To celebrate freedom I have went through my unread doujins and picked out a stack on the basis “would I be sad if I died without reading this”. I liked the build-up of tension to set the scene! I did spend a good 20 minutes at C107 picking up their 総集編 from their booth, only to find a huge stack of it at Melonbooks immediately after the event. Tragic… but expected I suppose given their popularity.
OK it’s time to go touch steel
tomatama curry udon
I did the same thing again today. Cleared more 10s in IIDX and played a few credits of DDR. Legs are sore! Gains soon ™
I started following this artist when he was drawing Xenoblade 2 doujins, though for some reason some huge Xenoblade 2 fan i knew at the time really didn’t like this artist despite the artist pumping out a ton of fan art of Hikari and Homura. I like the Sakurako book more than the Yuuka one as Yuuka just acts as an unfiltered slut for the whole book.
Today is April 15! Hope you filed your U.S. individual tax return if you live in the United States!
I have a friend that I played games with a lot and whenever something goes wrong I’d yell out AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW really loud. I guess I do it in person too. Here’s me doing it at work.
microsoft teams chime is a blight upon humanity
Since I had to stay late yesterday leaving the office at 17:30 (the horror!), I promised I’d leave the office early today at 15:30 to go to Round 1. I said goodbye to my team without any reservations and headed off!
still got it after not playing for 1.5 months
I also played 3 credits of DDR. I have to learn how to hold the bar when I play, since I’ve played my whole life without using the bar… my arms get tired first! So I start with holding the bar and then switch to not using the bar halfway through the song. I’m out of shape but if I keep playing maybe we can move up from 9s/10s back to 13s-14s.
tfw ur udon joint sells… rice?
For dinner… Bolognese Udon sounded the most interesting.
apparently, spaghetti is NOT considered a type of noodle. therefore, spaghetti and udon are NOT interchangeable and you should refrain from trying this at home
So I’ve been thinking about how I should be checking the internet less. Let’s do a dry run of what checking the internet looks like.
melonbooks’ uribouzakkaten section. They commission artists to do some art and make goods out of them. I like to buy face towels to stick my face deep into towels with cute anime girls printed on them
so it’s like… Do you need to check these things every day? Probably not. Preorder windows are pretty long…. and it’s not like I’m swimming in money right now either haha…
Well. I can admit it’s hard to be future oriented when being bogged down with work. But now we can be positive and look forward to tomorrow!
I thought about how I have to write some sort of sob story about my life but I don’t know. That’s been most of my whole life already… :^) Well… I’m still fat and out of shape and behind on my Japanese reps and bad at mahjong and bad at IIDX so it can only get better from here right? Haha…
At least most of the work for now is done until August…Now you can spend all the time you want on your goals instead of pissing it away on the internet on useless things :^)
Maybe I can write more often as a daily whatever the fuck instead of some weekly recap only thing. That means each post is less impactful… whatever. We’ll see if anything comes to mind.
That’s all you get in a day. No more, no less. Everyone else in the world gets exactly the same number of hours per day. All the rich people, all the poor people have the same time. Sure, maybe they have access to resources that could allow them better use of their time (both relatively and absolutely), but all the same they better make them count…!
Periodic haul of goods…
New tapestry (:
Week’s not too bad but had a bunch of stuff to do for work so I’d wake up at 05:00 to get ready to leave the house for work and come back at 20:00-21:00… It’s not a good excuse to work out but it is what it is. Just gotta sleep ASAP when I come home late instead of goofing off. After all I get 1.5 hours to goof off on the way home from work so… goof off then? Hmm..
I’ve left my phone off for about 24 hours now? Maybe I can break the tendency to piss away hours on it (famous last words). For now my ‘break’ routine will be to jump in bed and roll around hugging one of my dakimakuras. There’s supposed to be some shit where you actually need to give your brain a break when taking a break, and using your phone/pc to look for shit/entertainment is not taking a break as far as it involves engaging your brain (and some other shit about dopamines).
