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!