Adventures in Japan

We've Been Busy

Carla's parents have been gone for a while now, yet we haven't really blogged about their here-ness.

As always, I have excuses. I just finished my year of teaching, and it has been busy as all get out. If that is, in fact, a real saying and not just one that I made up, as I oftentimes do. The main reason for this busy-ness is that Keiko, my boss, decided that we should celebrate the fact that her school has been around for 5 years. What better way to celebrate than with a concert? With singing and dancing and such. And a play.

I had to write said play. And re-write it. And so on. Then practice it over and over and over and over. With the singing and the dancing. In spandex.

Exhausting.

But all that is over now. The concert, I mean.

Now I can tell y'all about our wacky hijinx. Except, most of what we did with Carla's parents we already did by ourselves. So we don't want to bore you by repeating ourselves. And we'll probably do the same stuff when Ry comes to visit. Except I'll actually get to eat at that all you can eat place and ride on that Resident Evil ride.

What new stuff did we do?




Huh.

Maybe I shouldn't have waited so long to write about their visit.

I know! I'll just look at the pictures we took.

We walked down a covered shopping street. With people selling various bits of seafood and vegetables we ain't don't ever see in North America.



We went to the earthquake museum again and also walked along a preserved section of quake mangled waterfront. Kinda jarring seeing it right in amongst the rebuilt city.



For dinner, we ate at a Spaghetti Factory. Similar to the ones back home, but with smaller servings.



The next day we went to Kyoto. We walked around places we've walked around a few times before. Unfortunately, this time, the trees and such weren't so much in bloom. We did see some signs of Spring. But not many.




One of the parks we walked through had all sorts of sculptures and objects d'art and such set up. After dark, they got all lit up. Like so.




Maybe I should just write about Tokyo. Carla's parents' flight came into and flew out of Tokyo. They made it to Osaka all on their own, but we decided to accompany them back. We rode the Shinkansen. It was fast. I mainly slept.

Tokyo is big. Really big. There are a lot of people. A lot.

Some of them kinda freaky looking. If you want to see freaky people, stroll through Harajuku on a Sunday afternoon. That's what we did, and this is what we saw:



And some of this too:




I like taking pictures of people taking pictures.


That's a big camera.

That's a big boot.

I would have taken more pictures, but there were too many other people also taking pictures. Too many tourists. Next time, though, next time I'll take more pictures. With monkey.

We wandered through Harajuku's Meiji shrine. Bigger than I was expecting. With nice, wide paths. To accommodate all the fat, white tourists.




After that we strolled through a nearby park. It was huge. We had to take a couple breaks. There were lots of people out. There were bands playing, a drum circle... if I list everything, my fingers will get real tired. There was lots to see and do. And it was a gorgeous day. After all that walking we napped. Man, I sure do enjoy a good nap.



After that we went over to the skyscraper district. Not what I was expecting. Sure, the buildings were tall, but they weren't all packed together. I didn't feel as confined as I would have thought. Some nice looking buildings, boy howdy.



The next day we said goodbye to Carla's parents and explored Akihabara, the electronics district. We spent a lot of time there. Way more than we had planned. But we didn't see all there was there. Not at all. We took a quick stroll through Ginza, the hoity toity district on our way to catch our train back.

The end.