Thursday, 25th December! Christmas!

Today is our last full day in Japan. We got up and ate the hotel breakfast which was Japanese food only. It was okay, but not great. As usual Chucky was anti. I think he just wants weeties.
I HATE WEETIES.
Despite feeling jibbly, we went out on the train to Akihabara Electric Town. We took the Yamanote line because it is JR and as such we get free travel on our passes. Isn't Chucky clever to book us a hotel on the Yamanote line? Clever boy.
Electric Town is just full of electric parts shops, anime shops, computer and other electrical appliance shops, and maid cafes. We saw a beautiful Lolita and followed her discreetly. She went into a maid cafe where she probably works.
We looked at headphones all morning trying to find some nice noise-cancelling ones for the plane. It was great. I got some pink ones and Chucky got some extremely nice ones. The morning was not spoiled at all, even when I had an upset stomach.
Next we took the train to Ebisu, because I wanted to see what it was like. The train took about half an hour. On the train there were two girls who were totally goth-loli and looked amazing. One had blue hair! Yebisu Garden Place is a place visited a lot in my favourite J-drama, so we went there and took photos of us being like film stars. I can't believe I stood where Matsumoto Jun and Inoue Mao stood!
Lunch was a McDonald's affair, which was surprisingly awesome. I think people take their jobs very seriously in Japan, whatever their job is. It makes for good burgers.
We took the train another stop to Shibuya, where there is a famous pedestrian crossing. It was amazingly busy and was packed with beautiful people. I followed another Lolita for a while until she got boring. Shibuya has lots of big video screens and neon signs, very exciting. I was mainly astounded by the beautiful people. We went to a few shops but didn't buy anything. We were starting to feel tired.
We walked to Harajuku. I love Harajuku. First we went to the Laforet building basement where there are many awesome fashion shops, including Metamorphose, Angelic Pretty, and Putamayo. I bought a ring and some earrings, all with deer on them. They were from different shops but go together well. I still didn't buy anything from Metamorphose. I'm beginning to dislike their thing of having everything stupidly overpriced just because it's a name brand that people want to show. We also saw two guys who were the most incredible goths - white makeup and long straight hair with blonde streaks.
We walked down the famous pedestrian street in Harajuku and had fun looking at people and shops. At Harajuku station we took the train back to our hotel and collapsed.
We got dinner at a don restaurant. I got Buta-don (pork rice bowl) which was better than usual. There was only one guy working at the shop. He was doing the cooking and the serving and was incredible. I felt sorry for him, because people kept coming in and saying "Sumimasen!" while he was cooking.
Got two desserts at am/pm - one cream and cake dessert and one creme broulee. The creme broulee was the best ever.

Wednesday, 24th of December

Chucky: We spent the morning at Emi's place hanging out with the family and packing up our bags. Chrissy had a sleep because she still has a cold and I found things in our luggage to throw out. Eventually we got both the bags packed and both were lighter than 20kgs (just!). We said goodbye to everybody and Emi and her Mum took us to the station where we waited around for the Kodama shinkansen to take us to Tokyo. The shinkansen trip was comfortable and we got an AMAZING view of Fuji san. AMAZING. Just like a postcard. Fuji-san is really big.
Chrissy: When we arrived at Tokyo station we had to catch another train to Ueno, so we joined in with the crowd and rushed through the station and onto a train. The walk to our hotel was fairly short but extremely crowded. Yay! Back in crowded Tokyo!
After we got settled we went out to find some dinner. We went to some upstairs place which looked a bit seedy at first but turned out to be DELICIOUS food. We had a bacon Okonomiyaki and some yaki-soba. Despite telling the waiter that I don't eat prawns, I found some tiny tiny tiny prawn-type animals in the yaki-soba. After eating a bunch of it. I had thought that they were little slices of pickled ginger, because they're exactly the same colour. I had to look really closely, but they were definately miniature prawns. I stopped eating and began to worry about it. I did start to feel sick, but it's all better now and the worry was probably causing the nausea after all. Maybe I'm NOT allergic to prawns? They were only very tiny, so maybe I am? Charles tells me that tomorrow we're having a whole lobster for lunch.
We walked around the area for a while, which looked fairly seedy with lots of bouncers with earpieces walking around being tough. I don't know who they were bouncing. We went to Don Quiote which is a huge chain that sells everything. Literally everything. Headphones, chewing gum, ballgowns, tinsel. It even had imported Tim Tams and Pringles!
We went to a Lawon's and a 7/11 and a Family Mart and bought some Christmas Cake and a miniature bottle of champagne for a Christmas celebration. HAPPY CHRISTMAS!