I think we’re doing ok – it’s not 100% compliant but given the shit I have going on, it’s pretty good, actually. I was eating a bit at work, but I’m not yet concerned about my weight as I started taking creatine since last month… so my cope is weight not decreasing is due to water saturation from creatine. Will it hold? We’ll find out…
For weight lifting, apparently muscle memory is a thing so I should probably try to increase the weights a little more rapidly than my original schedule. Probably do some sort of 5×5 once a week for each lift and add 5 lbs to each the week after until it’s not sustainable, then switch back to the 5/3/1 program I’ve been using. There’s no rules here… so let’s see what happens.
Since I’ve been able to full clear my anki deck, I now have room to be adding cards to my deck. Ideally I’d be adding words I come across in エロゲ/同人誌, but going back to those and looking after the fact is a little annoying… so for now we are just sticking with words I miss from Kotoba Bot’s N1 reading quiz:
Maybe we can pass DJT’s n1 quiz in a few months… side goal to JLPT N2 at year end, I suppose.
Mahjong has been really sad lately… I thought about taking a short break cause it was making me upset, but I think token one game a day should be fine. Just don’t play a game trying to get a 1st to set the tone for the day… Be happy on your own (:
I don’t really know if I can make every post exciting… but in the end, life itself is quite ordinary… so let’s let this be a reflection of that too. It’s like when you’re reading those high drama stories where everything is going to shit and the characters facing peril are like “Damn… I just want to live a normal life man…” yet here we are living normal lives pining for excitement to escape the drudgery of our normal life! What if we just learn to take joy in living a normal life?
I guess I have to turn on my phone for this…. damn…
Well we were doing pretty good until I took a break while wfh on friday… then I haven’t logged back on to work or done anything productive since then and have been in a death cycle of dopamine phone browsing and losing in mahjong whee. Losing is more tilting if you don’t have your real life straight, so we should do that first. I think we are good on weekdays at work but because I don’t have structure at home it is falling apart for now. Let’s practice!
Here is a dog playing with a tether ball on their front yard. It was having a blast so I couldn’t help but take a picture of it.
Had a kaisekidon! I think we can skip the ochazuke set and eat it as is. It’s not cheap, but not overpriced at $34. I would say it’s a fair price but worth it. Not something to eat regularly, obviously.
Washed the bedsheet yesterday… it’s a little bit discolored after two years… but at least it looks better after washing it than before washing it… a little gross hehe
Bought my flight for Japan for C109, in case oil prices spike because of shit going on across the world. If it goes up… cool. If it goes down… oops. I’ll have more days in Tokyo this time, so see you there!
pour one out for the iranian btw
—
Some lingering thoughts for myself. Maybe I should write these down and let it simmer and expand on it later. Maybe I should bust out the old writing journal so I don’t have to use a device and tempt myself into distractions…
You don’t need to be 100% compliant to make progress… but it would help you make the most progress…
No one else cares if you make progress or not. Do it for you’reself.
Get off the damn phone/pc wasting time!!!
—
This week’s daki theme is イチリ’s 堕天計画!
I do like アイミュ the most… but シャロエ and ルルーナ are cute too…!
ESPN was in town for the Super Bowl… now I can say I was on TV!
Ate at Fikscue Craft BBQ on February 7th. It’s primarily a BBQ joint but they also have some fusion Asian cuisine with it. It’s good! I don’t think it quite punches with true Texas BBQ ™ but it’s still nice to have something good locally without having to fly all the way out there.
I put stickers from my Japan trip on my laptop! Some room for more if I get other nice stickers next time. I do have more I could use but for now this is what we are rolling with.
New figgie came in – I wish I could lay her down on her back in front of my computer but her right leg kind of gets in the way… Maybe I can figure something out later with it.
Red Bull Showrun took place in San Francisco yesterday and I got to see Yuki Tsunoda! I started watching F1 midway through the 2021 season (The 2021 rainout for the Belgian Grand Prix was the first race I watched, actually) so I picked Max Verstappen and Yuki Tsunoda as my drivers to follow.
