 Hello everybody, welcome back to another vlog. Welcome back to LA, to my house. It feels so good to be home. I've been home for like a week now. And I actually just this morning finished like finalizing and uploading the rest of the Japan vlogs. So there's no more Japan footage, except I have a main channel video coming out. By the time you guys see this, that video will already be out. But yeah, crazy. Well, I'm dropping things. Figured we could catch up a little bit while I finished getting ready. I'm on my way. Well, I'm getting ready to head to Orange County today. But anyways, yeah, it's been, I guess eight or no, it's been nine days since we got back from Japan. And I've definitely like gone through. Initially I was like so happy to be home. And then like a day and a half later, I was like, I want to go back to Japan. Like I miss it so much. Drew and I are talking about it all the time. We're talking about it with Josh and Noel. They're coming over on Sunday for like a little Japanese curry. Like we're missing it bad. It was such an amazing trip. I'm going to do either at the end of this vlog or in the next vlog, like a Q and A where I answer a lot of your commonly asked questions about traveling to Japan, recommendations, all that kind of stuff. But yeah, in the meantime, I've just been trying to get back into the routine of life. I've been going on walks, trying to get outside, move my body a little bit. It's finally, I think, knock on wood. It's finally done raining in LA. It rained pretty much for four months straight and I'm not exaggerating. I didn't really mind it until like right around the three month mark. I was like, okay, like let's get a move on here. Drew and I, when we got back, honestly in just an attempt to like be our jet lag, we've been going on like a couple of dinner dates. So we went on like a little belated sort of like anniversary date, even though our anniversary was spent in Japan. We just went on a little date night. That was fun. I have been doing my very best to adjust to jet lag. If you've ever flown to Japan, you understand that coming home is a jet lag unlike any other. It's now day nine and I'm still not really sleeping through the night but I also have insomnia. Oh my God. I cannot hold onto this mascara to save my life. I have insomnia, so it's hard for me to sleep through the night anyways. So when you add jet lag to the mix, it's like game over. Drew has been struggling a lot with sleep as well but our friends that we've traveled with didn't have any jet lag. So I don't know. I've just been catching up on like filming and editing. I got my nails done. I did like a fun little sort of like, I don't know, Barbie-esque. It's just a pretty like pink color. It was OPI. I think it was mod about you and then the unicorn chrome over the top. So freaking cute. I think these might be some of my favorite nails I've ever had. They look so good. You know, just typical life admin stuff. Got my car washed. It's definitely, you know, it had been four months since I washed my car because it rained. So there was a lot of junk to clean off in my car and yeah, now I'm feeling a little bit better. I'm just finishing putting on my mascara. I'm gonna put on some lipstick and then we're gonna head out the door. Oh, I do also need to show you because I am bringing one of these things with me today. I need to show you the stuff that I got at Disney in Tokyo. Oh my God. I honestly held back because of the size of my luggage and we did end up buying an extra suitcase at Don Quixote right before we left because we thrifted so many good clothes when we were there. I was like, it's worth it. It's worth it to buy a suitcase. So all right, let me finish my mascara, finish getting ready and then I'll show you what I got. All right, and here is what I decided for for my outfit of the day. I just have my Uniqlo tank top on. I'm wearing these every single day. Like they're so good. They have a built-in bra. It's maybe the best thing ever. I have my thrifted overalls. These are my favorite and just like my little fake Birkenstocks and then this thrifted sweater that I got at the Rose Bowl like a few months ago and it's so cute. I'm gonna throw on these sunglasses here in a bit and there we go. That is today's casual look because it's like kind of chilly outside right now but I think it's gonna be nice later. So we'll take the sweater off. I gotta go but I'm gonna show you what I got really quickly from Disney. First haul from Disney. I did get a couple things for myself and a couple things for friends. The first thing I got was this Ariel shirt that I have already washed and it's just gonna be a nice sleep shirt. It just was so cute. This looks exactly like a shirt I would have worn as a child. I was obsessed with the little mermaid. It says Ariel and her friends. And then on the back it says under the sea. Literally, how cute is that? But it's like the cutest shirt ever. And then in a smaller bag, I got a few things. The first thing I got was for Karina and they had all these ears. It was very popular at Tokyo Disney to have the ears on that had like characters on top of them. So I got Karina a little tigger because I know she wears like a lot of like Winnie the Pooh stuff and I wanted to find a Winnie the Pooh one but they didn't have that because I was gonna get that one for Alexa but they didn't have any other characters. They