onigiri, nyc

 

I want to go to Cafe Zaiya, 18 E. 41st St. (btw. 5th & Madison), midtown in New York.

There's also one in the east village, at 69 Cooper Square.

It's a Japanese cafe and they have baked treats, bento boxes, and onigiri. 

I want onigiri so bad!! They are high up there on my Things I Miss From Japan list.

old pictures from kyoto

I can't believe I'm leaving in 2 days! It's impossible to feel like I've seen enough of Japan, but I'm also really looking forward to being home. 

Tuesday was my last class so afterwards we went to a Japanese Christmas party that Jae (to my right) invited us to. We were told to bring a present but we really didn't know what to expect. It turned out to be so much fun though! Me and Andrew were the only people there who didn't speak Japanese but we had funny struggling conversations in Japanglish. We also made a new American friend, Brittany, she's so cool, wish we'd met her sooner. She's even from right outside Philly! As for the secret santa, Andrew got bath soaps and I got candy and a bag of salt, haha. The presents we brought were equally lame though. 

The Japanese played some wacky games that completely went over my head. They seemed to involve some sort of public embarrassment, like singing or picking a random girl to exchange numbers with.  It was really cool to see a genuine Japanese get together with one of the smallest collection of foreigners of any event I've been to in my time here. By the time we left a Japanese guy was face down on the floor, ahem, being sick, and it was barely midnight.  They party hard.

Since then I've mostly been shopping for gifts and souvenirs. I should start to pack up I guess. Oh, and these photos are from last weekend, very glam (shot by Gallermic @ Trump house).

Kyoto, Nara, Osaka trip

Took the shinkansen (bullet train) to Kyoto on Thursday at 7:10am, almost missed it.. got to kyoto around 9. so early!

a shrine

took a train to this small town that has a park with wild monkies

view from train to arishiyama

cute town arishayama, outside of kyoto

we found the monkey park entrance!

first  monkey spotted!

monkey keeper riding motor bike around the sharp turns on the path with really steep walls, made me nervous

pretty autumn foliage

monkey paradise at the top, with an incredible view of Kyoto

the cabin in which you can feed the monkeys

baby!

"feed us peanuts and apples"

"plz!"

 

fishes and pickin fleas off each other

then we slid back down the giant hill

next we took a train to Nara, famed for its park with friendly deer

the sun was already down when we got there

a pagoda

deers! it took us forever to find them, i think most of them had gone to sleep. next we rode the train to Osaka, and got dinner at a takoyaki place

octopus balls, an osaka classic

and japanese pancake, osaka traditional meal

doesn't really look like much but it was yummy. then we were tired so we tried to catch a bullet train back to tokyo but they were done for the night so we took an overnight bus back, it was like a 6 hour ride but i slept most of it.

the end of my 24 hour travels around japan!

I see a lot of Japanese with eye patches. Is it because they got in fights or because they got the eyelid surgery to give them 'western' eyes? Or is it just a cool part of his outfit? (Don't think I'll ever know.) 
Photo by Rei Shito, the photog for FRUiTS.

patrick & kim @ trump house

sleepy heads

Also, plz take this survey, it's about fashion and stuff and it's not too long, for my aunt who is making galoshes.

giant crab attempts tokyo takeover

"it smells like seafood" "it's cause of that crab" "it's about to scuttle down that building"

me and my new friend Tomo- he is just like carl, for those of you in the know, he has the same voice and accent and he said he grew up in germany (or something)