The Great Dopamine Rush of 2025

Today started with a nice buffet breakfast in the hotel. Hannah and myself were both excited to go visit the Peace Memorial and the Peace Museum to learn more about the Hiroshima tragedy of Aug 6th 1945. After breakfast we walked down peace boulevard to the memorial park.

Now we thought we were prepared for it, We were both sadly mistaken. The museum was far beyond our expectations, in its ability to graphicly explain and portray the sheer extent of the atrocity that occurred here in Hiroshima. The number of innocent dead and how they died was a lot to take in at the museum. I learned about this in school when I was younger, but not face to face with bloody ripped and tattered clothes. Carbonized food in a child’s lunch box and photos of charred and burnt bodies. It was a lot, Both Hannah and myself shed some tears in the museum.

We walked around the rest of the memorial park for a few hours, visiting the thousands of paper cranes at the memorial, and the A-bomb Dome. Which is the last standing reminder of the devastation of that day. There was a lot of emotions today. Especially when the reality that 75 years ago exactly where we ate ramen yesterday, was the hypocenter of a 15 Kilo Ton nuclear explosion instantly vaporized or burned 75,000 people and wiped 14 sq kilometers of Hiroshima off the face of the earth.

From the memorial we went to go find some sushi for lunch. Now you cant always win when your playing restaurant roulette, our lunch sucked. From there we walked to a nearby massage parlor, Hannah got a well deserved massage. While she was getting a rub down, I went to a nearby Pachinko parlor. I am not much for gambling, but I’ve always wanted to try Pachinko. I understand how people get addicted to it, It was fun. An hour disappeared very quickly. I spent $50 after I collected my winnings so all in all not a bad way to spend an hour. We went back to the hotel for a quick change, and then we went to the restored Hiroshima castle. What a cool experience that was. There was so much history there.

From the castle we found a tiny hole in the wall udon restaurant, on the route back to the hotel. Hannah has had great luck picking restaurants, and our meal was incredible. On top of being delicious, it was only $20 for the two of us to leave satisfied. I ordered the suggested special from the chef, not realizing that it was a whole katsu donburi and a bowl of udon. Thankfully Hannah loves noodles and helped me finish it.

On our walk back to the hotel, we stopped and grabbed some pastries and a bottle of champagne for dessert. Sadly the champagne was not that great, but the pastry was good. I am going to miss finishing the night with pastries and champagne. Hannah was asleep by 9pm. Tomorrow we head back to Tokyo to do our last leg of the trip.

Till tomorrow.

Hannah and I woke up nice and early today. Our train was leaving for Hiroshima at 10:30am, and we wanted to go back to Kacto for breakfast again. That place was so damn good. The food was just as good as the first time, we had the same dishes.

The 2 hour train ride to Hiroshima was smooth and uneventful, Hannah napped and I read. We landed in Hiroshima station at 12:30pm, Now I must admit Hannah and I got all kinds of lost and confused in this station. Half of it was under construction, and the other half had very contradicting signs. After a brief struggle to find a toilet and another brief struggle to find a taxi stand we were zooming off to our hotel.

All through my trip in Asia I have been using Agoda to find my stays. And Japan was no different except I have been booking our hotels only a day in advance here. Now what’s cool about travelling a country in the off/shoulder season, is you can find some incredible deals on hotels. Last night I found us a $1160/night room, for only $240/night at the Hilton Hiroshima. I got to say this place is swanky. With breakfast included, and an incredible view.

After we dumped our bags at the hotel, we walked off into the city to find some food. I normally don’t like going back to the same restaurant during a trip, I like to experience as many different places as possible. That being said when you find something absolutely mind boggling good, exceptions sometimes have to be made. Ichiran is one of those places, we went here on our first or second day in Tokyo and it was bomb. The Ichiran in Hiroshima was no different, and the focus booth style seating really works for me. Its almost like being in a little bubble. If a restaurant only serves one dish, you know they do it well. Hannah and I left just as satisfied as the first time.

