My blog post is finally done chronicling my adventures in Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka with Nick. Its 19 pages long. Enjoy!!

Day 1: (Monday Dec 19,2005)

Woke up at 5:30am, and looked outside my window to find that about a foot (yes, 12 inches!) of snow had fallen in Hikone. Not too happy about this, but thinking it would only be an issue as I walked from JCMU to the cab, I got out of bed and quickly took a shower, packed my remaining items, turned all the lights, and said goodbye to JCMU for the following 5 days. Went down to the lobby and had to unlock the doors myself (since, who else was insane enough to leave at 6am on a Monday), and found that since I’m guessing JCMU is too cheap to have any kind of snow plow service, I had to walk through snow that went up to my knees with my suitcase, out to the cab which had thankfully made a little path for me with its tires, out to the street. It was like a winter wonderland, and I couldn’t believe that middle of nowhere Japan would get more snow in one night than I have seen fall in Michigan in a long time. The next 15 minutes was spent slowing driving to Hikone station in a taxi, while chatting on and off with the driver about how ‘sugoi’ (amazing) the snow was, and how it “Christmas mitai” (looked like Christmas), etc. Once I finally got to the station, it was completely dead, but luckily an operator showed up about 10 minutes before my train for Maibara would come, since I had to have my special Seishun 18 ticket hand-stamped.

Once I got down to the platform, I jumped into the little closed off waiting area and then…….waited. And waited. And waited some more. The snow continued to fall pretty steadily, and as such, my train was about 10 minutes late. No big deal, since I had calculated that I would get to Tokyo station around 2:30pm, which it would then take me 1.5 hours to get to Narita Airport, putting me 40 early from Nick’s flight. Once I got to Maibara, it was pretty easy to find the train I would take to Tokyo, since from there on out I had to take a train on the Tokaido line. The only train that I could get on was a local, which was a drag, but I jumped on it anyway. And that’s when it all started to go downhill. As we slowly went from station to station, I was sitting in the front car and occasionally we would get to a station where my car would pull up to an uncovered area of the platform, and the snow would be about 2 feet deep. I am not even kidding. We got to one station in the middle of nowhere, and with the doors to the car open, we sat in a driving snow storm for about 30 minutes. Once we finally got started, we went for about 5 minutes and then stopped again, in the middle of the tracks, and just sat there. Any streets that we passed, traffic was at a complete standstill. Finally getting moving again, an alarm would go off in the conductor’s cabin every 1 or 2 minutes, causing he train to slow to a crawl until it went off again. It usually only takes 1.5 hours to go from Maibara to Nagoya, so I should have gotten there by 8am. By the time I made it, it was 10:05am. I got off the train as quick as I could and got onto the next train on the Tokaido line. Luckily, this train had no delays at all, and I basically just tried to doze off as we kept moving east.

Eventually, the weather changed from a foot of snow on the ground, to a couple inches, to puddles on the streets from the rain, to nice blue skies. My Nagoya train ended at a stop called Toyohashi, and from there I just got on yet another train, this one bound for Atami. The only train available was a local, and it would take me 149 minutes to get there. The only interesting thing of note on this segment of the ride was that at one point we passed Mt. Fuji (and also, a station called Fuji), and it only had a little bit of snow on top of it. Reaching Atami 20 minutes earlier than I expected, I got on my last train that went right to Tokyo station. All the while on these trains I knew that I would be 2 hours late getting to Narita Airport, which would mean I would get to Tokyo Station (1.5 hours away from Narita) at 4:30pm, 10 minutes before Nick’s flight would be getting in. I hoped that the time spent from the plane to the terminal, getting through customs, and getting his bags would take at least an hour, and that I would get there and he wouldn’t have wandered off or thought that I had abandoned him, since I had no cell phone and no way to call the airport. So on my next two hour journey, I actually fell asleep for one short period of time. This train was the newest and cleanest train that I had been on all day, and had announcements in English (I suppose since we were so close to Tokyo now). Finally pulling into Tokyo station around 4pm (slightly earlier than I had expected), I ran around the station and found the train line heading to Narita Airport. I wanted to take the special express train for the airport, since that would only take 45 minutes to get there, but it was also 3000yen, where as with my special Seishun 18 ticket, the regular 1.5 hour train was free. So instead, I took the regular train.

Getting to the airport around 5:30pm, I had to make my way (with luggage) up several flights of stairs, and got a little confused when I reached gates that were labeled “Departing Flights”. I had to show them my gaijin card (my ID that I use in lieu of my passport), and they let me into the airport. I had to then make a choice between the East and West arrival concourse, and luckily correctly chose the West gate. I was worried that in the hour and a half that Nick had to stand around the airport waiting for me, he would have wandered off and gotten lost, but luckily he was still standing right next to the escalator that I took up to the main concourse level. We exchanged hugs, and I got a “nice haircut”, and after that we left right away because I was sick and tired of traveling around for the past 12 hours. We headed for the JR line platforms of Narita airport, where I had just come out from, only to be greeted by a security guard who directed us to a helpful woman at a counter who told us that there was “big trouble” on the train line and that the JR trains were no longer running between Narita airport and Tokyo station. Oh boy, more delays! So the helpful woman gave us some little white tickets, and we walked over to the Kosei line trains and got on a limited express train for free. I figured that would be even faster than the JR trains, until we had….yep…..more delays. I can’t say there has been a single day that I have had more train delays in this country than today. By this time I was starving, and since the manager at the guest house told us that it didn’t matter what time we got to the guest house, I decided that we would make a detour (though really, it was on our way anyway) to Ueno station to stop at the Tokyo Ueno Eki (literally Ueno station) Hard Rock Café. This is the only HRC in Japan that is inside a train station. We were able to locate it fairly easily enough, and had to maneuver through the crowded seats with our luggage to get to a table. Interestingly enough, the menu at this particular HRC was totally different from all the other ones in Japan. It was also a lot cheaper! (Why, I don’t really know.) So I had yet another tasty cheeseburger, and afterwards took some pictures and picked up a few pins, including one of a series of 7 (one for each café) of a guitar case pin. I hope to pick up the rest of the series from all the other HRC’s except for Fukuoka, since there is no chance I am going all the way back there anytime soon.

