Couchsurfing through Chiba

After we left Nikko, we headed back to Tokyo and stayed at New Koyo for a night in a "double" room. It really was just enough room for our bags and for us to sleep, but it worked (and it was cheap). But a tip for anyone else who plans to stay in the Minamisenju area, there are tons of other cheap hostels near New Koyo that are a bit harder to find online. One that I spotted around the corner from New Koyo was Hotel Accela, but unfortunately their site is only in Japanese.

The next day we departed for Chiba to couchsurf in Inage. Our host was great and let us stay for an entire week. She probably would have let us stay longer, but we didn't want to overstay our welcome. Almost the entire week we were in Inage it was pouring rain since there was a typhoon passing through. We spent a lot of the time cooking for ourselves and our host and her friends, which was really fun. During our stay she invited us to a charity potluck in Tsukuba. At the potluck we met lots of interesting people from all over the world that were studying at Tsukuba University. If you have the chance to go to there, I highly recommend checking it out. It is very different from Tokyo and almost reminds me of US suburbs. Our hosts told us that Tsukuba was planned and developed in the 1960s, which might be why it looks the way it does.

While we were in Inage the only places we ate out at were Mos Burger and a Thai restaurant called Siam House that was down the street from where we were staying. Siam House only had two vegan dishes: their famous soup and a stir-fried vegetable plate. The soup cost 1238yen, and it was worth every yen. If you are in Inage and in need of vegan food (or any food for that matter), I definitely recommend you check out Siam House and try the soup.

Nikko Park Lodge

In just two days Dan and I will start our WWOOFing adventure in Japan. If you haven't heard of it, WWOOF is short for Willing Workers on Organic Farms. You sign up on the website, pay a membership fee, and then you are free to WWOOF! The site has a large list of places that are currently accepting WWOOFers, that you simply send a message to telling them a little information about yourself and when you would like to come stay. Our first choice was a place called Nikko Park Lodge. We will be departing for it on Saturday.

When we CouchSurfed our way across the US last year, we stayed with an awesome couple in Lincoln Nebraska that told us about WWOOFing and the great experience they had at none other than Nikko Park Lodge. Although we didn't set out looking for the exact place they told us about, we quickly figured out that our number one choice was indeed the same place they had WWOOFed. We sent them an message letting them know that we were going to WWOOF there and they happily sent a e-mail to the owner of the lodge recommending us. The chef at the lodge is a vegan Buddhist monk who also teaches a morning zen yoga class everyday.

Aside from the chance to learn recipes from a vegan chef, we are also excited to go to Nikko for many other reasons. We have been in Tokyo for about 2 months now, and while the city is one of the greenest I've been to, the closest we have gotten to nature is Yoyogi Park. Not to say that Yoyogi isn't incredibly beautiful.. we are just very excited to experience living in a city where we have a view of the sky and mountains unobstructed by sky scrapers. Nikko is a UNESCO World Heritage Site because of it's many important shrines and temples. We have also heard that Nikko is a great place to be in fall in order view the beautiful foliage.

Getting to Japan

We knew that we were going to make this trip as early as last fall. When we moved to Portland last August, it was under the assumption that I would get into JET or be awarded a Fulbright Grant and we would be off to Japan on someone else's dime.

Well, Fulbright didn't work out.. and I am on the alternate list for JET, but that also doesn't look too good. Most people would have told us to wait and reapply to more programs next year. But we decided that we would rather go to Japan with a little bit of money, and try our luck at making our dream come true~ I hope that our blog will inspire others to do the same.

During the month of May, we traveled back to the midwest to visit some friends and family and to move our junk out of our parents houses. It was while we there that we realized we couldn't wait on JET, and I started applying to almost every school and Eikaiwa I could find. At the end of the month, we headed back to Portland, and I still hadn't heard back from any schools. While we were at the airport, Dan said something about how we should just hop on a plane and go straight to Japan. Obviously, we didn't do that.. but we did do some research and within a few days of our return to Portland, we booked our tickets to Japan. It took us a little while to realize we could do this on our own, but now that we have, we are completely going for it.

Couchsurfing is an amazing resource, and hopefully it will really help us out during our travels. It definitely has in the US. Last year we couchsurfed all the way from New Jersey to Portland and we met tons of great people. So far, I haven't had much luck getting us hosted in Japan.. but I think Dan has made some good progress. I think we have 3 weeks of our first month in Japan taken care of. I'm really hoping we will find jobs and be able to get our own place before the first month is up. But if we don't find a job during that first month in Tokyo, we plan on checking out other cities, so that will be a lot of fun too!