Day 14 & 15: The worst moving day and tropical rainy days

Day 14- September 4, 2023

Hello everyone :)

After what I already indicated yesterday, we had another small move ahead of us today. This time we were going to the city of Kanazawa, which is located on the middle island of Japan.

We woke up around 9:00 a.m. and soon discovered a great horror. We weren't doing well at all!

Yesterday evening quickly came back to us, along with the thought “oh man.. are we stupid.”

Yesterday we had a fun evening drinking several 0.5L cans of 9% while walking through the city. We got the punishment today...

While lying down I (Jule) thought that I was actually feeling quite well and I didn't understand why Moritz wasn't feeling well at all last night. When I got up, it turned out that wasn't the case. I immediately felt dizzy and also nauseous. Moritz seemed to feel the same way. But he seemed to have been suffering a little longer than me.

The only big problem we had was that check-out was in about an hour and we still hadn't started packing. Because last night it didn't even occur to us and we just fell into bed. Our room looked like a huge mess and we felt like we had our most difficult task in life ahead of us: packing our bags and tidying up.

Now we had our big dilemma: sweating and panting, we packed our bags, only to sit in the lobby for 2 hours because we still had to wait for the train. Moritz looked white as a sheet.

That was a very bad time.

We felt nauseous, dizzy and just plain uncomfortable. We also had to pull ourselves together because, as I said, we were in a hotel lobby.

Moritz organized a hangover breakfast for both of us: a banana for each, a packet of juice, an onigiri, a bar and a special drink that exists in Japan that is supposed to help with the hangover. Let's see what will be…

With difficulty we squeezed into something and thought we were feeling better.

At around 12:00 we set off and went from the cool lobby onto the hot, sunny street. This could be something now, I just thought to myself.

When we arrived at the train station, we immediately found the platform and got on the first train. The first 20 minutes went quite well, but then suddenly I felt very bad again. I felt hot, dizzy, nauseous and so uncomfortable. The thought of being stuck on this train for another 2 1/2 hours didn't give me any good feelings either.

It was really a very very very terrible trip and I hate both of us very much for our stupid action the day before, believe me.

Fortunately, at least Moritz was feeling a little better.

I then managed to doze off a bit, which was my salvation. I spent a good 70 minutes like that and we soon arrived at the next train station to change trains.

When we arrived at the train station, we found out that we still had to wait about 50 minutes for the next train. That was a bad thought for me because I just wanted to get there quickly. When we couldn't find our track either and I was feeling very, very bad again in the meantime, the mood wasn't so good 10 minutes before departure.

I went to ask the train staff about the track, which turned out to be helpful.

So we rushed to platform four, where our last train left, where we had to spend another 2 hours. I felt much better during this time, all the stress from before made me completely forget that I wasn't actually feeling well.

The 2 hours went by quickly, especially with the beautiful view. When we finally arrived in Kanazawa we only had to walk 4 minutes to our hotel.

After the hotelier almost couldn't find our booking, we finally got to the room.

Totally exhausted and exhausted, we freshened up and relaxed a bit. We were both feeling much better! I was really so happy that I didn't have to suffer like I did this morning. Only when one of us accidentally thought about the drink the night before did we immediately feel sick again (two days later nothing has changed...).

In the evening we went out again to visit a local restaurant, where we had two very tasty bowls of ramen for dinner. The service here was again very friendly.

We were just so happy that we were feeling much better, especially after the hearty bowl of ramen, which had a slight hint of lemon.

Too much shouldn't happen anymore, because what happened was more than enough for us! If you think I'm exaggerating how bad things were for us, you're wrong. I'm almost understating things and have left out the unpleasant details.

We've sworn off alcohol for the time being and the drink we drank the night before will probably never come into our hands again.

Tomorrow it should really start again with some action and culture.

Let's see if everything works out the way we imagined.

Day 15 - September 5, 2023

The fifteenth day of our Japan tour and the first real day in Kanazawa began with us not picking up breakfast at the convenience store. Instead, we took advantage of our hotel's breakfast offering. This was in the style of a Japanese buffet, with all sorts of local delicacies from Ishikawa Prefecture. There was lots of fish, soups, eggs, yogurt, bread and of course rice. For me (Moritz) the price was definitely worth it, but unfortunately for Julchen the whole thing was different.

After we left breakfast more or less well fortified, the activities of the day began. First of all, we took a completely overcrowded bus to a district commonly referred to as “Little Kyoto”. When we got there we immediately noticed where the name could come from. The district seemed as if time had stood still there, which means that there were many older houses and streets waiting for us. Unfortunately it was raining a bit at this point, which wasn't a problem at first since we had umbrellas with us. After strolling for a while, I realized the real problem with this weather. The catch with the rain that day was that it didn't actually cool the air down, it just helped increase the humidity. Anyone who has ever been to Gondwanaland in the Leipzig Zoo may know that the temperatures there are more of a secondary problem, but the humidity can make you melt. We originally wanted to walk to our next destination, but changed our mind along the way and took the bus.

Our next destination was the Kanazawa Museum of Contemporary Art. After queuing for a while, we got tickets that even had a student discount. So the tour began. The first two exhibits left me quite skeptical and unimpressed. The second was just an oval on a sloping wall. The pieces that followed picked me up more or simply made me laugh. My highlight was definitely a machine made from illegal firearms from Mexican cartels that played a song every 15 minutes. I was also definitely refreshed by various paintings, sculptures and a huge, inflatable emoji (this one 😂). Unfortunately, at the end of the exhibition, Julchen discovered that one of her bag tags, which she had recently won from a crane machine, was lost.

A little dejected, we went from the museum to a very well-known park, Kenroku-en. There's probably not too much to say about this. We walked through the park for a while and listened to the chirping of the cicadas. This time we even got to see a live one. When we got enough of the park's greenery, we moved on to get some food at the nearest convenience store. We wanted to eat the same food outside in front of the shop. So we sat down and started. As I held my bun, slightly inattentive, I saw what I thought at that moment was a jacket that passed me with full force and tore my bun to shreds. At first I thought someone had thrown something at us, but it definitely couldn't have happened that quickly. After another moment I realized that a rather large hawk was probably jealous of my sandwich and wanted to steal it from me. We then quickly sat down and watched the falcon circling around the scene while I mourned after my sandwich. The loser couldn't even get it because two ravens stole the large pieces that were left. It was fine with me.

All of this really exhausted us, so we went back to the hotel to get some rest. Towards the evening we went out again and went to the nearest arcade to leave some of our money there and to get Jule a new plush friend in the hope of comforting her from her loss today. So while she went to play the crane machines, I tried out a few games before ending up back at my favorite game (the one with the drum). Before that, however, Jule arrived with a huge bag and showed me her winnings. A very large plush thing in the same stem as the one she lost today. Even though you can't dangle it from your bag, she was still happy. After Jule reached her goal, she watched me play for a bit, but more as an excuse to observe that the guy next to me was simply a hundred times better than me. His reaction time probably exceeds that of professional racers and he made the difficult songs seem like it was nothing. I, on the other hand, was happy that I did the moderately difficult ones well. Hats off to you in any case.

Afterwards we grabbed something to eat so we could end the evening relaxing in our room. As always, we thank you for reading our articles and send warm greetings home.

Jule & Moritz.