After leaving the HRC, we got back on the Yamanote line (the most famous JR train line in Tokyo, it is a loop line that comes every 2 minutes or so and goes to stations like Tokyo, Ueno, Shinjuku, and Ikebukuro), and headed to Ikebukuro. There, we had to get off and get onto a train on the Seibu Ikebukuro line and get off at Hibarigaoka. Luckily, Ikebukuro is the starting point for the Seibu Ikebukuro line, so we didn’t have to wait very long for a train. We were instructed by the guest house to get onto an Express train, which would take 17 minutes to get to Hibarigaoka station. It cost us 260 yen, and once we were there we went out the North exit, and followed the fairly detailed map that I had to get to the guest house. It indeed took us 10 minutes to walk there, just as the map said, and once we got there (around 9pm), we were greeted by the manager of the guest house, Toshi, who gave us our key and told us to get settled and to come back and pay whenever we wanted. We walked up the stairs and house our room, which was small but fairly nice for the ~$28 a night we were paying to stay in it. There were two twin beds, with a small desk and a wall mounted heater. After dropping off our luggage, we went back down to pay. Toshi, who was fluent in English (and also very very nice), told us where everything was located, how to use the showers (100yen for an 8 minute shower), how the heaters in our room worked (100yen for 2 hours), and everything else. (It might sound like paying for a shower and the heater sucks, but when we were paying about $69 for 5 nights in Tokyo, another $10 for extras really isn’t bad at all.)

After we had everything settled, we walked back towards the station to go to the 7-11 down the road to pick up our breakfast for tomorrow. A box of pineapple juice and a piece of walnut bread later, we headed back to our guest house where we settled in for the night.

Tokyo Ueno Eki Hard Rock Cafe:

Day 2: (Tuesday Dec 20, 2005)

We woke up around 8:30am, and after taking our 8 minute showers (which weren’t too bad), we got dressed and walked back to Hibarigaoka station. After transferring to Ikebukuro station, we got onto the Yamanote line and headed for Shinjuku. Shinjuku is considered the core of Tokyo, mostly because the Tokyo Metropolitan Government office building, and all other subsidiary government and political buildings are located there. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building (or Tocho) is a fairly famous skyscraper in downtown Tokyo, and it seems like in all the anime that I have ever watched, it is usually the only building left standing after Tokyo has undergone some apocalyptic horror. When we got to Shinjuku station, we wandered around a bit through the underground passages, until we got to Tocho. I wasn’t sure how far we would be able to get in the building, since it was the government and all that, but we went in and found out that not only was the Tokyo Tourist Office located inside (where I picked up many cool maps), but there was also an observatory on the 45th floor that was free to go up into. As we got in line for the elevator (and our bags were searched by security), there was a group of Chinese students in front of us, and one of them (a girl, naturally) asked for a picture with Nick (in English). I figured that this would be the first of many times that this would happen (though I must say, in the 4 months plus 1.5 weeks last year that I have been in Japan, no one has ever asked for *my* picture). Once we got up to the observatory, we had many random Japanese people coming up and saying things like ooki (big) or takai (tall) or even sugoi (wow). This would continue on every day, many times a day, for the entire time we were in Tokyo. We took pictures of the views from the tower, and wandered around the gift shops. I was sad to find no coins to stamp, but I did find some cool hankos (personal kanji seals) with kanji for English names. I found one for Nicky, but since there are no c’s or y-endings in Japanese, I figured it was as good as Nikki (actually my name is a word in Japanese, and does have a kanji, but I can’t really write my name as ‘diary’ all the time….).

Leaving Tocho, we wandered around some more and eventually got back to Shinjuku station, where we then headed to Harajuku, which is known for the bizarrely dressed teenagers that frequent it. Also in Harajuku is Meiji Shrine, the largest and most important Shinto shrine in Tokyo. That was our first stop after leaving Harajuku station. Meiji Shrine is, like most famous buildings/places in Japan, a reconstruction that was built in 1958 after it burned down during WWII. The shrine was fairly deserted when we went into it, and most of the people we saw there were actually foreigners. I bought another ema while I was there, and got to take pictures of a couple who were having their wedding photographs taken at various places in the shrine.

After leaving the shrine, we walked through Takashita-dori, the famous trendy clothing street of Harajuku. Harajuku is supposed to be the area of Tokyo where kids go and dress up in outrageous clothing after they get out of school, supposedly to ‘escape’ from the conformist uniforms and such that they wear. All that this makes for is the most bizarre fashions that you have ever seen. Unfortunately we didn’t see anyone dressed strangely today. We did however stop in this underground shop and do some ‘purikura’s together, which was pretty fun, but we stood out quite a bit since the rest of the crowd was purely high school girls. The crowds were getting pretty crazy so we went back to Harajuku station and traveled to Shibuya, a shopping district in Tokyo.

Besides shopping, Shibuya station is also famous for two things: the intersection directly in front of the station, which is the busiest pedestrian intersection in the country (and the world, supposedly), with around 10,000 people walking through it every time the light changes. The second thing is the statue of Hachiko. Hachiko is a dog who, the story says, waited for his master every day at Shibuya station. One day, his master (a professor at one of Tokyo’s universities), had a stroke and died, but Hachiko continued to wait, everyday, for his master who never returned. People learned about this story and made a statue of Hachiko and put it outside of Shibuya station. Today, one of the exits of the station is called the Hachiko Exit, and the statue of Hachiko is now a famous place to meet friends. I was able to get a couple of pictures with Hachiko, and then Nick and I braved the famous intersection in front of Shibuya. It wasn’t quite as crazy as I had expected it to be, but then it was also only about 2pm. I wanted to get some pictures of people walking through the intersection, so we went into a building the overlooked it. Unfortunately, every store with a window to the outside had its view blocked by a gigantic television that was pointing towards the station, and the only place that had a good view was a Starbucks. But, to get in, we had to actually order something. Nick and I both decided on a Matcha Frappachino (matcha being powdered green tea). Never having had a frappachino, or even coffee, I wasn’t sure how this was going to taste. Luckily, it was very tasty and reminded me of bubble tea.

After we watched people for a while, we went back into Shibuya station and got on the Yamanote line and went to Roppongi. From here we wandered around a bit trying to find the other Hard Rock Café that is located in Tokyo. We got a little confused as to where to go, but eventually we found the right direction and I was able to pick up #2 in the guitar case pin series. Took a few pictures (didn’t eat here this time), and then left. We headed towards a new shopping/entertainment/living complex in Roppongi called Roppongi Hills. Supposedly there was cool shopping and other interesting things to see. When we got there the first thing that we saw was a garden/courtyard area with a bunch of trees all lit up in Christmas lights. Since it was around 5:30pm, it was already pitch dark in Tokyo (the sun usually sets at 4:30pm here….it sucks). We wandered around looking at all the lights and interesting modern architecture, and eventually found our way to a theater. Reading the schedule, we found that they were playing King Kong in English with Japanese subtitles. Not having been to a movie in probably 5 months now, and wanting to see King Kong really bad, we went in and bought tickets. Since I have an ID for Shiga Prefecture University, I was able to get a student discount so that my ticket was only 1000yen. Poor Nick had to pay 1500yen since they didn’t accept his GVSU ID. Oh well. The next showing wasn’t for a couple hours, so we wandered around a bit more and eventually found our way to a nice looking sushi place, which when we went in, we found it to be a bit more westernized than we would have liked. We split a california roll and a unagi roll, as well as had some miso soup, and since for some reason the hostess told us we could only sit in the restaurant for one hour, we quickly left and wandered back to the movie theater to wait for the movie to start. It was really interesting to watch movie previews in Japanese, and even some that were in English with Japanese subtitles (and one that was in Spanish with Japanese subtitles…..I was totally lost there). After what seemed like an eternity of trailers and ads, the movie finally started. Let me just say, that it was AWESOME. For the first two hours, my mouth was either hanging open or I was sitting on the edge of my seat. Some of the most suspenseful action sequences that I have ever seen. The last hour though, was pretty depressing. However, I recommend that everyone go see it!!

