I went to Hitachi Seaside Park, Hoshiimo Sweet Potato Shrine, and Saw Black Swans in Ibaraki Japan this Golden Week...2 Truths and a Lie

May 2022 

One of the 3 things in this title were meant to happen, and the other 2 were accidental little gems we found instead of what we had planned.

So you know the famous park in Ibaraki Japan with the Baby Blue Eye flower fields and the ocean? 

Hitachi Seaside Park. This one.

(Image from google and link here)

Well, I finally had a day where me and husband were both off and we could borrow his parents car. We left the house at 9:30, picked up the car and hit the road.

And then, we hit the worst traffic jam I can remember ever being in in my LIFE. It was the first official day of Golden Week, which meant the day everyone leaves to travel. We learned a lesson that day. LEAVE at like 6am if you must travel the first day of Golden Week out of Tokyo by car. Anyway, I had my camera and music and each other, and a whole day ahead of us, so we made the best of it.

What Sonic the Hedgehog level is this??

Sooooo many rice fields

So after 8 hours (!!!!!!!!!!) (supposed to be about a 3 hour drive...) We finally made it!!!!

...just kidding. This is just a small patch of nemophilia in a parking lot about 5 minutes away from the park because WE DIDN'T MAKE IT IN TIME. That's right, we left at 9:30 am and we arrived at the line for the parking lot an hour before their 5 o'clock 

 closing time, and we made it to the ticket area by 4:50. So no flowers for us this year

.........

Plan B: (which we were considering might happen as we slowly were realizing we might not actually make it by the 5 o'clock closing time) was to drive to the end of that same road and see some ocean, so we did.

Next up was to head to a park he'd found online! Literally, all the parks, aquariums, and zoos closed at 5 except for this park. Another thing I wanted to do was to find the grocery store called Kasumi, which is like everywhere in Ibaraki (at least in my experience) and get their yaki imo because Ibaraki grows satsuma imo sweet potatoes and they're AMAZING. So, I checked google maps and found something very strange and interesting sounding nearby...Hoshiimo Jinja!!!! Hoshi imo is dried sweet potato (not AS good as yaki imo but same potato made it). It was 5 minutes from our current location, so we went. I found the god and place meant for me XD It's a newly built shrine (4 years ago, so 2018? The first year of Reiwa in the Japanese calendar) literally dedicated to hoshi imo, A shrine for dried sweet potato!!!

And they had an imo bike you could pose with XD

And there was a hoshiimo vending machine, and it was delicious, perfect texture (and also what's hanging out of my mouth in the above photos)

After that, we headed to Chinami Park. Actually I'm trying to google it now but it looks like its all like one big park with small bits all possibly even connecting to Kairakuen which is the only one of the 3 famous gardens of Japan I haven't been to yet in Mito! We didn't go very far, just wandered a bit of Senba lake, but that 15 minutes was all we needed. We found 2 black swans!! Neither of us had ever seen a real one before, and they came close when we called to them!

After that, we'd decided we’d had our fill of adventure for the day, and headed back to Tokyo (which took only about 3 hours, by the way)

The moral of this story is, as long as you are open minded and positive, you can find adventure everywhere even when your plans fail! I have many memories and so does my husband of traveling when things go wrong, and everyone gets stressed and ends up unhappy, and I'm so glad that we aren't that way. I'm always positive and see the best in everything, and he is oppositely negative and assumes the worst, but we are both very chill, go-with-the-flow people and it balances out. He keeps me realistic, but I show him the light. He's happy when I am happy, and I'm always looking at the bright side, so together, we are perfect traveling partners <3

First of the Sakura in Matsuda

Hello and hisashiburi! It’s around that time of year where work is suuuuper busy with lots of stuff coming to an end, and lots of other stuff getting ready to begin. It’s a hard time of year because the end of the winter where it’s hard to get out of a dark cold slump (every year, it happens), and then everything is getting ready to happen all at once, but you know when it all ends, it’ll be spring and warm and flowers and new beginnings! I liiiive for the sun and hot weather, and I’ve finally finished the last big work event of the (school) year. Now there’s just a few more things to tie up, and it’ll be the the transition into the new year, and then a little break for golden week! Actually, I got covid right between 2 of the biggest events of the year and my timing was so lucky (?) I guess? 😆 So I didn’t have to miss anything extremely important, and kind of got a chance to recharge between them. I was totally sick and fevered for about 4/5 day, but then I recovered. 

Anyway, enough about all that stuff, and onto why I started this post! Well, I did wanna give a little life update, but more importantly, flowers!!! Early blooming Kawazuzakura to be exact. I decided suddenly on Monday to head to Matsuda in Kanagawa and catch some of there’s sakura in bloom up on a mountain along with the yellow nanohana. 

