April 2
Good morning! Today I write this entry alone because yesterday was officially the last day of devhouse. We started off the day by cleaning up the house and packing our bags. Damian and Bailey had already left in the early hours before we woke up.
Once devhouse was all tidy and our bags were all packed, we said our fairwells to the house and locked the keys away. Our first stop for the day was to go straight to the train station and book tickets for the Shinkansen back to Tokyo as James, Elise and I all had the be back there.
The tickets were a little confusing to buy and I almost didn’t end up with the right ticket. We eventually got them sorted, grabbed a bite to eat for the journey and hopped on the train. It was a peaceful ride, and James and I had spent some time working on some final changes to the devhouse website.
James built a merch store, which you should visit shop.devhou.se .
While on the train we were fortunate enough to get a nice and clear view of Mount Fuji. It was spectacular!
When we arrived in Tokyo, we had to find some scales for James to use so he would know how many giga strong zeros he could take back. We ended up using a set of display scales and he was within his weight limits.
After this we said our last farewells, James had to head for the airport, and Elise and I had to separately check into our hotels.
Once I checked in, I went for a walk and explored the area. It’s nice being back in Tokyo with all of the Sakura blooming, it’s very pretty.
I look forward to the next few days staying here, I think I want to visit some more parks to view the blooming Sakura, and maybe I will visit some museums and do some more sight seeing.
Devhouse Tokyo edition has been an amazing trip, and I’ll remember this trip for a very long time.
Until next time! See you in Bali!
April 1
Good day! Yesterday was a bit of a slower day. I had a bit of a sleep in after another huge night the previous day. I woke up at around midday and went for the daily morning walk to the nearby conbini to get my day started.
After some time James, Elise and I went for a walk to grab some lunch. Though when were getting food James got distracted on the way and ran to go on the ferris wheel. Elise and I just went to the conbini to get some lunch and went back to devhouse.
We all decided to make plans for the last night together as devhouse and we bought tickets to go teamLab Botanical Garden Osaka. I had some time before we needed to head off and decided that I would visit the nearby Uniqlo store briefly to see if they had any local merchandise I could buy. I like Uniqlo clothes and I think having some items to remind me of our travels would be nice.
We headed down for the teamLab experience and caught the train to Nagai. When we arrived at the park it was nice and dark which would make for a good experience during a light show. We walked through the park and admired the show that was put on, it was very mesmerising!
Later we went to get dinner back near Dotonbori and we found somewhere that served dry ramen, abura soba. It was delicious! we then headed to a small karaoke bar that was not too far away and had a few drinks and sang there.
We said goodbye to Damian and Bailey who headed home early so that they could catch their flights out of Osaka in the morning.
The rest of us headed home to listen to some music and wind down before a big day of travelling today.
March 31
Good morning! Yesterday was another big day. When I woke up I still had a headache from the night before and I woke up early at 7am because I couldn’t sleep. I was surprised when I got up and not even Damian was awake yet, normally he is first, but he did get up not long after.
I spent the morning hanging out at devhouse while doing some coding on the devhouse website. I needed to fix a few bugs but it also turned out I had created some more so that was fun!
James and I had set out on an adventure to find a rental car for today so that would could drive together down to Hiroshima and have a big road trip. When we checked the websites every place had said they were sold out, we assumed for Sakura season and everyone else wanting to go on little vacations. We did end up finding a small number of places that had cars available but unfortunately the only cars anyone had were little cars and wouldn’t be nice to spend 10 hours total driving in a day.
We decided that maybe this was a sign and that we shouldn’t hire the car. We went back to devhouse to deliver the bad news. Becuase we now didn’t have to wake up early the next morning we made a plan to go for a walk and get some dinner and drinks instead.
Before we started our night plans though I went for a short run around Osaka so that I could get in some exercise. It was a nice run but the paths were a little busy with other people walking. I quickly ran back to devhouse with everyone eagerly awaiting so we could get some food.
We made a plan of heading towards the first bar, which was submarine themed, and we would get some food along the way. Most places we stopped in at were either closed or full so we had to try hard to find somewhere. Eventually we ended up somewhere that was highly reviewed that sold hamburger steaks. Because it was pretty busy James and Elise had tried to find somewhere else to eat where we could all eat together but sadly we got seated at the same time they found somewhere.
This meal that we received from this place, the hamburger steak, was one of the most amazing meals I have had while being in Japan. We were able to watch the chef prepare our meals fresh, including cutting and cooking the meat.
We then went to the first bar which was like being inside a submarine. It was a little small and cramped, but this was nice because I felt it added to the experience. From there we went to a small bar we found along the way when we were walking the food place before. From the outside it looked cozy and there was only one person there so we figured we could try it out and there was room. It was nice here. Damian was able to have another conversation with the other patron and I was quite impressed. I like that he is able to communicate with other people that I cannot.
