Ari & Nici in Japan: Dotonbori River Festival, Osaka ♥

Hey guys (^-^)v

This will be my last post about our Japan trip, which is now more than one year ago. Our time over there flew by so fast, now it seems to me like we didn't spend more than a week in Japan although it were three.. But I'm very happy I can go back to Japan in the late summer of this year again! And this time I will be there for longer *-*

 However, the last post about Japan I want to share with you is about the Dotonbori River Festival we attended while being in Osaka. I really like the city of Osaka very much and hope I can spend more time there somewhen in the future.

The Dotonbori festival is a lantern festival along the riverside of Dotonbori river. It is located directly in the city centre around Ebisubashi, the bridge where the famous Glico Man billboard is located. The whole riverside was decorated with hundrets of lanterns, and the people were dancing traditional dances everywhere.

As this was a Japanese summer festival (祭り), we dressed in Yukata that we had bought at a store in Studio Alta in Tokyo.

Nici in her pretty Yukata ^-^

 As this was (at least that year) my last chance to take a picture with Glico Man, 
I could not let this chance go wasted:

 I was really lucky as a few days later the billboard was changed to the picture of a woman (from a famous band if I remember correctly) in a Glico dress, whereabout a lot of people complained. We spent the rest of the evening, which was also our last day in Japan, at the festival (and in the nearby Don Quijote store x'D). 

I don't have anything else to tell about the festival, maybe only that our way back to our host family's house (15 min walk from the station) turned into hell. As you can see in the pictures above, we wore these traditional japanese sandals without socks. That was a big mistake as I think.. First of all, the sandals were one-sized.. and Nici and I have pretty big feet, according to Japanese standarts, so these shoes didn't fit really well. Additionally, the band rubbed on our feet the whole time while walking and resulted into huge blisters the next day.. 
So, if you're not used to them, better wear them with socks x3

 Unfortunately, this was our last real day in Japan. We spent the next day with packing all our lugguage and cleaning the rooms we used in the host family's house. After that, we went to the city to eat something and then headed for the airport, where we had to spent the night. I'm still happy that and surprised how everything I bought had fit into my suitcase x'D

I hope when autumn comes, I'll be able to blog about adventures in Japan again ♥
Thank you for reading! See you next time (^-^)v

Ari & Nici in Japan - food and beverages (食べ物と飲み物)

Hey guys (^-^)v

I'm so sorry I didn't post for such a long time.. It was the longest hiatus I have taken until now and I wish I could promise it never happens again, but I am not entirely sure about that. Anyways, I needed some time for myself, also to sort some things out. My current occupation doesn't allow me to have a lot of free time, and I am almost stressed out everyday with studying and homework and more studying (maybe I will explain it in a seperate post if anyone is interested in what I'm doing at the moment). So I took advantage of the holidays I had and did absolutely nothing. And I really needed that for myself to keep me going and to be able to finish the last two semesters. So I hope you understand and are still a little bit interested in what I post. For what comes next, I think there will be two more post about my Japan journey (it's more than a year ago by now Q_Q) and than we will see what's coming as, with a lack of free time, I also don't have time to explore things and show them to you.. But I have some huge plans for my future that I want to share with you and I will keep this blog running to at least that point of time. Anyway, here we go with the next post ^-^

Before Nici and I left for Japan my dad asked me to take photos of the stuff I was going to eat there because he had nearly no idea of what Japanese food was like (except for sushi of course). So I thought it may be a nice idea to write a post about what we were eating and drinking in Japan.
Also, I thought it might be interesting for some people, who also are vegetarians, as Japan is not really a vegetarian-friendly country and there is fish or meat included in lots of things..

While staying at our host family's place in Tokyo we usually got breakfast and dinner from our host mom.

breakfast - red bean paste filled bread, yoghurt with a slice of pineapple and a boiled egg (that I didn't like at all.. tasted like it has been boiled in soy sauce or something..)

breakfast - miso soup and some vegetables rice stuff for the microwave (althought I told our host mom that I am vegetarian I think there was fish included.. I just picked out everything that looked suspicious x3)

Dinner - Japanese style pasta, absolutely delishious *-*

Dinner - rice with stir-fried tofu, onions and some more slimy stuff (but tasted pretty good)

Dessert - CAKE ROLLS!

