Biggest Buddha of my Life! (Day 12)

How can one top last night? I don't think it's possible, but we'll certainly try. Today we headed to Kamakura to see the Daibutsu – a giant Buddha. It was a long trek – almost two hours each way by train, but it I gotta say, it was pretty freaking cool.




Me and the Buddha…and my face isn't even superimposed. No big deal.

There were these totally cutest schoolkids there and while I was taking my pictures, I heard them speaking English amongst themselves. They were saying, "Please take picture." "No! It's please take A picture!" "Please take picture." Eventually they started yelling it in my general direction and I realized that they must be talking to me since I was the only white person in sight (Jean elected to sit outside since she'd been here previously.) I said, "Me?" and they said "Yes!" They wanted me to take a picture of their group, so I agreed and received a chorus of "Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!" So I took the picture and in true Japanese fashion, they all gave me the peace sign and said, "Cheeeee-zu!" I then received my second chorus of "Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!" Such cute kids. You can also pay 20 yen and go inside the Daibutsu, so I did. Um…not much to see here.


That hole leads to where the head is.

As I gawked inside the Buddha, I saw that someone had left a 10 yen coin stuck into the wall. Soon, as I looked around, there were different coins stuck all over the place. Apparently they leave money at these places for good luck. I quickly put the coin back, a little embarrassed. Ah, culture.

After we made it back to Tachikawa (it was now almost dinner since the hugely long train ride), we elected to do some more shopping in Tachikawa, specifically my favorite department store, Granduo. We decided we were hungry first, so we headed up to the restaurants floors and found this Japanese Viking (Viking = buffet in Japanese) so we decided to splurge and stuff our faces (again – seriously, we do this best.)





After hitting up all the good shops in Tachikawa, I headed back to my hotel to pack up as tomorrow I check out; we are spending my last two nights in Tokyo at a ryokan – a traditional Japanese inn.








Asahi is a kind of beer you know….


The cutest mouse I bought for my laptop! Kawaii desu, ne?


My cooler second yukata.

So onto my cool toilet:


If I know I need to use the toilet, I can turn on the seat warmer so it's nice and warm when I need to use it. Also, everytime I use it, a powerful deodorizer comes on to neutralize any unpleasant orders. I apparently can also put the toilet on standby…but I'm not sure what that would mean…


More toilet controls. This toilet had more buttons and options than the TV remote. Unlike the little picture, the "bidet" function doesn't actually shoot you up off the seat.

Not too much today. I just bought lots more crap and food souvenirs for the family. Did you know you can get a red bean Kit Kat bar? Well, I got one.

Tomorrow: World's Largest Ferris Wheel, a self-driving car that we test-drove, and the clubbing night in Roppongi that wouldn't end (even though we so badly wanted it to.) Stick around kiddies!

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Red-Light District (Day 11)

Before dawn cracked, I was up. I had gathered my crap together the night before, so it was just getting my butt to Kyoto station by 8:00 that I was worried about. I was at Misasagi by 7:15, Yamashina by 7:25, and Kyoto by 7:35. I wandered among all the salarymen waiting to catch their train back too. Nope, no one here like me.


Mine's the Hikari. Nozomi is the fastest bullet train and is not covered by my rail pass.


At my best.


My ship coming into port!

I rove the shinkansen. So speedy, quiet, and clean. This time I had requested a window seat, so I ate some shrimp rice crackers and listened to my lectures while zipping through the countryside. I would occasionally giggle at the thought I was in Japan, on a bullet train infested with salarymen sleeping.



After getting back into Shin-Yokohama, I booked it back over to my turf in Tachikawa and checked back into my lovely little hotel. Then it was off to the station to meet Jean and hit up Minato for the Studio Ghibli museum.











The Ghibli Museum is home to a lot of Japanese animated movies such as "Spirited Away", "Castle in the Sky", and "Howl's Moving Castle". It's also the home of Wallace and Gromit! The museum is really popular, so we had to purchase the tickets in advance, while still in Canada for a specific day. Since we aren't allowed to pictures inside the museum, here's a few I've found on the internet:












The entrance ticket


Me and Jean had both seen this picture on the internet beforehand and were trying to find this DVD player in the gift shop, but they didn't carry them anymore. Boo!

The museum was really neat, but crammed with children and their parents. I could take pictures outside, so I did.













Upon leaving (after trying to ignore this pasty white emo guy on the exit stairs) we got lost trying to make it back to Kichijoji to go for a ride on the swan boats!



They were closed that day. Boo! I think the lady said the swans were taking a nap, actually. Unless I dreamt that. I can't remember.

