東京ディズニーランド

No apartment pictures yet, sorry. But I have an excuse! On Monday I went to Tokyo Disneyland!

It was FUN TIMES. It wasn't super crowded! The weather was lovely! I experienced rides I haven't been on in forever! Dumbo! The canoes (awesome)! I experienced rides I know and love in Japanese! Star Tours! AstroBlasters! The Haunted Mansion (well, some of it was English, but the narration was Japanese)! I experienced rides I know and love in pretty much the same form as in California! Pirates of the Caribbean was so similar it kind of weirded me out a bit. The first skull after the bayou speaks Japanese, there is only one waterfall, and you disembark right after Captain Jack Sparrow gets his treasure, but everything else - the smell, the look and sounds of the Blue Bayou, the temperature, the everything - tricked me into thinking I was in Anaheim. It was jarring to get off the ride and find myself in Japan.

There were some fab eating times too. I had a delish orange popsicle. And I had two churros! A regular cinnamon one and a honey-lemon one! Oishii!

Other stuff! I got to see the Electrical Parade! I got to see a cute live show! I got my picture taken with Wendy and the scariest Peter Pan ever (I think only my mother will know what I'm talking about, but he reminded me of that guy at Nordstrom - replace "Omigod, it's coming to LA!" with "[huge gasp] Did you fly here using pixie dust?!" - only he was terrifying in his unrelenting cheerfulness). I was super lame and wore mini Minnie ear barrettes most of the day!

Maybe the best part of the day was that I didn't get stressed out by other guests! No one was rude! No one shoved! No one got right up on you in line! No one acted like the park was only for them and no one else deserved to be there! The one time some kid bumped into me in line, his mother apologized! Everyone listened to the cast members when told to do or not do something! Even if everything else had been exactly the same as Anaheim, the excellent behavior of the other guests would have told me I was somewhere else. I've possibly been forever spoiled; I foresee being extra annoyed next time I go to Disneyland back home.

The only tragic thing about the day was that Space Mountain was not open. Hopefully next time!

But in general, the day was happiness. I want to go back already! Before I went, I obviously knew that it was close, but it didn't seem real since I hadn't experienced it for myself yet. But now that I've been and know exactly how close to home it is, it will be hard to resist going. If I could afford an annual pass, I would be there, like, every weekend, even if just for a couple hours. ALAS.

Pictures all ended up being of the "Oooh, look at this thing!" variety than the artistic variety, but enjoy anyway. The Pirates line one is total blurry crap, but I include it for the "Dude, it does look like the CA version!" factor.

Konbanwa from Harajuku!

I only have a one-day weekend this week - training tomorrow - but it's been nice. I lazed about this morning (and called the mother for Mother's Day) and then headed to Shibuya for a little shopping and to Harajuku for fish tacos (HAI! MEXICAN FOOD!). I'm in Harajuku still, nabbing some free internet action in a cell phone store. Heading home after this for movies and more laziness. Huzzah!

TOP FIVE STORES IN JAPAN
1. UNIQLO - I buy all my clothes here. They have cute stuff! And good deals! I got a dress there today, yay. It's blue.
2. Loft - If I had the money, I would buy all my home decor here. It is so so awesome! I buy things there every once in a while, and like to look at the cute cute things even when I can't afford them.
3. Tokyu Hands - Not quite as fabulous as Loft, but a little more affordable. And there is still great stuff there! A bunch of my home decor did actually come from there.
4. Kinokuniya - Huzzah for English language books. It's funny because at Kinokuniya at home, I buy Japanese stuff, but at Kinokuniya here, I am like, "YAY FOR ENGLISH!" Tower Records is also good for English books, but I am happier at Kinokuniya.
5. Passport - Um, they have super cute stuffed animals. And I use "animals" loosely. "Food" is more appropriate. They have a super cute tofu character. I might have three Tofu things in my apartment. I might buy more.

Odaiba! Bowling!

Yesterday I went to Odaiba for a little while. It was sprinkling when I got there and dumping rain by the time I left, so it wasn’t really the best day for a trip there. Looked cool though; I’ll have to return another time when the weather is nicer.

Ate lunch there at Red Lobster, haha. Different menu than home, but had the same feel. And a great view looking over the bay back at the rest of Tokyo (check out Tokyo Tower and the Rainbow Bridge in the pic below)!

Went bowling after I got home later. It was super fun! I hadn’t been bowling (except on the Wii, haha) in years. I wasn’t great, but I wasn’t the worst in the group! 3rd place out of 6, yo! I definitely want to go again sometime.