After the movie got out, we hurried back to the nearest subway station. While it was only about 11pm, it would take us about an hour to get back to our guest house and I didn’t know what time the last trains ran. Luckily we got back to Ikebukuro station and found out that the last trains didn’t run until after 1pm. Getting back to our guest house well past midnight, we quickly went to bed since we would have to get up and leave by 8:30am the next morning to make it to the Ghibli Museum by 10am, the time that our tickets were set for.

Tocho and Meiji Shrine:

Meet me at Hachiko! and the famous Shibuya crossing:

A view of the Tokyo Tower from Roppongi, and the Tokyo Hard Rock Cafe:

Roppongi Hills:

Day 3: (Wednesday Dec 21,2005)

Started the day off not so well because we decided not to put money in our heater during the night, and consequently I froze to death and didn’t sleep so well. That and we woke up at 7:30am so that we could get out the door by 8:30am to make it to the Ghibli Museum by 10am. Eating my walnut bread and juice that I had bought from the local 7-11 the night previous, we quickly got ready and went out the door around 8:30am. Going from our station of Hibarigaoka to Ikebukuro, we got onto the Yamanote line then transferred to the Chuo line at Shinjuku station. From here it was a 20 minute ride to Mitaka station. Getting out at the station, we walked down some stairs and found a line of people waiting for the bus that goes to the Ghibli Museum. We bought our 300yen roundtrip bus tickets, and waited. There were a lot of foreigners waiting in line along with us (English speaking and others), which I didn’t really find too surprising based on the worldwide popularity of Ghibli movies. Around 10am the bus finally came and we were on our way!

Walking into the museum, we exchanged our Lawson’s bought paper tickets for the nice film cel tickets that they give everyone. I was really lucky and got a fabulous shot from Howl’s Moving Castle! Nick got a set of film cels from Kiki’s Delivery Service (which….he hasn’t seen, oh well). We spent the next several hours wandering around the museum, which was pretty much the same as it was last year. I had thought that since I wasn’t able to read Japanese the last time I was here I had been really missing out, but even this year being able to read some of what was written next to most of the exhibits, it was pretty much the same experience. I’m sad to say it was almost a little boring this year since everything was pretty much the same. This year however we actually went in to see the short film that they were playing in the theater (which I hadn’t done last year because they were showing some Russian short film that I didn’t have much interest in), and it was really really cute. It was about a little baby cat bus (ko neko bus), and also showed all the other ‘kinds’ of cat buses from the Totoro universe, with the little Totoro commuters coming home from the city back to their forests. It was really cute. After watching the film we also saw a new exhibit focusing on the Ghibli adaptation of Heidi, which I haven’t seen. Walking through the mock-up of Miyazaki’s studio, they had new artwork and cels tacked to the walls (yes…with tacks, its terribly depressing to see real production artwork so mishandled) from Howl’s Moving Castle (though, only background that’s were hand done, since there are no real cels from the movie). Going into the gift shop I was, for two years in a row, disappointed. This time they actually had reproduction cels for sale, however they were all $400+ and none of them really caught me. As for the rest of the stuff on sale, none of it was all that exciting….and they still had no shirts! So, I walked away with some postcards and stickers, and a cool tin with cookies. At the bookstore I bought a guide of the museum, which has pictures of the place throughout (since we aren’t allowed to take pictures inside the museum, but I took a few anyway), as well as English translations of the descriptions. Going up to the roof of the museum, we took some more pictures with the neat sculptures they had, and then walked around the outside of the building a bit, and then headed back to the bus stop to go back to Mitaka station. The only bad part of that whole museum is the fact that it is so small.

Heading back to Tokyo on the Chuo line, we stopped at Nakano because there is a 5-story building called Nakano Broadway that houses quite a number of anime related stores. I went to it last year and had a lot of fun shopping and especially looking through animation cels (though, silly people at one store didn’t think I was serious when I wanted to look at their selection of Princess Mononoke cels…..probably a good thing thought as I might have spent a fortune on one of them). This time however, I was disappointed. My favorite cel store that I had bought something from last year was now out of business, and the other store selling cels didn’t have anything worth my time. The rest of the building was filled with stores selling anime figures, costumes, and manga (comics), none of which I have much interest in. Not buying anything, we quickly left the building and headed back to our guest house.

Initially we went back to our guest house to drop off the stuff that I had bought from the Ghibli Museum, since we were fairly close to it. But by the time we got back I was feeling pretty tired, mostly from not getting much sleep the night before and from the fact that we did a lot of walking the day before. So, we came back to the guest house around 3pm and took naps. After a while we figured we should go back out, so we planned on heading out to Asakusa around 6pm for some dinner and shopping in the famous Nakamise street which is situated between two gates, one being the famous Thunder Gate (if you’ve ever seen any pictures of Tokyo, then you’ve probably seen this gate with a large red lantern hanging in the middle of it). Well, by the time we finally got there, around 7pm, everything was closed!! I couldn’t believe it. So instead of shopping we took pictures of the gates and the temples that are on the other end of the street. I had also planned on going to Kappabashi, the plastic food district, since it was only a few blocks away, but since all the shops here were already closed we figured there wasn’t any point in going. Going back to Ueno station, we stopped at this restaurant that we had tried to go to the day before in Shinjuku station, called Tokyo Soup Stock. If there is one thing I miss for food in this country, its soup. The Japanese just….don’t eat soup (besides things like miso, and I don’t consider a ‘hot pot’ meal to be soup). So I had a bowl of minestrone and clam chowder, and then we went back to our guest house around 8:30pm.