The next place we went to was hidden behind a vending machine. We finished off the night at a club along the Dotonbori river. We somehow spent a lot of time here and left when the sun started coming up.
See you tomorrow!
March 30
Good morning. Yesterday was a late start for the day because I had been up until 4am the day before drinking strong zeros at devhouse. When I woke up Damian had already left to start his day. He likes to get up early and go exploring, I wish I had that energy. It had been a few days since the last time I had gone for a run, and knowing the weekend was going to be busy I planned to go for a run today.
I planned out a route for a 21km run and when the rest of devhouse had gotten up and ready to leave for their adventures to Osaka Castle and Umeda sky tower I headed out with them. I had mapped out a path that took me for a short path that had stops to Osaka Castle and then from there I would run along the river where I didn’t need to stop and I could enjoy my long run.
When I made it to the castle I found that there was a running path around the park and this would make for an enjoyable run. I ran around the castle and then onto the river and was really enjoying the scenery. I was feeling really good at this point and decided that I would push myself and go a little bit further and run 30km! This would be the longest run I have ever done, and I knew that it would destroy me but I needed to do some longer runs in preparation for my marathon and I was really enjoying the scenery.
I made it to my halfway point which was 15km away from devhouse. When I was running along the river it was very peaceful and at one point there was a young man playing the trumpet up on the hill which added to the vibe. I finally made it back to Osaka Castle where I would do one loop before heading back. At this point I was dying and my legs were so sore. I was regretting going the extra distance but I had already committed to, so I pushed myself to get there.
I finished my run just around the corner from devhouse and stopped into a conbini on my way back to get a recovery meal. When I arrived back at devhouse I was met by Damian who happened to be walking down our little alleyway at the same time. What a coincidence! Readying for another bar crawl tonight I had a shower and a long nap to recover and get back some energy. When I woke up my legs were so sore, it was hard to get up.
When the rest of devhouse arrived back we all got ready and headed out for the bar crawl. Somehow we had decided it was my birthday so I knew it was going to be a big night! The first bar we went to had a deal for unlimited drinks but there was catch that there was a long line so we only actually got 2 drinks. The second bar was similar when we got there and there was another long line, but I had a free drink pass from a game at the last bar so I waited anyway. The line eventually cleared out and I had a few more lemon sours.
The third bar was a little better, but by this time the shots we were getting between bard, plus the extra shots for my birthday were really starting to kick in and I wasn’t feeling too well. I headed outside and then I saw Damian who had also headed outside and we went to McDonalds to get some food. There we met some Germans who were also on the pub crawl with us and we ate together.
The last place we went to was a club and because Damian and I were late from getting food, we had to wait in line with all the regular people not from the crawl. Inside we met the rest of devhouse and had a few more drinks and a bit of a dance. I was getting quite tired early so I headed back to devhouse to get some sleep for the night.
See you tomorrow!
March 29
Good morning! Yesterday we spent basically the entire day at Universal Studios. It was amazing! Learning from last time, I knew we needed to get there early so that would could reserve a time slot for Super Nintendo World before it all got sold out. We left devhouse before 9am so that we could get there early and then the first thing we would do when we got there was reserve the slot.
By the time we got through the gates and tried to make the reservation it was before 10am and the earliest that we could book was 9pm! We decided that we would do it anyway and spend the whole day at the park waiting for it. Super Nintendo World is pretty cool so it was worth the wait.
We spent the day going on many rides, the flying dinosaur was my favourite, and we had the ingenious idea of just going in the singles lines on all of the rides so that we wouldn’t have to wait as long. Some of the rides had wait times of around 90 minutes but we basically walked into the front of the line and didn’t have to wait. I think the longest we had to wait was for the flying dinosaur and we only spent maybe a little over an hour waiting for it but it was worth the wait.
For dinner we had minion burgers and the happiness cafe and they made me very happy. It started raining in the evening and we hoped that this meant the park would start to clear out and maybe we could go to Super Nintendo World early as they had told us if there was not many people in there that we could enter without the reservation. Unfortunately this wasn’t the case but it meant that we had time to go on a couple of the rides again, this time at night and in the dark. It made the thrill so much more exciting.
We finally waited through the day and made it into Super Nintendo World in our slotted time and it was so cool in there. It was like if a Mario game had made it into real life and we were living in it. We spent the rest of the time until park close there and then headed for home when we got kicked out.
On the way home we stopped into the conbini and picked up a couple strong zeros and we had a couple of drinks back at devhouse.
See you tomorrow!
March 28
I have forgotten to post for a few days I have been busy coding. Sorry.
Monday night we went to akihabara.
Tuesday shibuya.
Wednesday night we caught the Shinkansen from Tokyo to Osaka. We checked into our booking and found a nearby yakinuki and whiskey bar where we’ll be spending a lot of time.
