Japan through the iPhone

As I mentioned last week, I hardly had my camera with me at all. I just about had my iPhone the same amount of time. I don’t have an international plan. ..(Verizon is behind the times in a big way), so unless I was around a decent wifi spot, there was no point in having my phone.

Not only that, I never once carried my purse. Cumbersome thing…no wait, correction. I didn’t even bring my purse on the TRIP! I took a clutch but only for “if” we went out in the evening and used it once. All that to say my carmex went with me everywhere…oh and my passport but the man carried that.

But the few times I took my phone, I had fun using it for the odd things I would encounter. For instance!
…now this isn’t necessarily “odd”..more like resourceful and the majority of the restaurants would have all their foods on display to help show what they had for us foreigners…and locals.. as many stopped to look as well.

But with that would come some hilarious misspellings like this “coffee flort” or as we American’s like to call it, float.

Unless I’m in the most desperate of ways, I will never find myself using these…that were in all the public restrooms. I don’t even know how one would aim! let alone which way to face…

These are “pets”. As in, buy me and take me home to your kid to play with…pet. I do.not.understand.

There’s also the “Engrish”. We sought out all the ways they misinterpret English and had some fun being on the hunt. A few giggles were definitely had by these.

We went into a French bakery and there were so many delectable pastries and ice creams all around but I came across this cake and saw that it was in German. Having a German friend, I sent it to her to translate and the first thing she said back was “it doesn’t make any sense.”  It says, “I needed time and baked it.” well, okay then. 

Going into an Indian restaurant (that happened to be very delicious!), they had a big screen tv playing a Japanese game show..that I couldn’t figure out for the life of me and that also had heated toilet seats. And this is where my life changed forever experiencing a heated toilet seat. I didn’t want to get up. It was heavenly. Also, those little white zigzag things are their napkins. Small. hard. and small. Everywhere has those and only those for napkins. It’s a good lesson on being a better cleaner eater…that I still have yet to grasp.


Inside one of their {many} malls was this delightful tea room. G-man thought he was the only man in there, but I reassured him there were others to make him still feel like the man he is. I got what I thought was a hot tea but clearly I don’t understand the concept of the “float” and instead got the iced chai tea float while G-man being the smarter of the two got hot green tea. Both were delicious.

Almost all the manholes had this figure on it in a different way. Whether he was fully dressed, standing, dancing. Made for some enjoyable distracting sidewalk walking as I ignored the evil yellow strips.

When we were in Tokyo, we couldn’t find the sushi place and landed ourselves into this restaurant called Gonpachi. Also known as the “Kill Bill” restaurant since they filmed a major scene inside. This place was great! And busy! The moment we walked in, they greeted us with iced wine and as we got seated, they yell something and the whole staff yell something right back in response. Every single time.

I highly recommend Gonpachi. The servers all have the flag of the language they speak on their nametags and it was incredibly helpful to have an English speaker who was also very sweet and entertaining. Not to mention the food was absolutely delicious!

We walked the streets of Tokyo and I was amazed at the cleanliness and order.

While there, we got to stay in 2 fancy shmancy hotels, where one had an incredible Sunday brunch with everything you could imagine. first time experiencing caviar, to the other leaving complimentary pajamas on the bed (…that didn’t fit at all and were too embarrassing to show pictures of…)

I have all the in-betweens to show but this shows all the little details that made up my trip to Japan. It was fun, comical at times, disturbing, frustrating and relaxing all rolled into one…and I can’t wait to do it again!

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