Technically it’s not the “current” F-1 car (it’s the 2011 RB7) but getting to hear an “F-1” car in real life was really cool! Unfortunately the engine in the car caught on fire towards the end lol but it will be nice to see if Yuki can return to F-1 later! Maybe I’ll watch again in the future but the F-1 seasons since 2021 have not been as compelling.
Stopped by the local Kinokuniya to see what JLPT N2 books to get… they want $25 each (translator’s note: $25 is 3,875￥) for these doohickeys! Luckily I am a seasoned Japanese item buyer…
Yeahhhhhhhh ok that’s more like it.
I got a RÅSKOG / NORRÅVA cart from Ikea to help consolidate some things. I used to have my meds and supplements and protein at the front of my room… so keeping everything in one place will hopefully make it easier to wake up and get all my ‘dailies’ done here. Also going to try to commit to taking 4 scoops of protein per day. I had an old bag from 2023 that expired and might have been giving me the runs… so I don’t think I should punish myself by forcing myself to finish the old stuff, even if it might be fine.
self review
So it’s been about 3 weeks since I started… It’s not looking too good… At the very least… I can say that I’m actually following up on poor performance instead of giving up like every time in my life before…
I can say I was derailed from being sick and also from dealing with my parents being a pain in the ass this last week… but that’s not a good excuse in the long run. So what has worked and what hasn’t and what changes can we make to help?
Lifting needs to be done first thing in the day – If I don’t wake up early and knock it out ASAP I’m gonna keep finding excuses to not do it. This also means I need to sleep early to wake up early enough to do it not and have to get on work to put out fires. Which also means I need to be diligent and ahead of my work to be able to log off early peacefully (at this time, I am not lol). Which also means I need to quit goofing off and using my phone and finding ways to not be bored instead of working. Which I do because I’m trying to escape from working. Which I goof off because… I don’t wanna work. What a terrible cycle! So really the main answer is… I gotta sit down and do my damn work so everything else can come into play.
Here’s a sample schedule I whipped up, keeping sleep schedule consistent and allowing for time in the morning to exercise and time at night to clean up, get ready for bed, and jerk off. I think it’s probably too ambitious but we can adjust once tax time is over. My main failure point is goofing off from 20:30-23:30 on my phone not actually doing anything, forcing me to wake up late the next day. Quit it!
And a workout plan that I’ve been putting off. Instead of wondering what my starting weights ‘should be’ and wondering if it’s too light, I’m just picking something light and we’ll start from here. This schedule works by adding +5 lbs to upper body lifts every month and +10 lbs to lower body lifts every month. Which means if I commit to this and did the lifts every time, at the end of the year, my press would be 145×5 (yeah right), bench press 165×5 (probably too low, but whatever), squat 225×5 (respectable), deadlift 235 (a little slightly low, but whatever). But I think that’s a way better place than if I don’t actually measure it, so let’s just take that and have a solid foundation to increase weights, instead of quitting and thinking about what ifs. Maybe you knock off -15/-30 lbs for each and even then it’s not bad. But we can always improve later. The key is to actually improve over time, no matter how small.
Since this schedule is lifting 4 times a week, the other 3 days shouldn’t necessarily be entirely off days. Maybe just 20-30 min of playing around with the reverse hyperextension machine I bought or some supplemental stuff like core work or light conditioning should be fine (in addition to the walking being done). That way I still have to answer “yes’ to did I exercise (and changing the daily criteria from “did you lift” to “did you exercise” to account for this).
Mahjong and IIDX… I kinda don’t wanna say it but… let’s get the exercise and work stuff in order first. Unironically I should try to make this my ‘goof off’ activity but looking at shit on the internet and pissing hours away doing nothing has way less ‘friction’ to do. lol
Well ok that’s it let’s stay on task…!
This weeks dakimakura theme is Illyasviel von einzbern!
OK it’s been 3 weeks since i landed back in America and i haven’t done anything useful so let’s set everything straight so we can make some progress!
