Welcome to my travel post about Days 10 and 11 of my Japan & Korea 2017 trip! I’m sorry it’s been so long since I’ve posted one of these! I was a little too busy with reading, blogging about books, and dealing with some tough real life stuff, and sadly these travel posts were put on the back burner. Plus, there’s also the fact that thinking about, and talking about, this trip makes a me a little sad because I miss Japan and Korea a lot … like all the time. Do you feel that way about a particular place or places in the world?

Day 10 was a fairly sad day, because my parents had to pack up and head to the airport in order to fly back to Canada, and we had to leave our lovely little Airbnb apartment. We got very attached to this temporary home, and had really settled in! I wish that we had apartments like this in Canada. I included a GIF with a little tour on the right. As you can see, it wasn’t a very big place, but that’s fairly common for Tokyo, and we were still quite comfortable. It was cozy, really, and we really really enjoyed sleeping on futons on the tatami floors! I was able to experience tatami floors on my first trip to Japan in 2014, and I had hoped that we could find a place with tatami so that my parents could experience it as well, and things just fell into place!

As I mentioned, my parents had to go to the airport. So, I took the video on the right just after I had helped bring their luggage downstairs. Then I packed up all of my things, made sure we didn’t forget anything, and headed down the street to where my friends were living at the time, (at the Austrian embassy in Tokyo, which was a pretty cool place to stay in)! I spent the day reading and hanging out with my friends’ cat while they were at work. Then we spent the evening talking about our upcoming trip to Korea, went to an izakaya (a Japanese pub) for some beer and delicious snacks, then went back to my friends’ place to play Zelda on their (then) new Nintendo Switch late into the night.

We slept in and took it easy the next morning, then my good friend, her husband, and her husband’s brother (who was also visiting Japan at the time and would be joining us on our trip to Korea) went out for some Hawaiian waffles. I had never had them before, and they’re quite popular in Tokyo! Sadly, the place that my friend really wanted to take us to had a lineup out the door and onto the sidewalk, so we found another one nearby (Eggs’n’Things in Harajuku), and the food there was very very good too!

I always find it funny how I’ve tried foods from other countries while in Japan. When I went in 2014, I tried Swedish meatballs for the first time, haha. And this time around, Hawaiian pancakes! I (of course) got extra whipped cream on the side because I was on vacation! Along with some super yummy pancakes, my friend and I also got some eggs Benedict to share, because I absolutely love eating eggs Benedict for breakfast! Now that I think about it, though, I’d actually eat eggs Benedict for any meal of the day!

After finishing our food and chatting for a bit, we wandered around a little and did some light shopping. We also passed by a neat Disney store (pictured above), but were a bit too sleepy to go inside. We also had to get back to the apartment to get ready for a fancy dinner that my friends were hosting at a restaurant in Shibuya to celebrate their recent wedding (they got married not too long before I got to Japan that May). They moved to Thailand in late 2017, so this was one of the last times that they could celebrate with their friends in Japan, and I was very happy to have been around for it too!

I won’t go into very much detail, since this part is likely a bit boring for all of you, but the restaurant was a very nice one in Shibuya (one of my favourite parts of Tokyo), the food was fantastic, and I made a lot of new friends. When we finished dinner, we all went for some karaoke, and then, much later, stumbled to the train station to catch the last trains home. Stay tuned for Day 12, where I’ll tell you about our flight to South Korea, and the first day that we spent in another one of my favourite cities: Seoul!

ALL PHOTOS WERE TAKEN BY ME! PLEASE ASK ME FOR PERMISSION IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO USE THEM ANYWHERE. THANK YOU FOR READING THIS POST ABOUT MY JAPAN AND KOREA 2017 ADVENTURES! ALSO, PLEASE FEEL FREE TO SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS AND/OR SOME OF YOUR OWN EXPERIENCES IN JAPAN, ASIA, OR ANYWHERE ELSE IN THE WORLD, IN THE COMMENTS BELOW!