Reading about your trip made me start looking at plane tickets for later this year 
Glad you’re having such an awesome time!
It is true, I do love Aeon. Even just regular Aeon and all the Aeon spinoffs. Love me a good TopValu brand item (the Aeon store brand). My favorite work pants are Aeon brand, have some shirts as well, Aeon brand thick cut chips are great, all their protein bars are good and cheap, they have a great dried fruit section, even their chocolate bars are pretty decent. That said, at my old house the only shopping nearby was Aeon brand stores and almost everything in it was Aeon brand (maybe it’s just Stockholm syndrome lol). Even on my crazy trips across the country I stop by many an Aeon for snacks and their prepared food section. Pretty much all prefectures have good Aeons. Probably my favorite Aeon of all time was the Hakusan Aeon Mall in Kanazawa Ishikawa, which was one fantastic and two the place where I found my beloved void kitty giant stuffed animal. The Aeon on the bottom floor of Takasaki station is pretty good too. Maybe I’m just a grocery store person, because I got really obsessed with Conad grocery stores when I went to Italy too. Those cheese puffs for 0.69€ were incredible.
I’ve seen vtubers and anime stuff do collaborations with local towns (like mio being a tourism ambassador for gunma, or that one romcom about gyaru from hokkaido, or any of the many locations in yuru camp having signs for anime tourists) before so was kinda curious about what was going on here but this one’s totally new to me: those are voicebank characters (like miku, or teto, here’s a synth v2 tech demo with them)! Developed specifically for a city tourism thing in collaboration with tokyo6 to run promo for otaru
idk if it’s a testament to the work put into these voicebanks in particular or a testament to synth v making pretty much everything sound at least ok, but some of these songs are actually pretty good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rVh4rQg-JI
online chuni…..................
soon, soon
wait i missed this one, this is the most yuyuko yuyuko itasha i’ve ever seen oh my god
Can I ask if you saw any security guards? I suspect that you easily pass for a uni student ngl
oh, it’ll probably stay there until the end because people would see taking it as stealing 
you gotta add really obvious signs
Nope, but at least in Seville, I remember I went there with my family to eat
I wonder if the conditions are different between countries too 
A BOOK TREE IS A REALLY OBVIOUS SIGN XDDDDD
that genuinely sounds fire, I’m so interested in this one now xddd
May 15th, 2026
- 40 reviews on WaniKani
- 24 reviews on Bunpro
- 2 lessons on Bunpro
- 11 min of Kanji Learner’s Course
- Book: イジメ返しp51->p75
- Magazine: 電撃アニマが２００３年１０月号
So as a weird story for today, I found a very small bookstore in 滝川, where the owner was an older lady and most of her inventory were things, books and magazines, from 2000-2005, making me think that maybe she had children or grandchildren that were very much into those books/magazines.
She did give me a 日本語ペラペラ after I chatted with her and told me that she thinks that her bookstore is 恥ずかしすぎる, which I do understand if you just look at the face value of the goods she was selling, but I’m a sucker for the history of the objects and the aesthetics as well, and was trying to tell her that in Japanese too, that we as people in the western world look at a magazine from 2003, we yawn, we look at a magazine from 2003 Japan, and we drop our jaws at how cool is this ^^
She wished me good luck on the way back to Germany, I did mention my plans for the next few days, showed her my JR pass and told her I might go back one day, so hey ^^
But on the note of the 2003 magazines, phone pic now, it’s adorable how LITTLE text it has and how easy it is to read:
A similar is still coming out in 2026, almost 25 years later (CRAZY TO HEAR 25 YEARS)
…and the text density in it is not even comparable. It’s just insane how much more text there is in magazines about anime these days xdddd
Life
So aside from the wholesome story from 滝川…
I found a really cool cafe in Sapporo in one of the JR Towers, the owners of the cafe would make their own zine and put people who work in the franchise as people inside of the zine, interview them, their hobbies, how they like their coffee, and damn, that’s the kind of local recognition I kind of strive for ^^
Takikawa is labelled on the JR Sapporo-Furano pass as one of the hubs that connects areas, but it’s a very small town, and pretty 田舎, to the point that their Vtuber is a sheep someone else drew ^^
They have bits and pieces of local manufacturing and commerce, my mom would love it ^^
And I found an 居酒屋 that was putting stickers on it! No Nett Hier stickers though ^^
Must be very remote~
And in terms of local communities, I found a place called Brot Heim, (the House of Bread in German), and went in and chatted with the person selling there to grab myself a smol lunch too, around her I played a German, not a Pole, was easier to explain what Brot Heim comes from C:
There’s a big and straight car road that winds through the whole town, and most of the things in the town are centered around that road, including schools, no protection from running off onto the asphalt C:
Having realized I saw what I wanted to see, I returned to the station to realize that a train to take me further will depart in exactly one minute.
