Take lots of pics in Hawaii please. Especially Kauai. Which hotel are you staying at?

I thought you didn't like Phuket? Do you dive? If so and you are on Koh Samui consider going to Koh Tao. Great for diving especially if full moon isn't close (coral spawn).

Yes, we really disliked Phuket, but every traveler we talk to raves about it, so we wanted to try it again. We are staying in a different area of Phuket, so hopefully that helps.

We don't dive, but do enjoy snorkeling. We are on Ko Samui for 2 weeks, so we will probably venture out on day trips (have to stay on the island at night as we are looking after pets at a house sit).

Enjoying the heat in Hawaii at the moment.

Is that house sitting for a friend, or something that you found through some kind of advertisement? And does it mean that you are staying there rent free?

And jealous of you being in hawaii, there is flooding here atm.

House sit found through advertising. It is rent free. If it wasn't for house sitting we would be well and truly out of money

Hah, nice. Any website or anything for it to recommend?
Also other than looking after pets, why do people generally want their house sat, they're worried it will fly away if they're not there?
But seriously, is it for like watering the plants and making sure they don't get burgled?

There are a bunch of websites that do it, but trustedhousesitters.com is the main one we use.

95% of house sits have pets. It's the main 'chore' at the house. Most people don't like putting their pets in kennels. General yard maintenance, pool (if they have one) maintenance and keeping the house clean are the other ones. Nothing too time consuming.

Some house sits are like full on farms and you have to look after sheep, cows etc. We don't apply for them as that's insane, but they are there.

Ahh Hawaii

did land creature's stomach bypass her mouth and just directly consume the other one?

post to sub. im jelly

Awesome thread.

I was able to read for 45 minutes at work and forget how ****ty my day is currently. Cant wait for more updates.

Tokyo

Sometimes while I’m traveling I can sort of forget I’m traveling. While I know that I’m not at home I’ll be in a place that has a lot of similarities to Australia. Places like America and England have a lot of similar things and it sort of gives you that feeling of home away from home. That doesn’t happen in Japan. I think it’s because I can’t read a ****ing thing here. It’s pretty awesome. Walking down the street and seeing Japanese writing everywhere makes me smile. You know you are out of your comfort zone. Going to a restaurant and pointing at something on a menu because the tiny picture looks ok is pretty fun. Finding out it’s something you never would have eaten otherwise and liking it is even better.

Yes, Tokyo has been fun. Having come from Hawaii I was happy to find a few less Japanese people here (if you been to Honolulu you will get that joke!) and have had a great time. The city is huge. 36 million people alone in Tokyo and a billion people in in all of Japan. To put that in perspective Japan has the land area of a little over a half the size of Texas. That’s a lot of people in a small area. But they make it work.

Firstly, and very importantly, the toilets here are awesome (picture below). You can do anything to your ass while sitting down. There’s a button for everything. They are all in Japanese, so I’m not sure what each one does, but that’s just details. There’s probably one for the ladies to get them pregnant. Would explain why there are a billion of them. Every toilet in Japan is like this, even the ones in Maccas (before you start with the “Why go all the way to Japan to only eat McDonalds” bull****, yes I had McDonalds – At 3am my stomach had disagreed with some Japanese food I had eaten the day before – big time – and it insisted I eat something that was familiar for lunch before it completely gave up).



Maybe I’m late to the party but they have the coolest slot game ever here. Vegas (and the rest of the world) have the spinning wheel, get 3 in a row, win 5 credits thing. Pretty boring. Japan doesn’t do boring. I walked into one of these slot machine casino places and I had no idea what was going on. Basically it’s a game where a heap of ball bearings dropping from the top, bouncing around on a bunch of pins until they reached the bottom. The guy using the machine was either doing exactly nothing, or was smashing several buttons at the same time. In the middle was a TV screen where a cartoon girl was screaming / cars were racing / lights were flashing etc.

Yes, it really was quite confusing. I had absolutely no idea if the person was winning or losing. Of course I wanted to put money in and give it a go! So I put 1000 yen in and played. Well I think I did, all the instructions where in Japanese, so who knows. I pressed a bunch of buttons, it did something, ball bearings dropped, the screen flashed and I think I lost that money. Maybe the guy that used the machine after me found it had 990 yen credit for all I know. Here’s some pictures.







While here I experienced a Japanese tea. The tea tasted horrible and kneeling made me feel like I was 100 years old as I couldn’t walk afterwards. Pretty cool experience though.



Ok, because I’ve been here for several days I will confirm and deny all those stereotypes for you (I have kept it really tame, but if a mod finds anything wrong with what I write, please delete it)…

They are polite


They like their comics/manga


Japanese girls have a thing for Westerners


Temples are everywhere


Ninjas are everywhere


Samurais are everywhere


Hello Kitty is everywhere


And just for fun, here’s a picture of a giant sperm I found. In before someone who knows far more about Japan than me tells me how wrong I am.

