My ultimate comfort place is always a Disney park, and I booked to go on three seperate days which felt just right: two days in DisneySea, and one day at Disneyland. Disneyland is actually my favorite and the bigger park, but there's only one DisneySea in the whole world so I felt like that was the one I should make the most of. And as it ended up raining the entire first day I was at DisneySea I was even more glad I'd planned that! I did enjoy DisneySea in the rain though, it makes the outside areas of the park really quiet and I enjoy just sitting down and taking in the atmosphere.
I've gone back and forth over whether I wanted to share about my trip to Japan. I had an incredibly weird time, and in some ways although it's silly I've felt ashamed for not doing things that I feel like other people probably think I *should* have done - like their opinion matters, I know. To be honest there were things I had planned, in some cases tickets booked and paid for, but I just didn't get round to it. Even while I was there I was beating myself up; I had planned this trip as a vacation, I had each and every day itinerized, but when it came to it the effort just felt insurmountable. And it's only now, with some distance, that I've been able to reflect back on it and see the situation for what it was: not only had I recently had Covid and was left battling the worst fatigue of my entire life (it was my first time, and my only symptoms were every single inch of my body hurting, and being so tired that if I stood still for a few moments I could actually fall asleep standing up and did so!), but I was also mentally recovering from South Korea, a situation that had been so stressful and traumatic that I had to run away in the night. So on reflection it's really not surprising that I just wanted to find comfort in areas of Tokyo that I already knew and enjoyed from having lived there before. I did what I was capable of under the circumstances, and I'm so thankful to Japan for being so kind to me and that I got to have the opportunity to heal there.
I'm so happy that I got to go to the Pokemon Cafe, which I loved and recommend with my whole heart! I'm not actually a huge Pokemon fan, I've played a couple of the games on DS and remember seeing bits of the anime on Saturday morning cartoons, but that's the extent of it. Oshawott is my favorite as Pokemon Black was the first game I played, and I collect things of him as it's kind of hard to find. I stopped by the adjoining Pokemon Center and was thrilled to see more Oshawott than usual as he's been brought back for Legends: Arceus which was exciting!
You have to pre-book to go to the Pokemon Cafe, and it can be quite difficult as slots go so fast, so I was really excited to get in. Looking at the menu beforehand I wasn't actually sure what I wanted to eat, but I ended up going for the Pikachu plate with a ramune soda float and it was delicious. Pikachu himself came out and did a little dance, and the whole thing was just adorable and so fun!
My comfort places in Tokyo are Shibuya and Shinjuku as I know them so well. I ended up spending a lot of time browsing various branches of Tower Records, it was a lot of fun as I've started collecting CDs now. I loved flicking through the Japanese variations, and the Ghibli soundtracks on vinyl. I ended up buying a Japanese cast recording of Wicked and an Elvis complilation.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons was released 3 weeks after I moved to Japan, which kind of makes it even more special to me now.
I always have to stop by dear Hachikō, you can read here for his full story. Although I wasn't in Japan for rainy season, there was a pretty major typhoon that hit.
Akihabara, which I had never been to before as it's actually pretty skeevy with most of it being a front for, ahem, 'adult' stores. There are a lot of arcades, I won an angry Moomin key chain in a claw machine and the worker kept stopping by to check my progress and move him to an easier spot! But I didn't stick around for long as there's arcades and gachapon in safer feeling places. This is the only place in Tokyo I've been to that feels like that.
I also went to Ginza which I'd never been to before either - it's kind of like Tokyo's Bond Street or Fifth Avenue where all the designer stores are located which just isn't my vibe, I'm more of a Shibuya 109 kind of girl. But I'd heard of Itoya, a huge stationary store that spans 8 floors, so I was curious. Really for my interests it didn't offer anything that I couldn't get at Loft or Tokyu Hands, but I did like that because each floor is dedicated to a different type of stationary it had me looking at stuff I might normally bypass in those other stores. Which is how I discovered ring planners, and now I'm obsessed with Plotter. Oh well. I also got a binder with a raccoon on the front that I love so much.
