Vacation

I haven't posted in a little while and that's because I've been on vacation.  IN JAPAN!!!!! (yes, it does warrant all those exclamation marks)  I and my friend Christina had been wanting to go visit our other friend, Noriko, who lives in Tokyo for a couple years now and things finally worked out both time-off-wise and financially.  So, off we went the week of Thanksgiving.  It wasn't a very long trip; we left on Monday and came back the following Monday, giving us 5 whole days in Japan.  It was, however, a very fun trip and I very much intend to go back as soon as I can.

I did realize something about myself from this trip, however.  I mean, I'd always know it was true, but with this trip it really hit home: I suck when it comes to taking pictures.  Not that my pictures turned out bad.  Some of them actually look pretty good.  But the whole time I was there, I only took 73 pictures, some of which are duplicate shots when the first one didn't come out very well.  I partially blame my camera.  It's very fussy about trying to focus and can take forever to do so (which is why I didn't ask anyone to take pictures of the three of us) and it eats batteries like crazy.  I'd like to think I'd do better with a newer and better camera, but honestly, I'd probably still be awful about picture taking.  Luckily for me, Christina doesn't share this problem, so when she sends me her pictures, I'll post some of hers here, too.

I have no idea what this is, but it's sooo good!

Big damn roll (half gone)

The first night we were there, Noriko took us to this restaurant whose name I can't remember and we got tasty food, the name of which I also can't remember, but here's a picture of it!  It's pork and bean sprouts.  Reeeeeeally tasty.  We also got one of these that had chicken as well as the biggest damn dragon sushi roll I've ever seen.  Unfortunately, Christina started feeling rather poorly, so she didn't have anything.  More for me!  Though, that sushi roll didn't get finished.  Noriko and I made a valiant effort, but it was just too much.

The next day involved much sleeping on my part (I woke up pretty early, then took a "nap" and didn't get up again until 2:30), which was ok, since Noriko had other things she needed to do that day.  When she got back and everyone was conscious, we went to wander around the Imperial Palace.  The palace buildings and inner gardens aren't open to the public, but the outside grounds are quite lovely. 

 

I'm not really sure what that thing is up above this sentence (some kind of lamp maybe?) but I thought it was pretty neat looking.  Nor do I know what that little building off to the left is, but I thought the old-style architecture in front of the modern city buildings was kind of neat.

Fancy!

Then it was time to head to Asakusa and do some shopping!  But first, a quick trip to a mall for a bathroom break.  While there, I saw these on display.  Again, not sure really what they're for, but they sure are fancy!

Kaminarimon

 One of the most notable features here (and a very popular place to take pictures) is the Kaminarimon.  Once you go through this gate, there are about a million and a half shops lining the street to the temple at the end (Sensō-ji, I think).  Since this was the first day we really went out and did much, and I'm definitely not a big-city girl who's used to large crowds and lots of hustle and bustle, I was pretty overwhelmed here.  That didn't keep me from buying lots of things, though!  Once we got down the street, we got to the big temple, which was pretty cool.  I also got a pretty good view of the Tokyo Sky Tree, which is the tallest tower in the world (though not the tallest structure.

Sensō-ji

Sky Tree

On our trip, we also got to go visit Kamakura, which is about 30 miles or so outside of Tokyo.  While there, we visited one of the temples (Hase-dera, I think) and saw the Daibutsu, a great big bronze Buddha.  It was around here that I started getting super bad about taking pictures, but here are a few that I did manage to get:

 

 



















Later that same day we went to Yokohama's Chinatown where we got dinner, but like I said, I kind of stopped taking many pictures by this point.

Another thing we got to do was go to Sunshine City's 60-story skyscraper (Sunshine 60) and get a panoramic view of Tokyo.  Here are the pictures I took there:

 Tokyo sure is big.

The last two pictures I took were at Meiji Shrine:

Of course, we did a whole lot more than what I've got pictured.  With any luck, Christina will be able to send me some of her pictures soon and I'll be able to post more!  As for now, I've been at this post for about an hour and a half and dinner is just about ready, so I'll talk more about my trip later.