And shockingly, I ran into some people I knew! Sundai and her man were out and about taking photos for her clothing line and I joined in a bit along with stealing a few quick snaps of the gorgeous Sundai (thank you both for brightening up my day a bit 💕🌸) 

Soooo yeah, a lonely adventure ended up being a lot more fun than I’d thought! 😊🌸

Vlog will be here after 3/21/22

Mint the Parakeet

Monday November 1st. I'm off on Mondays but boyfriend usually isn't. He was off this day, so we planned to run a bunch of errands and spend the day together since we'd both been so busy lately we haven't been able to just do stuff or spend time together. I got ready, put on my perfume that boyfriend actually likes (he's a bit picky with scents). I got this perfume in the depths of Nakano Broadway and it's got a picture of and is inspired by Mint, my favorite anime Tokyo Mew Mew girl. She's a blue magical parrot girl, for anyone who doesn't know the anime.

I'd followed an instagram account about taming and training parakeets recently. I've always loved parrots, specifically parakeets, they are my favorite animal, and boyfriend loves all animals, even more than humans. We always talk about what animals we like and pets we want. Parakeets are not only beautiful and colorful, but they are extremely smart and funny. They can be trained relatively easily, and can be super lovable, and can learn how to talk. We decided we'd look into local pet shops that Monday for fun and for the future. We found one nearby and after getting my favorite yaki imo breakfast, running a few errands, and a yummy kaiten sushi lunch, we decided to check it out. They had a few hand-fed baby parakeets. There was one still being hand-fed that was sooooo cute and would start chirping for food when we'd accidentally pointed a finger too close. Then I heard the familiar singing of parakeets and realized there were some more mature (but still baby) budgies. There were 4. One blue and white one at the end was hiding at the bottom of the cage at first so I didn't notice him right away. But then he was singing and making sounds like he'd wanted to talk and kept looking at me. He was fluffing up and rubbing his head on the cage bars like he wanted me to pet him. I couldn't leave him behind. I felt something. Like I'd be heartbroken to leave him behind. I'd cry if we left. We had an appointment to update our Internet in 20 minutes. We missed it. Now he is sitting next to me grinding his little beak and looking sleepy.

Coming up with a name was kinda hard. Beforehand, boyfriend suggested Yakitori (grilled chicken) and I jokingly added Kara-age (fried chicken). We were thinking of getting 2 parakeets when were ready because I was worried just one would be lonely, but the shop staff said one would be fine and less risky than if 2 didn't get along, plus he'd bond with humans more. They were all kept separately and couldn't see each other, unlike how I'd remembered in American pet stores like PetCo where they were all kept together in a large enclosure. Actually, we weren't even planning to buy a bird that day...but Mint chose us. 

I think he's a boy because of how vocal he was and because his cere (nose) is blueish. Boyfriend suggested the name Sora (sky in Japanese) but I think there's probably so many blue parakeets with that name, and we have a friend named Sky already XD I thought Sage would be pretty, but boyfriend said it sounded too much like the Japanese male name "Seiji". Then, in the same category of herbs and spices, I thought Pepper would be cute....but then I thought what it would sound like pronounced in a Japanese accent, like Sage. It would sound like "Peppah", which got Peppa Pig in my head. Noooooo thanks... so I thought of the next herb that popped in my head. Mint. The perfume I wore. My favorite anime. My favorite character from the anime I'd loved since I was a child, that had first piqued my interest in Japan. The blue girl. The parrot girl. It all clicked. His name in Mint

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Here's a story from my childhood. It's not a happy one

(Trigger warning: pet death) I grew up with birds as pets which has made me love them, but I have an unhappy memory related to this. When we lived in NY as kids, we had 5 birds. A cockatoo, 2 cockatiels, and 2 parakeets (budgies to be specific). I had a green and yellow one named Cookie and my sister had a blue and white on named Cream. We didn't really know how to tame or take care of them, but I learned a lot, and we'd eventually been able to form a bond and semi-tame these birds. Then the tragedy hit. We had an awful rat problem in that apartment. Actually we had lots of problems and awful experiences there, but this one stuck the most for me. I don't remember all of the details because I think my mind is protecting me. One morning I think it was, I went up to where our birds were. I found one of our cockatiels Leana Pearl dead. Then I saw my parakeet Cookie was also dead at the bottom of the cage, and Cream was lethargic and not doing well. I'm pretty sure I screamed something along the lines of 'Cookie is dead and Cream is dying!' and was already crying and borderline hysterical at this point. I picked him up and held him in my hand and seconds later, he died, while still in my hand. We were shocked and I don't remember ever feeling as devastated as I did then, and I don't remember much else before or after that. Snowy and our other cockatiel Rosie were ok. Snowy is still around, at my grandma's house today. We'd assumed everything was fine because Snowy and Rosie were fine, so we decided to get 2 new parakeets. They were beautiful. I got one named Periwinkle and my sister got one named Mystic, but we called them Peewee and Mimi for short. I don't remember the exact time frame, but the same thing happened to them. The same way. I was devastated and traumatized. I still have nightmares about it. I refused to go when my mom and sister went to give them a burial at sea, which I was told was beautiful. Both my mom and sister have had pets since then, but I haven't. We'd gotten 2 more sweet babies only to have them die because we'd chosen them. That's how I felt. This was the last traumatic straw before we moved from NY to WV for good.

I know that a pet is a living being, a huge responsibility. We are their whole life and all they have. If I can't be sure that they will have a life better than if they'd been born free or gone to another home, I don't want to take that chance. I'm opening up again for my little Mint. I will do my best for him and give him my all.