Tokyo - Akihabara and Ginza

On Sunday I went sightseeing with another secondee, a girl from the UK named Stephanie.  She made all of the plans, and it was really nice just to go along with her!  We started at the imperial gardens, where the koi were really active.  These ones were colorful and had super long fins!

 Next we took the train a few stops to Akihabara.  This is the anime and electronics district!

 Some of the anime billboards.  There was also a cafe/shop here for AKB48, a girl group in Japan with a cult-like following.  The line was huge!

 After looking in some of the shops, we had lunch in a restaurant near the station.  It was the first time I read something on a menu!  Well, I read the part that was in hiragana, and then figured out what the kanji meant based on the picture - it was katsudon (かつ丼).  I was super proud of myself - and then I ordered something else.  I managed to understand it was fish from the waitress, but for some reason I expected it to be cooked and hot.  It wasn't, but it was still pretty good with the egg and the different kinds of fish.  And the hot soba warmed me up from a day sightseeing in the chilly rain!

 After lunch we went to the Ginza shopping district.  There were a lot of fancy fancy stores here, and some cool buildings!

 This building had a directory of the floors on the outside stairwell, kinda neat!

 A clock tower that was listed in my guidebook. 

 The main shopping streets are closed to cars in the afternoon, and there was a ton of people out! 

 Norman liked the shopping!

Norman and I in Tokyo!!

 And, as always, Hooters was there to keep it classy.

Enoshima

I have been wanting to go Enoshima for a little while now, and today was the perfect day for it.  I got up early to head out, and took the train to Ofuna, and then the Shonan monorail to Shonan-Enoshima station.  It was a suspended monorail, it felt very strange, but it was a nice ride up in the sky!

 From the monorail, I was able to snap a slightly blurry picture of work - the Shonan Research Center.  It is the five big white buildings in the distance.  It is huge!  It takes forever to walk from one end to the other!

There is a long bridge to cross to get to the island - it wasn't so crowded early in the morning!



 Heading up the stairs to see the shrines.  I bought an eno-pass for the day, which let me see the lighthouse, the caves, and allowed use of the escalators.  I was in the mood to climb things though, so I just used the stairs!

Here is one of the shrines.  They were very intricate!

 Behind one of the shrines was this pretty little area.  There were scoops to drink from the dragon fountain - I'm not sure what that was supposed to do for you!

I found this funny - a french toast cafe.  It looked tasty, but I wasn't hungry yet!



Here is the lighthouse on the top of the island.  It is called the Sea Candle.  I did not walk up all of those stairs!  It had two observation decks, one inside, and then another up one flight that was open to the air.



 The next few pictures are the views from the top.  You can see the beaches on the mainland, and some mountains in the distance.  It was too hazy today to see Mt Fuji :(

 Here are the cliffs on the back of the island - there are some caves in them that you could go inside!

 This guy looks pretty mad.

 On my way to the caves, I saw a lot of people fishing.  I have a feeling they were supplying most of the island restaurants!  Also, there were a lot of little kids playing in the tide pools - you could buy a net and a bucket to catch things with.

 There were two caves - in cave number one, I saw some plant life managing to grow!

On the way to cave #2 I saw this turtle stone.

 Cave 2 ended with this super creepy dragon.  I didn't stay long here!

 There were dozens of the hawk-like birds flying around.  I have never seen so many in one place before!

I was hoping that I could translate the type of bird that they were from this tile in the walkway, but I think it just says "flying".

 After the caves I ate lunch at a restaurant overlooking the water.  I don't think it gets much better than this!

Lunchtime!  I had tamago-don (rice covered with egg and onion), miso soup, what I think is some pickled radish, and an Enoshima local beer.  (Very important tip - beer is pronounced bee-ru!)

After lunch I went to this spa (the tan building on the edge of the island).  The beer helped me have some courage to try my first onsen, a Japanese public bath (this one, like most, was segregated by gender, thank goodness!).  The onsen was very nice, but super hot.  I could only stay in about 20 minutes, and when I got out my face was very red!  After the onsen, I visited some of the swimming pools, one of which was outside and looked out over the sea.  Luckily the water was quite warm, because the air was very chilly.  So chilly in fact, that I went back in to the onsen after to warm up!  It was such a relaxing way to spend part of my afternoon.  I have a feeling a lot more onsen trips will be on my agenda for the rest of my time here!

 After the onsen I was ready to do some shopping!  I bought quite a few presents, but everyone will be relieved that I didn't buy them a cuttlefish.  :)

 I am so glad I made it to Enoshima early, because this is how crowded it was when I left!  You could barely move down the shopping street!

So far, this has been my favorite place in Japan.  I wonder what could beat it?!?