Tuesday, 23rd December

Chrissy: Today we went to a different area of Fukuoka to try to find Kinokunia and do some other shopping. We found the building it was supposed to be in, but it wasn't there. It turned out to be the most frivolous shopping plaza I've ever seen. Perfume, cosmetics and a ridiculous amount of clothes shops. No bookshops, no food shops, no chemists, carpenters or any other kind of shop. It was the worst.

We found a bookshop in the building next door. It wasn't Kinokunia, but it might as well have been because it was so well-stocked and had exactly what we were looking for - a Japanese version of Tintin for Emi's 7-year-old nephew. Also I found an actually good clothes shop where I bought a really nice - and really cheap - red coat. It's amazing.

Charles:
We also had a donut from MR DONUT. It was pretty good. Bookshops in Japan are different. There are bookshops everywhere and most of them are books for people to read on trains. They look like libraries with rows of shelves full of identically sized books. The only sections we can see is the broad difference between plain coloured normal books and zany manga. These kind of bookshops have no kids books and are totally useless for us.

Also how come Chrissy can find a rad coat for 3000 yen and Chucky can only find one for CONSIDERABLY more. Mysteries of fashion.

THE STORY CONTINUES.

We had our longest shinkansen trek ever back to Emi's place. having gotten back to Hakata station, we had to take a 2.5 hour trip to Osaka. Then we got directly onto another shinkansen which took 1.5 hours to get to Mikawa-Anjo station. The second trip was nicer because we got to see Kyoto again out the window. Yay Kyoto tower! Yay world's biggest tin shed!

We got to the station at 6:09 and Emi was waiting for us at the gate with her Mum in the car. We were really happy to see them again! Travelling is fun but its nice to see familiar faces. We went home and presented presents to the family and the kids.

Dinner was enormous because it was a celebration for (big) Emi's birthday. Yum. Their food is the best. (Especially the miso soup)

After dinner, Moka-chan kept asking Chrissy "yonde kudasai! yonde kudasai!" (read to me! read to me!) so Chrissy had to battle through a bit of Frog and Toad which was luckily in Hiragana. Hopefully Moka-chan understood the words because we didn't. We also had fireworks (I think birthday celebrations as well). These were fun. Japanese fireworks are similar but somewhat more dangerous than ours. Yikes!

We had a bath and then watched an episode of our new favourite drama with (normal) Emi. The drama is called Zettai Kareshi (absolute boyfriend) and is about a girl who volunteers for a trial of a robot entirely dedicated to love. Deep philosophical exploration of what it means to be human. Not. We have been watching this and some other shows on the trains on the small lappy.

Anyway, we remembered that we left a lot of stuff here and have been going through it throwing useless things out. Carrying our bags has lessened our love of useless things.

December 13th - Kyoto and Nara

Today we thought we might visit the bamboo grove in Kyoto before we got on our way to Nara. We got ready to leave but realized that is was quite a long way away and we were a bit stressed about activating our Japan Rail Passes. We went for a short walk in the city instead and got a great view of Kyoto Tower and the Big Tin Shed.

After we picked up our bags (heavy) from the hotel we walked down to the station and negotiated our passes. We felt very special being able to usurp the ticket machines and simply show our passes to the man at the gate. We’re SPECIAL PASS HOLDERS.

We figured out the platform to go to Nara and saw a train ready to leave. It was a local train and we thought “Oh, it’s only 37 kilometers, it can’t be that bad.” When we got on the train and it stopped every 10 seconds we took the initiative at a big station to change to an express. Very clever of us.

When we got into Nara, Chrissy was a bit disappointed that the station area looks just like every other city in Japan with big messy buildings and loud traffic. The walk to the ryokan was uneventful but annoying with our bags which we dropped off and went to look about and find lunch. Nara has some shopping arcades as well, kind of like a mini Teramachi and Sanjo streets (Kyoto). We went back to the ryokan for a while and then went out to look at the park. According to the map, about half of central Nara is park with temples, museums and a few shops. The light was fading but we had a nice time looking at the deer. We walked through a giant temple gate and when we turned around we realised that there were two giant scary statues watching us! Scary!

