Mt Fuji and the best birthday ever :)

For my birthday, I went to Mt Fuji :)

It coincided with the flower festival

Jesus it was so beautiful. They planted so many flowers of all different colors. The flowers bloom at all times during the month as to ensure there would always be some in bloom even when others were withering

I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say visiting Japan is like a dream you never wanna wake up from. Seriously, in your best, wildest, most surreal dreams, do you ever imagine fields like these?

Best birthday present to me!

The view from the top of a ropeway

I don't know what the hell this was but it was om nom noms

For lunch, I went to the convenience store lol! I love convenience store food here! That's two different types of tuna sandwiches and apple juice....everything was so fresh! I hate sandwiches and apple juice normally but goddamn I could eat this everyday if they'd sell it.

Spaghetti dinner. I hate spaghetti, pasta, pizza...things with lots of cheese and carbs, but the Japanese knows how to cater to Asian tastebuds! It was justttttt the right amount of creaminess.

The next day, I had a truly spectacular experience with a whole day stay in a ryokan. A ryokan is a traditional japanese """"""""""""""""""""""""""""hotel"""""""""""""""""""""" (that's a lot of quotation marks because the word hotel is complete shit to describe this kind of place.) Have you ever watched Japanese movies where a fair maiden in a silk kimono pitter-patters her way through a rustic old house with wooden doors, tatami mats, and delicate paper covering the doors and windows while the snow is gently falling in the corridor? A ryokan is kind of like this. It's old, rustic, traditional, set in a gorgeous landscape, equipped with private natural onsens, and comes with maid service and very traditional japanese haute cuisine. If all of this sounds superb, it was all that, a bag of chips, a hot potato on the side, and will cost you about few hundred dollars (fml).

All the guests get to pick out a yukata to wear during their stay :) I wanted the green one but they didn't have my size so I got a pink one and a green bow

Ryokan camwhore pic!

Very happy men coming back from the hot springs

Equally beautiful at night

The onsen at this ryokan also did not allow cameras (which is a shame, because the onsen was the most beautiful part!), so here are some pics from the website of the hot springs complex in the middle of the ryokan:

Onsens at traditional ryokans are completely natural and bubble from the earth below. Some of these streams were boiling and steaming during the day!

It gets really hot and I could only stand it for about half an hour before I felt like I was going to be soup. Japanese men seem to just stay in there for hours on end though!

My favoritest part was neither the setting nor the onsen....it was the kaiseki (japanese haute cuisine) dinner!!! HOLY FUCKING FLYING SHIT SAUCE the meal was sooooooooo delicious!!!! My tongue has never felt more pampered.

This lady was the sweetest. She couldn't speak a lick of english and kept pointing from dish to dish telling me what I should dip and cook and roll....I couldn't understand a single word she was saying so I'm pretty damn sure I ate everything wrong. But who the hell cares, it was so good anyway!

Have you ever in your life seen beef this beautiful? In America, the best beef we have is kobe, which is already quite nice and japanese. In Japan, matsuzaka beef reigns supreme. These cows are fed all natural foods, pampered and brushed and massaged daily, drink WINE, treated totally presidential (until they get slaughtered anyways) so that the meat is marbled to perfection. The maid lady told me it's supposed to be eaten as shabu shabu (hot pot) but it was so beautiful I ate it raw when she left LOLOL. What a fucking barbarian right but I don't care.

This fish looked so silky and nice I asked her if I could just eat it raw too. She emphatically said no and didn't trust me after that so she stayed around to grill it for me lol.

MMMMMM sashimi. Damn it was so good! How is this raw? It tastes like butter.

The fish was perfectly salty and charred

GUESS WHAT THIS IS!!! It's bear!!!!!! Oh my lord, it was the most pungent thing I've ever eaten (and I've eaten a shit ton of pungent things like spoiled cabbage, fermented bean paste, embryos, penis, brains, stale squid, etc). It tasted LITERALLY like mother nature herself. Imagine blending together the pure extract from grass, rivers, mountains, freshwater fish, deer, etc etc and putting that into a piece of meat. It was sooooo gamey! I could not chew it because it refused to dissolve but I felt so bad for wasting it I just swallowed it whole lol.

So despite the wonderful stay at the ryokan, something did piss me off. There was one white American family there (trust me, I knew they were American from the Michigan college tshirts and Billabong shorts and thick mid-west accent). I heard them criticizing the food at breakfast (which was served in the common restaurant and not in our rooms), making disgusted faces right there while the maids were serving them. Japanese people like eating boiled eggs a bit red and runny, and these Americans kept making comments like, "Is that safe?" and laughing and turning their faces when the maids were preparing their food. They went on and on about how eating bear is so barbaric and that it totally ruins the whole experience and how can Japanese people be so cruel. Fuck people like this, seriously, fuck them so hard. I am annoyed frequently with how retarded and disrespectful tourists are in Southeast Asia, but since it's such a huge backpacking destination, it's gonna be a complete circus anyways. But the Japanese do not deserve any amount of ill treatment, especially at a centuries-old ryokan. If you do not like the food, don't fucking eat it. It states clearly on the website that bear soup will be served, because this is traditional food that has been eaten in the region for many many years. I understand that not everyone likes meat, but these bears are raised sustainably by people who have been doing it for god knows how long. I wish it didn't bother me so much, but I couldn't stop thinking about it when I left the ryokan. Why do people suck so much?!

The next day we went to a wisteria festival. I don't think I have to say much about this. The pictures can show you much better than I can.

Ice cream made from purple wisteria! MMMMMM

A whole walkway under white wisteria....can someone pinch me right now?

HE'S (she? it?) SO CUTE!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yellow wisteria tunnel

What a perfect day!

After going to a country like this, how could anyone ever wanna leave?