Honeymoon in Japan, Part 1 (2017)

Hello! Jane here. 😊

I wanted to share some photos and travel journal I did for our honeymoon for a little while now. Since we both decided to give up most social media - facebook a few years ago and I personally have also given up IG recently- I am running out of ways to share pictures, stories and thoughts with my friends and family. I’ve always wanted to write more and in a blog format where I can go back and reminisce.

So, here’s my attempt at doing that. Starting with our honeymoon pictures and travel journal.

I am writing this quite late (hah) but like they say, better late than never. So, in 2017, Juan and I decided to go to Japan for our honeymoon. We had the choice to either experience cities in Asia, or cities in Europe. I traveled quite a bit during my childhood so I’ve been to Japan a few times as a child - but I’ve never experience Japan in my teenage years like some of European countries I’ve been to such as UK, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Netherland, etc. We wanted our honeymoon to be something new we are experiencing together for the first time. I must say, Japan was absolutely amazing in many aspects. I travel for food (mostly) and Juan travels for new exciting one of a kind experiences. Japan did offer BOTH and more for us.

I’m sharing some highlights of the experience as a warm up for more writing in the future. I hope y’all enjoy some of these, we sure did.

Day 1: 新宿区 -Shinjuku, Tokyo 東京

We spent our first day in Shinjuku walking around in the morning, it was crisp and sunny. Our friend had mentioned that we should go to 7Eleven for breakfast. I’m gonna be honest, I was skeptical about 7Eleven because generally they aren’t great in the United States. But y’all, Japanese 7Eleven is amazing. For the rest of our trip, we would go to 7Eleven for breakfast and I’d always get morning Onigiri. 🍙

Day 1 highlights were Robot Restaurant - I won’t go too much into Robot Restaurant because I don’t really know how to describe it, but we would suggest you go, have fun and definitely take up their offer of hearing protector. We had lots of fun there and we closed the night out at this small cozy Udon Shop: Shin Udon. It is our favorite Udon Shop in the entire world*. They’re cash only shop which reminds me that Japan is a cash society and you do get tons of change. Travel tip: get yourself a cute coin pouch, I actually got this one in one of the shops we visited.

Day 2-5: Let’s go to 京都-Kyoto!

I’m so glad we did a deep dive research on JRPass 6 months before the trip. (Also extremely thankful for our Japanese friend who helped us navigate this. Emily, ありがとう!) We purchased a week long Green Passes so that we can go back and forth between Tokyo-Kyoto-Osaka-Tokyo and it worked out amazing. We decided on Green Pass because we were traveling during peak holiday time and didn’t want to be seated separately. Green Passes allows you to reserve seats ahead of time. I can be such a rigid traveler sometimes that we actually did a dry run of getting to Shinjuku train station from our Hotel on the first day but we still got lost anyway. hah. 🤪

We were super excited to eat Bentos in the train though, so we both got some bentos and drinks before we get into the train. It was delicious. I spent the whole Shinkansen (Bullet Train) ride drawing and Juan spent the time playing on his Switch. I think he was playing Breath of the Wild at the time. It was a short ride ~3hrs and then, woah! we are in Kyoto.

Hello, Kyoto! You are beautiful.

Unknowing to us, we booked a hotel in the middle of a shopping/sightseeing area of Kyoto. It was nice to step out of the hotel and be able to browse and shop around immediately. Hotel Gracery Kyoto Sanjo was the name of the hotel. Upon finding out we are honeymooners, the hotel staff did something so special for us. You’ll see in the next slides of pictures. Kyoto has such a different vibe compared to Tokyo. It is quieter, more mellow and filled with older architectures and temples. We were super excited to explore the city for 4 days before moving onto Osaka. We will also be celebrating the beginning of 2018 going from Kyoto to Osaka. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves here, see below for some highlights from Day 1 in Kyoto. I totally remember being very sleepy and cranky in the middle of the day. So, Juan cheered me up by taking me to meet Hanachiru, the hedgehog.

What a good husband.