Dinner was at a chain Japanese restaurant specializing in rice with ingredients on top dishes. These are usually called something-don in Japan and this restaurant is called the don. Chrissy ordered an old favourite of ours – oyakudon ­– or eggy chicken on rice. I ordered a mysterious item which turned out to be crumbed and fried OYSTER on rice. Bad choice since I’m not that keen on oysters. I probably should have looked at that page on the menu which featured a big picture OF AN OYSTER.

We came back to the hotel reasonably early and used their big bath to wash away a stressful day. Soon – sleep!
j

December 12th!

Chrissy:Today we got up and caught a bus to Kiyomiz-dera, which is a shrine in the East of Kyoto.
On the way to the bus stop, we saw a old lady who had dropped a bag and was struggling with something. Chucky asked if she was ok, and I helped her with her dropped bag. She said thankyou and we went on our way. Then she called after us "Are you French?" and we went back and explained that we were Australian. "Oh, Australian" she said. We went on our way. Then she called to us again and ran up to us as quick as an old lady burdened with a million bags can run. She pushed two little packages into our hands and said they were "From Tokyo". We thanked her and finally actually went on our way. We were really touched that she gave us a gift when all we did was pick up her bag and see if she was ok.
The bus was packed, so I pushed my way to the front of the bus when our stop was approaching. Then almost everyone on the bus got out after me, including Chucky. I felt a little silly.
Then everyone who had been in the bus, as well as a hoarde of other people started walking up a very steep hill on a very narrow road. We followed and were soon forced along up this hill. I just love crowds and traffic, especially when there are no footpaths. So I was overjoyed when about 20 huge buses drove past, clearly having dropped scores of people off at the top of the hill, where we were headed. Along the narrow street were lots of pottery shops. We stopped and looked in a couple in an attempt to find someone a wedding gift. To no avail!
We finally reached the top of the mountain and I had a sit down. I thought it was particularly mean that there was a sign saying "No Eating or Drinking" at the entrance to the shrine. I was so thirsty after the trek! I snuck a sip from my waterbottle.
One of the pagodas was really tall. There was a multitude of little buildings and things to do. The best building was a huge structure with a famously brilliant view of the city and of the coloured leaves. I fell over and hurt my hand and shin. I was so embarrassed I went and had a discreet little cry.
Next, we went down some steps to the sacred water-drinking thing. A sacred spring up in the hills is directed down to this structure with three streams of water. People take sticks with cups at the end and wash their hands and drink the sacred water. It's supposed to grant your wishes or give you long life. Chucky did it, and I watched and took photos. He brought me back some sacred water. I felt much happier after that.
We walked around the complex for a while and looked at all the good luck merchandise. I bought a phone dangly with a little bell in it that I thought was cute. AS SOON AS I put it on my bag, it became exceedingly annoying and I had to remove it.
There is an attraction at this particular shrine that is an underground tunnel of darkness. The Lonely Planet guide says "This subterranean walk through the darkness easily qualifies as Kyoto's most unusual attraction. We won't say too much about Tainai-meguri - just try it". So we did. We paid 100 yen each to a man and were told that it is "very dark - use your left hand". There was a rail on the left that you're supposed to hold to guide you. Chucky made me go first. We descended a flight of stairs and then turned a corner and went through some curtains and were in total darkness. It was the kind of darkness that makes you feel as though there's a wall right in front of you, stopping you from continuing. Feeling the handrail and listening to the people ahead of me, I went along slowly, getting more and more freaked out the whole way. Towards the end, I saw this weird glowing rock that you're supposed to turn clockwise. I took my hand off the rail to turn it and then couldn't find the rail, and panicked until Chucky guided my hand back to it. Then we were out and I needed a good sit down. We were down there for less than 5 minutes, I think. When my breathing returned to normal, we left and followed a walk suggested in Lonely Planet. We bought crepes from a crepe shop. What I thought was ice-cream in the picture turned out to be normal cream, so they were incredibly rich and were hard for Chucky to digest. It was ok though. At the end of the walk we took a bus back to our hotel. We had a late lunch of tempura from the lady over the road. It was so filling! I also ate the little gift the old lady gave me this morning. It was a little package of Hello Kitty sweet soft rice snacks, covered in that yummy powder they use so your fingers don't get sticky. Yum! Thanks old lady!
Went out again later to visit a department store we read about in the book. It turned out to be only dumb clothes for girls, but the boys clothes were pretty good and Chucky bought some amazing shoes. Yay! Ate a late dinner at our mystery restaurant and now home. I've had the same dessert 3 days in a row and I AM getting fatter.

