One week in

So I'm in Osaka tonight, chilling out after an exhausting journey from Ueno in Tokyo to Moriguchi. It was exhausting both because it was an all-night bus ride, and because I had to carry my bike on my back through various train stations at both ends of said bus ride. I need to stop carrying my bike and start using it, or at least figure out how to arrange it in the special carrying bag so that it doesn't poke me in the spine.

Anyways, this week was pretty awesome. We had a variety of awesome food from around the world (the Japanese do wonderful pasta and pastries, not to mention yakitori and tonkatsu), saw some wonderful sights (Minato Mirai in Yokohama and Odaiba are both great futuristic date spots with Ferris wheels), gawked at bizarre outfits in Shibuya, and shopped in famous places. There were a few other great miscellaneous things, too, like some quite successful purikura pictures and acquiring a cell phone.




Oh, and we went to Tokyo Disneyland. Siena will probably do more on that since she's a big Disneyland fan. It was my first time at a Disney resort since I was like 5, and it was pretty fun. Everything is designed to be fun to look at, and of course it's exciting to see my favorite Disney characters parade by. I read an essay on Tokyo Disneyland back when I took Japanese history, but I just have to say, the quintessential symbol of Tokyo Disneyland is the Mickey Mouse shaped manju (steamed pork buns).

I'm always coming up with regrets and anxieties but generally overcoming them. Every once in a while I wonder if I forgot some crucial item while packing, or remember how I failed to contact any previous host families. Or I wonder if I should have just started biking through Kyushu instead of working on a tomato farm in Shikoku for a week. But every once in a while I get really excited about hitting the road, like when I met up with Oliver and heard some of his stories.