The five things I want/need to focus on in my life are (in order):
My Health
My Job
日本語 / cunny
mahjong
iidx
Maybe 4/5 can be swapped depending on mood cause mahjong is kind of a shit game… but…
My Health
Being healthy is good for you! Living longer means I can continue to jack off to cunny into my old age (bro’s talking like he’s not already old lol), not be in pain while you’re travelling in Japan because I’m out of shape, and if a cute 2d girl were to walk up to me and say “onii-chan… manhandle me tonight…♡ ” I’d want to be physically able to do so all night long… instead of being out of breath only a minute in!
More practically speaking… I’ve read a few articles about Magnus Carlsen being very fit to that he can last longer while playing chess… so I’d probably gain some benefit somewhere in my other activities by not being a fat shit in terms of everything else… and I also don’t like being a fat ass when I’m wearing my cute anime girl clothes… it’d be cooler if I wasn’t…
My Job
This is how I get money to pay for everything… Do the damn work instead of putting it off later and being like oh fuck I shouldn’t have goofed off earlier on my phone… How are you gonna make the case to become manager if all you do is goof off???
Japanese / Cunny
I like cunny… the method to consume cunny involves knowing Japanese… (this excuse works for doujinshi/eroge but not for figgies lol) My Japanese is currently serviceable but it could be better… So let’s sit down, get caught up on Anki reps, then you can set aside time to work on grammar… Maybe we can take N3/N2 as proof you know something? At the very least I’ll need to work on grammar output to pass that instead of skating by on reading only. I’d say the ideal level would be where I’m comfortable reading things natively without missing context and actually being able to speak to people in Japan… but baby steps first…
Mahjong
I want to fulfill my dream of becoming a 鳳凰 player some day… Maybe not this year as I’m pretty far behind in 三段 right now… but maybe something realistic like 五段 by year end could be possible…?
IIDX
I want to fulfill my dream of becoming a 皆伝 player some day… Maybe not this year as I’m pretty far behind in 七段 right now… but maybe something realistic like 九段 by year end could be possible…?
So long term goals… we can put it like this:
Reach 160 lbs body weight (estimated weight to not have a belly hanging out)
Become a Senior Manager (assuming the job literally doesn’t kill me before that, this is at least 8 years out. so 2033/2034 at the earliest)
Pass JLPT N1 (Not necessarily aiming for this, but it’s at least concrete for now. Being able to say i can read x or y is not a concrete tangible goal)
Reach 七段/鳳凰 in 天鳳. Maybe in 3-4 years? Could be sooner but I’d rather get #1-3 in order first
Reach 皆伝 in IIDX DP. Maybe in 3-4 years? Could be sooner but I’d rather get #1-3 in order first
Now… extrapolate to year end goals…
Reach 200 lbs body weight (currently at 226 this morning. That’s about .5 lbs per week)
idk how to put this out concretely since I’m not getting promoted for another 2 years at least lol idk do your job
Take (pass?) JLPT N3 in July/December (not necessarily aiming for this… but I shouldn’t be that far from N3…?)
Reach 五段 in 天鳳
Reach 九段 in IIDX DP
Tax season is starting up so now let’s focus on daily/weekly goals to get to the year end goals… we can adjust later once we get more free time…
Be Active – take a walk 3 times a day for 30 minutes and lift 4 times a week.
Find the courage to put my damn phone away while I work. Maybe measure this as ‘during working hours how many times did I check my phone to look at something dumb, find a baseline and reduce it’
Reduce the number of outstanding Anki vocabulary cards for review per day by at least 100 (this number is currently at 2000 lol). Once complete, spend 30 minutes reading/practicing Japanese grammar.
Play one hanchan (client of your choice) and write one review log once a day. I believe self review is fundamental to improving myself as a player but I’m too lazy to do it (as you can see, a recurring theme in my life).