Getting back, I started feeling not so well. I figured that it was because of all the walking we had done and the fact that we had half ran back from the station to the guest house because it was cold. However, I wasn’t starting to feel any better as the night went on, and within a couple of hours I began to puke my guts out! Luckily there didn’t ever seem to be anyone else in the bathroom area during my many trips there, since I didn’t really feel like seeing or talking to anyone. After emptying my digestive system in liquid form several ways, I figured that the soup just hadn’t agreed with me and I would be fine from then on. Haha or not! Up until 2am that morning I was still waking poor Nick up with my retching…….all I could do was reverently apologize each time. Not sleeping well at all that night, I woke up feeling really really crappy. Which leads to…

The Ghibli Museum:

Asakusa and the famous Thunder gate:

Day 4: (Thursday Dec. 22, 2005)

Woke up this morning and I knew that I wasn’t going to be getting out of bed anytime soon. Attempted eating a piece of bread and couldn’t. I told Nick that he should just go somewhere on his own today so that he also wouldn’t have a completely wasted day in Tokyo. Around 10am he wandered off for Akihabara, the electronics district of Tokyo, while I stayed in bed, sleeping on and off. I was a little worried about him, wandering off into Tokyo on his own, but he survived and came back around 2pm, around the time where I finally dragged myself out of bed and managed to take a shower. At this point, I figured it wasn’t food poisoning anymore, and it was some sort of flu thing. Luckily though, around 6pm or so, I was starting to feel a bit better and hungry, so we decided to leave the guest house to go find some noodles or something to eat close to Hibarigaoka station. Well, we didn’t find any noodles, but we did find a revolving sushi bar, which Nick had never been to before. Yeah I know, eating sushi right after puking doesn’t sound like the smartest thing to do, but I stayed away from most of the raw stuff, and mostly stuck with unagi and california roll, which were all only 137yen a plate (very cheap!). Eating dinner for about $4, we walked back to the guest house and stayed in for the rest of the night. It was around this time that we actually found the LAN port in our room. Yes, it took us 3 days to figure out that we had internet access in our room! All that time laying in bed I could have been chatting with people or something…..oh well. Since we had big plans for the next day (that I would not be missing, no matter how I felt), we went to bed before midnight.

Day 5: (Friday Dec. 23, 2005)

Today was December 23, the Emperor’s birthday. Because of this, today and January 2 are the only days of the entire year that the Imperial Palace in Tokyo is open to the public. This day was the main reason that I came to Tokyo during the week that I did, all because I wanted to be able to go inside the Imperial Palace and see the Emperor. We got up and got out of the guest house by 9am, since I didn’t know what time that the Emperor would be making an appearance or what time the palace would be closed. We got on the Yamanote line and headed towards Tokyo station, to which the Imperial Palace is right down the street from. When we got outside of the station, we could see a lot of people walking towards to the palace. Halfway there we were given some Japan flags to wave inside the palace. Getting to the grounds of the palace, there were police everywhere. Big marquee signs were in place informing us that “The next appearance is at 11:05.”, and since it was around 11am we hurried through the lines to get in. We got to a station where we were searched (I didn’t bring a bag with me, but I had to show the police woman everything that I had in my coat pockets), and joined the masses of people slowly making their way into the palace. We weren’t going to make it to the 11:05am appearance, but luckily they were making announcements to everyone saying that the final appearance of the Emperor would be at 11:40am. I had no clue before coming to the palace what time everything would be going on, so I’m really glad that we got there before everything was over. If I had missed one of the appearances of the Emperor I would have been incredibly disappointed.

One we passed all of the gardens and the stone wall left over from when Edo castle still stood, we came upon the inner palace building. It was a surprisingly plain building with a green tiled roof and built in a modern, yet still Japanese, style. The part of the building that we could see had a balcony that came out and faced an open courtyard. The hallways on the outside of the building, as well as the balcony, were all covered in (what I would assume is bulletproof) glass, and there was a screen set up directly behind the balcony, so that whenever the doors opened to it we wouldn’t be able to see inside of the building. When we got into the group of people waiting to see the Emperor, everyone seemed very excited, and while we stood there waiting for it to be 11:40am, there was an announcement over a loudspeaker telling us that the Emperor (tenno heika, ‘his majesty the Emperor’) would soon be making an appearance. It was great because the speaker was using very formal polite Japanese, and I could understand some of it. We waited for another 10 minutes or so, and then we could see in the balcony the doors opening from behind the screens. The crowd started to get very excited and everyone waved their flags and yelled “bonzai!”. I yelled along with them and waved my flag as well. It was great to be in a crowd of people that were feeling so patriotic. The Emperor (Akihito), as well as his wife Empress Michiko, the Crown Prince, and Prince Fumihito (Akihito’s second son) and his wife all came out on the balcony and waved to the crowd below. I was standing about 50 feet away from them. It was just a cool experience!!

Eventually Emperor Akihito (who turned 72 today), made a speech, a little of which I could understand. He thanked everyone for coming and said a few things about being worried for people living in the areas where it was snowing unusual amounts recently (like, where I’m living!). He only talked for a minute or two, and then left the balcony to go back into the palace. The crowds started to disperse, since this would be the last appearance of the Emperor for the day, so we followed them out of the inner palace grounds.

Some interesting information about Emperor Akihito: The era of Emperor Akihito’s reign is called Heisei (平成), and when he dies, he will be renamed as Emperor Heisei. Emperor Akihito assumed the throne on the death of his father Emperor Hirohito on January 7, 1989, making 2005 his 17th year on the throne. In Japan, they use two different calendar systems. Sometimes you will see the year represented as 2005 and sometime you will see it represented as 17. Occasionally I will buy things that have an expiration date of 18.04.20, which means the 18th year of Emperor Akihito’s reign, or 2006. Its kind of confusing but also interesting, though I’m not sure why they still continue this practice. I think that anyone who knows the year only by the date of the current Emperor’s reign would have to be a really smart person, because Emperor Akihito is the 125th Emperor of Japan…..

After leaving the inner palace grounds, we wandered around the palace’s gardens for a while, but since it’s the middle of December, they were fairly brown and dull. There was a very nice water garden, complete with waterfall, and some very nice hedges. After leaving the gardens, we continued to walk through the palace grounds, taking lots of pictures, and eventually ended up back from where we began. Heading back to Tokyo station, we went inside and tried to find a ticket booth so that we could inquire about tickets for a night train that we could take back to Hikone. I had read that we could use a train called the Midnight Nagara with our special Seishun 18 tickets, and that all we had to do was pay another $5 extra for a reserved seat fee. Unfortunately, after talking with the man at the ticket window, I found out that the train was sold out for the night of the 24th (the last day we had reserved in our guest house). So, the next option was taking a night bus back to Hikone. We also had the option of taking the Shinkansen back, which was the most expensive option but also the fastest. We talked it over for a bit, and primarily because I wasn’t up for another 10+ hour ride back to Hikone from Tokyo, and because the Shinkansen wasn’t too much more expensive than taking a night bus ($100 versus the probably $70 it would have cost for the bus), and because the Shinkansen is just plain awesome, we decided to buy tickets for the Shinkansen. I tried to use an automated machine to buy the tickets, but when I fed it my credit card, it asked me for a pin number. Not really knowing what to do, I instead went up to a live person and bought the tickets. We bought then non-reserved so that we would pick the next day what time would be best to get to Tokyo station, versus trying to make a deadline if we were busy doing something in Tokyo.

