Zachary A. Martz

Choco Mint

There’s something quietly comforting about a small, themed snack—like it’s trying to set a season for you. On the table, the mint-green boxes sit in a calm arrangement: KitKat Premium Mint beside Choco Mint Pocky sticks, both leaning into the same promise of cool sweetness. Even the packaging feels like a breath you didn’t know you were holding—mint leaves, soft color, chocolate pictured in neat pieces as if order itself could be dessert.

Choco mint is one of those flavors people argue about, but in the moment it doesn’t feel controversial. It feels simple. The chocolate is familiar and steady, and the mint lifts it just enough to make everything taste cleaner, brighter, like cold air coming in through a cracked window.

The Pocky sticks are slender and precise, made for slow snacking, while the KitKat is the opposite—something you can break apart and share, or keep to yourself without ceremony. Together they make a small pairing that’s more mood than meal.

If you’re looking for an easy treat that lands somewhere between dessert and a palate reset, choco mint kind of does the job. It’s cool, sweet, and briefly feels like it changes the room around you.

Face of a Winner

There’s a certain kind of quiet triumph that only shows up after the noise. The screen flashes, confetti scatters, and for a moment the arcade feels like its own small weather system—bright, loud, and sealed off from whatever the day was doing outside.

“Face of a Winner” is a simple title, but it catches something true: the way a camera finds you right after you’ve been trying. Not posing, not polishing the moment, just letting the result land. A crown icon, a first-place badge, and that familiar Mario Kart palette—candy colors wrapped around the sharp little satisfaction of getting it right.

I like how victory looks less like a victory lap and more like a pause. The face isn’t shouting. It’s steady, almost surprised, like the body is still catching up to what happened. In the background are characters that have been traveling with us for years, drifting through childhood memories and mall arcades, always ready for another race.

Winning doesn’t have to be a grand thing. Sometimes it’s just a single frame that proves you were there, hands on the wheel, eyes forward, and for one round at least, the world lined up.

Breakfast for 2

There are mornings that feel like they’re in a hurry, and then there are mornings that settle in—quietly, deliberately—like a house holding heat in its stones.

Breakfast for 2 was the second kind. A low table, two places set, and a spread of small dishes that made the moment feel larger than it was: bowls of rice, small plates of fruit and pickles, and warm soup—everything arriving in modest portions that add up to something generous.

Across the table, two people framed by a backdrop of pale, tangled lines, like winter branches caught mid-sway. The room feels hushed, and the food does what good breakfast does: it slows you down without insisting.

I keep thinking about how meals like this make time behave differently. The clink of ceramics, the pause between bites, the small decisions—what to try next, what to save for last—turn into their own kind of conversation. Not every morning needs a speech. Some just need a table and enough care to make staying still feel natural.

And then, eventually, the day starts moving again. But for a while, it was simply breakfast, for two—quiet, warm, and complete.

Golden Ice Cream

Two cones, two hands, and a little shimmer that feels almost out of place in the plain daylight.

We tried Golden Ice Cream—soft serve crowned with delicate flakes of edible gold. It’s the kind of treat that looks like a dare: too pretty to bite, too bright to be real. But the first taste is familiar and simple, the way good soft serve always is. The gold doesn’t change the flavor so much as it changes the moment.

Standing outside with the street behind us, it felt like one of those small travel scenes you keep longer than you expect. A regular afternoon made slightly stranger, slightly more memorable. The cones catch the light; the gold clings to the ridges and settles into the swirl. For a minute you pay attention—really pay attention—to texture, to warmth, to how quickly something ornate becomes ordinary once you start eating it.

If you’re in Japan and you spot a shop offering gold leaf on ice cream, it’s worth stopping. Not because it tastes like luxury, but because it turns a quick snack into a quiet story: something fleeting, sweet, and bright enough to notice before it disappears.

Almost time for bed …

There’s a certain hush that settles over a place when the day is finished with you.

