I'm back from Japan!

Hello my lovely patrons! :]

A little housekeeping first: I won't be charging you for March, because I didn't get any illustrations done. No creations, no charge. I'm sorry about the delay and the lack of content. But in the next paragraph, I'll explain why.

To be honest, I've been back since 12 March, but there were some things that I had to deal with before I could actually get back into the habit of working on a regular basis.
From 16 'till 18 March I was in the hospital to get some minor surgery done. I had scheduled it in advance and it all went well. But that kind of stuff still slows you down and messes up your plans. So I needed a few days to recover from it. Oddly enough though, the days I spent there just lying in bed felt like another mini-vacation and now I feel better than before (despite the fact that they put me in a 5-bed-room xD).

But let's talk about Japan! I put together a tiny collection of photos that I felt represented a lot of the things that I liked the most. Excuse the poor quality, but I only had my cell phone camera. We (my boyfriend and I - Hello! :D) stayed in Tokyo for a whole month and visited a bunch of places in the city and around it.

GHIBLI MUSEUM
One thing I definitely wanted to do was go the Ghibli museum in Mitaka. If you want to go, you need to buy the tickets in a Lawson convenient store at a machine that probably tells you that it's booked three weeks in advance. So we reserved our tickets for 1 March and went that day. It was awesome! As an artist, I felt like a kid in a candy store. In the exhibit, they show so much of the creative process - from gathering ideas/scrapbooking to character/environments designs and the actual animation. It was really cool to see how they painted every single frame on transparencies and how the scenes finally come together. My favourite things were probably the large reproductions of Kazuo Oga's background paintings, which I love most about Ghibli movies if I had to pick one aspect.  You also get to see an exclusive short film in a small cinema within the museum. No spoken words, so people from all over the world can understand it. Unfortunately, you're not allowed to take pictures inside, but at the same time it makes you look more closely and pay attention to your surroundings, instead of holding your cell phone up like a zombie. :D And outside, you can take as many photos as you like! The main attraction there is probably the robot from Castle in the Sky.

SHINJUKU, SHIBUYA, IKEBUKURO, AKIHABARA, ASAKUSA, ROPPINGI etc.
Tokyo is huge and busy! I've never seen that many people in one spot in my entire life. But you also have many places to go and a bunch of stuff you can do. We explored different wards/districts (?) in the city, looked at temples and shrines like good tourists do and ate a ton of food. What I especially loved were those tiny restaurants that you can find all over the city. Next to a massive neon sign there might be a small, traditional-looking ramen restaurant where only five people can sit and eat. We also played pachinko (so loud and weird!), took purikura pictures and went up the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building in Shinjuku to get a free panoramic view across the city. It looks much better at sunset/evening, when the grey concrete gets a splash of colour. The photo at the top/middle shows my jetlagged self at our first day in Tokyo.

KAMAKURA, KAWAGOE
Two destinations I can definitely recommend are Kamakura and Kawagoe, near Tokyo. If you want to escape the busy craziness of the city and want to see more calm, traditional places, these are great! In Kamakura, you can climb up to a Buddhist temple from which you can see the ocean. There is also a big Shinto shrine and it's just nice to walk around, try Japanese sweets and see a few girls in kimonos. And you can buy matcha soft ice on every corner. I took the photo in the bottom/middle in Kawagoe, at another Shinto shrine. People write their wishes and prayers on wooden panels and hang them in this "tunnel" among all the others. Walking through it was a very special and magical experience for me. :)

I probably could go on and on about it, but the post is already pretty long. So here are some final thoughts: I definitely want to go back at some point and see more of the rural areas and traditional Japanese culture. I've got a solid impression of the big city life and it was exciting and fun. But man, it was expensive! And the living spaces are so small! Once I got back home to my apartment, it appeared huge to me. Massive. And I'm thankful for all the space. So I probably wouldn't want to live in Tokyo, but a one-month vacation there was awesome. :)

Thanks so much for reading!
If you have any questions, feel free to ask. Or if any of you have been to Japan and want to share their experience, please go ahead!

Djamila