$100 poorer, we left Tokyo station and headed down the Yamanote line for Ueno, for attempt #2 to go to Kappabashi, the plastic food district. It has been my dream for a while now to go to the plastic food district and buy a plastic version of tenpura udon, probably my favorite Japanese food item. I’m not really sure why I want one, or what I would do with it, but they are so cool and realistic. Getting to Kappabashi, for some reason I had completely forgotten to connect the fact that the Emperor’s birthday would be a national holiday in Japan. So naturally, almost all of the stores were closed. Walking for blocks and blocks down this street, I found all of three stores selling plastic food. Three!! The only one having something slightly resembling what I wanted, wanted around $75 for plastic tenpura udon. Needless to say, I was very disappointed that I didn’t buy any plastic food.

After walking around for so long I was starting to feel not too great again, so we took the subway back to Ueno station in a hunt for food. We ended up wandering down this street market called Ameyoko, which is famous for its bargain prices. I didn’t pay much attention to what was being sold, but I did stumble across a vendor who was selling large pieces of melon and other fruit like pineapple on a stick for 200yen. In Japan, melon/cantaloupe is INCREDIBLY expensive. We’re talking $25 for a melon. I am not kidding. As such, I haven’t had any in about 4 months. So, for 200yen, I could have a nice juicy piece of it on a stick. It was soooooo good. I pondering handing over another 200yen for another piece, but instead we kept looking for real food. Not finding anything, we turned around and headed back to the station and ended up going into this noodle restaurant which was situated directly under some train tracks. This was the first that I have ever sat in a restaurant while trains were going above my head. It was really noisy and the whole place shook each time a train would come in (which, was pretty often, maybe several times a minute). But, the noodles were good (this was Nick’s first time having tenpura udon), and after eating them I felt a little better. However, we still went back to the guest house to rest for a little bit before going out again. I laid around in bed for an hour and a half or so, while Nick used to computer in the common room of the house to send his family some emails and make a couple of blog updates.

Around 5:30pm we decided to head out again, this time to Japan’s second largest city, Yokohama, which happens to be right outside of Tokyo (how surprising!). Our destination was Hard Rock Café #6. It took us about an hour to get to Yokohama from Ikebukuro station, and once we got there we walked through the very cold wind to a courtyard that was in front of Japan’s tallest building. Though personally, I didn’t think that it was very tall. It didn’t take too long for us to find it, but when we did there was a line out in front of it. So for the next 25 minutes or so we waited outside in the cold for a table. Once we got in, it was pretty much the same as all the other HRC’s, and while their bacon cheese burgers are quite tasty, I decided to deviate from the norm, since I had already been to two other HRC’s in the past week, and would probably be at another one before Nick left for the states. I finally caved in and ordered my favorite HRC US item, the spring rolls (5 for 1500yen! Such a bargain), and had a caesar salad to go with it. The spring rolls were great, but the salad was less than exciting (and the usually 420yen pop was 525yen here….talk about a markup). Oh well. In the gift shop I picked up another shirt and of course pins! They still had the guitar case pin, so I was able to pick up #3 of 7. Hopefully I can get 6 of 7 (no chance I will be going back to Fukuoka any time soon), so that I can have an almost complete set. Leaving the café around 10pm, it took us another hour to get back to the guest house.

The approach to the Imperial Palace, and the inner palace building:

The crowd cheering, and the Imperial Family:

Plastic food! and Nick with his head above the crowds, in Ameyoko market:

Yokohama Hard Rock Cafe:

Day 6: (Saturday Dec. 24, 2005)

Christmas Eve! But, without snow, family, or home it didn’t feel very Christmasy. Christmas isn’t a holiday in Japan, but the signs of Christmas can still be seeing in a lot of areas, mostly stores hoping for people to buy, buy, buy! If its one thing Japanese people DON’T need, its another reason to buy things. Americans are pretty materialistic people, but the Japanese take it to another level. Especially women. No matter where I went in Tokyo, at any time of the day, I would see men and women carrying bags from stores. I would say 85% of the people I saw were carrying these bags. I’m really not sure if this means that everyone is just always shopping, or if it is some sort of symbol to be carrying around your things in store bags. Some stores that I have been in even have their paper bags for sale. Why would you want to buy an empty bag?? That and everyone carries around handbags. Men and women. And most of them are Louis Viton bags. That or Prada. Its amazing really.

So anyway, Christmas Eve. Our last day in Tokyo. I had hoped today to visit the Tokyo Tower again today, since my visit last year had been on a rather dismal day and pictures weren’t too nice. I also wanted to go to the Sony Building, where they have on display all their newest gadgets for your hands-on enjoyment. And finally, there is an area about an hour outside of Tokyo, called Kamakura, where there is a famous Buddha statue, whose size is outdone only by the Daibutsu (Great Buddha) in Todaiji Temple. Well, with only a day to go, I knew that Kamakura was probably out of the question. That and Nick was interested in going to the Ueno Park Zoo, so our first stop of the day was there. Ueno Park is famous for all of its museums and other famous buildings, as well as for the large number of homeless people who live there with their tarp tents. Apparently two days previous, some random homeless man had come up and started talking to Nick (in English), about how he lived in Ueno Park, among other things. From what I have seen and read, some homeless in Japan aren’t necessarily poor, and in fact have appliances and televisions in the tents that they put up. I’m not really sure what Japan’s laws are regarding people living in public places, but these people literally construct box and tarp towns, which are then not disturbed or removed by any authority figures (in Osaka, forcing someone out of their tent takes a required four notifications before anyone can take action). (This is an interesting article from the Wall Street Journal).