only had tigger and I thought about getting like doubles but I wanted to get them something different. So anyway, got this for Karina. If she sees, no, I'll see her before this goes up. Cause that's kind of like a belated birthday present for her. I don't know what possessed me to get these. They were just so cute. I never saw these when I first showed the vlog but then like as I was leaving, I saw them and they're little hamburgers and we thought maybe we'd give these to Drew's niece or something. Not entirely sure, but like, is that not the cutest thing ever? Hamburgers, love. Then we've got, oh, this is the one I got for Alexa so I need to pack this up but this is an Aristocat ears. And I like, come on, that is so cute. And she's like the cat's girly. So I thought she could wear like a cute little cat outfit and then wear these to Disney. So I'm going to pack those up and then, oh, we did get chopsticks. I barely remember this. I don't remember these. Yeah, I got many chopsticks. We were like mad that we didn't get any chopsticks when we were in Japan. And then you got the alien ones. Oh my God. Drew literally was the other day like, I'm so mad. I didn't get any chopsticks when I was in Japan. And like he did want like authentic ones and we just never came around to it. But we got Disney ones. So here's my mini ones. So cute. I totally forgot we got these. We blacked out at the end. And then here's the alien ones. So freaking cute. Oh, and then, well, I guess you already saw it. You already saw my little sunglasses and my ear. Those were the best. So anyway, I'm just gonna put this in here and then be on my merry way and give this to Alexa. Oh yeah, I'm seeing Alexa today because she and I have a meeting for a lunch meeting with our YouTube partner manager. It's essentially like our contact that works at YouTube. And we have the same one and she happens to be in town. So we were like, let's meet at the lunch. So that's what we're gonna do. I need to get in the car. I'm running late. I don't know if this is a flex or not, but I did pack my Taylor Swift Aeros tour bag to wear today. So that everyone knows that I saw Taylor Swift. Anyway, okay. Let's hit the road. All right, just finished up with Alexa and we had a lovely lunch with our YouTube partner manager. It was so great. We didn't even realize that like three hours had gone by practically or like two and a half hours. So it was just such a wholesome day. I loved it. I loved being here. I loved being on the beach. Laguna is my favorite place in the world. I need to come back soon. So we'll have to do that. Good morning. It is now Sunday morning. Good morning. Well, yeah, that's true. It's like 1230. I wasn't gonna rat on us, but I guess you are. So that's fine. We're actually headed out on a hike this morning and this hike that we've tried to take, this is now the third time that we've tried to take it in the last few months and it's been closed due to like rain and flooding and stuff because it literally rained for four months straight in LA. And I looked it up this morning. I looked it up on like the actual park website. It says that the entrance that we're using is gonna be open. So we're gonna swing by, get some Alfred coffee and hopefully go on this hike. I don't know if it's gonna work out. The only one on this once, this like big hike once with my friend Cara and I got like the worst sunburn of my life and it was also very strenuous. So we'll see how we do. I'm on antibiotics. I haven't even talked about that. We'll chat about it a bit. So wish me luck. Well, actually, I think I like these sunglasses better. We'll switch. Anyways, coffee time and then a hike. We were gonna go to the farmer's market, but today is Easter slash Passover. So no farmer's market today. Oh, he's got so good. I can't believe we're finally doing our favorite hike. Like it's been God six months probably since we've done this. So I'm hoping that the next time I'm back in the car I will let you know that we did it. These houses that like jut off of these cliffs like this, how do you sleep at night? Knowing that you could just potentially break off and come tumbling down a mountain. That's crazy, but like no doubt I would live in any one of these. All right, we're back from our hike feeling good. My ear is doing something crazy. Okay, yeah, by the way, I'll give like a quick cause I'm hungry and I wanna make a snack, but quick little like if you don't follow me on Instagram you wouldn't have seen me talking about it, but on our flight back from Japan, which was now 11 or 12 days ago, right before we landed it was about like 20 minutes before we landed. All of a sudden, you know, my ear plugged up really bad and I was like, ah, and it kind of hurt for a second, but I was trying really hard to get it to pop. I was like, you know, doing everything, yawning, chewing, chewing gum, everything, and nothing was working. And I was like, okay, that's weird, but like it'll eventually pop, you know? So we landed, still hadn't popped. In the Uber home, still hadn't popped. Got home to the shower, still hadn't popped. Got in bed, took a nap, still hadn't popped. And now here we are 11 days later and it still has not popped. So that's been really fun and it developed into an ear infection, probably around day eight, I would say. So I went to urgent care last week and they were like, yeah, it's a little infected. It's