So I rushed to the manned ticket station and was like できるだけ早いチケット and they did boop boop boop, gave me the ticket within a few seconds, showed me the platform six platforms away, opened the JR gate for me and… I made it in time and managed to wave at the clerks too C: <3
But yeah, 旭川! The second biggest city in 北海道, a city built around its zoo, and a lot of things in the city seem to be pushing for you to visit it C:
And here’s one for queenofthegods: almost every Aeon mall I saw on Google Maps has been in the far suburbs of the city… but they just opened one less than a month ago and it was right next to the train station!
Considering how in Berlin it took almost a year for The Playce to start having shops, it’s wild to see how almost every commercial space, except for Junkudo, has already been taken and all of the shops are in place ^^
But yeah, being built around zoo means that there aren’t that many things in the city center, except for eateries and Aeon ^^
Also, this time I reeeeally cleaned my lens and zoomed in with the sakura C:
So, surprise surprise, as the city wanted for me to do, I went to the zoo!
The zoo is open space, almost all animals are out there and you can hang out with them and make new animal friends C:
Some animals I saw, like this sika or this flying squirrel, I’ve never seen in my life before!
And yeah, I stood there until the zoo closed down at 5pm and then started roaming around the city and looking for fun photo shots ^^
Also, Japanese books to learn English be like:
I had a fusion food 石焼ビビンパ, wanted to get some veggies outside of just meat today ^^
And yeah, city at night also has a fun vibe~
I went back to my hotel and started looking at their book offerings, and then the newspaper they offer. I was trying to decode some characters and hiragana goes better than recalling specific kanji, but it was still a bit of a challenge. I took the newspaper though ^^
As I was trying to decode it, a Chinese person in the lobby stopped me and wanted to talk English to me, so I gave him the opportunity to do so ^^
His English felt a bit below my Japanese (no comments on the quality of my Japanese xddd) and I had a bit of a challenge to try to use Simple English to answer his questions about things. He also was pretty formal and asked me for my CEFR levels of English, German and Japanese, and then he told me about his plans to travel through 北海道, and that he would love to go to Europe and experience travelling between countries without passports and visas! He asked me for hints on how to learn languages, so I showed him the Abroad in Japan book you can see in that nook and told him that if he wanted to improve English, 2 pages できる every day and you’ll eventually get there xdd
After a while he thanked me for the conversation in a very formal way and wished me a pleasant evening, that I unfortunately didn’t have because I accidentally clicked 読み放題 on Bookwalker and it started running my trial so I started preparing manga for Mokuro instead, ehhh xddd
Anyway, see you tomorrow! C:
May 16th, 2026
- 33 reviews on WaniKani
- 27 reviews on Bunpro
- 2 lessons on Bunpro
- 11 min of Kanji Learner’s Course
- Museum: 旭川市科学館 サイパル
And a bunch of leaflets, a bunch of signs, a bunch of plaques, a bunch of his to people, I will miss those things, as they genuinely do supercharge my Japanese study ^^
But today’s rant is about magazines, because I haven’t decided which magazine to bring with myself from Japan and 読み放題 allows for you to dabble in a few, so I decided to look into different areas of magazines and just get a few different ones to test the waters, and you won’t believe how surprised I was to see this 
It turns out that a magazine that has barely 130 pages can have 2.5 times as many characters as one that has 1265 pages…
I don’t believe in character count as a metric of a value of a magazine, but when I saw this, I really was surprised, so search is still inconclusive and I might be on a lookout tomorrow ^^
Life
So starting off in 旭川, I cast a bit of an unfair judgment on the town, there are other things there than a zoo as well ^^
The central park, Kitasaito Garden, stretches for a long time behind a river, and a cafe/food court in the middle of it booked today for a special conference-related thing, they still gave me an ice cream though C:
While walking through it, including bouldering walls and corridors, I accidentally stumbled my way on a science museum in the city center C:
The permanent exhibition has been about the Earth and space, and it seems to have been pretty popular today! Some of the technological systems were a bit older, some were newer, but what I really liked is that the exhibit has been written specifically for the town of Asahikawa, especially for this specific museum, and some exhibits referred to that pretty extensively ^^
There have been attendants right next to a few, wanting to prepare you for an experiment that they’d conduct: I’ve tested how my body reacts to G-force and 360 degree spins, I was stuck in a gigantic bubble around me, I got pumped down the pump and smashed upon a pushing wall!
