Woo hoo, Japan!

So as you might have heard, Aaron and I went to Japan for the weekend. October 2nd and 3rd were big Korean holidays, so we had an extra day off of school. Actually, Aaron got Thursday and Monday off in addition to Friday (him and MOST other teachers!) but my school is inherently evil and I had to show up on those days. And in the end, so did Aaron since his principal changed his mind about letting Aaron stay home those days. At least I had students to teach on those days; he showed up to a completely empty school. Very nice.

ANYWAY, since we were cheated out of going to Japan for our summer vacation (by Aaron's school, again) we decided to go over this holiday weekend. It ended up being for the best since we spent a lot less money being there for only 2.5 days instead of 7. Make no mistake, Japan is not cheap. Granted, our hotel was pretty cheap and the flight wasn't too bad, but the food, the drinks, the stuff...all quite pricey. And we were in Tokyo, which is apparently one of the most expensive cities in the world (and the largest - wikipedia). Which would account for that.

We left our house very early (about 6 am) on Friday morning (after staying up until near 2am drinking with friends) and headed to the train station. We then spent 2 hours on various trains to get to the airport. Aaron slept a lot. I stayed awake and watched for our transfers. Once we got to the airport, we hung around til our flight left. The Incheon airport in Seoul is very, very nice. The flight was pretty painless as well. It wasn't until we got to Japan that the real fun started.

Now, to be fair, I've been to Japan before. I've ridden the trains there before. I have at least a conversational grasp of Japanese. But this was 5 years ago. And I had never been to Tokyo. Needless to say, our first few hours in Japan were full of stress for me. While Korean has a standard alphabet, Japanese has 2. And Japanese also makes excessive use of kanji (Chinese characters) that were the bane of my existence while I was studying the language. Place names are almost always in kanji. In fact, most things were in kanji. I hate kanji. I don't remember hardly any of what I had learned. So this was a problem for us, because we couldn't understand where to get off the train, which train to transfer to, and even read the train map at the stations. Highly annoying. However we seem to have luck where these things are concerned and made it to our suburb and hotel without anyone dying. Although Aaron came close, because I was really stressed out about it.

The hotel was quite nice; unfortunately we didn't think to take pictures of it. But it was a standard room, nothing special. We paid for our room, took our stuff upstairs, and then promptly took a nap. Afterward, we wandered around our area for a bit and found some dinner. Dinner was hamburgers at this fun place called Freshness Burger. While my Japanese was rusty, I could still order food (you know, important things) and we didn't have any problems with that. The burgers were amazing!!

Fries and onion rings. They were both very good. They were super greasy like burgers are supposed to be!

Aaron and his burger. It was also very good. As was mine, but we didn't get any pictures of that. Whatever, it's a burger. You know what those look like.

Here's the outside of the place. Please note the Halloween decorations. Japanese people love costumes, as presented by their rampant cosplay, so Halloween naturally caught on.

And the inside. Very cool little joint. They were even playing some nice, smooth, English jazz. The atmosphere was very chill.

Here are some photos around our hotel. It was in a suburb right outside Tokyo, so it was kind of quiet; very nice and peaceful.

Many celebrities get paid lots of money to advertise for Japanese products. Boss is a kind of canned coffee they sell in convenience stores here. I just liked the Tommy Lee Jones picture. He is pretty boss so it was appropriate.

A really...cute...thing. I don't actually know what these are properly called. Anyway it was tiny and pink and purple and that's all you need to know. Goes to show that Korea is not the only country with men that like lots of girly colors.

I kind of wish we had gotten to eat at this restaurant with the really cool-looking bear outside. We kept walking by him until I just had to take a picture. I don't know what he's so mad about. It actually had a sensor that made the bear roar when you walked by.

Okay, it didn't, but that would've been neat, right?

The next day we woke up somewhat early and headed to Akikabara. That's the huge electronics district in Tokyo. There was a giant store (about 9 stories I think) full of electronics and stuff. Cameras, computers, mp3 players, TVs, toys, video games...just tons of things. The building was so big I couldn't get a picture of the entire thing, but here's part of it.

We headed up to the 6th floor which promised to hold many toys and video games. We were not disappointed.
An entire aisle of capsule machines! Actually there were 2 such aisles. Lots of Pokemon and weird things inside them.


Aaron wanted a shot of these. Apparently he played with these as a child? I have no idea. They were actually called M.U.S.C.L.E. and were decently big in the states from '85 - '88.

Some kind of Nightmare Before Christmas toy; guess it involves those little plastic things you can fuse together. I remember playing with those in my younger days...

A music store in Akikabara. Aaron was not allowed inside, because we would have never left. But the outside was neat. It was a wise decision on her part.
Next up was Shibuya and Omoetasando areas. Big entertainment/shopping area.


Aaron took this. Not me. No, we did not go inside.

The main street; we wandered up and down this in huge crowds of people. We went into the H&M (since Korea doesn't have one) so I could peek around (and maybe buy something? no?) but we left after literally a few minutes because it was so packed in there I was freaking out. The Forever 21 next door had a LINE to get inside. Ugh. For those of you in Korea, please note the cleanliness of the streets and the general lack of garbage bags/piles.