Almost time for bed … and the ryokan room has already done the quiet work of turning itself into a small refuge. Two futons laid out on tatami, folded comforters with deep blue patterns like water in low light, and that soft, practical order you only notice when you finally stop moving.

The walls feel plain in the best way—nothing fighting for attention. A simple arrangement on the shelf, a framed piece above it, a few belongings tucked to the side like they’ve learned to be polite. It’s the kind of room that doesn’t entertain you so much as it gives you space to hear your own thoughts.

If you’ve been soaking in onsen water and walking through evening air that smells faintly of cedar and steam, this is the part where everything slows down. Not a grand ending—just a gentle closing. You can almost hear the building settle, the way an old house does, as if it’s living alongside you for the night.

I like that nothing here insists on being new. It’s simply ready. Ready for sleep, ready for another early morning, ready for the small ritual of waking up somewhere far from home and feeling, for a moment, completely held by the quiet.

Room with a View

Some places don’t ask for your attention—they just hold it.

From the room, the view is a pale bridge suspended in a thick spill of green, the kind of structure that looks like it’s been there long enough to forget who built it first. The arches repeat like a quiet sentence. Nothing dramatic happens, but everything feels alive anyway: leaves layered over leaves, a shaded river cut below, the suggestion of cool air moving even when you can’t see it.

“Room with a View” is an easy phrase to say, but it’s rarer to feel. A good view doesn’t just show you something pretty; it gives you space to hear your own thoughts. It makes the world feel settled—worn in, not worn out. The bridge does that. It connects two sides you can’t quite see, and for a moment it makes you content to stay on your side and simply look.

In a ryokan, the day tends to slow down around small rituals: the soft shuffle of steps, the quiet order of a meal, the way light changes on paper and wood. Outside, the green presses close, and the bridge stands firm in it—stone and concrete holding their breath while the trees keep growing.

It’s not the kind of view you photograph to prove you were there. It’s the kind you return to, because it reminds you how to be still.

Boyfriend Who Bridge at Onsen

The bridge near the onsen curves forward like it already knows where your feet will land. Steel ribs cross overhead, framing a ribbon of boardwalk and sun-warmed rails. Beyond it, the hills stack up in soft green layers, and everything feels briefly suspended—half engineered, half borrowed from the mountains.

He stepped into the moment with the kind of seriousness that’s usually reserved for jokes. A bridge pose, right there in the middle of the walkway—back arched, hands planted, body making its own small span. It was simple and strange in the best way, like adding a secret door to an ordinary afternoon.

Travel is often like that. You go looking for water and quiet, and you end up finding a new angle on someone you thought you knew. The onsen promises a reset, but the real reset happens in the in-between spaces: the walk there, the light on the beams, the way laughter echoes and then disappears.

After, the path keeps curving. The forest stays put. And for a while, the day feels bigger than your plans—held up by metal, wood, and a goofy, perfect little act of balance.

Breakfast before Exploration

The day starts the way I like it best: quietly, with warm wood under everything and small dishes that make you slow down. A Japanese breakfast set arrives like a little map of the morning—rice steamed into a soft white mound, miso soup still sending up a faint cloud, and tamagoyaki cut into neat, sunny blocks.

Around it, the table fills in the details. Pickles, seaweed, a few vegetables, and bowls that feel like they’ve been used for years, washed carefully, and put back where they belong. At the edge, a small grill does its steady work, the kind of heat that makes the air smell like salt and patience.

Before exploration, there’s this: a moment to be in one place. Travel can make you feel like you’re always arriving late to your own life, but breakfast like this pulls you back. It asks you to notice textures, to listen for the soft clink of ceramic, to let the warmth of soup and the steadiness of rice set the pace.

Outside, the day is already moving. But here, for a little while, everything is arranged, balanced, and calm. Then you stand up, step out, and let the morning unfold.

Private Cocktail Venue

The first thing you notice is the light.