{x} sick Life
[x] im jelly

I've been enjoying this TR immensely. I travel to Tokyo for work every 2 years and always love the hot coffee in a can out of the vending machines. We don't have that in Murica, probably because some idiot would burn himself breaking into the machine and sue.

Regarding the pachinko game: on one trip I asked a reggish-looking old man for help and he came over and twisted a knob 30 degrees and brought down an insta pachinko ball rain. Of course I ended up messing with it again and lost that money.

It's 127 million. Nice trip report though, Japan must be awesome.

It's actually a baby whale the Japanese have tortured and mummified. Purely for science of cause.

I stand corrected.

I'd always like to think I have a pretty nice life. Then I read this thread. ****.

What a boss you are fid. Carry on sir.

Are you just in Tokyo? I went to Japan around six years ago. I stayed with my brother in Odawara for a couple of weeks, which was pretty quiet, and around an hour and a half away from Tokyo, but we went to Tokyo a couple of times. I learned some Japanese as well (which I still remember a bit of). Luckily for me, when I went my brother was basically fluent in Japanese and with me almost all the time, I can imagine it would have been extra crazy there otherwise. But sounds like you're having fun and just trying random things which is cool.
Seems like my experience was kind of different to yours, although some parts of it the same/similar. Had some tea on my knees, which you are right, it does kill your knees and back (even at 18). Didn't get loads of people bowing to me. Yeah they loved their arcade games, and some were amazing at them. And their fireworks were amazing, they are on another level. Highly recommended if you can.
And yes they are obviously almost all very polite/ friendly. One of my favorite things was that there is a popular bicycle make called "Nice Friend" .

And yeah I was also going to post what Sheep said, assumed you were thinking of China. And did not know that you're actually from Australia, I always thought US/Can.

Also, about you having seen 0 ninjas. Well, obviously. Otherwise they wouldn't be very good ninjas now would they?

Also speaking of ninjas, I highly recommend that you go to a special/expensive restaurant called Ninja. It's really badass and is in the dark.

Good point about the Ninjas. Maybe I actually saw a heap of them, but am none the wiser.

A couple of other ramblings about Japan I missed in my post...

It is super orderly here. Everything seems to run immaculately well and always on time. I mean they have queues to get on the subway, not just let's all get on at once attitude.

There are no bins anywhere, yet it is always so tidy. No idea how that works.

I offered the bell boy a tip for bringing up our bags to the room and he refused it. What's up with that?

We couldn't find teriyaki chicken anywhere. What's up with that?

Everything imaginable is on a menu. One of my meals involved me eating a leaf. Any meat seems to be a 50 / 50 on whether it is cooked or not. My stomach doesn't always agree with it.

Their idea of wearing a mask when sick is brilliant. What an amazing way of not transferring any illness on to random people. It should, but will never catch on (cwidt) in the Western world, because we are too cool for that. Also a fantastic way for a girl to just pretend she is sick and cover her face if she had a pimple.

Yes the billion people thing, I was thinking of China. I remember learning China had a billion people many years ago, but I was talking to a local and she said they had a billion people here, so I assumed my memory sucked and it was actually Japan and not China with a billion people. Hence I wrote it here. It was obviously wrong, and looking back I remember she did struggle saying the word 'billion'. I assumed it was because she wouldn't have said the word to many times in her life, but it was probably her stuffing up 100 million and a billion. I should do some more fact checking before I publish a post... nah I can't see that happening.

Leaving Japan tomorrow to go to the Philippines for a short stint.

Really? For both of these. In some places staff just aren't allowed to accept tips, particularly posh ones. Really thought you would have seen that before, with you being all well-travelled like.
What the **** restaurants/food places are you going to? Not this at all for me.
Although saying that, in "Ninja", I'm pretty sure that I had pork with squid ink, which was crazy, but good.
Yeah it's simple yet clever and efficient, which pretty much sums up Japan actually. My sister-in-law still wears it when she comes to visit us here and is ill.
This seems like a poor choice.
Also see the rest of my previous post you slut.

I did see the rest of your post, not really sure what you wanted me to comment on

Currently in Cuba. Only got here at dark, so have yet to see anything yet...

Visited Japan a lot a few years back since my gf was studying abroad there. I remember after a particularly long trip (1-2 months), we found an actual american restaurant where they served a genuine greasy American hamburger and tons of buttery items.

Had fresh lobster sashimi from the ocean, kobe/wagyu beef, ate fresh street market ramen, but damn that burger was the best meal we had. The food was very very good in the beginning, but the fresh and light nature of it really makes you crave for some greasy ass ****.

Umm actually Cebu