And since a part of it was also about 旭川, they put stickers and exhibits and composed their own Asahikawa-music for exhibits so that you could enjoy what the city has to offer ^^
And despite being a little aged and low-tech, my final exhibit has probably been an earthquake machine, I’ve never experienced an earthquake I could perceive in my life, so that was a new. A mad-scientist-type-of-a-guy made an explanation of how earthquakes form (that I did know!), what are the different types of quakes (that I didn’t know!) and after explaining what you can expect from the quakes, a special shaking machine imitated a couple different types of shakes in a controlled, but progressively more spooky environment. When that happened, the scientist in the video hid under a desk and said to be mindful of safe spaces where you can hide from the quakes, so hey, preparations done!
Considering how the museum was just 410 yen to enter and gave me like, two hours of Japanese study and plenty of fun, I’d say iT WAS A BIT OF A STEAL :DDD
I did fill in a survey at the exit and told them about the Earthquake machine being cool and tried introducing some small talk with the workers at the museum, so hey, big Japanese day! Being B1-B2 is a blessing ^^
After that I found another used goods chain, Japanese seem to be pretty resourceful with them ^^
Because Asahikawa was a bit of a smaller town than Sapporo, it does feel like some of the prices were 20-30% down compared to Book-Offs or じゃんぱら in 札幌, that’s provided that you could find the equivalent goods though ^^
BUT YES, EVEN BOOKS WERE MUCH CHEAPER
So there is a 銀座 in 旭川, it’s definitely a bit dated, but one of the weirdest part of it is that there is only one shop in the southern part of it, and the rest of that 銀座 is empty space to the left and to the right xddd
Very relaxing was playing on a low-quality speaker and almost nobody was there ^^
Well, almost nobody doesn’t mean nobody, in the middle of that one building, mostly selling Chinese clothes, sunglasses and so on, there was a cute little cafe ran by a woman in her 60s? 70s? And the only people in that cafe were also similar age ^^
So that was my breakfast ^^
From 旭川 I took a train over to 美瑛! If you map 北海道 onto Sinnoh, it’s right there in the middle of Route 206, and also I had the Mystery Zone variant of Route 206 playing on my headphones as I walked through it, SEQ_DUMMY ^^
Right next to the city hall there is an observational deck you can jump on and get to the top of a tower called “Four Seasons” to be able to see the city from above, though I suspect the season is “there’s snow on the mountains regardless of the month” ^^
ITS PRETTY THOUGH
Biei is supposed to be covered with flowers, but the flowers did not properly blossom yet, and all of the attractions of the town require a tiny bus ride, and the bus only goes a few times a day, so I ended up just going as far as my feet would take me ^^
But watch out Sinnoh comparisons, because my next step was 富良野! I mean, Floaroma Town! I mean, it’s where Oreburgh was supposed to be on the map, but they definitely based Floaroma on this one ^^
How do I know?