It doesn’t just sit on the ceiling—it spills, curves, and drifts across the room in bands of magenta and green, turning the polished surfaces into little pools of color. The space feels carefully built for a certain kind of quiet: the kind you settle into when you’re handed a drink that took its time.

Private Cocktail Venue suggests exactly what it is—somewhere between a lounge and a hideaway. Plush seating wraps around low tables. Glass and mirrored textures catch reflections and multiply them, so the room seems larger than it should be, like it’s holding more than what’s in plain view.

In Japan, bars like this can feel like small worlds with their own weather. Step in from the street and the day drops away. The conversations soften. The lighting does half the talking. You can sit back and listen to one world press up against another: the hum of the city outside, the slow clink of ice inside.

If you’re looking for a private cocktail spot that leans into atmosphere as much as it does the drinks, this one feels made for lingering. Not rushed, not loud—just composed, reflective, and a little mysterious, in the best way.

If you’re curious about what others ordered and how the night unfolded, the Instagram comments are worth a read.

Best Lunch & Best Vegetarian Food of Trip

There are meals that feel like more than a stop in the middle of the day. They settle in, quietly, the way a familiar house holds winter heat.

This was one of those lunches: the best lunch and the best vegetarian food of the trip, set out in red lacquer bowls on a tray, each dish small enough to invite attention. Rice still warm. Silky tofu with a dab of green. A pale, custard-like bowl with something sweet and delicate floating near the surface. Little bites arranged like the day had time to be patient.

In Kyoto, even lunch can feel ceremonial without being showy. You sit down, and the noise in your head lowers a notch. The texture of tatami, the careful spacing, the simple colors—everything makes room for you to taste what’s in front of you.

I came looking for a good vegetarian meal and left with something else, too: the sense that travel isn’t always about chasing highlights. Sometimes it’s about noticing the ordinary become meaningful when it’s treated with care.

Best Lunch & Best Vegetarian Food of Trip wasn’t just a title. It was a small, quiet benchmark for how satisfying a simple midday meal can be in Kyoto.

Meditation Break

The garden is quiet in the way a place gets quiet when it doesn’t need you to do anything. Trees crowd the edge of the water, softening the sky into a pale sheet, and the pond holds it all—green, stone, and the faint suggestion of wind—like it’s keeping a secret.

I sat down for a meditation break and let the scene do what it does best: stay. The rocks along the shoreline feel deliberate, placed with the patience that only time can afford. The water turns small movements into slow ripples, and even those seem to settle back into stillness.

In moments like this, you can feel one world press gently against another: the everyday noise you carried in, and the calmer layer underneath it that’s been there the whole time. There’s something comforting about a space that doesn’t ask you to be improved. It just invites you to listen.

I left with my thoughts a little less tangled, as if the reflection on the pond had borrowed some of the weight and set it down among the stones. Not fixed, not transformed—just eased, the way a place can ease you when you finally stop long enough to notice it.

Best Burger Kyoto

There are meals that feel like a landmark, even when they arrive on a simple tray lined with paper. In Kyoto, where the days can be all angles and quiet temples and slow footsteps, a burger can land with the kind of warmth you didn’t know you were missing.

This one came glossy and browned, the bun shining under the lights like it had been brushed with patience. The patty was thick and dark at the edges, the cheese spilling out in a soft, molten fold, and a pale sauce clinging to the side like a small storm cloud. A pickle tucked in at the back, crisp and green. Beside it, a metal cup of fries—thin, pale-gold, scattered with salt—doing what fries do best: promising comfort without asking questions.

“Best Burger Kyoto” is a bold claim, and maybe that’s part of the fun. You eat, you listen to the room, you watch the table, you let the city’s noise fade into the background hum. For a moment, Kyoto feels less like a checklist and more like a place you can actually live inside.

If you’re traveling with someone—especially someone who measures a trip by the bites you remember—this is the kind of stop that makes the rest of the day feel brighter. Not because it’s fancy. Because it’s honest, hot, and exactly what it should be.