Dinner - vegetarian hamburger steak and rice

 As you maybe can guess from the amount of pictures I, most of the days, forgot to take pictures.. 
One evening, after we had visited a wind orchestra competition of our host mom's daughter, she treated us to dinner for kaiten zushi (running sushi)

You could either take something off of the conveyor belt or order something you like via touch screen

Mine delicious food ^-^
Our host mom laughed at us for only eating "children's stuff"..

they also had so yummy desserts that were soo amazing ^-^

As poor stundents don't travel with enough money to go to restaurants, we also bought a lot of food in Convenience Stores:

Dango and Milk tea

left - Nici's; right - mine, there was fish in the sushi rolls but I just picked it out

Yakisoba Pan

Omu raisu and Pasta

Melon Pan

A really great thing about Japan is that there are vending mashines for drinks nearly everywhere. Especially during the hot summers this is super convenient and refreshing ^-^

C. C. Grape - really delicious

My favourite drink of all time: C. C. Lemon ♥

favourite tea - just usual green tea, super refreshing at hot days ^-^

One day in Osaka we also got a pizza. As you might have heard before, pizza in Japan is super-expensive. We paid like 15 Euros for a normal-sized one (in Germany you can get some for like 5 Euros or even cheaper), and it was not even delicious.. My pizza margherita was flavoured with some strange herbs and tasted really unfamiliar, and the pizzas my friend's had ordered, did not have that usual pizza crust, but were made with some kind of puff paste instead.. I don't know if all pizza stores do it that way, but I can not really recommend eating pizza in Japan alone because of the price x'D

We also bought a lot of the really fancy snacks and ice creams Japan has to offer:

Ice cream from Baskin Robbins - Suica (watermelon) and cookie flavour. Definitely try out this store! Is has one of the best ice creams I have ever eaten

Frozen yoghurt you could assort on your own! Unfortunately, you pay for the weight and these were a bit very expensive..

Hello Kitty dounut at Sanrio Puroland (did not taste as good as it looked to be honest..)

famous Harajuku Crepe with strawberries, cheese cake, and chocolate sauce ♥

Last but not least I want to show you our food we had at fast food restaurants. All in all, we only tried two of them: Lotteria and MOS Burger. MOS Burger is my absolutely all time favourite! At the moment they only offer one vegetarian burger, but it is absolutely delicious ♥

Melon Soda and Rice-Kinpira Burger at MOS♥

Lotteria one the other hand only has frensh fries if you don't eat meat or fish...

Frensh Fries and (of course) Melon Soda again ^-^

But next time I also want to try Freshness Burger. They also offer a vegetarian black bean burger ^-^

Japan has to offer a really wide range of food and you will definitely not die of hunger as a vegetarian, but on the other hand it is really hard to find something you can eat in a restaurant. When we went eating out with our host family in Osaka, our host dad ordered ramen without meat for me and it was no problem, but I haven't tried it on my own yet, so I don't know if it had worked out too. But in supermarkets and conbinis you get lots of food you can eat and it's really good! It's just a bit sad that it is hard to get traditional food without meat or fish. If you are really craving for it, you can go to a Buddhist temple restaurant that traditionally serve vegan food, but it's terribly expensive so I didn't do it..

Well, I hope I could give you some new information and provide an insight into what kind of food will expect you if you don't go to restaurants.

Thank you for reading, and feel free to leave your opinion or questions in the comments!

See you next time (^-^)v

 

Ari & Nici in Japan: Osaka - Sumiyoshi Taisha Shrine + traditional wedding

Hey guys (^-^)v

I'm sorry it took me so long again to write a new post here.. (if you want to stay more up to date, feel free to follow my instagram x3) but in the last few weeks of school I couldn't motivate myself to do anything at all.. additionally it was so hot that I was just lying around all the time watching anime (Yowamushi Pedal) x3

But back to the actual topic: while being in Japan, I really wanted to visit 住吉大社 (Sumiyoshi Taisha) one of the oldest shrines in all of Japan. It was built 300 years before Buddhism came to Japan and is therefore free of architectural influence from China or other Asian countries. It shows the unique Japanese architectural style called Sumiyoshi-zukuri.

Very famous is also the Sorihashi Bridge on the shrine grounds:

There were so many cute turtles swimming in the water under the bridge *-*

By coincidence, we also came to see a traditionally Japanese wedding ceremony that was processing by. It was really amazing as you actually hardly have the chance to see this as a tourist:

the bride and the groom

It was really hot that day and I've heard once that wearing a traditional Japanese wedding kimono feels like being wrapped in a futon. So it must have been really hot for the bride wearing so many layers on a 33°C-day.. but she nevertheless looked so beautiful *-*


Aside from the wedding procession, I took some more random pictures of what I thought was beautiful on the shrine grounds:

the obligatory sake barrels you can find at nearly every shrine

Ema - small wodden plaques where you can place your wishes

Chozuya - water basin to wash your hands and mouth before entering the shrine

the Sorihashi bridge is really steep

It was a really nice experience to visit the shrine and take a look at this traditional Japanese architecture. Would you like to visit shrines and temples too when you're going to Japan?

Selfie - me and the bridge xD

Thanks for reading (^-^)v
See you next time ♥