Last day of vacation today! Not sure what I’m doing, but I better make it awesome.

Kamakura, Part Three!

On Monday I planned to hang out in a few places around Tokyo with a friend, but she decided to stay home for r&r instead. I thought about just hanging around a few random Tokyo places on my own, and I got on the train with a vague idea of hopping on the Yamanote Line and just jumping off wherever.

Instead, I ended up in Kamakura again. I really didn’t mean to go! My feet just took me to that train instead of the one I intended to get on!

It was lovely again. It was a bit later in the day than when we got there the day before, so I didn’t have so much time (the sites of Kita-Kamakura will have to wait for yet another day), but I visited the Daibutsu and enjoyed the beach for a while and shopped and had a delicious garlic shrimp plate (and mango juice, yum) for dinner. I went down the coast a bit again and found a beach in Chigasaki and enjoyed that until it started getting too dark, and then I headed home. A very relaxing day!

Enjoy the pictures of my dinner and a random sign at the temple and the Daibutsu. I know I took a ton of pics the first time I visited, but I still took a ton more on Monday. I could not help it! He is very photogenic!

Kamakura, Part Two

...we went back to Kamakura and got on the Enoden line, a little train that goes down the coast and was INSANELY CROWDED, but which would be a charming ride with less people (saw lovely ocean views anyway, even if my ribs were crushed against a metal bar for most of the trip). We rode the whole length of the line, to Fujisawa, getting off and on again at Hase Station (still in Kamakura) to visit THE BEACH.

IT WAS SO AWESOME.

It was pretty much just like the beach at home. Cold! Windy! A little miserable! I was happy that the other side of the Pacific feels just like the part I know best.

The only thing that was different was that instead of seagulls, there were crows. (Have I mentioned the crows here yet? THEY ARE SCARY. They’re gigantic, and I’m terrified of them attacking me.)

There were a ton of windsurfers, so that was fun. And there was loads of nautical crap around which was also fun. And it was super super fabulous to be at THE BEACH.

Wanted to go to the beach in Fujisawa too, but it was not as close to the station as I’d hoped (I think we needed to actually get off the train earlier, but my research hadn’t made that clear). Walked in the right direction for a bit, but gave up and went to Hiratsuka. Wanted to go to the beach in Hiratsuka too, but first we walked in the wrong direction and then we were hungry and couldn’t find anywhere we wanted to eat and then it got dark, so we just went to McDonald’s by the station and then came home.

Anyway, Kamakura! I love it! Next time I want to visit a couple more of the Zen temples and go to the beach and visit the Daibutsu again (there was no time to see him yesterday). And go shopping. There are tons of little shops everywhere, and I’ve been in, like, one.

If you come visit me, I want to take you to my number one place in Japan!

Kamakura, Part One

Kamakura is my favorite place in Japan. Maybe it’s partly because it was the first place I visited, after that first week in Omiya, or maybe it’s just because it’s an awesome awesome place that feels right to me. I returned yesterday for my second visit, and I loved it as much as the first time.

Got some lunch (curry rice) to start and then went to Hachiman-gu, the most popular shrine in Kamakura (there are 19 Shinto shrines in Kamakura and 65 Buddhist temples). Crazy crowded, but very pretty. I was glad to get to see the whole shrine; the first time I was there, we only had time to peer at it from a distance.

Walked to Yamanouchi (also called Kita-Kamakura) after the shrine. There are five high-ranked Zen temples around Kamakura (I want to visit them all!), and three of them are in Kita-Kamakura. We went to Kencho-ji, which is the first-ranked of the five and is the oldest Zen training monastery in Japan. It was really fantastic! So beautiful and so old! So much greenery and so many flowers! So peaceful! It was lovely.

Got mango ice cream on the way to Kita-Kamakura station and then...

(To be continued.)

(The first three pics are from Kencho-ji, and the others are from Hachiman-gu.)

Nikko

On Friday I went to Nikko. It is very far away! Takao-san felt like it was out in the country, but Nikko really is. There were farms everywhere on the way there! It’s 90-something miles north of Tokyo, and it took about 3 hours to get there (2 hours from Asakusa Station, but unfortunately Asakusa isn’t the easiest station for me to get to, so it took almost an hour to get there and only then could we actually start the getting-out-of-Tokyo part of the trip). It took tons longer to get back home because the train we ended up getting was weird and slow. There were only four trains an hour or something, since it’s so far away, and two of them were expensive reserved-seat-only trains. One was a local, and the other looked like it was a rapid (which was how we got there). But it was so slow! I thought the schedule had lied to me and that it was a local, because we were stopping at every stop for a while, but as we got closer to civilization, it sped up and skipped more stops. It was apparently some weird local/rapid hybrid. IT WAS CRAP.