…just an accident ^^
Arriving here was a little bittersweet, because on one hand, there are many cool things about it! It has a double identity of being a flower town (in June and July… no lavender yet…) and being a skiing resort, and I do respect that ^^
On the other hand… this is where my Sapporo-Furano pass ends. In the middle of 北海道.
Not to mention how for some reason they’re gonna just blast the saddest and the most nostalgic music they can find on the speakers around the town to make you feel as if you’ve been sold a demo of Pokemon Diamond that only goes to Route 207 and the rest you have to wait for another year 
I went to a grill place today, but this time, it was local fish specialties, and I felt as if they kind of overtrusted me with the agency and using the furnace, I almost felt as if I’ve burned the whole restaurant down with how I didn’t know how to grill it xddd
And hey, I got a free scoop of ice cream! I need to be using Line more ^^
Damn, missed the sample pedometer by two steps…
…and I really like this warm color of lights, definitely stands against the colder LED lights ^^
And you know what? Since most things got closed at 8pm, I just thought “why not” and walked into a karaoke xdd
My voice hasn’t completely recovered yet and I had a feeling as if I sang from falsetto the whole time, but it’s my party and I dictate the rules for what counts as good singing xdddd
Ahhh, final full day tomorrow, I need to find my way back to 札幌, but also do something fun tomorrow too. I didn’t plan for tomorrow at all, so we’ll see how it shapes out! See you tomorrow!
Also, PS. I have not many stakes in Eurovision this year, but I’m crossing my fingers for Romania especially and Australia, hope they manage to do well!
Uff, I mean there are certainly easier songs to sing than unravel…
Hater xddd
May 17th, 2026
- 35 reviews on WaniKani
- 29 reviews on Bunpro
- 2 lessons on Bunpro
- 11 min of Kanji Learner’s Course
- Manga: 超深宇宙より愛をこめて第７話
Been a while since I was reading manga, but I bought a few 百合姫 ones just so that I don’t have to pay shipments and slowly started reading it, this one is a bit more difficult to read, so I was getting a little lost, but 大丈夫です ^^
Life
Ahh, Furano, the town of flowers… and this guy and snowmen on the cabs ^^
…and wines too ^^
Since trains don’t go often from 富良野, I looked at the next train an hour later and started looking around ^^
I didn’t want to return to 札幌 yet, so I was looking for what places to pick up on the path too!
Ooh, yeah, and we had a layover in 滝川, so I added myself into the visitor’s book and I’m immortalized there forever now C:
I decided to pull over in 岩見沢:
…and it has a bit of a banger train station ^^
This town feels really big, but almost all of it feels like a big suburb, and since I’m very much not a fan of cars, I felt like I was walking a straight line and inhaling all the car fumes along the way xdd
I think on that front 100k population towns in Germany definitely win against something like 岩見沢 or 千歳.
But I’m a fan of GEO, I’m a fan of Book-off, had my strip mall second hand shopping experience ^^
Also, for some reason, two absolutely-not-lesbians in the window, we stan ^^
More central areas…
And then, finally made my way to 札幌! But then I immediately realized that I lost my headphones on a train from hotel I was in. And that made me go CRAZY SCARED xddd
The train finished its run from 小樽 to 新千歳空港 and I was like “i’m never going to see my headphones again!”, but then somehow the headphones on “where is?” app started going back to 札幌, and I was like “OOOOH”
Went to JR information station, lost and found, cross-referenced things with Google Maps and found the exact train the headphones are on and when they would be arriving in Sapporo. I jumped on a train… not to find them. And if you’re further away from the headphones and they don’t update location as quickly, they always are 3-5 minutes delayed and you can’t turn on the Bluetooth specific search.