After lunch we went to blow off some steam in a local mall. Sadly very few Japanese fashions will ever fit my 6’4 frame, that being said everything fits Hannah here and she was having a ball with the styles available here. Now we shopped for several hours, bought a few things, but mostly we were just having fun. In one of the large multistorey malls there were some claw machine games, now everybody knows that these games are rigged to only stay closed every so many grabs of the claw. That being said I still have an affinity for them I can not explain. Well we had wasted a few bucks on some machines, when we came upon a machine with a single giant plush Kuromi doll in it. Again bigger the prize, less the chance. Well for nothing more than shits and giggles, and after some very critical remarks from Hans about the chances. I used a coin, and in one shot had won her a $150 Plushy. Both of us were pretty shocked, like these machines are rigged and its obvious. Now after winning it a new problem arose, what to do with it? like this thing is the size of a 4 year old kid, thankfully we have enough wiggle room between our baggage that I think we will be able to bring it with us on the plane back home.

When our appetite’s for shopping were fully sated, we walked back and dropped off our new treasures at the Hilton. We walked back out to the business district after a brief sit down and found a not conveyor conveyor belt sushi spot for dinner. The spot we found ended up being our favorite of the trip so far. Hannah loves salmon sushi, and its been kind of hard to find here. This place had an extensive salmon section, and the fish was incredibly fresh.

From dinner we called it an early night and went back to the hotel. Our room had such an incredible view of the city, I love sitting in the bay window reading and writing. Hannah has never had room service before so we ordered some ice cream and fresh fruit to tick that box. Tomorrow we are going to see the peace memorial.

Till tomorrow.

Because I’ve been slacking on writing, this morning I spent a couple hours catching up on the last few days posts. We thankfully booked a hotel for Kyoto that had ensuite laundry so Hannah was able to get some laundry done while I wrote.

We have been taking it pretty easy here in Kyoto, so today we had a pretty big list of sights we wanted to see. I have always had a deep love of Japan’s Samurai culture, so getting a chance to go to the samurai museum here in Kyoto was not something I was keen to miss. To start our days adventure we walked the 2 km to the samurai museum, we had to wait 20 minutes for the next tour to start. So we walked around to find a snack nearby, it didn’t take long to find a booth selling huge skewers of tempura crab & omelets. Now I have a thing for deep fried eggs, they are so damn tasty. The museum was really cool, being able to hold ancient swords, and try on armor with real helmets. The tour was short and sweet and we got to throw shuriken (ninja stars) at the end of it. Hannah didn’t like this too much but I loved it.

After the museum we went for don at a nearby don restaurant. If you didn’t know, don is just sashimi on fresh rice. Hannah loves don back home so she was very excited. I ordered a bluefin don, Hannah a salmon don. Both were exquisite, simple and hard to beat in terms of fish quality. Bluefin tuna is so amazing, I wish it wasn’t $12-$24 per piece back home. My whole meal was $22 here.

From lunch we trained over to Fushimi Inari, To do the 10,000 Inari gate hike. On the way we passed by a Sanrio store, which Hans found a super cool Kuromi bag in. The hike was really cool, It was incredibly busy. We didn’t get to learn to much into the significance of the gates, it was so incredibly busy. Thankfully as we did the 5 km loop the crowd thinned, the path winds all over mount Inari and its gorgeous. It was a little more of a hike than either of us were dressed for, but we completed it in about 2 hours.

Our plan was to go check out the Kyoto Aquarium after Fushimi Inari, so we went back to the hotel to change into less sweaty clothes and headed there to catch the last hour of the Aquarium (when we originally checked closing time it wasn’t a weekend so we thought we had more time) . Sadly they close ticket sales 1 hour before doors close and we missed it by like 4 minutes. Hannah was kind of bummed, so we headed to a Family Mart to get a consolation sushi snack.

Now I love getting up high and seeing everything in a city from a vantage point, so we went up Kyoto Nidec Tower. On the same note Hans is terrified of heights, But she is a trooper so up we went to the top of the tower to have a look. It was cool to see all of Kyoto, which isn’t very big in comparison to Tokyo’s massive sprawl. Everything was great until the tower moved, I mean it moved kind of like a sign swaying in the wind. Well Hans did not like that one bit, She came with me knowing she hated heights. So I was happy to oblige going down after only a few minutes.

Safely back on solid ground, pangs of hunger in our stomachs we began our search for dinner. The area where the tower is, is on of the food hubs of Kyoto so it didn’t take long. I have never had teppanyaki before, so we went to a restaurant called Loin, to give it a try.