Charles:
The walk today was great. We got to go down lots of amazing streets and saw some really nice traditional japanese craft shops. We also saw a giant faux-traditional japanese crafts shop which spanned three or four of the old buildings. Bizarre.

December 11th

Charles: Today we went to the Kyoto Costume Institute in the morning. It was only one stop down the JR Kyoto line which turned out to be a really awful area. The costume institute turned out to be on the 5th floor of a big building. This crashed through the first of Chrissy's imaginations, that the institute was a sprawling campus full of costumes. The second of Chrissy's imaginations was that the gallery was vast, in fact it was one room and, as was stated on the website, had three dresses and four undergarments, all European from the second half of the 19th century. It took me about one minute to take in the gallery, but Chrissy was determined to eximine every detail while the attended flitted conspicuously behind us.

Chrissy: In my defence, photos and sketching were not allowed, so I was trying to memorise the details about the dresses that I liked the most. Can't remember now, though.

Charles: After returning to Kyoto Station we were asked some questions by grade 6 students from a primary school in Kyoto who were doing an English project with their teacher. They thanked us and gave us a postcard and a piece of calligraphy they had done. I think they were surprised that we knew the characters - ni hon (Japan) - but these are about the only kanji that we know.

On the way back to the hotel we visited a temple called Higashi Hongan-Ji. Apparently the big hall is one of the largest wooden structures in the world, but since its being repaired its currently wrapped in the biggest corrugated iron shed I've ever seen. Luckily there was a picture so we could see what we were missing out on.

After relaxing for a while we set out again in search of a kimono shop that Chrissy had read about in the Kyoto Visitor's guide. It took us about 45 minutes to find it even though its nearby. The small streets here are basically unlabelled and the whizzing trucks, vans, cars, scooters and bikes are hazardous and distracting.

Chrissy: I hate traffic. Twice last night I nearly died of shock when trucks that were really too big for the tiny alley roared past about 3cms away from my vital organs.

Charles: When we got there, a nice young man showed us around the entire shop. He could speak quite a lot of English but when he introduced us to a lady who had very good English he was too shy to say anything. After seeing some beautiful kimonos (over 1 million yen) we decided to buy the cheapest kind of yukata (a light cotton kimono) they had which were about 2500 yen. We also bought the proper belts and had a lesson on how to tie the correct knot. Chrissy's knot was extremely difficult but we have managed to reproduce it.

Chrissy: The lady who was teaching me how to wear the yukata and belt told me lots of interesting things about how mine was different from a men's yukata.

Charles: After the kimono shop we got some late lunch / early dinner from a place called Yoshinoya's. This very simple but very cheap food was pretty satisfying. The basic meal is a beef bowl or pork bowl which is a big bowl of rice with a pile of thinly sliced meat on top. Another kind of dish is curry and rice. There are also sidedishes like soup, salad, kimchi or raw egg which you dump onto the rice. Emi assures me that this is delicious but I can't get the hang of it.

We walked across the river to Yasaka-jinja which is a shrine in Gion and was the starting point for a Lonely Planet walk. We went through little streets past old style houses and restaurants. We saw a Geisha (maybe Maiko) in a big hurry. She was absolutely stunning and we were both a bit startled as she teetered past. Our walk was lit up with lanterns and we enjoyed the atmospheric streets.

Chrissy: I've tried a different 7/11 dessert almost every day this week. My favourite is a layered cream and chocolate dessert. I'll be FAT SOON.

Also look at this link. It's an ad for Chucky's favourite kind of bum-washing toilet. Warning: features bums. Washlet. I'm sitting here cringing.

Sunday, 30th November

Chrissy: Today we finally got to go to Harajuku and Shibuya! We took the train to Omote-Sando and walked down Omotesando street. We went into the Spiral builidng which is full of pretty yet expensive shops. It was beautifully decorated with lights and chandeliers and red carpet! Unfortunately, no photos were allowed.
Next we went to Kiddyland on Omotesando. It is 5 or 6 floors of toys! I mainly wanted to look at the Licca-Chan and Blythe dolls, but there was enough to keep me occupied for about an hour. I really like Blythe dolls.

Charles: They had some nice remote controlled helicopters and cute little robots! Perhaps I'll buy one later in our trip. One whole floor was Snoopy and on the other floors the space was neatly divided into areas corresponding to each franchise. Totoro, Disney, Hello Kitty and many others we didn't know.

