It’s been a hectic month! Exactly one month ago today, my book Sanctuary came out into the world. It was an absolutely incredible experience for me to see that dream realized. If you haven’t read it yet, I hope you will! If you have, it would be awesome if you could leave me a review. But either way, I’m so full of joy and pride for my little book.
In other news, we’ve now been in Tokyo for coming up on three weeks, which is crazy and hard to believe. I start work at my new school on Monday! Lots of updates to come on that, I’m sure, but here are some highlights of my first few weeks abroad.
1. Attack on Titan: The Animation Gallery
Ohhhhh my goodness you guys, I geeked out. So. Hard. At this event. I could literally post thousands of pictures, but I will restrain myself and just give you a glimpse. This was a really cool glimpse into the original artwork behind Attack on Titan/ Shingeki no Kyojin which, as most of you know, is my jam.
We also checked out some cool Final Fantasy artwork the same day, but you have no idea how hard it was to limit myself to three shots of Attack on Titan, so I will move on.
Animal cafes are a HUGE thing in Japan. You pay money and hang out petting animals — mostly cats, but they also have hedgehog cafes, snake cafes, owl cafes… and bunny cafes. But more importantly, this specific rabbit cafe has OTTERS.
The rabbits were fun to feed, but playing with otters was a totally unique experience. I posted some video on my insta feed if you want to see more!
3. Geeking Out
We spent a lot of time wandering around two of Tokyo’s geek paradises, Akihabara and Nakano Broadway. I did a bit of shopping here but honestly most of my attention was taken up stopping my husband from spending our monthly food budget on Gundam models! We had a great time rediscovering all that these super cool areas have to offer, and I made a new friend.
4. Yokohama: Chinatown and the Hikawa Maru
We really wanted to go to the Cup Noodle museum in Yokohama, but it was closed, so we visited their huge Chinatown and had amazing food. I went to a store that included literally nothing but panda merchandise, and I bought a panda oven mitt, because why wouldn’t I?
From there we went on to the floating museum, the Hikawa Maru. This ship has a long and fascinating history you can read about if you’re interested, but it’s been a luxury liner featuring guests such as Charlie Chaplin, a war time hospital ship that triggered mines, and a merchant vessel. It’s now a visitable museum largely preserved in its original condition.
5. Tokyo Zoo and Fireworks
We checked out the Tokyo Zoo. It was an INCREDIBLY hot day, so some of the animals had retreated indoors (and I was very happy to see that was an option for them). The Tokyo Zoo mimics the natural habitats of the animals, giving you a chance to see them in their element. Even cooler, there were a lot of animals you don’t often see in Canadian zoos. There was even a baby panda, but there was ALSO a two hour line in forty degree heat to see it, so we gave that a miss.
Another surprising element of this zoo? It really gives visitors credit for not being idiots. Whereas in Canadian zoos the animals are often behind thick glass or set far back from the viewers, many of the animals here were in cages well within human reach if you were foolish enough to stick your fingers in (many signs warned you not to do so). This didn’t apply to animals like tigers or bears, but definitely did for the monkeys.
We were super lucky that night to be able to see some of a fireworks festival from our hotel room. There’s something pretty cool about lying on your bed watching the sky light up.
And in some non-Tokyo news, I did a Q&A for TBR & Beyond, which was sooo much fun — they had amazing questions. I also did an Instagram takeover for Lit Joy Crate, who kindly featured my book in their July box! If you missed that, you can check out the video archive here:
That’s all for now! This was a graphic intense post, but I really wanted to share a bit of Tokyo with you.
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And remember, my book Sanctuary is now available wherever books are sold!