like mild, here's some antibiotics. So tomorrow is my last day on the antibiotics and today has been the first day that I have been like yawning and I actually maybe feel something happening because I'm also on nasal spray. I'm also on a de-congestant and I'm on the antibiotics and currently I'm also on Tylenol and Advil because I'm on my period. So it's great, it's fun. And yeah, I have just been hanging on by a thread. I am very just like un-dwayed. It feels like I've had an ear plug in my ear for 11 days. And yeah, I'm going, you know, I'm gonna go back to the doctor to make sure everything is good. But I wanted to get in with like a specialist but that was like a very long wait. So that's what I did in the meantime. I have spoken to a lot of you who have said that the same thing happened to you and that it just took time and it's just eventually it'll pop and it'll be okay. So that's just what I'm reminding myself. But yeah, there's been some ear drama. Also there's like some rumors going around about Taylor Swift and her boyfriend. I'm not ready to talk about that yet. I need some time. I'm actually fully in denial. So anyways, okay, enough about that. Cause I do need to take my antibiotics soon. I am going to make this viral fricking TikTok toast. Like really, you all saw me like a few vlogs ago trying out cottage cheese for the first time in my entire life. And I was like, mm, don't know how I feel about it. And I feel like cottage cheese is really having her rebrand in 2023. Like there is like full on cottage cheese TikTok. Like there's a whole side of TikTok. And I've been seeing a lot of people make avocado toast, like mashup avocado, season it and then put cottage cheese on top and then put like some red pepper flakes and some hot honey. And I tried it and it's delicious. So I'm gonna show you how I make it. I don't know if it's the right way, but this is how I do it. So I'm gonna use this potato bread. I would really prefer like a good crusty crusty bread, but this is what we have. So we're gonna use that. I'm gonna use some Mike's hot honey. And then I'm gonna grab an avocado, some cottage cheese and some seasonings. And then I'm gonna toast this bread while I'm over there. Then you take your avocado. I'm not super confident that this isn't rotten. So we're gonna see. Oh, it feels hollow. Yeah, no, I don't feel super confident with that. A lot of people, I see, I watch blogs and they eat a lot of avocados that I would not feel super comfortable with, but we got a new one this morning. So this one, beautiful. Look at that. So I'm only gonna use half. So you mash your avocado. My toast, I think it's ready. No, it needs more time. If I'm having avocado toast, it has to be like crispy. You know what I mean? All right, now we got our mashed avocado. I'm gonna do a lot of salt. I feel like avocado and potatoes are like the two things that just, they have to be salty. The two things in my life that like I cannot have without salt. We'll do pepper. I'll actually save the red pepper flakes first on the top of the toast. I really fully tried this thinking like, I'm not gonna like it. And I love it. So I guess I've found my way of eating cottage cheese. Drew's been having it every morning with fruit, but this morning he had it just with honey and cinnamon and he said it was really good. All right, I hope that was enough. Did I get to do the whole avocado? We'll see. I'm not like a massive amounts of avocado person. That amount is actually perfect for me. So you spread it on your toast. Then you take your cottage cheese and you put a little bit on top. I'm not gonna do like a ton. That was kind of a lot actually. And then you spread it across as well. Well, that actually wasn't that much. That's fine. Then you do a little bit of chili flakes. And then I'm gonna do some of the hot honey. It looks so good. And here she is. Look at that. Look how pretty. Like tell me that doesn't look good. I don't know. I'm not a cottage cheese girly and I'm into it. Okay, cheers. I'll do a taste test on camera. I haven't had it on this bread, so we'll see. I'm obsessed. I'm gonna go eat this now and I desperately need a shower. So that's the next order of business. It's the next day. I am actually in the car outside of the courthouse because I have jury duty today, which is part of the civic duty, you know what I mean? So anyways, I'm here a little bit early. I have like about 15, 20 minutes before I have to go inside. So I thought that I would end this vlog since it's kind of like a catch-up type of vibe by answering a few of your questions that you asked me on Instagram regarding Japan. I feel like now that I'm back from the trip and even when I was on the trip, I have gotten so many questions from people about traveling to Japan. I've gotten questions from friends, YouTube friends, tons of people online. I've gotten DMs, comments, et cetera. So I thought that I would pop a little question box on Instagram and then answer some of the questions that you asked. I am by no means an expert on traveling to Japan. I have been there twice, but I don't know all the answers, but I will try to answer them the best that I can and just hopefully give you a little bit of insight if you're thinking about traveling to Japan someday or if you maybe have a trip planned and you wanna know like some tips, tricks, whatever. I don't have many, but here it is. The number