The Ueno Park Zoo, which is fairly small, is the first zoo that I have ever been to that has had pandas. This one had only one, named Ling Ling, who, when we saw her, was either sleeping or pacing back and forth in her cage. Pandas are nice I guess, but I can’t say that I get as excited as the next person at being able to see one in a zoo. This was actually the first zoo I had been to in years; ever since I went to John Ball Zoo School in 6th grade, I haven’t had much love for zoos. Seeing animals in small, dirty cages generally just depresses me. I felt that this zoo did an ok job at housing its animals, with a few exceptions like 4 elephants in an area less than an acre, or a couple of polar bears in a filthy little enclosure. I was surprised to find that they actually had guinea pigs, both the wild and domesticated varieties, though the poor short haired guinea pig was all alone in his cage (without even a tube or a house to hide in…poor guy). His cage was pretty big and clean though, so I don’t think he is being mistreated. They also surprisingly had a stuffed guinea pig in the gift shop, with a tag on it that says Tokyo Zoo Association, so I snatched that up. The cage for the otters was also pretty cute, it allowed them to swim through a clear plastic tube into a little tank that was outside of the main cage next to all the visitors. We were able to watch a zoo keeper feed the several varieties of penguins (which the Japanese called pengi), and it was sort of funny since a lot of birds that were not part of the exhibit would come swarming in and steal the fish that the zoo keeper would keep throwing in.

After we wandered around the zoo, our next stop was the Tokyo Tower. While I had already been there once, I really wanted to get pictures of Tokyo on a nice, clear day. Luckily for us, the weather had been wonderful our entire stay in Tokyo. We stopped at a Wendy’s on our walk there, for a quick lunch, and then continued on our way. The route we took there had us pass by Zojoji Temple, which I had explored last year, and since we didn’t have a whole lot of time left in the day, we passed it by on the way to Tokyo Tower. Since the weather was so nice, when we got to Tokyo Tower, we found it to be absolutely packed with people. We paid our 820yen to get in, and got right in an elevator to go up to the observatory deck (we could have paid another 600yen to go to the ‘special’ observatory, which is just a couple hundred feet above the regular observatory, but I wasn’t too impressed with it last time, so we didn’t). We were able to see Mt. Fuji from the tower, which was pretty cool, and I was able to buy another coin! (Only one coin on my whole trip to Tokyo, how sad.) After we took a bunch of pictures, we went down to the main building that is located under the tower, where they have a bunch of shops and restaurants. I was given a mission by my Mom to locate some crazy banana-shaped cookies, called Tokyo Banana, that we had bought at the tower last year. I never even ate one, but I guess they were very tasty so she wanted me to bring back some more. Well, they were still available, for the low low price of 15 cookies in a box for 1000yen. While we were wandering around, we also found a place that was selling bubble tea!!! My first time having bubble tea in 4 months, and it was good. Kinda expensive….and small, but good nonetheless. I really don’t know why bubble tea isn’t popular in Japan, I mean it’s a somewhat odd drink that is also cute, which I would think would fit in perfectly in Japan, but apparently not.

Around this time it was getting to be about 3pm, and since it would take about an hour to get back to our guest house, we thought we should get going. The trip to the Sony Building was not going to happen, for a second year in a row. On the way to the subway station, we passed by Zojoji Temple again, and figured we might as well take a couple minutes to wander in it. I was able to visit the cemetery behind the temple again, and finally photograph a headstone that I was always telling people about. It’s a marble Go board with a game in progress….I would guess the deceased was perhaps a Go pro (in Japan and other Asian countries, Go is a very serious game, with pros competing in tournaments and winning cash and fame, not unlike pro chess players. In fact, many times coming back to the guest house, I would see a group of older men playing Go inside of a parlor. It’s a game that can be played very simply, or incredibly complexly, and I’ve always wanted to learn how to play it…). I went into the main temple building, hoping to find an ema to add to my collection, and inside we found a pile of incense ready to be lit for a 100yen donation. So, Nick and I both tossed some coins in a box, and attempted to light our incense without looking like complete idiot gaijins. We did alright, and went outside to place our incense in a large bowl set in front of the entrance. Then I went back inside and bought the largest ema I’ve seen to date. It’s a pretty image of the front gate of the temple covered in snow.

At this point it was getting to be later than we had planned on getting back to the guest house to get our luggage. So, taking all the usual trains back to Hibarigaoka, we picked up our bags and left our key at the front window, and were on our way. Once we got to Tokyo station it was about 6pm, and since we had non-reserved tickets, and I wasn’t sure what gate we had to go into, I had to ask a station attendant. They pointed us into the right direction, and we went into the Shinkansen terminal portion of the station to look for our train. I had thought that Tokyo station’s area for the Shinkansens would be similar to that of Hataka, as in, an almost airport like feel with a bunch of shops and restaurants for people to use before getting on the train. I figured we could stop at one and grab some food to bring on the train with us, but once we were in and couldn’t get back out, there was….nothing. There were two stands selling bentos with a bunch of unrecognizable food in them, but otherwise there was nothing to eat or buy. So, we figured then, we could buy a bento on the train, since they always have a food cart that goes by and they sell little boxed lunches.

Once we found the train that we would be taking, we went to the platform and stood and waited at the doorway that we would be entering. We had cars 1-5 to choose from, so we arbitrarily picked #3 since there weren’t too many people waiting in line for the door there. This was a mistake, since once we got onto the train, there was a distinct haze of smoke when we got into the car, and an announcement told us that cars 3 and 4 were the smoking cars. Great. Not willing to sit in smoke for the next 3 hours, I wandered down to car #2 where I found some seats near a window that were still empty. Unfortunately, at 6:30pm, its pitch black outside, so the scenery wasn’t all that great on our ride back to Maibara (the Shinkansen station that is closest to Hikone). At one point however we did watch some fireworks going off over the ocean/a bay. All the while we are sitting on the train starving to death, waiting for the person pushing the food cart to come by. When they did come, however, they told us that they didn’t have any bentos!! So I ended up with juice instead, and munched on some of the bread I had in my backpack from the bakery in Hibarigaoka station. The ride was fast and smooth the entire way, but in between Nagoya and Maibara it was very snowy, so the ride was slowed down considerably. Since our ticket was non-reserved, I don’t know the exact time that we were supposed to get in to Maibara, but we did get in around 9:10pm. Had to get on the local train to go one stop to Hikone, where we then left the station and hopped on a cab to get back to JCMU.

