Unfortunately the prayers didn’t reach through, thanks for keeping me in your prayers though xddd 
Buy buy DIO-Berry, the place is in Denden Town if you were curious of ever going in there and grabbing one ^^
The it lasting shorter with time is my conspiracy theory that I can’t really back, because there’s another aspect that came into my life between me buying it and now: it incentivized me to become way more physically active, so yes, it does last shorter (5-ish days?), but there’s a good reason for it lasting shorter now ;___; xddd
If you consider hiking in the Alps, I think an obvious answer is going to be Salomon, I think I’m pretty much the same as you when I consider that I wear the same shoes every day and that they don’t stick for that long and are not very reliable, those ones have a lot of sponges, insulating and great insoles, and they do wear out, but luckily not as quickly as my previous ones, I have them since November-ish of last year and I can see myself using them for at least the next few months every day ^^
Yep, and you can hear people in the streets pretty loud, thank you noise cancelling headphones ^^
Online website I found as I was sitting in the plane from Frankfurt and waiting for it to set off ^^
That one will safely make it through the trip ^^
because it channels the vibe of being a random german countryside village that has the final bus of the day at 8PM and then you’re stranded I don’t know xdddd
No, Kyoto has some district that are open for a bit longer and you can see the lights and eat some cool food in there, but I think the implication is that in the day you hang out in Kyoto, and in the evening you go over to Osaka, and since I’m a bit of a nocturnal animal, I’m team Osaka I believe ^^
May 11th, 2026
Mixed Life & Study
Exciting~
Today was the day I met up with another friend in Japan, and we spent a whole day together ^^
Ever since starting in this garden, she’s been a tour guide taking me through the city
Pretty quickly though we’ve decided to pivot away and she rented us a real car and we grabbed some snacks and food and went away from Niigata city!
Still hopeful, I bought a lot of drinks to try to get my vocal folds to start playing around and as the time in the car went on, I slowly started realizing I scream through my injured vocal folds faster than I’m regenerating them with the moisture and ehhhhhh xddddd
But my friend was such a yapper and it was such an amazing experience to listen to her continuing one story after another, and it was very easy to identify the spots to come in and start yapping on Topic B and introducing Topic C so that she could later yap on Topic C and introduce Topic D so that I could yap on Topic D and introduce Topic E and ahhh 
We went over to 村上 in the Niigata prefecture to try some tea from a tea ceremony and she did complain at how difficult it is to do the tea drinking ceremony wearing a kimono, and yep, definitely can see that xddd
Then we pulled over at a roadside station to look at some souvenirs, even though I ended up grabbing none xddd
We had some food together and basically yapped there almost until the closing of that station xddd
And as we kept on doing the roadtrip more north, we arrived at 桑川 station, at the very strict north part of the prefecture!
As it turns out, my friend was pretty familiar with that place and a couple of people recognized her there, and I was side eyeing it and going like “damn thats so cool” C:
We went to 夕日会館, a booth where people would stop over and grab something to eat before gazing at the sun or taking the train to wherever their home would be, and I ended up getting a 村上市 manhole card with a quick survey of “where are you from, how old are you, what gender are you”, probably to track demographic stats xddd
So right next to the station there is a 笹川流れ beach where we were trying to get the best sunset out of while collecting NOT AMBER, she called it pirate glass, and it made me start questioning if the things we call at the Baltic Sea actually are ambers or have I been catching pirate glass all along ^^
And ahhh, the ambiance has been so cool C:
On the way back we hooked by a car wash and funnily enough, this was my first time seeing a proper car wash in action in Japan, so it involved a lot of making sounds and lights and pouring water around and I do remember clapping when it was going through and thinking of a solid good 8/10 score xddd
And I have finally seen the woman, the legend, the one you might know from my friend’s study log, おばあちゃん！！！！
I also was able to feed her and give her pet pets, its been great C:
But yeah, as the time went on today and I kept screaming through my already heavily damaged vocal folds and doing the math of like “do i want to enjoy myself in the moment hating on german tourists taking every outdoor adventure opportunity in japan” vs “should i be able to use my voice tomorrow” i kept on mostly prioritizing the former one, and eeeh, i arrived at the hotel and i can’t make a single sound at all xddd
It’s been fantastic though
I’m always so enthralled with people that just have interesting stories to tell and know how to deliver them in an exciting way, so even when we were collecting the rocks at the beach, I was constantly thinking of what we’ve already been chatting about and what will come after that ^^
So thank you @queenofthegods and you’ve been a real one and it was such a pleasure to be driven by you across the prefecture today. She did use the word “chaos” to refer to herself, possibly unaware that the adventures we’ve had today are basically how i plan all of my trips and travels, so hey, she matched up the adventuring velocity really well C:
IT WAS SO COOL AAAAA
Definitely would recommend taking package holiday day trips with her ^^
Thank you so much queenofthegods and hopefully see you again if i manage to get back to Japan one day ^^
See you tomorrow!
May I ask which one you have? and how happy are you with it? I have the 
especially the random people you met 
Better be on the safe side, I guess 
and are you allowed to tip the person singing or performing on the street?
