Rachel and Valerian's Japan Trip 2025

We landed into Osaka and spent the night at a ryokan. There were a bunch of young Japanese university students staying there too. Our room was right next to the common area where they were all hanging out, and the walls were paper thin! Thankfully we were very sleepy so had a great sleep. The outer suburbs of Osaka are very quiet. We weren't here for long as we quickly trained off to Kyoto to meet up with Rachel's brothers (and their partners).

We returned to Osaka after one night in Kyoto, this time we stayed in a huge 2 bedroom apartment next to the seafood market! The seafood was pretty expensive though, probably as the market was quite touristy. The Osaka expo was on but we didn't go as we heard it wasn't very good. We tried all the delicious Osaka street food - takoyaki, okonomiyaki, kushikatsu, and lots of other tasty things. The shopping districts were crazy busy, but we found some peaceful parks to escape to when we needed a break. We spent ages browsing all the cute stores, especially the ones selling adorable stationery and little knick-knacks.

Highlights: Rachel eating gluten for the first time in 4 years

This was just a quick stopover while we caught up with Rachel's brothers and their partners. We zoomed through Kyoto and saw Ginkaku-ji, and the Fushimi-Inari shrine. Kyoto seems more touristy than when I was last here, the walk up to the shrine was insanely busy (we had to walk like 1/4 speed). I tried to book a restaurant via tabelog (the Japanese restaurant booking) website with my alter-ego バレリアン マッカスキル, but booked the wrong one! Oops :(.

Highlight: Seeing how the price of the Pocari Sweat in the vending machines increases as the altitude increased, when walking up the stairs at Fushimi-Inari

We were in Tokyo for a total of about a week and a half, staying in Shin-Okubo, which has a large Korean population. As with a lot of places in Tokyo, the main street is very busy, but once you walk 1 or 2 streets back, it's quiet and residential, where we were staying. I'd recommend doing something similar as it means you can retreat from the busyness of the city to your quiet apartment. A lot of the exploring I didn't take too many photos of, but our general routine was to go to an area for the day and explore it.

The music festival run by Circus was really interesting - it was located in Odaiba, which is an artificial island that is very modern, with some weird buildings and lots of open space. While we were there, there was a Gundam exhibit. You could leave the festival and go to the adjacent shopping mall, filled with Gundam fans, other shoppers, and festival-goers. The rain kept the event pretty mild. I also think drinking isn't as big here for the younger generation - they told us we had to get drink tickets to enter the event, and even so, we noticed about half of the people would use it for a can of coke or a bottle of water instead of an alcoholic beverage. Anyway, the event had a really entertaining crowd that were clearly very into the music.

There seems to be some anti-foreigner sentiment in the more touristy areas - Asakusa, we were asked not to go into an izakaya because 'no english menu', when we were fine to order off the Japanese menu, despite them having lots of spare tables. In general, busy places from the last time I was here seem busier and more touristy, for example Harajuku and Shinjuku. Rachel really liked the gigantic 7+ storey department stores, where you can buy hundreds of options of clothes, stationery and Cinnamoroll merchandise. Each shop we went to had a different Cinnamoroll type of merch, so when we'd grab some groceries, we'd typically leave the shop with an extra bag charm or sticker pack too.

In general, Tokyo is gigantic, and there are heaps of places to see. If you don't like one area, there's a new one, just one train stop away that might have a completely different vibe.

Kusatsu is an onsen town about 3-4 hours from Tokyo. It's quite small, high in the mountains, and mostly attracts Japanese tourists. We saw a lot of groups of old people in little tour groups here. The main appeal are the onsen, where you can sit in a really hot bath (either open air or indoor), with lots of minerals, with some other people, while naked.

We really liked Kusatsu, and I definitely recommend it. I'd say to stay here for a day or two, as there aren't too many activities (unless you want to relax HEAPS).

When we returned to Tokyo, we accidentally booked a love hotel (well the receptionist insisted it was a 'leisure hotel', but the vase in the room insists otherwise). The gaudy furnishings and lack of natural light were a lot less relaxing than Kusatsu, so to compensate we went to a Sento (Japanese bath house) every day. We definitely caught the Sento bug. I think if one opened up down the street from us in Melbourne, I'd go there once a week. We also caught up with Minami, a friend we made in Paris from a few years ago. It was really nice to meet someone who was living in Tokyo!

The Ghibli museum was also great (this was my second time though).

Okinawa is a really interesting place! For one, it's very car-centric, and it also doesn't have much meat, so there is spam everywhere. The onigiris at FamilyMart are spam flavoured too. We stayed in a gigantic three storey mansion AirBNB in Onna. We spent a whole day relaxing in the gigantic AirBNB, and then went snorkelling (again) at the Blue Cave. It really lived up to its name, and seemed quite busy despite it not being peak season. As we didn't book anything, I was asking all the different snorkel vans in the carpark to find someone to take us - luckily a very friendly woman from Taiwan was happy to lend us the gear and give us a tour. The architecture here is very interesting - lots of concrete and tiles, and lots of brutalist influence. We made a visit to the American Village, which had equally weird architecture. It felt like we were in a parody of Miami or something, complete with the burgers, noisy cars, and lots of light-up signs. I would recommend, especially Christmas Land!

Highlight: Definitely the snorkelling. I would recommend the Blue Cave, lots of fish, clean water, and not too busy if you come in offseason.

BONUS! Isaac and I made a game while we were in the gigantic AirBNB on Okinawa! You can play it here: Cat Snorkel Game

Tokashiki island is off the coast of Okinawa and has a population of about 700 people. It had very clean, amazing beaches with water that was almost transparent. We did a lot of snorkelling here, and as a group of 8, were 1% of the population of the island (so we practically took up almost the entire restaurant when we ate here). Rachel liked the small restaurant where she had a beer for the first time in 4 years. After that we were very dehydrated from being in the sun all day. There were some umbrella sellers selling umbrella rentals for $30 each, but it seemed worth it to be in the shade, as it was really hot and humid! We were lucky enough to see 2 turtles, and lots of fish (and a sea snake!).

Highlight: Lisa swimming past the safe swimming area and being repeatedly told off by the lifeguard on the jetski