Satuday 6th of December

Chrissy: Today we went to a new Italian Restaurant that opened around the corner. We ate a ridiculous amount of awesome Japanese-Italian food. The carbonara was prepared IN AN ACTUAL CHEESE. I learnt that Japanese "ginger ale" is a pale imitation of the sneeze-inducing Australian kind.

This evening we went with Emi's brothers' family to N- to see the Christmas Illumination. It was amazingly cold! We took these little heat packs that have chemicals which react to oxygen to make them hot. We got there around 4:30, and had an early dinner in a Chinese restaurant (not that great), and when we were finished, all the illuminations were... illuminated. The most spectacular was the tunnel which was about 200metres long, completely made out of little gold lights. Then there was a huge field of blue and red lights, with big shining mechanical butterflies flapping slowly.

We had a foot bath at an interesting little onsen place. The water was extremely hot, so it warmed us up quickly. It was interesting and fun! On the way out we looked at the coloured leaves of some trees that were lit up by some hidden lights. They were really beautiful!

This was taken before the lights came on...

And after!
This is us at the entrance to the light tunnel!


Links about the Nabana no Sato Winter Illumination: Gizmodo, FarEastGizmo
It has 4.5 million LEDs!

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.