I was worried that once we got to JCMU we might have some…issues involving getting Nick into the building without anyone seeing him. See, I’m not actually supposed to have anyone staying overnight in my room. Guests aren’t actually ‘allowed’ in the building after 10pm. In the past semester though, there have been people who have blatantly had people over (one person had his girlfriend come over from the US, and she stayed overnight for what seemed like a week), but I figured no one was going to be around this week, and since I no longer have a roommate, AND it would be free for us to stay here during the night, that what the heck. So, getting back to the building we began our covert ops mission. I had Nick hide in the laundry room while I went up to my room to drop off my luggage and to scout out the place. Naturally at 10pm at night on Christmas Eve, there was nooo one around. So, going back downstairs, I got Nick and we went in the elevator up to the second floor so no one would see him. Getting out from the elevator I went to my door, and just at that very second someone popped out of their room on the way to the TV room (which is directly next to the elevator). So I’m walking to my room, half talking with this guy hoping and praying he isn’t gonna walk farther away from the TV room door and past the elevator where Nick was standing. Finally he went into the TV room and I ran back to the elevator to grab Nick, where we dashed back to my room. Apparently all the while I was talking to this guy, Nick was frantically pushing the close door button on the elevator so that he wouldn’t be seen. Crazy as it was when it was happening, we were rolling in laughter once we got into my room and locked the door. The rest of the night was spent making dinner and sitting around trying to stay warm. And doing laundry!

At Ueno Park Zoo:

Tokyo Tower and the view from it (look closely near the center of the picture and you can see Mt. Fuji):

Zojoji Temple, and a very cool headstone:

Sitting in the Shinkansen:

Day 7: (Sunday Dec. 25, 2005)

Christmas Day! It didn’t feel like Christmas at all here. Exhausted from everything that had gone on in Tokyo, we both slept in until around 11am. After taking showers, we headed over for some breakfast/lunch at Coco’s where we discussed what we wanted to do today. First of all, Nick called American Airlines to see if there was any way for him to change his departure airport from Tokyo Narita to Osaka Kansai. This way, it would be a lot easier for him to get to the airport (a 2.5 hour journey instead of a 9 hour one), and we would be able to do more things together since he would be here longer. Unfortunately, they told him if he wanted to do so, it would be a $150 fee. So, that plan was nixed. The next step was then figuring out how he would get back to Tokyo. His two options were taking the night bus or taking the Shinkansen. Obviously the Shinkansen would be a lot more expensive, so we decided we would try for the night bus. Unfortunately though, I didn’t know the phone number for the bus station and they don’t have any sort of website. So, we decided that since we didn’t want to waste the second to last day that Nick had in Japan, that we would go visit Kyoto. So around 1pm we called for a taxi to come pick us up (since the other option was walking), and headed on our way to Kyoto.

Getting to Kyoto station a little over and hour later, we wandered around the shops, checked out the Sirotan store (nothing new, darn), have nice HOT waffles at the infamous waffle store that tempts us every time we get off the train at Kyoto station, and then I stumbled across a foreign foods store where they were selling canned Campbell’s soup!! Yeah, so it was the condensed kind, but it was canned soup!! I snatched up a couple, as well as a jar of REAL spaghetti sauce (Japanese spaghetti sauce is slightly strange), and some hot cocoa mix (Japanese hot cocoa is literally just cocoa power, so its rather bitter). I passed on the boxes of brownies at 680yen each, as well as the many kinds of salsa for 500yen on up (though, now that I know this place carries salsa, even if it is a little more expensive than the store in Hikone, I don’t have to bike 30 minutes through the snow anymore!). In hindsight it wasn’t a very smart thing to buy 5 cans of food while we were still wandering around Kyoto. After leaving the station, we couldn’t decide on where we wanted to go, so I suggested Nijo castle since Nick hadn’t been to any castles yet. We took the subway there, and got off one stop too far, so we had to walk a few blocks to get there. Once we did, we were very disappointed to find out that they had already closed up the ticket booth. We were too late by only about 10 minutes. We didn’t know what else to do at this point, so we headed back to Kyoto station to make our way back to Hikone.

Getting back to Hikone before all the stores closed, we stopped at Al Plaza, which is across from the station and has a grocery store. There wasn’t much food back in my dorm room and I wasn’t really interested in biking to the store in the snow, so I thought this was a great opportunity to stock up. Nick also took this opportunity to buy some sake to bring back to the States with him. We found some rather interesting juice box sake, as well as cup sake with fruit in it. We also picked up a few interesting cocktail drinks, since for the rest of the night we’d just be sitting around my dorm room with nothing to do. Finishing our shopping, we caught another cab back to JCMU where we had to initiate stealth mission #2. We didn’t encounter anyone this time however. Spent the rest of the night drinking our fruit cocktails (Nick also tried one of the juice box sake….I guess it wasn’t so good), and watching bad anime movies. We tried to go to bed at a good hour because we would be getting up early to go to Universal Studios Osaka the next morning. That and, I woke up the next morning around 3am to call my relatives at the annual Christmas get-together at my Grandma’s house. It was nice to hear from everyone, but I was very sad to not be there myself. Well, there’s always next year…

Day 8: (Monday Dec. 26, 2005)

Today we woke up around 8:30am and got ready to go to Osaka. What awaited us was Universal Studios and Hard Rock Café #7 of 7!! (Which one was I more excited about? Just guess..) Took another taxi to the station, where we got to use our special Seishun 18 tickets again, since from Hikone to Osaka is about a 1900yen trip. Before getting on the train though, we stopped by the bus center where Nick was able to buy a ticket for the night bus to Tokyo. It would be leaving from the bus center at 11pm that night.

The trip to Osaka was fairly uneventful, if a bit worrisome since it snowed/drizzled on and off. The weather report said that it would be sunny though, so I was hoping for the best. Getting to Universal City station around 11am, we got off the train and were immediately on the somewhat downsized Osaka version of the Universal Citywalk. Having been to Universal Studios in Orlando, I was hoping and expecting something similar. The citywalk was pretty much the same, and we found the HRC easily enough. The arched gate and spinning Universal globe were also the same. We bought our tickets and started walking through the park, where the wind was blowing pretty steadily causing it to be really really cold. Our first stop was the Terminator 2 3-D ‘ride’, which I had also gone on at the park in Orlando, and it was quite funny to hear Arnold Schwarzenegger talking in Japanese. The best part of the ride was where the on screen Arnold destroys another Terminator, and then young John Connor asks if he knew him. He replies in Japanese “Daigaku no roommate” meaning, his college roommate (I was laughing out loud). The next stop was my favorite, the Spider-Man ride. This is a really fun ride where basically you are sitting in this little vehicle that moves along a track (it never leaves the ground), and because of your 3-D glasses, at times the ride tricks you into thinking you are flying in the sky or plummeting back to earth. Again, hearing Spider-Man talking in Japanese was pretty hilarious, though they did a pretty good job of dubbing the voices. After Spider-Man we wandered over to a ride I hadn’t done in Orlando, something based off the movie Backdraft. We figured hey, it’ll have fire, so it will be nice and warm inside! Once we got there we found the sign saying the wait would be about 40 minutes, but since the wait for the Spider-Man ride had said the same thing and we had gotten in to it in about 20, we weren’t too worried. But, once we got in line (which, we had to stand outside), we just…stood there. The line didn’t move at all. And once it did move, we didn’t make it into the ride at all. We waited for another 20 minutes or so, and the doors opened again, and as people were going in we were getting closer and closer but we didn’t think we’d make it. We squeaked by in the very end though. Backdraft turned out to be pretty lame though. We stood and watched two different films, and then moved into the final room where they ‘recreated’ a scene from the movie, minus all the people. So basically, we got to watch a mock up of a warehouse catch on fire for a couple minutes.

