Week 7 Japan Trip: Disneyland, Maid Cafe, Mount Fuji...
This is week 7 after being laid off. We skipped week 6 because I was in Japan and I'm super excited to share my trip with y'all.
So, the trip started with going to Tokyo Disneyland, which, you know, is the most magical place in the world. It's so fun to see Winnie the Pooh on a blustery day, it was an amazing ride, and I highly recommend it. As for Mickey fans, I'm a bit sorry about that, but not a Mickey fan.
A true highlight was meeting my Japanese teacher, Saya, in person after 3 years of online lessons. Meeting her in 3D was wonderfully weird. Surprisingly, she wasn't as tall as I imagined from our video calls. Saya joined us at a maid cafe in Akihabara, a lifesaver as I only understood about 30% of the Japanese. Using English would have felt very unauthentic, so her explanations when I was really confused were super helpful.
The vibe in the maid cafe was so positive. After everything with the layoff, being in a place with such positive energy, order, and kindness was exactly what I needed. Every maid was smiling, and people, you know, you could just feel everyone there had a smile on their face. Except the people waiting outside and lining to get into the maid cafe, but I'll ignore that as that's technically outside of the maid cafe. Once you get in, they will ring a bell and every maid will greet you together. お帰りなさいませ、ご主人様、お嬢様！
I got a Cheki (チェキ), which is a photo, with a maid who had Mimitchi (みみっち) from Tamagotchi (たまごっち). I'm just so into Tamagotchi these days. The walls were pink with photos of other maids. To get service, you will ring a bell, it's super loud, and a maid would instantly appear. They have really great ears. And don't worry, nobody really is caring that you rang a bell or anything. The best part was when my drink came. We had to yell out all the spells to make it tasty. So it's like, huri huri, shaka shaka, and so on. They keep the flavor of the drink as a secret, and my Japanese teacher, Saya, guessed it was orange, and she was completely right. The maid cafe was surprisingly family-friendly with a great vibe, and about half of the visitors were female, and a lot are tourists, actually, so it's debunking the otaku-only myth. It truly felt like an experience you can only get in Japan, because they pay attention to every single detail.
Next, a day tour to Mount Fuji, which 100% deserves its own emoji. You know there is an emoji for Mount Fuji, right? We were super lucky, the weather was perfect, and Mount Fuji was 100% visible. So it's just like a kid's drawing with a triangle and snow on the top of the mountain. But perhaps we were too lucky. So while setting up our selfie tripod at the famous Lawson spot, because I'm too shy to ask others for photos, boom. Our Pixel phone smashed screen first onto the road. The screen cracked into a million pieces and went all white. You can barely see anything except the very teeny tiny top of the status bar. But we came prepared, we had a backup phone. So we were able to transfer all the data over to the backup phone and continue our journey in Japan.
We also visited the Google office. Google makes their office so beautiful that I always treat it as a tourist spot when I visit another country. The food, I wouldn't say it's amazing, but the scenery was over the top. You can see the Tokyo city below you.
Last but not least, we went to a wagashi place to have dessert inside the Tokyo station. Fun fact, Tokyo station looks remarkably like the president's office in Taiwan. I would say about 80% similar with its red and white bricks. So if you're not in Tokyo and want to see the Tokyo station, just look at our president's office.
So I've been talking about all the good things in Japan. Now the challenging part. Tokyo's rush hour subway. You are literally lying on other people. Meanwhile, I didn't get the infamous pusher experience. I was still squashed and it was incredibly hot. I don't know how the Japanese people can still wear suits in that situation. There, I said it. That was the worst part of the trip. It is the one thing that is so chaotic compared to everything, how it's so precisely ordered and pretty everywhere in Tokyo.
Reflecting, Japan is the one country I visited where I really want to stay longer. Their attention to detail is incredible from desserts to service to clean streets. You know, even without trash cans, it's clean. You can always expect quality out of everything and no surprises in a bad way. Also, because I'm learning Japanese, I feel that staying there longer would really help me learn more about the language and culture and perhaps even see some of the ugly sides of Japan beyond just the crowded Tokyo.Subway. So hopefully after listening to this, you all want to go to Japan as well. I definitely want to go again. And this is me, week 7 after the layoff, signing off.