Chrissy: We kept on walking and found Takeshi-dori, which is parallel to Omotesando. It's pedestrian only, and was jam-packed full of hip kids (some dragging their long-suffering parents) and fashion shops. The clothes in these shops were gorgeous! I saw a shop that had a really pretty little dress on the mannequin, and Iasked if they had any more. The lady took the dress off the mannequin and PUT ME IN IT. It was way too big, so she adjusted straps and things and then another assistant came and attacked it from the back with a big stretchy clasp to pull it in. They assured me that I looked "kawaii", but then I found out that it was 19,000 yen. Chucky and I skillfully extracted ourselves.

I looked at some Gothic and Lolita shops that were on a little guide I found on the internet. They were mostly punkish, which I found pretty surprising. It's probably more fashionable to be punk-gothic-lolita right now that just Lolita.

I found a shop called Body Line that sold really cheap Lolita clothes. I could get a whole outfit (skirt, shirt and bolero) for 10,000 yen. That's about 4 or 5 times cheaper than the famous shops like Baby, The Stars Shine Bright and Angelic Pretty! I thought it was a really good deal! I wasn't allowed to try on the clothes at the shop, so I was a bit worried that it wouldn't fit well. There were so many beautiful outfits I could have bought, but in the end I got an outfit the same as one on a mannequin: see below! I didn't get a petticoat because I thought the prices were exorbitant, and I think I can make one easily at home. So my skirt is not as full as it should be. I also need to figure out some shoes and socks!

We went to the Cosplay Bridge and saw a couple of kids posing for the cameras. It wasn't nearly as cool as I thought it would be! Then we walked to the Meiji shrine in Harajuku park. It was a really beautiful park, thick with huge trees. At the shrine, we were lucky enough to see a wedding procession! At first I didn't know what was going on, so I just took photos like all the other foreigners around. The bride was so beautiful!

It was so crazy to go from Takeshi-dori, with its super-modern cosplay boys and girls, to the Meiji shrine, which is peaceful and beautiful despite being full of people. Those two places are over the road from each other. Those cosplay kids may have a traditional wedding like the one I saw at the shrine!

We tried to find Metamorphose, which is a Gothic and Lolita shop I really wanted to see. It totally wasn't there! I used the address that was on their website from about 3 weeks ago. Bizarre.

We went to the Laforet building, which is a shopping plaza with about 6 floors of fashions. We went all the way up to the top floor and worked our way down, to find that the Lolita fashions were in the BASEMENT. Gosh we were tired by the time we got there. They had an Angelic Pretty store there, which sold some really cute clothes. I'm not into dresses with cakes and stuff on them, I like flowers and things more. The price for a dress was 26000 yen, and shirts were around 18000, as far as I can remember. There was also a small Metamorphose shop there! As expected, their clothes were amazingly beautiful and amazingly too expensive for me.

We went to Tokyo Tower next. It was quite a long trip on the train, as we had to stop over somewhere. We were SO tired and it was a long walk to the tower. It was worth it! Tokyo Tower is beautiful at night, it shines bright orange. Out the front there was a Christmas illumination complete with a miniature Tokyo Tower.

At the hotel I finally got to try on my clothes. Hooray!

Charles: Note dainty teacup and Winter edition of the Gothic Lolita Bible.

Saturday, 29th November

Chrissy: Today we went to Yokohama. It took us a while to get there on the train. We looked around in Marui for ages. I thought there was only one kind of cool, or two at most. It turns out that there's about 8 floors of cool at Marui in Yokohama. It's the most amazing department store I've ever seen! Everything was really expensive, so I didn't buy anything. But I really wanted to! Each floor had different stuff, and was made of lots of tiny shops. Some shops were SO PRETTY and had clothes that I could wear exclusively. Then the cheapest thing in the shop is 9800 yen.

We met Emi's friend Ayano and went to have lunch at a curry restaurant. I had teriyaki chicken and curry. It was great! Then we walked to the Red Brick shop building. It was really nice there, but extremely busy. I bought some boots there, made of fake suade and fake leather. They were cheaper than the real suede and leather ones in Marui. They look cool, but are a little uncomfortable. At least now I can stop obsessing over everyone's amazing shoes here.

Chucky and I were tired so we went outside to look at the bay. There was a circle of bubble machines in the open, with children and adult running around having fun, so we took photos of us looking grumpy there.