Today we head off to Universal Studios.
March 24
Today was a bit of a rest day after a big night last night. I stayed in devhouse and wrote my blogs for the past couple of days.
For dinner we went to have some yakinuki and it was delicious. We had one of the servers come at point and he cooked a massive slice of delicious beef. It was the best piece of meat I have ever had.
I later went for a quick 5k run near our airbnb and I went to rainbow bridge. The bridge is so big, it was amazing.
March 23
This morning we started the day early, preparing ourselves for a huge day ahead. We had already booked a pub crawl for tonight yesterday, which would take us late into the night, and I had promised that I would do parkrun in the morning, starting my day early. My alarm went off at 6am, I was not ready. Alas though I pulled myself out of bed and was greeted by an already awake James who said he’d be joining me for parkrun.
It was an adventure to get to parkrun, being the closest event was an hour train away so we had to get up and ready early. I got dressed, putting on some warm clothes as I had learnt to do from yesterday but was not prepared for just how cold it was. When we stepped outside it was 3 degrees and let me tell you I felt it. I was wearing 2 jumpers, one of them a puffer jacket I bought from ユニクロ yesterday, but this was not enough I was still freezing.
We ventured for the train station, through the freezing weather, regretting our decision to get up this early and go for a run but we had already made it this far and promised that we would go.
By the time we made it there, we had to walk for a bit to get to the start line, and there was some construction which meant we had to make a detour. We checked the weather again and it had warmed up by 1 degree and was now 4 degrees. Far too cold to be running! We got there just before they had started the introduction speech and then stripped off our layers to just a tshirt and shorts. I wish I had thought ahead and bought some longer running clothes, or even just some gloves would have helped.
When the countdown started I figured I would warm up through running and the cold may not be that bad, I remembered back to previous runs I had done in the cold and found that I could run faster because I was able to cool off quicker and the only limitation on my running was my physical performance and not environmental issues so I was somewhat excited to be able to run fast.
Through the run I found myself being colder than my running was warming me up and I started to feel my fingers and cheeks absolutely freezing. I pushed through, despite conditions, and felt pretty good about how I was tracking for time. I had started off at a more reasonable pace but as I felt that I could push myself I managed to go faster and faster. James had left me for the last 500 metres and left me in the dust.
I crossed the line and stopped my watch, displaying a time of 26:44. I was pretty happy with this result and went and checked my previous parkrun pb and my time then was 26:42, I then wondered how the event timings would turn out and maybe I could lose a couple of seconds between discrepancies of the different timings.
I quickly put my warm clothes back on and we headed to train station to head back to devhouse and meet the rest of the group. Along the way we received our parkrun results and they had recorded a time of 26:42, exactly the same as my previous pb, I was pretty happy with this.
When we headed everyone else was up and awake and head breakfast to prepare themselves for another day. We starting planning our day ahead and figuring out some plans. Some of the group wanted to head out to go to a Pokemon centre and get some udon for lunch. In figuring out my running plan for the week, and being aware that we were going on a pub crawl tonight and I may not be able to do my long run tomorrow, I opted to do a long-ish run instead today and so decided that instead of joining them I would go on a half marathon run instead.
When everyone was ready we all headed downstairs and then walked until parted ways, myself going to where I wanted to start my run, and everyone else headed to the train station.
I had mapped out a route that would take me to the imperial palace, I would do 3 laps there, and then run back, which would add up to a half marathon almost exactly. I had tried to plan a run that would minimise stops at red lights, and the route I had mapped would have only the first and last couple of kms with stops, the middle ~15 would be non-stop, ideally.
I headed off, preparing for a few stops along the way which allowed me to run at a slightly quicker pace because I would have time between runs to cool down and breathe for a second. I ran to the start point of the imperial palace and began to run the running loop they have there, preparing myself to run 15kms without stoppping.
I was quickly stopped by the police when I began running that loop though! I think there may have been an event on today, but there were not allowing running or cycling within the palace today. I then had to do the walk of shame out of the palace and back to streets where I could get back to my run.
This would mean that the rest of my run would have to be stop start, but I figured I could use this time to see some sights within Tokyo and go for a bit of a tour around the city, eventually naming the run on strava “Tokyo Tour”, and especially get to see where tourists may not normally go and see some ordinary places which I think are interesting to see.
I made it back to devhouse at the final end of my half marathon, happy that I had completed a big loop of Tokyo and done some sight seeing along the way. I was able to keep a pretty good pace as I had to keep stoppping along the way, and when I checked my watch I had spend almost half an hour stopped at lights over the 2 and a half hours.
I ducked into the nearby 7-eleven to grab myself some recovery snacks and drinks and went back to devhouse to get some rest. Not long after the rest of the group had returned from their adventure so we started to plan out the rest of the day. Knowing we had a big night ahead of us with the pub crawl, and I had just done 2 runs prior, both big and fast runs, we decided that everyone getting a mid afternoon nap was the best idea so we all headed to bed for a few hours.