Play one hour of IIDX three times a week
OK… make a sheet and let’s track it! If I actually did those things every day/week, 3-6 months out there’s no way there wouldn’t be some sort of measurable progress by then… right? I think instead of using Excel I’ll need to use google sheets so I can edit it on my phone, and not just my home PC… ok let’s set that up and then I need to catch up on work that I’ve been neglecting lol
Well I was putting this off for a bit but I should get this done at some point… Not that I’m doing anything important anyway… Probably abbreviated at this point since I put it off for so long lol
january 8, 2026
had a nice breakfast
Not sure how you’re supposed to eat the grated yam. I kinda put some in my rice and added soy sauce… probably not correct? I know it’s been put in kishimen in Nagoya but here…? IDK i think there was enough stuff in the miso soup.
Took the bus down to Togendai Station to take the pirate ship to Motohakone. When I mentioned pirate ship my friend was imagining something a little more… ragged? lol but it’s a full fledged transport ship. I did note that the Hakone peace shrine didn’t have a line for it… the reason being…
It’s closed to visitors! On fucking New Year’s! Couldn’t you people choose a better time to fix the bridge? Maybe it wasn’t planned… but this is the best we could do for our instagram shot.
Prayed at Hakone Shrine. I think the hatsumode crowd has died down at this point.
hOw MaNy PiCtUreS oF mOuNt FuJi Do YoU nEeD
Took the ship back to Togendai Station to take the ropeway up to Owakudani. Unfrotauntely it’s really windy and really cold up here, so we didn’t want to stay for too long… but we got the prize…!
yes it’s just a god damn egg get over myself
On the ride back to the hotel we passed by the grass fields. It’s a landmark, apparently, so I think we’re just in the wrong season… probably looks better than a field of brown lol
And… dinner! I missed the plate of raw shrimp and uni and fish… sorry…
and the next day’s breakfast
It was nice. Overall for the ryokan trip… I enjoyed it, but I don’t think I’d shell out all this money again for it. Worth crossing off the bucket list, but real talk… just stay at a Dormy Inn. I do appreciate that they have a low room count, so apart from dinner time, it really feels like you’re the only person at the resort. I think maybe if I think more highly of kaiseki dinners, or if it was out of the world I could see it being worth it, but it’s just very good and we can better deploy the funds used elsewhere.
thank you hoshino resorts i hope you find my feedback useful and actionable
january 9, 2026
After getting our last baths in and packing up, we took the bus back to Hakone-Yumoto station. We got on relatively early on the bus route so we didn’t have trouble with luggage, but it got a little ギリギリ towards the end after everyone else on the route got on…
Since we had some time to kill until our reservation for the Romancecar, ate some street food in the area! The hakone stamped manjuu is only 80￥ and is really cute. I also picked this mentai mayonaise fish cake and some black sesame dango. While walking further I noticed a sign that said Hakone Pizza and we hadn’t had lunch yet… so why not?
I would note however that this place specifically tries to recreate Italian pizzas faithfully with a wooden oven and therefore is NOT an actual representation of traditional “Japanese” pizza as we know it (a la Domino’s, Pizza-la, etc.) It was a nice change in pace from all the Japanese food we ate.
And in the station, a hakone pudding milkshake! There were these nice and thick gooey bits in the shake (presumably, pudding) that go well with the drink, though I got some on my jacket trying to shake the drink to make it more easily able to drink from.
After touching down in our hotel in Ikebukuro, I had to dash on back to Akiba to pick up some figgies. Amiami resumed international shipping to the USA for their stuff, except for R-18 stuff… so I had to cancel my existing pre-order for Fraise and take matters into my own hands.