Anyway, enough about trains. Nikko! I liked it! It was very pretty there, and I liked seeing all the famous stuff at the Toshogu and Futarasan shrines and Rinno-ji temple. Most of my pictures are from Toshogu; Rinno-ji was probably my favorite, but you weren’t allowed to take pics inside. But it was very cool; I was most impressed by the Sanbutsudo (or Three Buddha Hall) that holds three huge gold-plated statues of Amida Buddha, Senju-Kannon and Bato-Kannon. Beautiful!

Toshogu was awesome too; it is dedicated to Tokugawa Ieyasu, who founded the Tokugawa shogunate and who built his capital in Edo (now Tokyo), and his remains are entombed there. No expense was spared in building the place, and it is ridiculously elaborate and very different from what Shinto shrines normally look like. There is also a lot of Buddhist influence there, which is interesting; being both Shinto and Buddhist is the norm in Japan, but you don’t usually see them so mixed at a shrine or temple (shrines don’t normally have pagodas, for one thing). The most famous things there are a carving of three wise monkeys and a carving of a sleeping cat (the souvenir shops are filled with sleeping cats and monkeys). We saw the monkeys (see below), but weren’t willing to pay more money to see the cat. My personal favorite of the many carvings there is the bit where there are two elephants that were done by a dude who had never actually seen an elephant before. Hilarious!

I would like to go back again for more than a day trip. There are a ton of waterfalls and lakes and hot springs in the national park, as well as more temple-y stuff, and it would be lovely to have the time to see them. Maybe in the fall - it’s supposed to be gorgeous there then.

All the pictures here are from Toshogu except for the one of the stairs, which is on the way to all the sites, and the love prayers, which are from Futarasan Shrine.

Monkeys

As requested, some monkeys from Takao-san. There were a bunch of babies that I spent most of my time trying to get pictures of, but none of them turned out! Most of the monkey pics sucked since they were all moving so fast all the time.

They also smelled SUPER GROSS. But they were fun to watch! Especially the cute cute cute babies, even if they wouldn't sit still for their pictures.

Takao-san

On Thursday I went hiking at Takao-san (Tokyo’s only mountain!). We didn’t quite make it to the top (we probably should have started earlier and not spent so much time at, say, the monkey park on the mountain, but at least now we have an excuse to go back), but it was awesomeness. It’s still technically Tokyo, but it feels like it’s way out in the country. It was beautiful there, and just a perfect day for hiking. And there’s so much to see on the mountain! Nature! Views of Tokyo! Statues and little shrines everywhere! Monkeys! A temple! And that was only on the one trail we were on! There are, like, seven more! And if it's clear enough, you can see Fuji-san from the top! I definitely want to go back.

Because of the time and because we knew we were going to be doing quite a bit of walking again the next day, we ended up taking the cable car on the way down. There are a cable car and a lift that go halfway up the mountain. On one hand, it was the lazy way out, but on the other hand, it made me feel super accomplished. It took a long time to get down in the cable car! And it was super steep! I climbed up all that way and more! And I wasn't even really sore in the morning!

Except when I had to go climb a bunch of stairs the next day, and then it was, like, "OW."

Anyway, it was a super fab day. Who knew so much nature was so close to the center of Tokyo (45 minutes or so from Shinjuku)?

Meiji Jingu

I am on vacation! I worked on Tuesday this week, but Wednesday was the start of Golden Week, and we don’t work until next Thursday.

On Wednesday I relaxed a bit - I was still recovering a bit from being sick the week before - and then went to Harajuku (insane because a giant Forever 21 opened there that day and apparently everyone in the world was there trying to get in).

In between the relaxing and the Forever 21 madness, I spent a little time on the non-crazy side of Harajuku Station at Meiji Jingu, probably Tokyo’s most important Shinto shrine. Very understated, but really lovely. I enjoyed it very much, especially the pretty pretty pretty walk between the two ginormous torii gates (the largest in Japan).

The picture above is of a bunch of prayers. Below is the central sanctuary, a smaller torii, sake barrels, and the first of the large torii (taken as I was leaving).