Motomachi Shopping Street - Yokohama

Last Sunday I had my first Japanese lesson, and then I spent part of the day checking out a pedestrian shopping street called Motomachi, found China town, and discovered a nice park.


As I was walking to the station, I thought that this view would provide some prospective on just how big the hill I live on is.  I would not want to live up those stairs!  Also, I feel bad for the mail man around here!

Here is the entrance to the Motomachi shopping street.  It is blocked from cars most of the day.  It was pretty crowded!  There was a mix of Japanese stores, and ritzy western stores, like Brooks Brothers!
  

 I found this awesome bead store - I had to use a lot of self control to not buy things here!

 At the end of the street I just kept walking, and stumbled on to a nice park.  Here is the bay bridge peeking through some trees.

 I love when there is a map of the area posted, especially when it has pictures!

 The top of the park had a nice little observation area.

 Such a good view!  I chilled out here for a while, reading in the sun.  It was such a nice day - it is starting to get cooler here, and less humid!

 This is a really ugly bug.  I almost stepped on it on accident. 

 Hey look - it's China town!  It was filled with a lot of restaurants, and the same touristy china town stores you would find in any city.

 I bought some lunch and ate in this Italian garden, it was very pretty, but small.

Yokohama Hakkeijima Sea Paradise

Today I went to Sea Paradise, an aquarium/amusement park on an artificial island!  Brace yourself, because I took a lot of pictures!  I am also working on editing together a video from a lot of little ones I took, but that might take a while!

To get there, I took the train to Yokohama, and then transferred to the JR Negishi line, where I went about 7 stops to shin-sugita station.  There I transferred to the seaside line, and went to Hakkeijima station.  Then, a quick walk over a bridge led to Sea Paradise.  I managed to all of this without getting lost - hooray for planning.  (I think I learned from last weekend's adventure, which wasn't so well planned!)

 Again, my first task was to find something to eat.  Why do I always arrive places around lunchtime?  Today I had a shrimp burger - it was super tasty!  Ordering food is consistently one of the hardest things I have found.  Today I did ok until she asked me what I wanted to drink - that one took a few minutes to get through.  I ended up with iced tea!

 I found it amusing that you could buy a churro.  It seems amusement parks everywhere must sell them.  I really wanted to try one, but I was way too full from the shrimp burger!

My first stop was the penguin petting time at Fureai Lagoon.  I touched a penguin!

Here is proof!  I bought this picture for way too much money, but it was very necessary!  The penguin was wearing a Halloween cape.  The peace signs were non-optional.  It is the pose to do around here!  A penguin doesn't feel too much different from any other bird I think.  But, I can cross that off the bucket list!

 In this section there was a tube connecting two pools that seals could swim through - it was too cool!

 There was also an artificial reef area where little kids could wade and find things.  It also smelled really bad!

 More penguins!  Awww...

 This walrus was hysterical!  I have quite a bit of video of him.  He kept making raspberry noises on top of the water!

This building is the Aqua Museum - a.k.a the aquarium.  The back part is where the shows are held - it is open air, but with a glass roof over it.

 The main attraction at the Aqua Museum is the whale sharks!  They live in the pool where the shows take place.  They are huge!  One of them had a small school of fish that followed it around.  The other had two fish stuck to it's belly.

 This tank had a couple of sharks and rays, but it had a GIANT school of sardines.  It was so mesmerizing, I think I watched it for about 20 minutes.  I also have some cool video of this that I took from an escalator that goes through the middle of the tank in a tube!

 This is one of the giant rays in the tank - it must have been about 8 feet across!

 Giddy up sea turtle!

 This is the stadium for the show.  The show had a Hawaiian theme.

 Here is the whale shark again.  You can see how big it is!

 You could buy snacks in the stands, like at a baseball game.  They smelled pretty good!

 Here is one of the girls in the show saying "Aloha" to everyone.  She was the walrus trainer.

 This guy fed the whale shark from a rowboat raft.  At first I thought he was a volunteer, but then later he "fell" into the pool and had to be rescued by a seal.

 This seal did a lot of good tricks!

 The walrus does the hula!

 Two girls swam in the pool with beluga whales and did a lot of tricks.  This one was super impressive!  At the end of this section, the whales went back to their regular pool through a tunnel, pushing the girls in front of them with their heads!

 This was my favorite fish of the day!

 This is the dolphin house.  You could walk through a tube underneath the dolphins swimming around.

 This is hands-down the strangest fish I have ever seen.  It is an ocean sunfish, and it is giant.  And kind of ugly.  So strange...

 I don't know why this amused me.  I used to love the powerpuff girls.

 On the train on the way home, I remembered that I had David the gnome with me, so he got his picture taken too!