As I kept walking through the train and bleeding time going to, eee, probably 小樽, a Japanese girl stopped me and asked what happened, I explained in Japanese and she started following me and immediately raising the level of urgency towards everyone on the train to let them know I lost the headphones and should they find it, they should bring them here
And she was really cool with that
Problem is, this might have been the final train of the day following that line, so since I didn’t want to go to 小樽, I left at a station 10 minutes away from 札幌駅, and the girl left with me. It wasn’t her stop. Her stop was in fact 7 minutes before that xdddd
We went over to the JR information station together and she filed a report for me and helped me set up a Line account for lost and found, and then we both took a train back, me to 札幌駅, her halfway through, she added me on Line and we managed to chat about her job transfer from 京都, her love for Spanish food and the desire to travel to Europe, she was so cool like the definition of かっこい, very neatly put together, very helpful and also doing the emotional labor for me
And hey, by today I felt like I was able to say a lot in Japanese, in part thanks to the Daiso English-Japanese conversations that DIO-Berry gifted me and I carry in my bag and pull it out at random moments ^^
But I was STILL freaking out, and it was the last train of this line of the day, so when it arrived in 小樽, I was wondering what would happen to it next
SO THE TRAIN GOT REPURPOSED FOR A DIFFERENT SCHEDULE ALONG THE SAME LINE AND IT STARTED GOING TO SAPPORO
I went immediately to 忘れ物 and asked what time is the train arriving, how can I find it, and I lucked out that the location of the headphones updated over the 6 minutes the train was at 札幌駅 and oh my LORD.
IM SO HAPPYYYYY
If it were Poland, someone would’ve definitely taken them xdddd
Anyway, I sent my NEW JAPANESE FRIEND a message on Line to celebrate having found them, she congratulated me…
…and I realized it’s 9PM and everything is closed and I didn’t do the お土産 shopping I wanted. I bled too much time.
Since it was still open, and as promised, I ended up going to the 札幌台
And woo, here’s Odori Park and the southern shopping gallery of 札幌 ^^
The tower’s observational platform is at a mere 90 meters, so it’s nothing crazy, but the views are pretty C:
Also as one of the recommendations from MY NEW JAPANESE FRIEND, I ended up going for a thing called “Genghis Khan” today, which is a special type of a lamb chop that’s special to 札幌
Got some rice and egg and it was delicious, but I definitely wouldn’t say it was worth the money considering the portion sizes xddddd
And yep, this is how I end my 札幌 and 北海道 and 日本 adventure. It was wild today xdd
And I’ve been to all those, haaa C:
My day tomorrow will be 37 hours long. Not in a gimmick like two days will blend into one, my clock started almost two hours ago and the midnight will happen in 35 hours from now.
It will be VERY WEIRD. But either way, I hope I don’t get lost along the way! See you in the longest time from now EVER for this study log, I don’t know when yet xddd
I’ll probably do my wrapup of the trip then too ^^
See you in a very long tomorrow!
I’m really sorry to hear that 
and I hope the situation in general gets better for all of them
I appreciate the insight and honesty you provided
Here’s a Sakura to hope that people become kinder to them with time 
Wow, you can make new friends anywhere, under any conditions! 
Good job finding your headphones
Someday, I would like to go to the baby places you have been. Wow
I feel this is like your evil nice plan to rule over the world
I’m starting to belive that such people keep spawning for you intentionally, so that you can have as much fun as possible on your adventures
Thank yooooooooooooooooooou
nice photos
It’s all thanks to the amazing photographer 
Finally, some shopping
And spicy food was finally found
At some point, you should really consider going for a Guinness record of trying to catch a train in the last second Here’s a Sakura to give you more time with the other trains
These are really cute and the colors are maginficent
I might be getting a heart attack because of these cute pictures, but it’s totally worth it
This is not something I would usually expect What a question
That’s interesting to have such a simulation, per se.
A beautiful view
Out of all the songs, you chose this for your voice? 
