[chapter 4]

I am a very lucky lady for so many reasons. What I thank most of my lucky stars for (and my life quite literally) is my awesome parents. This last month they came to Korea to visit me for 3 weeks! The best part was they had the open-mindedness and adventurous spirit to ride bikes all over Kyoto, Japan for a week, explore Seoul and even rent a car by themselves in Southern Korea! I can only hope that I'll be half as cool as them when I'm, well....older.

Highlight reel includes...

• Kicking their butts the first day. Haha, well I think that we'll all laugh about it someday. I had the brilliant idea to take my parents on a hike up a fortress near Seoul on their first day (jetlagged and all). Long story short: we got lost more than once, saw some great views and my mom basically couldn't walk further than a mile at a time the rest of the trip because it messed her feet up so bad. I've had better ideas. 
• Our bike escapades. I was ecstatic to find that both my parents were absolute badass city bikers. I found myself following them on wild rides through narrow Asian alley ways, in between rows of traffic, carving, dodging, weaving through people, trash cans, small and large animals, other bikers and even joining pelatons of Japanese school girls on bikes. We formed our own biker lingo "T-up to the curb dude!" and found ourselves constantly proclaiming our love for bikes: "You would NEVER see this if you weren't on a BIKE!" And, of course... crashed. 
• Them getting to know my life and all it's little pleasures, flavors, people, faces, sounds and idiosyncrasies. Realizing how food is so different here, the logistics of carrying home groceries when all you have is a backpack and a bike, the sounds of the preschool next to my apartment that surrounds my apartment throughout the day, the trash situation, the seeming non-existent level of crime, how nothing is what you think it is when you buy it, the ajummas. It goes on and on, but let's just say they learned a lot and it was great. 
• For me, one of my favorite memories was them getting to visit my kindergarten classroom. It was a half hour of preciousness. At first some of the girls were legitimately afraid of my dad because they're not used to seeing people that are 6' 3". Once they realized that he was not a scary tall monster, it was all hugs and dancing and laughing. I'm so happy that they got to get a slice of the love and contagiously bright energy I get to work with everyday. 

Ending note: Almost a week after they left Seoul, my dad's favorite team, the Giants, advanced to the World Series. So this next week, cheer for our favorite baseball team, I know Alison Teacher's class will be!

 Hiking a fortress outside of Seoul

 Our daily morning walks in Olympic Park

 On our way up Seoul Tower

 At a temple in Kyoto 

 The Golden Palace

 Turtle hoppin'

 Singing in the rain, in Japan.

 Olympic Park

[chapter 3]

Japandering.


Where to begin...

For starters, we stuck to one city in Japan: Kyoto, which I really liked because we ended up getting to know one city really well, rather than skimming the surface of a few different places.

Kyoto is very cool. Here are my top 6 favorite things/memories:

• Japan dances to the beat of it's own drum. Their electric and totally original sense of style, the anime thing, the geisha thing, the food thing...the whole package: they've got it goin' on. 
• The temples were spectacular with their awesome ancient energy and architecture. Plus, I got to do some real quality Buddha nerding out (I think about 1/3 of my photo's I walked away with from Japan are of Buddhas). 
• The bicycle culture. We rented bikes for 2 days and had an absolute blast. We saw every type of person on every type of bicycle: older folks on their bikes from 1935, the cute 20-something Japanese girls in heels on their perfectly shined and sparkly beach cruiser bikes, the college hipsters, the moms with child seats mounted on both the front and back of the bike effortlessly hauling through crowds of people; we even found ourselves in a school girl pelaton at one point! Plus bike riding is officially the best way to explore a city, hands down.
• The bamboo forest. Words cannot describe, I will just post a picture.
• The family marts (aka convenience stores for non-Korean residents). I thought they were pretty righteous in Korea, but Japan takes it to a whole new level for sure, there's something for everyone. You've got the massive magazine corner (aka Japanese porn that the teenage school boys spend some quality after-school time in), the "practical" section full of all needs ranging from disposable underwear to men's hair gel, the amazing ice cream section that has my most favorite green tea ice cream waffle snacks that I'm currently having withdrawals from, the lunch section with everything from fresh salads to inari to barbecued everything, and the copious amounts of snacks and treats. The first time we went to one we ended up spending a half hour just looking and laughing at all the bizarre things we found. Good times.
• The entire city of Kyoto hasn't been updated since the 70's. Yep. That means all the stop lights, signs, subway system, architecture (urban, not temples), and even taxi's are from 30-40 years ago. The amazing thing is that they do such a good job of keeping things clean and working that the stuff nearly looked brand new.

If your feeling inspired to travel to Japan, you should be fully aware of these three things:

1. It is really, really, really expensive. No like really. A lot. Maybe too much. This is where I say Japan is the France of Asia, but I think it might actually be even more expensive than that. You don't get a break either: everything costs so much money. Let's just say that one night we got one pizza, a small salad and 3 beers (granite it was a nice restaurant and good food) and the bill was $80. I cried.
2. You cannot fly by the seat of your pants. Japan does not like it when you just show up like "Oh hey there, I'm super cool traveler dude". Nope, that 'ish don't fly in Japan. When you land on their soil, you cannot leave the airport until you give customs an address of where you're staying (which means you need to reserve a hotel or hostel in advance, unless of course you're staying with a friend). 
3. They couldn't really care less about speaking English. Or making things remotely easy for English speakers. It's not like a lot of places where there's some desire or need to speak English, they just kind of do their own thing. So be prepared for not being able to communicate with a lot of people and not knowing what most signs say.

Here's a link to our Ryokan (Japanese style hotel where you sleep on the floor, very simple and less expensive than your typical hotel room in Japan) www.kyoto-ohto.com

The place we rented our awesome bicycles from was called "Rent-a-cycle" just 6 minutes away from Kyoto Station. Highly recommend this place, the guy was awesome and our bikes worked super well.

Alright, picture time!

 Kyoto

 A temple fit for a Giant  :)

 Everyone rides scooters.

Japanese gardens.

 Scariest Buddha

Family photo at Japan's version of the Yuba River.

 Geishas are surprising hard to find and capture. We finally caught one towards the end of the trip!

Mom slayin' it on the bike through the bamboo forest

Shortly after the bamboo forest...let's just say she brought the Cindy Martin to Japan.

Meet Gnome-y. He is my most trustworthy and pint sized travel partner. I had lots of photo ops in Japan. I realize I'm the only that's really obsessed with him, so I'll limit the number of photos I post of him, but don't worry, his appearance will be made again.

Gnome-y with the very friendly/adorable cafe owners.