one question I will say that I got asked by far, and I actually tried to answer this earlier and then they were doing some like work on some concrete or something near our house. I think I'm gonna have to move this into my car. So that was kind of a shit show. But the number one question by far was, is it an English friendly speaking country or was it difficult for you to travel to Japan as an English speaker or is there hope for me as someone who doesn't speak Japanese? And for the most part, depending on where you go, like if you go to Tokyo, I can't obviously speak for the whole of Japan, but in Tokyo, in like a lot of sort of more touristy locations and a lot of more chain restaurants in a lot of like train stations, airports, et cetera, you're gonna have a just fine time getting by not speaking Japanese. However, I would strongly recommend learning a little bit of Japanese, learning how to say please. Thank you, thank you very much. Hi, good morning. You know, things like that really do help a lot because there are, you know, times because you're in another country where people are speaking to you in Japanese and you have no idea what they're saying. In a lot of restaurants, again, sort of more like chains, not as much like tiny Izakayas and more local places, but we're kind of like big restaurants that will offer like English menus sometimes or they'll have like photos. For me, when I went to Starbucks, for example, I was able to just like order my coffee normal. But other places that we went to if we were having a hard time, we used Google image translate. So basically like you set Google images to Japanese and then you like scan it on your phone and then it kind of gives you the best translation possible. There's always gonna be a couple of moments where you're just kind of like, ooh, wait, did that make sense? Like, are we getting, are we on the same page here? Like there were a couple of confusing moments, but as long as you're kind and polite and don't expect people to speak English to you, obviously, then like you should be good. And everyone is just so friendly and kind in Japan and polite and I adore that place so much. So definitely don't let it discourage you, but also like, you know, make sure that you're putting into effort. How do you manage flight anxiety? I literally don't. I don't have an answer to this. I had pretty intense anxiety on the flight over there. I didn't really on the way back, but that's just something that like I'm learning how to deal with. I have a glass of wine and sometimes that helps, but that's not good advice. What type of place would you recommend staying Airbnb, hotel, or hostel? I would definitely recommend hotels. Drew and I did stay in an Airbnb when we went in 2018, but I have heard that since then, I don't know what's going on with my voice. I have heard that they've since kind of cracked down on Airbnbs, like I think they've gotten a little bit more strict since then. So I personally had a great time at the hotels that are in the vlogs that I recommended that we stayed at. Those were all great. Some of them weren't like super central to everything, but they were like a quick walk to the train station or whatever. I would personally recommend hotels and I've never stayed in a hostel so I don't have that experience to recommend, but if you're asking me personally, I would recommend hotels. How was it ordering food in Japan? Was it difficult with language barriers? Sometimes, but for the most part, I would point to what I wanted on the menu and I would say one, please, like onigashimas, meaning like, can I please have one of these? There is a person that just pulled up next to me and this is so incredibly awkward. So for the most part, I got by with just pointing to what I wanted on the menu and saying like one, please. And they were like, oh yeah, thank you. And I would just say thank you so much and it was mostly pretty easy. Oh my God, I barely survived that interaction. That was so awkward. There's like people, a few cars down and that's fine, they can't really see me, but then there's like probably five empty spaces and the person just parked directly next to me and they were just looking in my car and it was very awkward. Anyways, I'm gonna make this quick because I do need to go inside soon. I got a couple questions on public transport. How easy is it? Did you take it, et cetera? Public transport is like something that you need to learn. It's kind of a learning curve but like we never got on a wrong train. We did have four people working together but Google Maps will be your best friend. You can screenshot the route that you need to take on the trains and then on the trains, all of the announcements are in English, Korean and Japanese and then like all the signs are also in English, Korean and Japanese, all the exits, everything like that. So that's pretty easy for the most part. So you should be fine with that. And then another popular question that I got was like how much did you plan in advance? How much did you go with the flow? And there were four people on this trip. So we were kind of like balancing what everyone wanted to do. So basically before leading up to the trip we did like a lot of research. That's like one thing that I kind of wanted to touch on is like before you go somewhere, I mean, unless you wanna just go and experience it and like fly by the seat of your pants