We bopped our way back to the shopping arcades from last Friday as Jean wanted to pick up some more souvenirs and ended up deciding on shabu-shabu for dinner. We were starving at 4:15 and the place opened at five, so we sat outside and waited and chatted. Once the doors opened, we were there, ready to cram our faces – and so we did.





Shabu-shabu is a giant pot of broth and you go grab a bowl full of veggies and noodles and dump them in, let them simmer, and then grab some beef or pork and swirl it around in the broth with your chopsticks until it is cooked. It's 90 minutes and all you can eat! And so began our night of indulgence.

Since Wednesday is ladies' night at the theatres in Japan, we were going to go see Akumu Tantei (Nightmare Detective) if we could find it. We decided that Shinjuku was maybe our best bet, so we headed there and began to wander the streets, along with the millions of others. We found many theatres, but none were playing the movie, so we decided to adventure down into the red-light district, kabukicho – what an idea, hey? Jean had been here previously (only to stare at everyone else down there, by the way.) We had NO plans to do anything unsavory, just so you know. We made plenty of jokes about the love hotels, the gentlemens' clubs, the escort bars, etc and gawked at the male pin-ups outside said places (until the door opened and some of what looked the said pin-ups emerged – awkward!) We decided that as white girls, we could probably make at least enough money after a week (hopefully less, but we don't the skills down pat) to buy a Louis Vuitton bag. Er..yeah.

We wandered Shinjuku for a while after leaving kabukicho to keep looking for a theatre and/or a crepe, since I still hadn't had one of these insanely-delicious smelling concoctions yet.


This says karaoke.

I soon concluded that our night wouldn't be complete without an insane sugar-rush, so I suggested that we go to the Sweets Paradise place we discovered last Wednesday in Shibuya which allows you eat as much dessert as possible in 90 minutes. We gave up on the theatre and jumped on the next Yamanote train to Shibuya.















Blah…I get some phantom sickness just looking at these pictures.

Not to be put off by a little bit of sickness, we decided that we would cap off our adventure with some karaoke. Oh…besty McBest.





We then booted it back out of the karaoke place by 11:45 to hop one of the last trains out. Phew. I was a-buzz with adrenaline. Sugar + karaoke = holy crap fun.

EDIT!!: I can't believe I forgot to post our purikura for that night! My apologies for making you miss out on our retarded fun.



Tomorrow: Giant Buddha! More buffet! Last night in Tachikawa…sniff sniff.

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...shimasu (Day 10)

Apparently some whore lives next door to Jen and Chris. She's not too noisy, but you can always hear her chatting with men late into the night. They had some stories about over Christmas that I'm not going to get into here.

This morning we slept it good and late again and decided that for lunch we were going to go to a place flowing with bread and butter – Baqet.


Your typical train leaving the station…just to show you what it's like.

It was a bit of a haul there (Kyoto doesn't have nearly the coverage of train service that Tokyo does – this means lots of walking) so it was early afternoon by the time we arrived at the mall where it was. This place was brimming with hot, young Japanese mothers and their tots. This place had the BEST bread buffet of my life. They had a baker that just made bread and the ovens were just on the other side of the counter, which equals = dough à oven à bread à mouth.


The bread buffet was included in every lunch, so we definitely ate our fill. There was onion, garlic, raisin, matcha, black sesame, and many more…grahh….so full.

Not having a whole lot of other things planned, we decided to just hang around and shop.


This is not a little girl – she was a small person and she ripped that machine to shreds.

After heading back to the train station after our unfruitful shopping excursion, we decided to head out to Lake Biwako for something to do since it was getting pretty late in the day. We were originally going to go to NIjo Castle, but everything closes so dang early. We got off at Zeze and stared at the lake before doing more shopping at Parco.










I was TRYING to do some sumo moves, but it comes across more as a dog trying to pee. Boo.

After gawking at the tiny clothes at Parco and more aimless wandering, we decided head back to Yamashina a delicious meal of okonomiyaki.


Okonomiyaki is like an omelet filled with cabbage. I had a "ba-kon chi-su" (bacon cheese) version.

When we left the restaurant, it was really great because everyone that worked there starting chiming "arigatou gozimashita!" It was ringing gloriously from the rooftops. I love these people.

Tomorrow I head back to Tokyo, so we just relaxed tonight. Jen and Chris watched "Family Guy" and then we shimasu'ed to sleep.

Tomorrow: Big day of fun! Ghibli museum and Kichijoji during the afternoon and then a night of gluttonous debauchery and karaoke! Funnest night of my trip. Ryu…where are you?

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