My trip to NipponBashi

Yesterday Rose ( another American student who attends my Japanese High school) decided to venture out into Osaka on our own. Even though Rose has only been in Japan for three months she can get around pretty much on her own. Unlike myself who needs to be walked to the school in order to find her way home.

NipponBashi was so huge! I'm glad I had rose with me. Even though we didn't "get lost" we did a lot of extra walking to find a store. A store.. ha! We all know i was looking for the anime store. I didn't take any videos in the anime store Rose showed me for many reasons. One being that a good portion  of the first floor was nothing but hentai and body pillows with explicit content on them. So there's no video of the shop, but i can do my best to tell you what was in the "pg" part of the store.

So on the first floor there was obviously the "adult" area, but the second floor was absolutely heaven for me. It was anime key-chains, posters, random accessories for days!! There was even a cosplay section. It was just so perfect, i didnt want to leave! 

Without even realizing it we spent over 2 hours exploring the store. After forcing ourselves to leave the amazing anime store we went to look for lunch. Since we're both living in Japan you would think we would eat some traditional food right? Wrong.  We ate pancakes and had french vanilla lattes.

After lunch we had to head home because it was already 15:00 ( 3 O'clock PM) and she had to be home by 17:00 ( 5 O'clock PM) . We didn't leave before the nerd ( Me) seen Iron man and had a mini fan girl attack. So of course I made Rose pose with him. 

After searching for the train station , and Rose asking for directions ( In Japanese!) we finally found it an hour after we started searching. We walked past it twice. Unlike on the way to NipponBashi we didn't have to take the Subway to get home. Just two trains. 

Yesterday was the first time I've walked home alone from momodoni station. It was a lot easier than i thought it would be. I think i'm finally getting used to being in Japan. It's to bad I only have three weeks left!

Fushimi Inari-taisha 2016

                 Yesterday my wonderful host mother decided to take me out to explore Japan! We went to a few places, but the most memorable was Fushimi Inari-taisha, the fox shrine. As some of you may know i'm a huge dork when it comes to foxes, so of course the nerd in me came out when we went to the fox shrine! I took pictures with almost everything there. Thankfully I wasn't the only foreigner who did so. 

Unfortunately we didn't make it all the way to the top. It was WAY to hot and as you can see i was wearing long sleeves! We did climb for at least an hour though, maybe because i stopped to take some pictures, but we did make it a good way up. I'll post a video on my Youtube for everyone to see eventually!

On the way up we seen so many cute shops, gosh i wish i had brought more money! No,.. I don't, i would have spent it all. 

^ Kitty-Chan!!

While we were at the shrine we did the typical Japanese things. We prayed, got paper fortunes, prayed again, and wrote down wishes on white fox cut out and hung them up. Although I didn't, many people made a wish on a special stone at the shrine. 

How the stone works:

First you toss some Yen ( Japanese Currency) into a hole in the concrete around the stone. Next you clap your hands and make a wish. After you make your wish you lift the stone off its holder. If the stone is light, your wish will come true. If it's heavy, well your out of luck. 

While at the shrine we seen many, many candles burning in certain areas. It was so beautiful!  I love the natural light candles create. Even though we didn't make it all the way to the top I seen so much. I hope that someday everyone who reads this will be able to see how beautiful this place is in person.

Peace-

Strawberry