We went to the shopping centre near the big ferris wheel for a while. Chucky and I had fun playing with one of those photo booths that are made for 15-year-old girls. We took the photos and came out, but couldn't find any photos! We looked all around but couldn't find them. We had to ask a guy where the photos were by saying "Doko de shashin?", or "WHERE IS PHOTO?". He showed us that there's another little booth for you to touch up the photos with effects and draw on them with a stylus. So we did. Then they printed.

We went on the ferris wheel when it got dark, because Emi is a bit afraid of heights and thought it might be less scary at night. It was certainly pretty at night. We could see lights for miles around. Many photos were taken.

We took the train back home at around 7pm. We were totally wrecked, so we just got some takeaway from the bento shop around the corner and watched T.V.

Friday, 28th November

Charles: Today we decided to visit Akihabara and Asakusa. We took the Ginza line to Ueno and changed to the Hibaya line which took us to Akihabara then we had to walk to the electronics district which is called Electric Town. On the way we noticed a Muji shop in a mall so we stopped to have a look. There wasn't anybody else in the shop so we had a relaxed time looking at everything. I was particularly taken with their clocks, bags and jackets, Chrissy liked the wooden toys and gloves and Emi liked some snacks so much that she bought them.

Then we walked into Electric Town and browsed through some shops selling appliances and anime merchandise. There were many cool things like the Tokyo train sign watch and the USB humping dog. I spotted an amazing market of electronics parts and devices and spent several minutes wandering around before being retrieved by the girls. Then we went into a big discount and duty free shop called Don Quixote and had a great time looking at food, toys, costumes, clothes, clocks and many other strange things.

Chrissy: I got a phone dangly which has Hello Kitty in Lolita costume on it. It is the best.

Charles: Our next destination was Asakusa to see the famous Senso-ji temple. We got a bit lost in the station but a nice salaryman helped us find the right way. When we arrived as Asakusa our first priority was to find a nice place to eat. We ducked into a small alley and Emi pointed to a nondescript door and said that it was a restaurant. On closer inspection there was a menu outside and it was a Monja-yaki and Okonomi-yaki restaurant. In this kind of restaurant, every table has a hotplate and you cook the food yourself. Okonomi-yaki is a kind of thick pancake with cabbage and strips of meat which is finished with layers of sauce and seasoning. Monja-yaki starts out with a similar kind of batter but it doesn't form a pancake, instead you seperate a bit on the hotplate and let it cook for a second by itself and then scoop it onto your plate and into your mouth. It was delicious and a great experience.

When we left the restaurant we went for a walk up the tourist street towards the temple where we went in nice fabric shop, ate some dango and saw the world famous Doll & Chocolate Shop. The Senso-ji was a very impressive building and it was a mysterious experience to see everybody performing small ceromonies with special incense, special sticks, special water and many other special objects.

Chrissy: I felt a bit weird about gawking at and taking photos of someone else's religious place. At the place where people were burning incense, Emi said that her grandmother told her to put the smoke on your head, because it will make you smarter. So I got Chucky to do it.

Charles: Our final destination was the Japan Percussion Centre. We got to walk a few blocks through the temple gardens and past some other interesting parts of Asakusa to get to the shop. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite as good as we had hoped. The showrooms were small so they had good ranges of snare drums, triangles, tambourines and woodblocks but not much else.

Chrissy: I liked a Grover triangle that looked like the metal had been twisted. It sounded amazing.

Charles: Prices were not great either and the exchange rate meant that it was much more expensive than equivalent shops in Australia. So we left and got on the metro to return to the hotel in Akasaka. For dinner we had takeaway bento from Hokka Hokka Tei. This is another place we wouldn't know about without Emi. Emi had a combination, I had Katsu-bento and Chrissy had O-Yako-don. Now we're relaxing and watching TV, Chrissy and Emi are enjoying a countdown-esque show with j-pop artists.

Thursday, 27th November

Chrissy: Today was awesome.

We went to the Ghibli museum today! It was quite a long trip. First we had to take the train to Shinjuku, then transfer to another line to get to Mitaka. It was really cold and wet! I was not wearing enough clothes. We walked for about 20 minutes to get to the Museum. It was a beautiful place with lots of trees and lovely houses. Our entry ticket to the museum was a still from a Miyazaki movie. I got Kiki on her broomstick! The museum was really busy but enjoyable. I thought it was lovely because there were all sorts of people there. There were two German punks and lots of little Japanese kids and some other foreigners and older Japanese. We watched a great short film about an adventure that happened to Mei after the Totoro film. All the museum exhibitions were great, except for one called Mini Louvre, which was full of copies of Renaissance painings. They were mostly nudes and were a bit weird. The gift shop was RIDICULOUSLY crowded. I could hardly move around at all.