The luggage suitcase itself costs about 6000￥, and the additional luggage fee flying on ANA is 20000￥, so ~$170 in total. I think after paying for the figgies tax free and dodging 15% “tariffs” I come out a little ahead vs shipping it through proxy, so if I miss pre-orders going forward it’s not the end of the world, assuming I come back to Japan annually for Comiket. Plus, I can still pack in other things with the suitcase… which will save my ass later…
shigure will be on the left… soon… one of these days…
For dinner we had Sushiro. I had kaiten sushi on my list for before I left… so here we are…
I didn’t take a picture of it, but at other Sushiro’s I’ve been to so far, they’ve only had a little tablet for you to place orders from. The one in Ikebukuro had big ass full screen touch TVs at the side to order off of now – These things are amazing for getting you to order more as they scroll their entire menu by you as you’re eating. How can Kura sushi compete? Not that I’d ever eat Kura in Nippon since we have Kura at home…
January 10, 2026
with my partner sleeping in I head over to Sunshine City to buy tea from Lupicia!
I bought like 22 bags of tea. The lady probably thinks I’m weird cause I wanted 8 bags of a certain flavor but all I said was 八 of x flavor instead of 八つ of x flavor. I don’t know anything after 一つ or 二つ or 三つ ok? sheesh
As a bonus have a picture of some fujos lining up for animate and k-books
It’s like me lining up for melonbooks… I get it…
After beating my partner’s ass awake (not literally) we stop by Shinjuku melonbooks and Osaka Osho for lunch
After getting a few books, a short ride to Nakano to visit Mandarake Honten. They do have a lot of stuff, but I only end up picking up 4 tankoubons I don’t really need. The soft serve store in the basement is popping off like I expected and I get imo and milk tea flavored soft serve:
They make a very big deal about not choosing the order your flavor is in. Given the high volume of people they deal with… Good move!
We goofed off a little more in Akiba before heading back to Ikebukuro. Here’s a pic of my stats in MFG that I took:
sex with grim aloe
Since MFG just queues you on wheover’s trying to queue at the time, rather than by rank/skill… I’d say on average the player base is at a silver-gold room level, since I’m overperforming pretty hard. I do like the game though since the hand win cut-ins and model animations are top notch, so I can see myself playing this a lot along with IIDX when I need time to kill in the future.
Mitsuyado Seimen for dinner! Apparently this is the first time my friend had tsukemen and he seems to like it!
January 11, 2026
Last day in Japan… I initially planned to ride Thunder Dolphin at Tokyo Dome City but it ended up being closed for the whole day due to strong winds… lol
So we get to ride Tokyo Dome City’s other roller coaster, Back Daaan. There’s a Love Live event going on at Tokyo Dome City, so instead of the normal pv and music, we get to listen to Snow halation instead! (I noted that the h is lower case per the image)
I think if you like Love Live you’ll probably like this more, but they had to disable the rest of the ride’s music and animations since they don’t go with Snow halation. Overall I’d say the original is better, but if you like Snow halation then this is for you!
Ate some pasta at the nearby Food Stadium while waiting to see if Thunder Dolphin would re-open. It didn’t.
And lastly, a walk through Korakuen nearby while waiting to see if Thunder Dolphin would re-open. It didn’t.
Lo and behold, I go to Akiba again… I saw on some X (formerly Twitter) posts that there’s a newly stocked section at the Yostar official store… and I manage to pick it up what I’ve been looking for this entire trip!
Along the way I also ran into a youtuber I happened to watch. I was really excited too, as I heard his voice in passing while he was talking for his video and I was like wait I know who that is lol.
Lotteria is having a strawberry fair, so I pick up a sukiyaki burger and the strawberry items. It’s… alright? Not amazing, but good. We have a strawberry pie, strawberry parfait, and strawberry churros. My friend noted at this point that I really like strawberries.
80 kilograms of cunny goods
Checked in at Haneda with my goodies. I learned that if you’re flying ANA, you can actually check in at any point after their check in counter opens (at about 06:45), rather than the 3 hours before your flight that I’m used to. I take advantage of this to use the Haneda Airport onsen, which is a little pricy at 4800￥, but it’s nice to be able to relax and be fresh for your flight…!
Looking for dinner I find a Torikai Sohonke in the airport garden, so I opt to get the chicken side dishes this time, rather than the cochin chicken oyakodon. It’s nice!
