Niijima Love

A good friend of us currently moved to an island south to Tokyo and nicely invited us to visit her.
The island is just beautiful and very calm, so I think it's perfect for relaxing.

We used an over-night ship to go to the island, which stopped at several big islands in that area. We were lucky, because we were the only ones in our shared room ＼(*T▽T*)／ But still we couldn't get any sleep, because the ship was full of drunk Japanese teenagers, who kept SHOUTING... I don't know why drunk Japanese always shout like hell lol  (*≧▽≦) But whatever...

such a big room only for us (☆^ー^☆)

romantic view teehee

Tokyo Tower

we are so pretty hoho

Juli und Maren - Ihr seid in Gedanken immer bei mir xD

Isn't it beautiful?

They have a very modern and nice local museum.

Nice, right? Just the toilets haha  d=(´▽｀)=b

coolest hairstyle in Japan!

 

The beaches were so empty, it's really nice to enjoy the landscape like that ^__^
There were only some surfers and really cute volunteer life guards on every beach. Most of them were from Tokyo and just enjoying the island like us.

We found this cute souvenir-shop in the evening ^-^

And last, but not least I'll explain the Japanese flag to you:

I never saw the sun red like that!

Baibai <3

You asked for it - FOOD!

Pretty much only the meals we ate at restaurants - I didn't take many pictures of food we bought on the street or at konbini...


Shabu-shabu

modern noodle-restaurant

 

seafood and local vegetables

Tempura

Chinese

Ψ(｀▽´)Ψ
Which one looks the best for you?

Baibai <3

Japanese weddings

Never say 'I'll blog about it tomorrow' and then don't.
I'm sorry xD

The days here were quite full and the only internet access I had was an internet cafe. But of course I couldn't use my own laptop there and I didn't have time to prepare pictures at home blahblah... ヽ(´～｀；）
From tomorrow on I will have internet the whole time, so probably it will be easier and more convenient to blog ((・▽・))

To be honest I find it not very interesting to read blog entries like 'my first day in tokyo', 'day 7 in shanghai', where people just list everything they did... so if I can I will categorize my posts more topic-related or at least write about 'special' moments ;)

This time in Japan we were really lucky, because we witnessed two weddings in big, popular shrines by chance. The first one was at Meiji-shrine in Tokyo and the second one at Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gu in Kamakura. We went there with a Japanese friend and it was also his first time to see a wedding at a place like this.

Unfortunately the pictures I took have a pretty bad quality, because I had to hurry.

bride and groom are walking under the umbrella

the couple, priests and miko (I like the mikos' garments so much  (●´□`)♡)

The couple was happily laughing all the time and even showing v sign for the photographers - and there were a lot. At first a man ran in the middle of the shrine and shouted 'Out of the way! A wedding procession!' and everyone gathered at the side and took photos and waved at the bridal couple. Actually I would have imagined a traditional wedding like this to be serious and strict, but the atmosphere was so positive and happy - it was beautiful (ღ˘⌣˘ღ)

In Kamakura we didn't see the procession, but the ceremony itself, which was nice too.

inside of the building you can see persons standing because of the ceremony

the music was wonderful!

At the right you can see the priests and miko leaving and on the left you can see bride and groom. This time the bride wasn't wearing the headpiece, she had a beautiful and decorated updo instead. A Japanese friend told me once the big headpiece is for hiding the woman's devilish horns  (*≧▽≦)

The couple had a lot of (professional) photographers hired, but they couldn't take any good pictures, because there was a big group of little children, who jumped in every photo. The bride was smiling desperately all the time, but the photographers got really angry. The couple's relatives looked really unhappy too. When we went back to the entrance we saw there was already a new couple coming! I would like to know if they managed to take a good picture and leave before the new couple arrived...
ヽ(ﾟДﾟ)ﾉ

Baibai <3

31 hours

Wow... actually this is the first time I have 'real' internet access... that's why it took so long to post something.
The last days were amazing, but also exhausting.

Actually we didn't sleep at all in the night before our departure - of course we weren't finished packing, always last-minute ヽ(；▽；)ノ. After we said goodbye to our families at the airport, our journey finally began!
BUT... our flight had two pretty inconvenient stops. The first one was in Frankfurt, were we had to wait for 10 hours. There was no good place to rest and no internet ٩(×̯×)۶

We were then awake for more than 24 hours and tired as hell, we brought nothing for entertainment (no space left in our luggage (*^^*)), so we just had to waaaait. Because our airline was a Chinese one, we were surrounded by Chinese people all the time and practiced our listening skills haha.
As we waited at some windows and watched the airplanes departing and arriving, a little Chinese boy stood next to us and sang Chinese songs the whole time! It was really cute and actually he was pretty good! Maybe a next generation Idol? haha

this wasn't our plane though

add some drama

Our airline was okay, though all the movies were in Chinese with Chinese subtitles and the stewardesses' English was... well, actually I didn't understand them at all ＼（Ｔ∇Ｔ）／. But I ordered chá 茶 tea and kāfēi 咖啡 coffee in Chinese! Haha I'm so proud!

choosing between western and Chinese!

We had to check out and check in again ヽ(ｏ`皿′ｏ)ﾉ, because they couldn't transfer our luggage to Tokyo automatically.
Of course we had no visa for mainland China, so the very fierce looking officers took us aside and checked our passports very thoroughly. It was just like you would imagine Chinese stereotype-officers ;)! But when the officer saw my Taiwan resident visa, he was suddenly super-friendly!
Smiling at me, he asked: 你会说中文吗? (Can you speak Chinese?)
I was really surprised and just said: 不会... (I can't...)
The officer happily replied: 你说得很好! (Your Chinese is very good!)
What a nice moment haha! ＾∇＾ So my Chinese is already good enough and I don't have to study too hard rofl

Shanghai airport

Because of a Typhoon our plane started very late and we arrived in Narita about 2 hours too late. Unfortunately the last train and bus for Tokyo were already gone, but we were able to stay in a hotel in Narita for one night.

All in all our flight plus waiting took 31 hours. Actually I can still feel the jetlag  (⌒_⌒;)
But the next days were just amazing, I will blog about it tomorrow!

Baibai <3