Thursday
Right after school we went back to the dorm and got ready to leave for Tokyo. Lots of last minute things going on; last minute cleaning, packing, computering... We went to the bus stop but when we got on the bus, Ele realized she left our Hotel check in stuff for Yokohama in her folder for school back at the dorm. She and Tyler got off the bus and went back to get it, and John and Marikriz and I went on the bus to the station. Ele and Tyler met us there by Taxi, and we went to eat at McDonalds before we left. We seem to do that a lot. Our train ride was long, and we transferred once at Echigozawa Station. The second train that we took into Tokyo was pretty cool; it was a double deck Shinkansen. We were on the second floor, but we were also asleep most of the time. Plus, it was dark anyway. When we got to Tokyo we switched to the JR line and took a train to Yokohama. Our hotel was near the station in China Town, so we walked there. It’s actually a really nice hotel, so it’s too bad that we only stayed for one night. Also, our friend Masa came to see us. We met him in Hawaii when the students from Kanto Daigakuin came to see us. It was really nice to talk to him and see him again, but we were really tired, so the whole encounter was rather loopy. I was using a really bad mix of Japanese and English. We finally went to bed really early in the morning.
Friday
Friday we woke up and got ready, packed up all our stuff and took it downstairs to check out. We left our luggage at the hotel and went to walk around Yokohama. We walked down to the harbor, which only took about 10 minutes, but it was hot and humid as hell >.> We were actually staying very close to where I stayed last year, but we took the train to the harbor last time. We walked along the harbor and took lots of pictures, and we passed a park that translates into “Elephant Nose Park” That was pretty entertaining :) We went to the red brick warehouse, which is a shopping mall near the harbor, and they had Kua Aina there, so that’s where we had lunch. It was kind of expensive, but it was soooo ono. The girl that was working at the cashier was really cute, and she had just been in Hawaii two weeks ago. She spoke really good English too. After that we walked to the big Ferris Wheel. I forget the name of it, but it’s one of the biggest in the world, I think, and it has a clock right in the middle. Last year I video tapped it at night when the lights looked like fireworks :) We rode the Ferris Wheel and the water ride that was there, because it was so damn hot. We don’t really have amusement parks like that in Hawaii, but in Japan it seems like they have little ones like that all over the place. After that we took the train back to Chinatown, because we were feeling lazy from the heat. We walked through Chinatown a bit before we went back to the hotel to pick up our bags and take the train to Tokyo. Then we transferred to the Yamanote line and got off at Kanda Station, and walked to our hotel, which was five minutes away. We relaxed there for a while because we were all really tired. I’m pretty sure everyone took a nap. Then we left for Roppongi to meet Okamoto Sensei for dinner, except we were like, an hour late. Which is really bad in Japan. We went to a Mexican restaurant with her. It was a little expensive, but the food was really good. Also, Roppongi is full of black people. As in, black people from Africa. I’ve never seen so many before; I think Sensei said that most of them are from Nigeria. They were calling to us to come to their clubs, and on our way to the restaurant one of them touched my arm and called me princess. I’ve started to feel less guilty about ignoring people that call out to us on the street, because there are just so many of them. After dinner Marikriz and I changed clothes because we were going clubbing in Shibuya. We spent maybe an hour or so looking for the club that we had found in the book, but the club next to it was the one that everyone seemed to be going into, so we went to go in there instead. Except we needed ID, and Marikriz and I had left our bags in a locker at the station. Also, the guy at the front said I couldn’t wear my slippers in there. So, we broke into three groups. Ele went inside, John and Marikriz went back to the station to get our bags, and Tyler and I went to find shoes for me. This was a problem, because it was like, 11-something and most of the shops were closed. Also, I have monster feet, so shoes in Japan don’t fit me. Eventually we ended up at ドンキ, which is nothing like the Don Quixote at home. Their Don Quixote is more like a Walmart shopping mall complex department store thing. They had shoes on the second floor, and we found the only pair that I could squeeze my feet into, which were size LL (shoe sizes in Japan are S, M, L, and LL). Even so, they were about two sizes too small, I’d guess. We walked back to the club and I changed shoes a little ways up the street, then we called Marikriz to bring my ID so we could go in. It was soo much fun dancing in there. There were so many people, and the DJs were really good. They played a lot of songs we knew, and everyone was jumping up and down and having a blast. The last train that we could’ve taken home left at about 12 30, and we were clearly