Starting to think ANA airline food isn’t as good as I remember my last flight’s food to be… Or I’m just spoiled by real Japanese food at this point.
and the last boss of my cunny trip is… US CBP! I pass through without paying any additional fees and mention God Bless America to my agent, to which he responds positively. God Bless America
closing thoughts as this will no longer be a travel blog
I’d like to come back again next year with my friend. Having a teammate for Comiket is overpowered…!
actually need to work on how to speak and listen to Japanese, rather than just reading it… If it’s a line I’m not expecting or haven’t heard before having to go すみません、もう一度？feels bad or worse play the ENGLISH PLEASE card
After perusing several arcades and their game selections, IIDX and MFG are the only arcade games for me. Might as well get better at those in my off-time, no matter how much I actually hate them sometimes… I wish I could like Ongeki more but the whole card gacha system feels bad on paper and I don’t wanna spend more money rolling on stuff than I need to
yeah right he hates rolling lmao
actually work out so your back doesn’t hurt and you can carry luggage suitcases more easily. lifting 23 kg shouldn’t be difficult for a man
I realized I never took pictures of the onigiri place called Onimaru in Osu…. here’s two I ate for breakfast
I like the one on the left the most, it has some chicken shit on top with some egg salad and a shiso leaf in between. My brother hates shiso leaf, but I think it adds a nice accent to the food.
Made it to Nagoya station while struggling with some bags in time… Since I wasn’t rejected at the shinkansen gate this time, I was finally able to get my ekiben for the trip!
For getting a shinkansen seat view of Mt. Fuji, it seems you need to pick the side that has two seats. I took a few pictures of it because it’s supposed to be hype, but I already saw Mt. Fuji very clearly last year, so how many pictures of Mt. Fuji do you really need…? I could be spoiled though…
soooooooooooo lucky
I was freaking out about whether or not we’d have luggage space on the bus from Hakone-Yumoto to the hotel since as we were getting off at Odawara from the Shinkansen, in my mind, every one of these fuckers getting off the train are going to their ryokan too in Hakone… but my fears were unfounded as the bus we took was practically empty! I do think I start to worry a little too much when my plans start to get de-railed, so we should try to relax and just let things happen… even if they don’t always go right it’s not the end of the world.
Made it to the hotel after walking uphill on a relatively steep hill. Maybe there’s an easier way to get up there I missed… lol
The room is really nice! I mainly wanted this place for the private onsen here. It’s just a little square with hot water, technically, but when the water is being refilled you can really smell the sulfur of the water! It’s nice to be able to use an onsen without anyone else around, though we did use the main bath without anyone around either. I know when I checked earlier there was only one room left at the hotel, but maybe it’s more empty than I thought…?
It’s nice to be able to finally sleep in my own bed again. We were sharing the same bed since last week in two different hotels, and our last hotel had a smaller bed than the first one… so it was a little ギリギリ, but we did ok!
Here is dinner! I was a little worried since there were a few bad reviews of this place, but I think it was quite good. I wouldn’t say it blew me away by any means, but it’s definitely a solid meal and each bite is unique. I don’t know if I could keep eating multiple course meals like this, though. Generally I prefer to just have like a one dish specialty from a restaurant and maybe a fun side dish and have at it, as I think the multiple course little bit of food in a dish is somewhat pretentious. It was a good call to not make any fancy restaurant reservations for this trip in hindsight. Probably the most fun thing was the conger eel and burdock fried in the tofu – I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it! The main dish was a bowl of rice and beef, mixed in with vegetables – the vegetables complemented the base rice without the overuse of sauce that one would normally see at a gyudon place like Yoshinoya or something.
And lastly here’s the really stupid thing I wanted to do. Bathe next to my daki!
beware of feet
There’s another mjg tourney going on, so I was playing in the bath… hopefully my skin doesn’t fall off from bathing in the acidic water for so long! Today we are going to visit Motohakone to look at the Shrine and balk at the line for the famous peace torii, then eat an Owakudani hard-boiled egg! It’s probably just a hard-boiled egg at the end of the day… but let’s be excited for being touristy!