I thought the goal was for your voice to recover and heal, not to send it to oblivion
Here’s a Sakura for your voice, so that it recovers fast
I pretty much doubt that I can but I appreciate the motivation and confidence boost
I wonder what’s logical about this notebook
You should really consider writing action or thriller movies and use this as an inspiration
I’m glad you were able to find your headphones and that you got them back in one piece
But the takeaway from all of this is that no matter the situation, you’ll always find a way to make a new friend It’s quite adorable
Nice view
Good luck with the travel Here’s a Sakura to bring you back home safely and thank you for sharing all those moments and adventures with us
Have a safe trip back home
May 18th, 2026
- 49 reviews on WaniKani
- 27 reviews on Bunpro
- 2 lessons on Bunpro
- 11 min of Kanji Learner’s Course
- Manga: 超深宇宙より愛をこめて第８〜１２話（第２巻終わりまで）
- Game: 10h of ポケットモンスタープラチナ
Yes, I’ve beaten Pokemon Platinum in Japanese on a plane, first time in like 15 years xddd
I did allow for myself to use cheats to speed up animations, have the game be 60FPS, increase the exp gain by 4x, have 100% catch rate and I played Randomizer for it to be more fun, because, hot take, as much as シンオウ is a really cool region with a lot of mystery and charm, all of the game’s pacings are a mess because of the grind and huge walls of trainers everywhere
I wanted to play it because of 北海道 and relive the roads I’ve taken, and yes, when I arrived in ミオシティ, I was like “OOO 小樽 ITS SO PRETTY” , and now the inspirations for cities in Sinnoh are even more obvious and even tighter connected with the trip in my head ^^
Also, ポケットモンスタープラチナ comes from the time before kanji in the script were a thing: I thought it would be a significant holdup for me to be able to read the dialogues, and yes, it did slow me down, but the thing that slowed me down the most is that some objectives are not explained or are falsely explained by NPCs - like when in トバリシティ, ハンサム tells you “INFILTRATE THE HEADQUARTERS, I’LL FOLLOW RIGHT AFTER YOU!” and starts staring at the big headquarters building and then you’re dumb and you talk to every single NPC in the area that mentions absolutely nothing and it turns out that you have to go to a different building in the city to get the keycard, and it’s like : IIIII
Or when じゅん tells you to hurry and go to the lake with ロッククライム, but conveniently enough, this is THE ONLY HM that’s not available over the course of just playing the story and no NPC mentions the location of where it can be found
But everything after the ギンガダン headquarters is just KINO and やぶれたせかい still stands as one of my favorite Pokemon climaxes ever
I have a feeling the game has been slipping in my rankings of favorite Pokemon games and this playthrough didn’t do much to convince me this is not the case xddd
Life
From now on, the Life sections will probably be significantly shorter, but writing this after a 37-hour day from a hotel in Boston C:
The only one with a Polish pin in Japan
And look, I made it in a reasonable weight of the luggage ^^
But yeah, my layover was in Dallas and somehow I didn’t connect the dots that Dallas in is in Texas, so freedom heck yeah? I don’t know???
Seems they’re really hoping to make money out of the World Cup later this year, I’ve heard it’s going to be a little harder than they think ^^
And yeah, what’s that price for the Pokemon cards, wtf
And eventually after 20+ hours of flight, made my way to Boston!
…but remember that suitcase weight photo from above?
American Airlines lost my suitcase.
They claim it’s “delayed”, which puts me at a bit of an ease, but I’m like AAAAAAA because all of my clothes, belongings, cosmetics and so on, were in there, so you’d better find it by tomorrow or I’ll be freaking out xddd
So Japan trip roundup, might make a proper one on Saturday or Sunday after all, for now it’s try to survive in Boston challenge ^^
See you tomorrow!
Well, I’m glad you somehow managed to keep the weight of the luggage in check, but not happy that the airlines almost lost it
Here’s a Sakura to bring your luggage safely back to you and one for you to survive the challenges ahead of you
Get back home safe 
IS THAT A THING OR DID YOU JUST START ONE??? 
Tagging @Mioneko, because… Because meow 
But that’s alright, because it’s ok to be weird. For example, us – cats – are weird by our very nyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaature!
That’s really awesome! I’m glad she was able to help you
Oh yay! You’ve already gotten more use out of it than I ever did lol
NOICE!!!
Safe travels!
Meow indeed! Thanks for tagging meow 
Puts Kobe on my shortlist, for reasons…
Ok, so many long posts breaks the quote feature on mobile apparently, but ..
On dining in university canteens: at least the university I went to, the canteen only accepted payments via the student card which you’d top up on a student portal so it would be impossible for a non-student to dine there.