We had lunch at a nearby bakery. The buns were really cute. One was shaped like a frog, which had sweet custard in it.

We went back to the hotel to rug up some more, then went out to Ginza again. Chucky wanted to see the Sony Building and the Apple store. We also went to UNIQLO, a big clothing shop. All I found there was some purple tights. And they weren't even a very bright purple. I bought an ARASHI single and CD. YAY!

Around 6pm, took train to Roppongi. Ate dinner in some fast food place, wasn't very good. I didn't eat enough because it wasn't great. After dinner we walked far enough along the road so that we could see Tokyo Tower in all its orangeness. It's huge! We were really tired from our long day, so we didn't get all the way up to it. We took some photos and started to walk back, stopping in some shops on the way. I bought a cute live green skivvy with little flowers on it, and some socks for Emi and me. They were 3 pairs for 1000 yen, how could I resist?

It turns out that it's a really long way from Tokyo Tower to our hotel. We found this out after we got back to our hotel. It was a fun walk though, because there were lots of interesting places to look at and also some art and illuminations.

Wednesday - 26th November

Charles: Today was our first full day in Japan. Our plan for today was to meet out friend Steve so he can take us to visit a class at Toho Gakuen which is a music academy where Keiko Abe teaches. The first thing we had to do was figure out how to meet him at Sengawa station. After scrutinising the Tokyo railways map we figured out that we needed to go to Shinjuku to get the Keio line to Sengawa. Emi was going to meet a friend today so she organised to meet at Shinjuku as well.

We caught the train to Shinjuku and found where we had to go and then walked around for a while. We walked outside which was pretty and walked in a big department store called O-dakyu. It was amazingly busy but we saw a great food market all kinds of japanese food being cooked and on display.

Eventually we got on our way to Sengawa and had a fun train ride looking out at the Tokyo suburbs.

Chrissy: At Senagawa there were lots of cool little shops. I went to a 100 yen shop and a bookshop which had Fruits magazine and a Gothic Lolita Bible.

Charles: When we met Steve we had coffee together and happened to meet some of the students at the academy. They told us that the teacher for the class would be Keiko Abe herself! When we went to the academy, Steve had to go to work so he left us there by ourselves. We met all the students and were able to speak to them a bit in Japanese. When the class started we met Abe-sensei who spoke to us in english very kindly rearranged the class so that we could see some cool pieces. The class was a percussion ensemble rehearsal and we got to see the class playing Ionisation (perfect performance, no conductor) and Prism Rhapsody II which featured two marimba soloists who played in perfect sync, again no conductor. Amazing!

Chrissy: There was one girl who was totally weird towards me. She stared straight at me for about 1 minute without blinking and later gave me some rubbish. I didn't know what to do. Then she played a solo part in Prism Rhapsody II which totally blew my mind.

Charles: We left at about 5:30 and made our way back to Shinjuku to meet Emi and her friend Masoto. Masoto was also a student at ANU but is now looking for a job and apartment in Tokyo. We wandered around looking at Christmas lights and bought dinner downstairs in Odakyu. After dinner we said goodbye to Masoto who was going to take an 8 hour bus trip to Osaka overnight (!). We decided to go to Ginza to have a look around.

Chrissy: There were millions of bright lights. It is what everyone thinks Tokyo should look like! We went to a little bookshop and I bought a craft book on tiny cakes made of clay. Everything else was closed. We got back to the hotel around 11pm!

Tuesday 25th November

Chrissy: Today we took the 9:30am plane to Narita airport from Sydney International Airport. I was really nervous about the plane because I had never been on a long flight before. But it was all fine, and we had hardly any turbulance. I saw a cool movie on the plane called Train Man, which was about a nerdy guy who falls in love with a pretty girl. It was lovely!
We took the Skyliner shuttle train to Tokyo, then the regular train to Akasaka. I was so tired when we arrived, and it was annoying to walk around with luggage. The hotel is really nice. Went to dinner at the station, had ramen and katsudon. It was huge! I couldn't finish!