Sayonara Japan. On to the next!

Brellowgirl
Nov 18, 2015
6 min read

11.17.15

It’s been a whirlwind the past few days and honestly there was a point while I was traveling where I had no idea what the correct date or time was. Today is Tuesday, November 17th and I left Nozawaonsen on Sunday morning. I didn’t sleep at all the night before I left because I was so nervous/scared/excited for everything I had to do travel-wise the next day. It was raining when I left to catch the 7:32 am bus to the train station and Anaïse walked with me. I’m gonna miss the crap outta that girl. My bus and 3 trains to Haneda Airport in Tokyo were all straightforward and I got there and checked in with plenty of time to spare. I had sushi, burdock tempura and gyoza before I boarded the plane-a perfect last Japanese meal if I do say so myself =P

I can’t believe 4 weeks has flown by so quickly. FOUR whole weeks! Japan has come and gone. It was just yesterday I was scared to be leaving the US, now I’m really on my own and scared to be traveling alone. I’ll be back to Japan soon though, there’s still so much I want to see.

I went from Toyko, Japan to Guangzhou, China to Sydney, Australia to Auckland, New Zealand. That’s what you get for buying the cheapest ticket. Everything was perfectly fine with all the flights though and I’ve never been 3/3. US domestic flights stink. On my China to Sydney flight I had dim sum for breakfast and one of the rice pieces I think had some kind of bone marrow in it and I put a little bit in my mouth and wanted to spit it out so badly but I was sitting in the middle of two random people and I didn’t want to be rude so I swallowed it. It just tasted so bad. There was also a bit of fruit and there was a piece of dragonfruit which I’ve always wanted to try but haven’t. It was really good. Sweet and had an interesting texture because of all the seeds. Yummy, nonetheless. I can’t even tell you how many hours I was on planes for or what I did the whole time. I feel like I was just so out of it I don’t even remember. I watched four movies I think and slept the rest of the time. Oh, I started to read The Hobbit and fell asleep twice and then saw that the plane had the movie so I just watched it on there ha. Took two times to get ¾ of the way through. It might sound like crap but that’s a record for me. I’ve tried to watch those movies probably six times now and I’ve fallen asleep the first 10 minutes each time.

One movie I was really surprised to see was One Day. That’s the book I was telling you guys about at the beginning of my trip that I really liked. I didn’t know it was a movie until my aunt told me and it just so happened that the plane had it. It was so awful. The book was 100000x better.

After a day of traveling I finally landed in Auckland, New Zealand yesterday, November 16th. I took a bus from the airport to downtown and met up with Kunal and his two friends Angel and Alyssa. If you don’t know Kunal we met in high school. He’s another one of my crazy friends that’s in love with traveling. He recently moved back to NY after being away in Pittsburgh for school and LA for work so I’ve finally gotten my friend back on the east cost! We stayed in a pretty cool apartment building through air bnb called City Life Auckland which was right on Queen Street, downtown. There was an autographed Metallica guitar on the wall coming out of the elevator and an autographed guitar by Eminem in our room. Those weren’t the highlight of the place though…My favorite part was taking a SHOWER. For the first time in two long weeks I got to take a shower from an overhead and not wash my hair with a bucket! I loved the onsens so much but man did I take showering for granted before. It felt so good to literally stand under the shower head and not do anything. If you’re at the onsen just sitting there you’ll get cold fast if you don’t keep pouring water over yourself. It was a workout taking a bath every day. Some days it was super fun though. Especially if there were kids in the onsen and they were sitting next to you. They’d be pouring water into buckets and I would be doing the same thing. Washing at the onsen was like being a kid again, pouring water over my head with a plastic bucket. I was so thankful for that shower and it felt so good that I went out with K to get food, went back and took another shower lol. Amazing.

In the morning we headed out early for our adventure day. The guys had rented a car the day before so we drove from Auckland to Waitomo Caves (south about 2.5 hrs. The system of caves includes 4 different caves and we went into one of them called Ruakuri to see the glow worms. We went with a company called The Legendary Black Water Rafting Co. and splurged on the most adventurous and exciting package they had-The Black Abyss. I was nervous because I had done some reading up on it prior but our tour guide was aweesommme and I felt pretty safe doing the crazy things we did. First we abseiled (repelled) 35 meters into a sinkhole cave opening. SO COOL. Seriously, people DO this?! There was a point where the throat of the hole wasn’t much wider than my body so I had to squeeze while repelling. It’s really the coolest thing. Then we got to zip line a bit IN the cave from one ledge down to the water. I could see glow worms dotting the cave ceiling on the way down it was beautiful. We were given hot chocolate and coconut bars to warm up before we had to jump into the freezing water (50 degrees- so not FREEZING but still pretty damn cold). Both were highly welcome because I already couldn’t feel my fingers. We got inner tubes, put them behind our butts and jumped from a ledge into the freezing cave waters and floated down the cave in complete darkness so we could see the glow worms. It was really amazing to see them all twinkling. The cave itself was crazy awesome. Water everywhere, eels in the water (yuck), waterfalls in the caves ahhhh. Every time we turned a corner there would be something new. We had to crawl into tight spaces and holes and my palms are adequately torn up from doing so. We got to slide down a small waterfall and then, my favorite part, climb UP two waterfalls. Couldn’t have done it without the help of our tour guides because the water pressure was so strong and I didn’t know where the good ledges and places to grip were but they pointed to where we should have placed our hands and feet and we climbed! So crazy!! Without my head lamp the caves are completely black. It’s actually terrifying. At one point we were walking and Cecil, the resident eel was sitting in the water so our guide took some pictures. Don’t even want to know what else lives in those caves…

Anyways, that experience was the coolest thing ever. Repelling into a sink hole?! If I could have seen the bottom I probably would have pooped my pants. Seriously. I forgot to say that right before we went into the caves we went on the Ruakuri bushwalk to explore a bit on our own. The vegetation is so rich and dense here. The greens are truly green and it’s damp and dark near these caves so the perfect environment for moss and ferns. Lots of Liverwort and a really really really cool looking silver fern that’s a spiral shape. It’s Mãori for “loop” and symbolizes new life, strength, growth and peace. I saw some along the trail and thought they were wicked looking and then I saw all kind of jewelry and postcards with them on it afterwards, The walk was really nice and Alyssa found a cave opening high up in the rocks so we climbed a bit to see what was up there. I love exploring, wish I could get paid to be Indiana Jones and go on adventures.

From Waitomo we drove another 2 hours or so to get to Tongariro. We’re staying at the Park Hotel Ruapehu. We have a room with a loft and ensuite bathroom so it’s nice. There’s a bar and full service restaurant on the main floor where we had dinner. I got a pumpkin and spinach lasagna and it hit the spot. We’re all fueled up for tomorrow cause we have a 7 hour hike doing the Tongariro Alpine Crossing at the World Heritage Site in the Tongariro National Park. From the summit we’ll be able to see the Emerald Lakes but I won’t tell you too much today, you’ll just have to check back and see how it went tomorrow =]

Have to get some rest-big day tomorrow!

Goodbye Japan and WELCOME to New Zealand!

Much love,

Cas