not on it. We were switching between floors of the club, but I never got to go to the fourth floor, where they were doing like, trance techno music or something. It sounded like fun. We ended up staying there until what we thought was 3:30 in the morning, but was actually 2:30. See, the train station started running again at like, 5 am, and we were all starting to down, so we thought we’d leave, wander around for an hour and a half or so, then go home. But it ended up being longer than that, so we sat at the station for a loooong time. Tyler ended up falling asleep on the ground against the statue of this dog that was so loyal to his master that he would wait for him at the station every day, even after he died. I fell asleep leaning on John. We also met this guy who came and sat next to us and was talking to us who works for IBM or something. Between his English and our Japanese it was a pretty good conversation, I think. Then we finally got on the train and went back to the hotel.
Saturday
Saturday I woke up at 8am to take a shower, because we were supposed to leave the hotel by 9, but Ele and Marikriz were still sleeping. I took a shower and then told Ele it was about 9, and lay back in bed and fell asleep. I woke up an hour later and there was no one else around, so I thought they had left without me. I got up and grabbed my stuff and went to knock on the boy’s door, but no one answered after 30 seconds and I was in panic mode, so I went and grabbed my stuff and went downstairs to wait for Ele and Marikriz to answer my text. I almost went to the train station to meet them, but they said John and Tyler were still there, so I went back to the hotel and knocked on their door until they answered, then I sat and waited for them to get ready to go. I was pretty mad that morning, because I would’ve thought that they would’ve at least left me a note saying that they were leaving and that John and Tyler were still at the hotel. Honestly. We ended up catching up with them in Harajuku, where we had lunch at this burger place called Loteria. Then we went to Asakusa to meet up with Harumi and Natsumi and Michi. They showed us around Asakusa. We went to a temple with these huuuuge lanterns and we went to Japan’s oldest amusement park and rode some of the rides there. We also took Purikura :) I always tend to forget how much I love purikura until I take them again. It’s ridiculous amounts of fun, especially if you have people with you. After that we went to the Meiji temple in Harajuku, and it was really big and actually really, really clean. Then we all split up, because we wanted to do different things. Harumi and Marikriz went shopping in Harajuku. Michi and John went shopping in Harajuku. Tyler went shopping in Harajuku. Natsumi and Ele and I went to Ebisu Garden Place to see the HanaDan site <3 <3 It was actually a lot smaller than I thought it would be, and they put planters around it. The space in general is smaller than I thought it would be. But now when I re-watch HanaDan I can say that I’ve been there :) We were going to try to go to Ueno Park too, but we didn’t make it there :( But I’m happy that we went to Ebisu. I was so thrilled, you don’t even know. Gah. Anyway, we went to meet everyone in Akihabara, but we went back to the hotel first because we were sticky and gross and wanted to relax in AC, but we ended up being late to Akiba. When we finally got there we met up with one of Aida’s friends and had dinner with her. She printed out coupons for us because we were going to Yuneesun the next day. Usually the admission would have been 3100￥, but because she gave us the coupons, we got admission and a buffet lunch for 3000￥ each. An amaaaaazing deal. After dinner Michi and Natsumi and Hiromi had to go home, so we said goodbye to them and everyone was kind of sad. But Natsumi is coming to Hawaii in October, so I told her to give me a call so I could hang out with her there. Hopefully I’ll have my license by then >.> According to daddy, I’d better have my license by then. Then AChan can meet her! Ele wanted to go to Shinjuku, so we took the subway there and went to Kabukicho, which is the red light district where they have all the Host and Hostess clubs. The guys are all dressed up and their hair is ridiculous and they have the purikura action going on so that they look like girls, but they were really pretty. There were a shitload of people there too. Also, it started raining, but we didn’t really mind because it was so hot, the rain was actually kind of refreshing. But Aida’s friend’s friend who was with her wanted to get an umbrella, so we stopped at a combini, and they bought us all umbrellas. We walked around for a bit, and then we had to get on the train back to Kanda before they ended, so we didn’t get stuck like we did before. It was about 11 30 pm and the train station was CRAZY. There were SO many people and a bunch of them were drunk, so they were falling all over each other. Saying that it was a little difficult to get to our train is putting it lightly. And there were a million people trying to get on all different sorts of trains before they stopped running. We finally did end up getting home, thankfully, and went to bed because we had to be up early to take the train to Hakone the next day.