We end the night quite early after eating a bowl of ramen and sharing sake. The ramen was good, but we definitely had better ramen to recommend so stay tuned. (I can’t remember the name of this ramen place (-_-) ごめんね ~

Morning of Day 3,

I think I have mentioned that I’m a planner type of traveler? (or maybe I said rigid, hah) anyway I do enjoy planning our day so I don’t feel like we are wasting time meandering. I’m so glad Juan is onboard with that bit of me. He’s actually quite excited about it. We did a bit of wandering, don’t worry, I made sure to give space between plans to enjoy the trip. Which is what we did before going to breakfast. We walked over to Gion area from our hotel and saw a few temples along the way. Juan, my sound designer husband was fascinated by the fact that Japanese crows caws are different than American ones. No joke. Maybe I’ll get him to share the recording.

I’ve done a thorough research on this breakfast place: Kishin Kitchen Kyoto. I wanted to experience proper Japanese breakfast and am I glad I made the reservation! It was one of the most beautiful eating experiences we’ve had. Juan also discovered that he really enjoyed fresh soymilk skin ゆばくみあげ Kumiage Yuba. The breakfast is served in a specific order. I didn’t take pictures of all the food, but I snapped a picture of the menu itself. It starts with Kumiage Yuba and then our choice of soup: Shiromiso Pork. The most thoughtful and beautiful thing: They let us choose which bowl to hold our rice. I really love that about the meticulous quality of Japanese culture. I also added 抹茶 (Matcha) to accompany my meal, and again, I find myself glad that I did. See precious pictures below.

After the lovely breakfast we had, it was time to behold Yayoi Kusama’s work - which happens to be showing at FMOCA Kyoto at the time. (I just found out that they are permanently closed as of 2019. tears!) I have been a fan of Yayoi Kusama for a long while, so I was excited to get a peek of some of her work. Her Museum in Tokyo weren’t open the time we were there for our honeymoon. From there we walked a long way to Kiyomizu Dera and spent a bit of time checking out Sannen-Zaka which happens to be along the way to Kiyomizu Dera (It happens to be because I planned it. haha) We snacked lots and went into a few shops. On our way back from Kiyomizu Dera, we happened upon a 浮世絵 Ukiyo-E Small Museum with a declarational signage:

“ UKIYOE SMALL MUSEUM OPEN WHEN I WAKE UP AND CLOSE WHEN I MUST GO TO SLEEP WHEN I’VE HADENOUGH THE STORE IS CLOSED”

When we walked in, it seemed like this person has had enough yet forgot to close the door. We got to see a little bit of work in there, but honestly, this photo and this museum and this person is a whole vibe I wish I can emulate.

After resting at our hotel for a little bit, we decided to explore around before heading to dinner to close out the day. We did a couple pet cafes. One was Kyoto Bengal Cat Forest and the other one was (can you guess it?) yep, Shiba Inu Cafe. We couldn’t have predicted this outcome: Bengal cats were the friendliest while Shibas were definitely “cat like”. At one point I had 3 bengal cats snoozing on my lap. It was glorious.

I also remembered we had a distinct annoying instance where (not surprised) a VERY loud american family were not only trying to cut lines in front of us (big pet peeve of mine). AND they also left their children in the Bengal Cat Forest without supervision. Those children scared these cats with their running around and screaming about wanting to have cats on their laps. PSA: Dear parents, please don’t do this. Don’t abandon your children expecting others to watch over them, not a good look. All in all though, it was excellent to get to pet some of those beautiful cats and attempt to pet some of those beautiful shibas.

We closed out the night with a fancy pre-set italian meals at The Sodoh Higashiyama Kyoto. I didn’t take any pictures of the food, but did took a picture of the menu. YUM. Travel tip: If you really want to do something or eat somewhere, please make a reservation. A lot of these restaurants have pre-set meals and won’t allow walk ins. We did lots on this day, and if you are reading, thank you for following along the journey so far.

