blootypirate

I've not only been to Japan, but I currently live here. Living here and visiting here are two completely separate things, and honestly, I wish I had gotten the chance to just come here on vacation before coming to live here. There's so many things to do here, but unless you're coming as a tourist, you never really can make yourself go do stuff. You always say "Oh, I can do it another time" but that's lead me to so many missed opportunities. But, on the flip side, you have all the time in the world to go do those things. You don't have to save up a fuckton of money so that you can go do everything at once. Your trips can be sporadic and on your own schedule so that you don't spend too much money and time at once. Other than that, just the experience of Japan is amazing. There's so many beautiful places, not even in tourist hot-spots. Just the park outside the East gate of the base I live on has this beautiful rose garden that my mother and I like to go to whenever the flowers are in bloom. And a lot of the people here are so nice and friendly. My fiance and I bought Yukatas from this nice lady and her husband that run a kimono shop that the lady's parents started, and they were some of the nicest people I've ever met, and they made me the most beautiful yukata I've ever seen. And when I was 17, my mom, visiting friend and I went to a Obon festival in Yamato, and whenever the parade was going by, we offered one of our foldable chairs to an old Japanese lady, and the couple that was sitting in front of us (didn't even know the old lady) turned around and started talking to us, offering us snacks, and the guy even got up and went to the store, and when he came back, he had bought a small tatami mat for me to sit on so that I wouldn't be sitting on concrete, because I gave the old woman my chair. Japan is just an experience that you need to have. It doesn't matter if you go into the heart of Tokyo or if you stay in the suburbs of a smaller city, everywhere you go you meet such nice people and see how gorgeous this land really is.