After leaving the Backdraft ride, we wandered back to the Spider-Man ride again just for the heck of it. After that was over, we passed over the Back to the Future ride (didn’t really like it in Orlando), the Jurassic Park ride (you get wet), as well as the Jaws ride (you get wet and it kinda sucked in Orlando). One thing this park had that the Orlando version didn’t have was a show based on the movie Waterworld (which, a lot of people seem to hate, but I like it). So I was kind of curious to see what it was all about. We got there in time for the next show, and sat far away from the ‘splash zone’ seats since we were freezing cold. Before the show started some pirate-y types came out and talked to the crowd, and every once and a while would toss a bucket of water on people sitting in the front row. Once the show started it was pretty hilarious to see a couple of white actors come out to play Kevin Coster’s and some other woman from the movie’s part. Dennis Hopper’s part was played by a Japanese guy though. For the next 15 minutes or so I (and probably Nick too) sat and watched some sort of story unfold with the bad guys coming in and shooting up the good guy’s base. I really can’t say what was going on……it was sorta entertaining and yet bizarre at the same time. All I could think during the entire thing was how freezing cold all of the actors must have been since they were all getting wet/jumping into the pool set/getting sprayed with water cannons/etc. In the end, the Kevin Coster sorta look-a-like saves the day, despite a plane crashing into the base from out of nowhere.

Leaving the Waterworld show, we walked through the rest of the park (where I found some store selling giant stuffed animals for $30….seriously, a 4ft tall giraffe stuffed animal for $30! Why must I be in Japan with no way to bring something like that home??), and eventually got back to where we had started from. Compared to its counterpart in Orlando, this place was teeny tiny. Walking by the Terminator ride again, we saw that it had a 10 minute wait, so we ran back in for another go. Afterwards I was getting a little hungry, and we had passed a nice smelling pizza place a bit earlier so we decided to try it out. A slice of not so good cheese pizza, a drink and salad for 1100yen! I guess it being an amusement park I shouldn’t have been very surprised. Jumped on the Spider-Man ride for a third and final time, just because it was so fun. Since we were getting near the point that we had to get back to Hikone for Nick to pack up and get back to his night bus, we hit the gift shop (where I bought NOTHING……I couldn’t believe it…they had absolutely nothing that just said “Universal Studios Osaka”, it was either a Spider-Man or Jurassic Park or Terminator thing), and then of course hit the Hard Rock Café. Since I thought just going there and buying pins and leaving was kind of cheating, we went in and I ordered some dessert, and eventually convinced Nick to order a beer. After eating, I went and spent some more money at the gift shop. With this, I have finally completed my goal of visiting every Hard Rock Café in the country!! (Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to accomplish my goal of eating fugu (blowfish) while in Tokyo like I had wanted to, but maybe I can do that in Osaka sometime).

Rushing to the train station since it was now around 8pm, I showed the station attendant my Seishun 18 ticket, and then we rushed for the next train. While sitting on the train waiting for the doors to close ANY SECOND, I caught on the PA system the station attendant making an announcement. All I could get out of it was that they repeated “seishun juuhachi kippu…..seishun juuhachi kippu” several times, so I’m thinking to myself “hmm, someone must have lost their Seishun 18 ticket”. Thinking it couldn’t possibly have been me, but wanted to make sure anywhere, I start checking my coat pocket and find….nothing. My ticket is gone! Yelling to Nick to get off the train before it leaved, we rushed back up the stairs to find one of the station attendants running out to meet us with my ticket in hand. I thanked them profusely, and we ran back to the platform, but the train had already left. (Its really a good thing that people in Japan are so nice and honest when it comes to things that are lost of left behind. I have heard stories of foreigners who lose their wallets, only to have a Japanese person who has found it go to great lengths to try to return it. On one of our trips, Cassidy even accidentally left her camera at a ticket machine, only to have someone turn it into the station attendant. In the US, my partially unused Seishun 18 ticket would have been taken and stolen in an instant. This honesty will be one of the biggest things that I miss when I have to return to the US.)

The next almost 2 hours was fairly uneventful, and I spent most of the time dozing off on the train (lately, that’s the only thing I seem to be able to do on long train rides, I can’t bring myself to read or do anything else). Getting back to JCMU around 9:45pm, I quickly called for a taxi to come and pick up Nick at 10:30 so that he would make it to the bus station in time for his train. Finally not having to worry about people see him some into the building, naturally no one was out tonight. I burned a DVD of all the pictures we had taken in the past week and wrote out some directions and my phone number while Nick packed and took a shower. At 10:30pm we said goodbye and he went out to go wait for his cab. After he left I got a few calls from him from the bus station since the bus didn’t come on time, but after a while I didn’t get any more calls so I knew he was safely on his way to Tokyo.

Universal Studios Osaka!:

Universal Citywalk Osaka Hard Rock Cafe, my last one!!

Some observations on this week:

-Seriously, I was shocked how surprised Japanese people would be at how tall Nick is. I swear that in a weeks time he probably had thousands of people that would stare or who I could hear say things in Japanese. And so many people came up to talk to him too, though it seemed like it was mostly older people who did so. He didn’t take my advise and tell people he was a famous basketball player though!

-There are TOO many people in Tokyo. Everywhere we went, no matter what time of day, it was a people jam. Every train we would get on would be jam packed. I missed the quietness of the Kansai region while I was in Tokyo.

-I love the Matcha Frappachino from Starbucks

-Our guest house was surprisingly awesome, despite the need to pay for the heater. If you are going to Tokyo anytime soon, I recommend www.tatami-guesthouse.com. The manager is very nice and speaks fluent English!

-After being in Tokyo for the week, I think I can now say with certainty that Kyoto is my favorite large city in Japan. Tokyo is nice but it doesn’t have the same historical importance or significance that Kyoto and the Kansai area has. As much as I like shopping, its just not as fulfilling to me as is visiting places like Nara or Ryoanji.

-I’m very glad that Nick was here in Japan with me for 8 days. We did a lot of stuff, and while where were a few speed bumps along the way, it really means a lot that he flew several thousand miles to come and see me. Thanks Nick!

The guesthouse: