tea for another two hours in the third floor kitchen and then woke up fresh the next day. Lovely. 

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18.10.2018

Homemade gyozas with Susie! Done with veggies and carrot rice. Absolutely delicious and surprisingly easy. Planning a gyoza night with all the girls from Komaba :) 

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14.10.2018

Yokohama celebrates unknown things. 

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14/10 || Yokohama

To explain why we went to Yokohama, you need to know that Susie has several nicknames. These are “alcoholic mum” and “one pint too many” and several others. She is always up for a beer and a chat, or a cup of tea if that’s, well, your cup of tea. She’d read about the Oktoberfest going on in Yokohama ages ago and had been asking if we’d want to go and after Miura we were actually planning to go, but we ended up quite tired so decided to skip it. So we made another plan to go to Yokohama during the day and see some more of the town before heading to Oktoberfest. We went there with B, Kevin, Lewis, Astrid and Susie. 

Taking the train there was so easy and we started out by walking around Chinatown and having really good Chinese food (miss ya, mum) from vendors on the street. Had a look at a couple shops before making our way to the docks of the city. We went onto a really nice pier from which the boats were accessed and watched the sun set (it was quite chilly!) before walking along the dock to where Oktoberfest was done. On our way there, we bumped into this insane celebration of whatever, I honestly have no clue. But there were drums, someone singing on a podium, groups wearing elaborate dresses and outfits and people waving around huge flags. It looked very traditional as most of the groups (they were all dancers, I think) had fans and knew all the moves like clockwork. We all stood and watched for a while and I had this huge grin on my face that I seem to get when people show their art on the streets and whenever there are drums involved. 

When we reached Oktoberfest, it was packed. The queue to get in moved fast though, but there were so many people, and since it had been open since early afternoon and we got in around dinnertime, there was a good portion of drunk Japanese people on as well. Still, we did a circle of all the beer vendors, picked one based on nothing but aesthetic and price, because we remain poor students, and looked for a place to sit. Turns out the place was even bigger than I thought it was and we found a table by a German band that had Japanese people dancing around it in circles. 

After that we started walking back to the station, the sky had gone dark and Yokohama was starting to light up. We then came across a theme park (?) that didn’t require an entrance fee and Susie casually dropped that she’d never been in a rollercoaster before. We were all slightly amazed at how she’d avoided them all her life, but okay, well, why not now, then? When we stood in line for the tickets for the ride, we noticed they said you couldn’t have been drinking and go on a ride. We assumed they meant drunk people couldn’t ride. Which was logical. We, however, had all just had one (one!) beer and were in a very sound state of mind. Got the tickets and queued up for the rollercoaster. However, once we reached the front of the line, the women checking tickets pulled out breathalyzers. And we went “surely we’ll pass, because we’ve just had one (one!!!!!!) beer”. Boy were we wrong. I tried to reason with them, saying we had a beer during dinner (which is wrong, because we never had dinner, but that’s besides the matter) and they still wouldn’t let us on. We did a walk of shame down the entrance of the rollercoaster and Susie still managed to evade ever riding one. Luckily, we were able to return our tickets, although I was too embarrassed to do so, so Kevin had to do it. 

After, we went on a hunt for dinner, found a good place with cheap fishbowls and ate away our sadness at not having ridden the rollercoaster. I’m still keen on getting Susie on one at some point, but that’ll have to wait for another day. 

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14.10.2018

Yokohama sunset

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12.10.2018

For Maarten’s birthday we went out to a maid-café! Got the real experience of that part of Japanese culture. It was kind of weird but also fun to have seen. Before, we’d gone for kebabs for dinner and after we went back to the dorm for beers before going out. 

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10.10.2018 Daniel and I went to a gorge near the uni, which we dubbed “mosquito hell”. You can guess why. We also saw quite a nice temple and had a good chat. 

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07.10.2018 All in all, such a good day. 

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07.10.2018 The まぐろ丼 from Miura. Four fresh kinds of tuna. Incredible.