Since I don't write regularly diary-like about what I've been up to in each day, here's a compilation of some of the highlights of my free time activities so far. There's surprisingly much to do without having to travel too far, and since I've adopted the "I have plenty of time for sleep in Finland" -mentality, I tend to say yes to everything and hardly have any time to feel bored. :D
Higashiyama zoo
Not too far from where I live, there's this really old and quite small zoo that offers amusement for the full day. I saw some animals which I'd never seen before (rhinos are HUGE!), but I don't really enjoy watching animals in their tiny cages so I had a bit conflicted feelings while there. On the other hand, the zoo offers some really good foods and they had a paddle boat pond which was definitely the most amusing part of the attraction. The tickets were really reasonable too!
My classmate and fellow exchange student Elisa has a vlog and she made this really cool video about our visit to the zoo. It also features some of the paddle boat madness! You can find more of her videos in youtube by her channel name "Elisa no Shashin" ;>
Nagoya City Science Museum
I had my friend Maasa visit me the last weekend and we paid a visit to the Science Museum in Sakae. (We'd tried to go there with Elisa during the Golden Week, but that proved to be a bad idea when we saw the line that reached to the street... Popular attracions are even more popular during the Golden Week so it's best to just lock yourself indoors at that time.) This museum sports the biggest planetarium in the world! And the planetarium sports the most suitable environment for dozing off... cozy armchairs, dim lightning, the soothing voice of the soryteller... Yup, had a really nice nap under the starry skies. Apart from the planetarium, the museum has a crazy lot of stuff to see and do. From molecule models to dinosaur skeleton replicas and wonky mirrors, they've got it all. I didn't probably get the most out of it though, since everything was in Japanese. Still well worth the money (only 500 yens with a student card!).
Sweets Paradise cake buffet
Sakae is such a cool place, they've got everything there! The Oasis 21, science museum, Osu Kannon shopping sreet... and the Sweets Paradise! This cake buffet cost ~1700 yen per person, and included were - alongside with the obvious cakes - ice cream buffet, a few main dishes (pasta, soups, karee), soft drinks and coffees and popcorn. :D For a cake lover such as me, it is a perfect place to visit on a lazy Saturday. And then you can conveniently spend the following Sunday asking yourself the important questions, such as "what have I become" and "if I write this blog post while standing, does it burn more calories". Oh, happy times.
Purikura and game center
At game centers, there are these photo booths that automatically photoshop your photos to something... creepy. The place we went to even offered free cosplays to wear at the photo, so of course we had to try them! Spoiler: our eyes are not that big in real life.
There's a lot of different games too: those basic "grab a thing with the claw" -money eaters from which I never win, shooting and slot games and many different kinds of two-player games such as the drum game in the video and Dance Dance Revolution. I've got no sense of rythm so I never win in any musical games ;'( The drum game was funny though. Video by Elisa, TinyPic fucked the quality up. :)
Onsen
Since there's a lot of volcanoes in Japan, there's naturally many hot springs too, called "onsen". Honestly though, the one I went to didn't have any natural hot spring pools, so I'm not all that convinced the water was actually from a hot spring. Anyways, I went to one nearby and didn't expect much since I was told it's "cheap since it's JUST a local onsen", but holy shit that place was amazing. The place looked like an expensive hotel and had multiple pools, both in- and outdoors, and two saunas. The water was much warmer than that of a swimming hall, so you could comfortably just spend hours in the water and feel all your worries and tensions float away... And if staring at the stars doesn't tickle your pickles, they had big TV-screens by the biggest outside pool and in the Finnish style sauna (not really anything like a Finnish sauna, it's a scam!). At onsens there's two separated sides, one for the men and another for the women since the bathing would be done naked, so got no photos for proof. But here's a photo of the soft ice we ate after the bathing; it's customary to drink milk after, but we figured an icecream is close enough. (◍•ᴗ•◍)♡ ✧*。
One of my other favorite past-time hobbies is of course ~*shopping*~, but that deserves an own post. Mata ne ^_^)/
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Marc (Wednesday, 04 October 2017 17:00)
i love the Onsen, hope that someday i can visit one of Onsen in Japan :)