• Food,  Travel

    Quick Eats in Japan

    First time visitors to Japan seem to marvel at the country’s many vending machines and convenience stores. While I don’t think I ever got excited over their vending machines and convenience stores, I appreciated their existence. If you’re anything like me when you travel, when you’re on the go, you just want to grab something, pay for it and be done with it.

  • Nature,  Travel

    Fukushuen

    Having been to a number of East Asian gardens, Fukushuen or Fuzhou Garden of Naha, Okinawa appeared less impressive to me than it actually was.

  • Travel

    Aoba Castle

    The grounds of Aoba Castle are peaceful, pretty and rather vast. Although there isn’t exactly much of a castle left, you do get to see remnants of it and I found it rather enjoyable to wander the grounds.

    For those of you that have awareness of Japan’s samurais, Aoba Castle was built by Date Masamune. Yes, the “one eyed dragon”. The interesting thing about Date Masamune is that he’s often portrayed in popular media as someone sporting an eyepatch, so you can imagine my surprise when I saw a statue of him, sans eyepatch in Sendai.

  • Food,  Travel

    The BL Cafe Experience

    One word: overrated. Honestly, I’ve been intrigued with this cafe ever since I first learned about it through some show over YouTube. The show’s host from Hawaii gave the cafe a rating of three stars and I questioned why her rating was rather low. After visiting the cafe myself, I now understand why she couldn’t even bother to give four stars. The irony of it all is that a decent amount of YouTubers rave about this cafe and I thought I’d be able to rave about it as well. Unfortunately, I can’t even rave about it…

  • Food,  Travel

    Dining at Suimui in Okinawa

    When I first went to Japan, I never bothered to eat inside a restaurant. I was scared of ordering. I was scared of dealing with cigarette smoke. I was scared of eating wrong, etiquette-wise. I was also scared that whatever I ordered would be non vegan, let alone vegetarian friendly. So, I never bothered to dine in Japan.