I LIKE TEPPNAYKI. I found out. I’ve always been apprehensive of trying it for some reason, the whole showy flair side of it back home was never truly that appealing. This was not that at all, our chef was in his late 60s and he was a consummate professional. Everything we ate was cooked to perfection and seasoned so well. We washed down our fanciest dinner of the trip so far with a half bottle of champagne, which funny enough paired very well with black wagyu fillet mignon. Our meal was way bigger than we bargained for and both of us left tipsy and stuffed.

After a short walk back we ended our night lounging in the hotel for a couple hours. All in all it was a great adventure day. We certainly got our steps in.

P.s I am not sure if ill be able to enjoy any other steak again after eating wagyu in Japan.

Till tomorrow.

Well Today started with a buzz of excitement, as it was Valentines day and we are in Japan. How romantic. Also we planned a day trip to Nara, which is about an hour train away, to go see the famous sacred Sika deer of Nara park.

We went for a western fusion breakfast down the street from the hotel called Kacto. It was so surprisingly amazing. I had salmon avocado toast with mascarpone cheese and hash browns with bacon. Hans had pancakes with bacon, sausage, and eggs. We devoured it.

We Boarded the train after breakfast, and headed to Nara. Now we had no real idea of what we were in store for, when it comes to the deer. My expectation was a couple deer that bowed for food. Well how wrong I was, there was hundreds of them, just chilling and milling around. They were incredible, they would approach you and bow hoping to get a snack.

We purchased some deer crackers from a little Japanese lady at the entrance to the park, and trotted off to go feed some deer. Hannah & I had a gay ole time, I don’t think either of us expected to have as much fun as we did. Those deer were awesome, and slightly aggressive if you showed fear when feeding them. They knew we had snacks and they didn’t have any reservations about nipping or head butting you to get them. Both of us got bit a few times and I think Hannah’s ass might be a little sore from getting headbutted. They were gentle enough that all you had to do was steer their heads away when they were getting pushy.

Every deer we passed would bow to us. I cant speak for Hannah, but I think it is the highlight of my trip so far. We reloaded on deer crackers several times. After a while of walking we went and sat on a bench in the park, and a very nice doe came up to us. We affectionately named her Deerdra, She posed for many pictures with us. We may or may have given her special treatment in the form of an entire pack of deer crackers.

After walking a few kilometers through the park we worked up an appetite and went to a little Conveyor belt sushi called Kaiten Sushi Totogin, spot to gorge on nigiri. It was really good. I’m not super into buffets and stuff like that because I have a tendency to over eat, this was no different. It just kept coming and coming and coming. After both Hannah and I had our fill and some we jumped back on the train and headed back to Kyoto.

We were pretty spent after Nara and went and chilled for a bit before going out for a Valentines dinner at an Italian Japanese fusion spot. We had a 5 course set menu it was delicious, the portions were more than we were expecting and we both left so full I think we almost needed to roll home.

After dinner Hannah had a romantic little Valentines surprise of rose petals throughout our hotel room. It was lovely. What a good day.

Till Tomorrow.

Today both Hannah and I woke a bit flustered from strange dreams, last night. There is a reason you shouldn’t eat shitty salty junk food before bed. Your sleep will suffer. We started the day with a kind of cheap breakfast spot not far from the hotel. It was a DreamWorks themed robo server restaurant, the food was cheap and the animimated robot server was pretty damn cool.

From there we checked out of our hotel and trained across Tokyo to the shinkansen rail line at Tokyo station. This was the first time either of us had ever been on a bullet train. It was pretty damn cool it is surprisingly smooth for travelling 200kmh on rail track.

Now being in a different country with systems that are completely alien to you, can be just exhausting. After Traveling to Kyoto, both of us were pretty tired. We found a Gyu-katsu restaurant that served wagyu katsu and went for lunch. It was stellar, arguably one of the best things we ate here. Except that Hannah got my Wagyu and I got her tenderloin. We didn’t catch it till halfway through the meal. Lets just say she liked mine better than hers. Wagyu tenderloin is so incredibly delicious.

We spent the rest of the afternoon chilling in the hotel having a rest. At around 8 pm we went to a local Izakaya for a small dinner. We had some local specialty nigiri & tempura, it was very good. After our dinner we went straight to bed. Our turbo tour of Tokyo definitely was showing.

A note about Kyoto, It feels like a ghost town in comparison to Tokyo. There is a minute fraction of the people here.

Till Tomorrow