I managed to get about a half an hour nap, plenty to get me through the day. We got dressed and ready and headed to the tatami room to have a little ceremony the celebrate the devhouse and get ourselves ready for the night.
We headed out for the pub crawl, though while we were all going through the train stations I had some trouble tapping on and going through the gates at the first station and was promptly bullied by Damian because I had previously bullied him about buying a physical card and argued that iPhones were better because we could create and load our Suica card entirely on the phone, and could even do this before we left Australia.
Despite this I had apparently not properly gone through the gates and when we got to the other station I could not leave because I hadn’t touched on. I had to go and talk to one of the attendants which was quite embarrassing where they manually charged my card and let me through.
Next stop was the first stop in the pub crawl, where the event would be starting and we would meet the host. When we arrived we had let the host know it was Bailey’s birthday today (it wasn’t) so that he could receive some special treatment. We were told that at the second bar there would be a surprise, we were excited. We had a couple drinks here while waiting for everyone on the pub crawl to arrive and also received some free shots along the way.
We were excited before heading to the second bar, knowing we were in for a surprise, unsure of what it would be. We had some more drinks here, and when Andrew, the pub crawl host, turned down the music and started talking we knew we were in for a treat. He got the crowd rowdy and began calling some people into the middle, calling one random person, then another person, then the finale, Bailey was called up.
We knew what we were about to witness would be thrilling. When he was up there, we sang happy birthday for him, and then he was invited to get down on his knees for beer bong. They poured in some beer, and added shot after shot of vodka on top, disgusting, but just getting him ready for an even bigger night.
After the antics of the birthday boy we headed to the next bar and had some more drinks there. At some point again Andrew had turned down the music and invited some people onto the stage. To everyone in our group’s surprise James had been called onto stage, we were not expecting this at all and made us even more excited for what would happen. He had to get up there and sing some songs, we thought this was hilarious.
Headed for the last stop for the night, the club. Knowing the trains stop running around midnight we had to make the decision to either leave just before then, or else we would have to stay until the first train runs at 5am. Obviously the choice was made to wait for the first train.
Drink after drink was consumed, and devhouse members started dropping off one by one making their way home through Ubers or just walking home. As a strong man I was strong on waiting for first train so I was not deterred by this and stayed until lights on and we were made to leave.
I caught the train home and on the walk home stopped into a FamilyMart to get myself one more drink, a meal to get me through the night, and an iced coffee for the morning. I quickly collapsed into bed and lights were out stat.
March 22
Good morning, this post comes from the day after because I forgot/was too tired yesterday to manage to pull together a post.
We started the day by landing into Tokyo in the early hours of Friday morning, approximately around 5am in the morning. It was a rough start. I had maybe 2-3 hours of sleep on the plane, though it was very uncomfortable because the seats are so small and I am so large so I didn’t get too much rest.
By the time we made it through the airport and on our way into Tokyo it was around 7am which is 9am Melbourne time.
We had found a space to code not too far from where we were staying and we hopped on in to start coding until our B&B was ready. This space offered different packages and length of times, this ranges from half an hour to a full day and either an unlimited soft drink package or an unlimited alcohol package. Unfortunately for us the full day package didn’t offer the unlimited alcohol so we had to maintain our sobriety for the length of the day.
Most of us then spent the day coding from there, except for Damian who is not writing code for the full length of the trip. We did find a nearby ramen spot that we went to for lunch, and boy oh boy did that get my appetite for ramen and Japanese food going! We also went for a little adventure to walk to the airbnb that we would be staying at whilst we’re in Tokyo and had a little peek around at the surroundings and scoping the neighbourhood.
Once we got through the morning the first thing on our agenda was to get some devhouse tshirts printed. We wanted to make a statement through fashion of our adventures in Japan. We had suspected the ユニクロ may have offered clothing printing, but due to the poorly translated website we were unsure of their actual offerings, so this was our first venture.
We made it there and discovered they do have printing so we had to pull together the designs and send them off to get printed. There were a few different options for clothing items, colours, and styles that we could choose from. When we first planned this we had desired to get some hoodies printed with the devhouse logo printed on the back, and tshirts with it printed on the front breast. We found that ユニクロ only offered the tshirts so we opted for that and figured we could find somewhere later that could print us the hoodies.
They turned out amazing, and we were very happy with the shirts. We lated had a ceremony to celebrate the existance of the devhouse merchandise.
Once we had received our tshirts and gone for a far too long ユニクロ shop, we found a nearby Yakitori where we could delve into some delicious grilled chicken, it was delicious!
We then headed back to home after a long day on very little sleep, had our devhouse tshirt ceremony and quickly dropped into bed, tired from the lack of sleep and long day, ready for another big day ahead!