Sunday
We left around 10 or so to take the train to Hakone. We wanted to get there early because we wanted to spend a lot of time at Yunesun. Yunesun is AMAZING. It’s pretty much an onsen waterpark. When we first went there we went to sign up for the buffet, because we were starved and hadn’t eaten breakfast. It was sooooo good :) Then we went to the actual park. The main building had a lot of different pools, like the Greek bath and the Salt bath and the Sauna, and then they had this HUGE pool in the middle where all the small children were playing. It was also super bubbly, so all the parents were hanging around in the bubblies like it was a Jacuzzi. All the water was warm, if not hot. The Salt bath was super amazing. It was like the Dead Sea, not that I’ve ever been there. But it’s so buoyant that you can’t stay on the ground. You can just sit cross legged and float with your head above water. SO MUCH FUN. Outside was an entirely different story. They have all kinds of different pools there. They have a coffee pool, a wine pool, a green tea pool, a sake pool, a charcoal pool, a rock pool… so amazing. We were hopping between all the different pools, and we also went to the coffee show :) They threw coffee on us. They especially threw coffee on Tyler. It was pretty hilarious. Then that night we went to our Ryokan. It was amaaaazing. We had this wonderful dinner at the hotel, and the dessert was so cute. Then we went to the onsen spa near the hotel because we had free coupons. That place was really nice too. The outside portion of the onsen was really big; bigger than any of the ones we’ve been to before, so we got to walk around outside naked and hop between the pools. The pools were REALLY nice. I loved the rock pool that they have; it felt like being a mermaid or a water nymph :) I wish we got to do that sort of thing all the time. It’s the best way to take a bath, I think, walking around outside sans clothes and hopping between the pools. There was a cold water pool too, and something called a plasma bath? I think it had something in the water that would help your skin or something. We had to get the hell out of dodge before 11 though, because that’s the time they were locking the hotel doors. We ALMOST didn’t make it because Tyler took so damn long. We had to run back to the hotel. Then we all fell asleep watching TV. It was a good day :)
Monday
We spent ALL DAY on transportation devices. When we woke up we took the bus to the station, then took a very old train to the very last station. The trail was a switchback, so we kept stopping and the drivers would run from one end of the train to the other to switch places. It was really funny. And it seemed like everyone took the time on public transportation to sleep. The old train was really fun, and it was also super adorable. After we got off the old train, we hopped on a REALLY steep, one track train that took us up to the rope way. That was really fun, and I think by far may be the best way to travel. We got to see the whole side of the country, and it was really beautiful. We also got to see the sulfur where they boil the black eggs. It was very interesting and very smelly. Then when we got to the end of the ropeway we got on a pirate ship and sailed across the lake. No joke. It was pretty cool. After that we took a bus back to the station, then a bus back to our hotel to pick up our bags, then a bus back to the station. Then we took a train to Shinjuku, and then a train to Echigoyuzawa, then a train back to Kanazawa, and then a taxi back to our apartments. WHAT A WEEKEND.