It was in this area that we found Kiddyland, which will get its very own blog post as soon as Aaron feels like it. There were way too many pictures of that place for me to put in here.

Some of the more "upscale" areas had specific places where you could smoke, instead of all over the street wherever you wanted. Above the ashtray things were such amusing facts as "A cigarette is held at the level of a child's face" and other such things. I stayed far away from them while Aaron smoked since they were always crowded with about a dozen people all smoking at once. "When I bumped into I apologized. When my smoke hit your face, I said nothing." My favorite, by far, was: "Inhaled. Burned. Thrown away. If it were anything but a cigarette it would surely be crying."

Next up was the Meiji shrine nearby. I'd like to add that it was overcast that day and rained (well, sprinkled mostly) on and off. But that didn't detract from our shrine visit.

Apparently France wanted to commemorate stuff for the Emperor Meiji and sent many barrels of wine for a consecration ceremony. I don't remember the details, but there were many old, cobweb-y barrels hanging out here.

Walking toward the shrine. There were several Shinto gates like this on the way. Yes Magic players, I did have the relevant conversations with Mel about Kamigawa block.

Before you go inside to pray, you can purify your mouth and hands at this water fountain. Quite a few people were there to pray that day, even in the rain.

You can buy a small wooden board with a string and write down your prayers/wishes for yourself or your family/friends. Then they get hung up by the priests. Quite a few were in English; many wishes for good health and successful studying.

Inside the temple. That's someone praying on the left there. We would've taken a nicer/closer picture of the background, but photos were forbidden in the actual praying hall. This is from outside and zoomed a bit.

On the way out, we snapped a picture of a little stream near a bridge we were walking over. Even though we were in the middle (well, sort of) of Tokyo, this shrine and the paths leading up to it were so quiet and peaceful. It was really nice.

Don't know what's going on here. But it's cute anyway!!

For lunch, we were walking around and stumbled upon a real English pub. (well, sort of) The kicker was that outside they advertised fish and chips, which we haven't been able to eat here due to Korea NOT HAVING THEM. So here's a picture of the inside of the pub and the food we ate.

At this arcade, you can get your picture taken in one of many booths. This one promises to enlarge your eyes so you look like a doll. How...adorable.

More shots of the arcade. Aaron spent three dollars on that Mario claw machine trying to win a 1UP mushroom or a star, to no avail. I was highly saddened. I wanted one badly as I couldn't find one in Kiddy Land. More on that later. The guitar game is Guitar Freaks. It's the predecessor to Guitar Hero/Rock Band.

Then we went to Ginza, apparently "the" shopping district of Tokyo. Basically this place had tons of fancy, REALLY EXPENSIVE clothing stores. Nothing for us here, so we only took 1-2 pictures and left.

Next up was Roppongi, the "foreigner" area. Many embassies were in this area, and lots of foreign foods to eat. And other interesting things. Like this.

Yeah, a giant spider statue. Horrible. The spider was huge! It was like War of the Worlds, but with spiders instead of Tripods. Well, and there was only the one. And people weren't scared. Well, I guess it wasn't anything like War of the Worlds except for there being a large thing that people should be scared of. At least Mel was.

Aaron took a close-up of its egg sac. I stayed away. Yep, there's actually egg looking things in there. The spider actually had "do not climb" signs.

Found a Mexican restaurant (Aaron was hellbent on eating tacos) and ate some delicious food here.

I have to admit, it is to my shame that we did not actually eat any Japanese food while we were in Japan. Oh, we intended to, and I really wanted okonomiyaki (and sushi if I could get it) but honestly, we were so sick of Korean food that we were overjoyed to find real food (burgers, fish and chips, burritos) in Japan. It seemed that every other restaurant was foreign food. Mostly Italian and French, but it was such a change from Korea where they apparently fear food that is not Korean.

We also saw an astounding number of non-Japanese people walking around. It seemed that Japanese people are (at least on the surface, don't know about deep down) more tolerant of foreigners than Korean people. For example, no one stared at me in Japan. In Korea, I am a celebrity; can't go anywhere without someone gaping at me!

Then we just realized that it is probably because Tokyo is infinitely more interesting to visit than Seoul.

It was interesting to also see foreigners who weren't all obviously teachers. It appears Japan allows foreigners to hold other jobs without marrying in.

This bar's name reminded us of Aaron's grandma. Grandma once said that everything was "copa soca" in an email to me. She had just been on a cruise and I inquired if she had picked up some island language or what not. After a few emails, it became evident that she was shooting for copacetic.

There was a pet store with tons of tiny puppies and kitties in the windows. It was difficult to look inside because you had to shove your way through the crowd of people going "awwww!"

Unfortunately, even though it was my birthday, Aaron refused to buy me a puppy.

The sign on the elevator panel. It was just funny.

So anyway, that was our trip. We got home late Sunday night (after an exhausting plane ride and train ride and bus ride) but it was totally worth it.

Now I just need to convince Aaron to move us to Japan next year...

We'll see....

Anyway, I added some stuff in green. - Aaron