by all means but I think with Japan like I would really strongly recommend learning about like their etiquette. They're very, very polite and it's, you know, part of their culture is politeness and like respect. So I would really learn like what is considered respectful like wearing masks on especially public transport, indoor spaces, not eating or drinking on the trains. Yeah, just respect is like a huge respect and politeness are like a huge part of their culture. So like learning kind of more about that was really helpful. We learned that the first time as well. It also helps that Drew took like a couple semesters of Japanese in college. So he has like a general understanding of it and can kind of read certain things, but you don't need that. You just need to kind of be willing to adapt and learn. And then we just kind of as a group, like we would just sort of have a list of things that we wanted to do. Our friends are like very, very into coffee. So like they had things that they wanted to do on their list where like they were like, we wanna go to this coffee shop and we were like, cool, meet up with you after. We were like, oh, we all wanna do karaoke. So let's do that. We all wanna go to Disneyland. So let's do that. So on this day, like there were a couple things that we planned, but for the most part, we kind of just were like, should we do this today? And it was like, hell yeah. So we kind of had like a list of things that we wanted to do and then we decided like what we were gonna do on what day. Was exchanging currency difficult? No, we ended up, Drew I think did exchange some currency beforehand, like at his bank, but I just ended up like pulling money out of the ATM. So it's totally your preference, but not difficult to do it all, but you should have cash in Japan because a lot, a lot, a lot of places, a lot more places to take cash there than here. A lot of like, please send your recommendations for like this, that and the other. I mean, everything pretty much that we did that I felt comfortable showing, like, you know, that wasn't like a tiny Izakaya, which is like a small restaurant that seats like 10 people. And you know, out of respect, didn't wanna film in there. Everything else I showed. So like if you have any itinerary questions or like what we did on what day, that's all in the vlogs. So make sure you check out the vlogs and that'll kind of give you pretty much everything we did. And I tried to anyway, link like everything that we did in the description box for all those vlogs. So that should be there. Another question was, is Disney worth it? It depends on like what you consider worth it. Like I can't like tell you, yes, it's absolutely worth it. You need to go because then if you go and you hate it, it's like totally personal preference type of thing. What I will say is the Disney sea that we went to because Disney has two parks in Japan, in Tokyo. The Disney sea park that we went to, I can't speak for the other Disneyland, but they did not have a fast pass system. So all the lines were extremely long for rides. So we actually didn't really go on any rides besides like a couple little ones. And you know, it was a really cool experience and it's a lot cheaper than Disneyland in California. So for that, I would say like, yeah, definitely recommend it. But it does take up like an entire day. It's pretty far out. So you just have to weigh those kinds of things when you're planning it, but I loved it. A couple of questions I got about vegetarian options. Now what I will say is this, last time Drew and I went to Japan, we were vegetarian and we really struggled actually. Like there are a few vegan and vegetarian restaurants, but as far as like, oh, I just want to like grab something real quick. It was difficult. Like even like a lot of the like soups or whatever they would have like fish broth or they would have fish in it. Things that like you wouldn't maybe necessarily expect and it's difficult to read labels and stuff. So we actually really struggled with that. I think it's probably changed a lot since 2018, but that's definitely something I would do some research on and like check some YouTube vlogs, like how to be vegetarian in Japan or like vegetarian restaurants in Tokyo or whatever, especially vegan. I feel like that would be even more difficult. There were like a couple veggie restaurants at places that we went to that were like more kind of chain based, but I will say of probably, I mean, I've only been to a couple other countries, but that is probably like the least vegetarian and vegan friendly one that I've personally been to. Obviously there could be plenty of things I don't know about, but that was where we struggled a lot. I think those are pretty much like the main questions. So I think I'm going to end it here. I do need to eat my little snack and then head inside, but I hope you all enjoyed this vlog. I'm so glad to be back and in the swing of things. And obviously after my jury duty era is over, I'm just back, I'm back, I'm full swinging and I'm so, so excited. If there are any other questions you want me to answer about Japan, leave it in a comment below. I'll answer some questions in the comments too if I missed anything, but that was kind of like the general gist of most of the questions that I got. So hopefully I answered your question and I will see you guys very soon in the next vlog. Bye.