Our last day in Miyazaki, we went surfing again in the early morning. It was definitely one of most beautiful surfing mornings ever cos we could witness the real Japanese sunrise. It was almost really red like flags show! Incredibly beautiful, we enjoyed the sunrise lots and were ready for shredding. Waves were awesome like yesterday.
After surfing and it was enough bright like daytime, Ichikawa took us to Southern and showed us an Island and famous heads statues (like Easter Island Heads). Didn’t know there’re more statues in the world expect Easter Island. Landscape and coastal roads in Southern Japan are so beautiful, it’s really a holiday paradise :) saw some surf spots but at this day it wasn’t very surfable at those spots.
After return of our boards at surf shop, caught our train to Beppu, the floating/spa city. We had booked our room at a backpackers hostel in Beppu. Bonus of this hostel is they offer free spa. We could bath when we wanted :) it made us falling asleep at nights easily.
More about surfing and sunrise please see another post: http://alohastephanie.blogspot.com/2013/09/japan-surfing-in-miyazaki.html
7th Day: Beppu
We rented bikes from Hostel for free, first thing of all we needed to wash our clothes at laundry. Really cheap and we may not to put any soap (for wash machine), really interesting and our clothes were fresh after wash! We cruised around Beppu city and visited Monkey Park. There’re a bunch of monkeys, we took a lot of pictures of them because they’re really interesting. They sleep, fight, eat, cuddle, play, clean, walk ... was so interesting to watch them.
We passed the oldest spa house in Beppu. Technically couldn’t gotta any public spa because of our tattoos but have read some spas allow people with tattoos. We decided to book a private spa at a hotel, top of building! When entered the spa room, we were exciting cos spa tube is outside and has an amazing view of ocean! Top and free. It costs $20, really not bad for a private spa!
After spa, we wanted to eat real Shabu Shabu in Beppu cos this city is floating on hot spring. The pot of Shabu Shabu is cooking on coals with hot springs, pure natural and real one. We love Japan one of many reasons: there’re Happy Hours for drinking or eating. We could order Shabu Shabu’s meats how often we wanted for 1,5 hours included drink! Their meats and beers made us really happy and forgot time which we needed to return our bikes at 9pm. We were actually late like 10 minutes, the staff of hostel wasn’t really happy. We took bath again before bed time!
8th Day: Beppu - Tokyo
It was officially our last day of RailPass and together before we are with our friends. The trip from Beppu to Tokyo took around 7 hours and we had to change trains twice. We saw the red sunrise in the morning again.
Dave joined our travel in Japan! We met him in Tokyo. Stephanie hasn’t seen him for one year. We visited Pokemon Center in Tokyo, we were little disappointed cos we thought it would be bigger and offer more than they offer. But we bought some stuffs! Stephanie got a cute cosmetic bag from Trey, we are using it as passports/documents bag.
In the evening we had dinner with our friends Akiko, Kaimi, Kiyo and their kids at a restaurant. We ate Tokyo’s okonomiyaki but we like Hiroshima’s lots better. We slept at Kiyo’s mom in Tokyo with Kaimi, Kiyo and kids. A real Japanese apartment in Tokyo for first time.
9th Day: Tokyo
We visited Shibuya Cross & Harajuku. It was kind of shopping day, we found some clothes and Trey a new Nike runners. Later in the evening friends left, we were alone and could enjoy shopping by ourselves more.
In that evening at 6pm we met Kuni’s childhood friend Shin at his work place, a Japanese restaurant which is really pure Japanese. When we arrived, we found out he had to work longer than expected. But another friend Erika, an actress in movie ‘Babel’, joined us.
We were little awkward with menu cos it was in Japanese only and we couldn’t read the price also. We decided to share a Sushi plate which was our first Sushi in Tokyo! We could say it was best Sushi one we had eaten! Rice is so delicious but fish (Ahi and Salmon) Hawaii has better :)
At that night it was little unplanned cos Erika & Shin wanted to show us the night life of Tokyo after his work (means after 11pm). It was actually late for us. We didn’t want to be rude to Kiyo and her mom for being late. Erika decided to took us to Shinjuku so we could see the night life for couple of hours.
Shinjuku is completely different than Shibuya! We saw a lot of Yakuzas, brothels, Love Hotels, Hostness Bars, Strip Clubs and many more. The real dark side of Tokyo, Trey was little overwhelmed by that place. We were really regret that we could stay more.
Erika is one of most funny and very girly we have met in our life. Wish could see her again, maybe someday!
10th Day: Tokyo
We went to see famous Temple, some see sightings. It was a kind of tourist day. We went to Shibuya again before we met friends for dinner. We had dinner with Japanese friends at a restaurant.
After dinner we wanted to see Tokyo from Top, we visited Ropping’s Hill Building. We witnessed Tokyo with full of lights at night, really beautiful. At that day we were lucky, we met a famous Sumo wrestler! He’s really big, bigger than thought!
11th Day: Tokyo - Nagoya - Okazaki City
Left Tokyo for Nagoya and Okazaki City where Kunihiro lives! We travelled to Nagoya by bus, every seats have own TV which included movies and games like an airplane! In Nagoya Kuni picked us up and headed to his hometown Okazaki City.
When arrived, we didn’t have much time cos we needed to return to Nagoya for Beer Festival. We took shower and were ready for night. In Nagoya at Beer Festival we could try different beers but we actually drank couple of beers because they were expensive.
Same we bought cheap drinks at 24hours shops (like 7eleven). We met Kuni’s friend Shingo and later Warren. We partied at Irish Pub and Shingo ordered lots of drinks. After leaving pub on way back to Okazaki City by train we could barely remember but it was an awesome party.
0 comments:
Post a Comment