i figured i should update, as its been a while, even though my top blog reader is here with me, and thus unable to read my blog updates, as the great firewall of china is still standing. beijing has been a lot more fun with mariel here- oh wait, i was going to write about tokyo. tokyo was awesome. it was probably one of the more random trips i've taken- a few days before, my friend isaac had mentioned that he needed to leave the country to renew his visa, and that he was planning on heading to japan. i had a week and a half to kill, so i figured i might as well. i'd been to tokyo before, but only for 1 night- on the way back from studying abroad, two friends from my program and i decided to make our layover worthwhile by staying up all night and heading into the city. i'm glad i got to spend a bit longer this time though, as i really found the city to be much more enjoyable then i expected. we hit up all the cool areas in town, taking in the incredible technology and appreciating being in an asian country that equalled, and even surpassed the US in modernity. we tried out all the different cheap sleeping options including the capsule hotels (which were incredibly comfortable and nowhere near as claustrophobic as i feared) and the internet cafes (where for 10 bucks you can spend 6 hours in a private booth with a pillow and blanket and enough space to sleep comfortably, all while enjoying internet use and all you can drink from the soda and coffee machines). we even stayed up all night on saturday night, when we failed to book a hotel and found that nothing was open at 3 in the morning. we even tried to find a spot in a "love hotel," a popular option with themed rooms where couples who live with their parents can get away for the night. no luck though.
the food was incredible, we ate sushi for just about every meal. sooo good. we also got out of the city for a day, to kamekura, a tourist spot about an hour from tokyo with a nice beach. it was my first trip to the pacific ocean, and i was impressed with how warm and salty it was. i was also impressed with the large numbers of japanese surfers, a phenomenon you'd never see in china. they were outrageous, dude.
um, i forget what else i was going to say about it. this always happens, i wait too long to update and then i forget what i planned to write. i had fun with my two jewish homeboys, one of whom had to spend 200 bucks on a visa for one day in china! that sucked, but he had a good attitude about it. we also spent the entire trip talking about scenes in lost in translation that reminded us of where we were then. but we never got to do karaoke, which was a shame. oh, and also tokyo is so unbelievably expensive! after being in china, it definitely hurt to drop 25 bucks on the capsules, or to spend 4 dollars an hour on internet. and we never ended up getting a real meal, because we straight up couldn't afford it. all right, that's all i have to say.
oh, and i'm going to qingdao w/ mariel for the international beer festival. i will definitely update and tell you allll about that. ciao!