My Summer 2022!

Japan’s summers can be the worst, with the insane humidity clinging onto your every move, but there’s also something so special to me about it. Aside from the couple of spring visits, I’ve only experience Japan’s summer, so it’s still got specialty and nostalgia attached to the unbearable heat. It’s been exactly a year since my last visit, so I wanted to share a little about what I did during my Summer of 2022 in Japan! (All hidden gems of course) 

       

I have a really good relationship with my mom’s closest community college friends from Japan and there’s one who lives in Yokohama that I’m extremely close to. I typically end up spending a couple of days at her home every time I go back and there’s one bakery 5 minutes away by foot from her home that I insist we stop by every time I’m there. This small bakery called Boulangerie Mont makes my favorite bread in the world! Japanese bread is incredibly soft like pillows and there’s actually a reason for why it’s so different from Western bread. Japanese bakers use a method called the “yudane” method which involves creating a gelatinous starch in the bread that keeps the moisture inside. You can read more in detail about this here! They also give out bags of toast crust scraps out for free and I know that may sound unappetizing to most, but I swear the bread is so good that even the scraps are something I ask for every time I go back! 

     

Next stop in my stay, I went to a place called Hakone, which is famously known as a really amazing vacation spot! There was a museum that I visited while I was there, called the Hakone Open-Air Museum. It is a HUGE open space with different sculptures and art pieces that you can browse around. Being surrounded by so much green and open space was such an amazing way to clear my mind and be at peace. They have this beautiful, tall stained glass building that you can climb to the top of, which you can see in the middle picture above. It was pretty nerve wracking both on the way up and down, but it was definitely worth it. (You can’t picture how beautiful all the colors were in person, on camera.) They also have an indoor exclusive gallery with Picasso’s pieces that was really amazing getting to see. I definitely recommend this museum for those who love nature and art! You can learn more about the museum here.

 

    

My last share on this blog is actually going to be a mall! I know that might seem a little random, but who doesn’t love a good mall right? This mall in Machida city is called Grandberry Park and they have so much to offer that your regular mall doesn’t. First of all, they have a temporary Snoopy museum that I was able to go to which was so much fun. They also have a lot of farmer’s market-esque areas indoors. There was one building that offered things like plants and cute home decor (shown in the middle) and another that was filled with different stands of food (shown in the right.) Aside from these, they also had a huge arcade and many other fun stores you could shop from. I think that everyone, even those who don’t enjoy shopping that much would find a lot to do here! 

Closing off, I wanted to thank everyone who took the time to read my entries and a special thanks to everyone who left nice comments under them. Japan is a really special place to me that let me spend valuable time with family and keep me connected to my roots, so it means a lot to be able to share my favorite parts about it with everyone!