Day 4 in Kyoto,

We woke up bright and early for a train ride to hike up Fushimi Inari Taisha 伏見稲荷大社. I read online that the custom to donate a torii began spreading from the Edo period (1603– 1868) to have a wish come true or in gratitude for a wish that came true. Along the main path there are around 1,000 torii gates. I think this is one of the few most beautiful spots in Kyoto. I personally really enjoy walking and hiking. Also pretty thankful that most people visiting in the morning are quite respectful. No constant lingering and influencers taking a billion pictures in one spot. It was nice. The walk up was tranquil and absolutely beautiful.

I took a few pictures of the empty train in the morning. Trains in Kyoto are much older compared to Tokyo’s trains. Which I found just absolutely stunning, they maintained cleanliness everywhere in this country. The respect they have for other’s comfort inspires me to be more considerate on my daily basis. These snaps below were impromptu places we went to after we hiked Fushimi Inari Taisha. We also went to Rengeoin Sanjusangendo, we took off our shoes and went inside with our phones turned off. The temple contains one thousand life-size statues of the Thousand Armed Kannon which stand on both the right and left sides of the main statue in 10 rows and 50 columns. I remember we stood there in awe for a little while before the crowd got too much and we had to leave. I am glad that there are experiences we get do without the distraction of taking a whole slew of photographs.

Along the way to dinner, we saw 3 ladies wearing kimonos and I asked them if I could snap a picture. They looked beautiful, aren’t they?

We closed Day 4 with early sushi dinner at Sushi Taka. It was the very first time I tried fresh wasabi and I was instantly in love. I must regretfully inform y’all that this place is also closed. I’m sharing pictures of what we ate that night. I am saddened that they are closed but glad that we had this memory to hold on to. I remember we head back to our hotel quite early that day. I ended up spending the night drawing before bedtime and Juan was reading. It was lovely.

Day 5 - New Year’s Eve in Kyoto,

We had big plans to go visit Nijo Castle, but they were closed on New Year’s Eve. We never got a chance to see the castle, but we are hoping to go back to Kyoto and do it! I was nervous that Kinkaku-Ji 金閣寺- The Golden Pavilion was going to be closed as well, but thankfully, it wasn’t! This was hands down my favorite spot in Kyoto. It was very crowded when we arrived but since we are both quite tall (hah) we were able to snap photos of the golden pavilion without other humans in them. I was very very happy with the pictures. One of them are actually my current desktop background. I’ll spare you millions of pictures and will just share this one.

After the lesson of Nijo Castle being closed on New Year’s Eve, we looked up the rest of the places we wanted to go to and found out they were also closed. We walked around a bit and figured out we could grab a quick snack and head over to Arashiyama’s Monkey Park Iwatayama. We hiked up to get to the top where most of the monkeys are. Along the way we ran into a man who decided that he will yell and waved aggressively at one of the monkeys to look at his camera, just so he can take a picture of his wife and monkey in the background. Literally YELLED. I was hoping the monkey would climb on his face and take their camera just like Indonesian monkeys would have. I am not joking, Indonesian monkeys at Bali’s Monkey Forest will NOT put up with that kind of abuse. They will take your purse, your sunglasses and your dignity (if you are rude) unprompted. I guess this is a Travel tip: Please don’t yell at monkeys, not a good look. After that incident though, we did enjoy hanging out with monkeys, we even saw a couple baby monkeys and a great view to close out the last day of 2017. Oh, almost forgot, we rode the coolest old train on our way here. See pictures.

We witnessed a car crash along our way back to our hotel. We decided to walk back to our hotel because I enjoy walking and was hoping to find other places to explore. It was a very loud crash and it got me worried that something had happened to Juan as he was walking behind me, but thankfully he was okay, and no one involved in the crash seemed severely injured. After all that, we were so hungry and a lot of places are actually closed, but we found a gem close by our hotel! I was pretty sure this is a branch of Juan’s favorite ramen place, but we would never know. It was delicious, not sure if it was extra delicious because we were hungry, but we’d call it both. Also, they happen to have kid’s fork フォーク for Juan, it was cute. That, my friends, concludes our time in Kyoto and the year 2017. We were in bed by 9pm and it was glorious.