Oct.31-Nov. 2

Wow! Talk about a long travel! Andrew and I left Denver at 8:30am on Friday morning; we took the same flight to San Francisco, then went our separate ways for our flights to Tokyo, his on ANA, and mine on Asiana Airlines, a Korean airline. Andrew’s flight was direct, and he ended up getting in around 3 pm on Saturday. Yeah, Saturday. My flight had a layover in Seoul (ummm, confusing airport…), and landed in Tokyo close to 9 pm. Having slept very little the night before our flight, we were both exhausted. Andrew’s friend Lauren met us at the airport; we’re staying with her for most of the time I’m here. Off we went to take three different trains to her house. Not much to tell, other than that we got to here place really late, and after a tour of her awesome little house and a shower, we both passed out and slept like rocks.

My meal on the plane...it required instructions to eat it. lol.

Our room at Lauren's house. It's a wa shitsu room, with tatami mats. We're sleeping on Japanese futons. .

Nov. 2

Wake up was around 9:30 am. Lauren and Andrew prepared breakfast, we all got ready, and off we went down to Tokyo (Lauren lives north 55 km). Ueno Eki (station)/Ueno park was our destination, where we were going to spend the day with a volunteer teacher/English exchange student friend of Andrew’s from CSU days, Sano Sensei. Sano Sensei was a very outgoing, bubbly, kind older Japanese lady, and we had a lovely day with her. She treated us to the Edo-Tokyo Museum (which was GIGANTIC and awesome, and is listed in the Lonely Planet’s Tokyo Encounter book as the #7 highlight of Tokyo) and to a Tempura dinner. In between we also hit up Senso-Ji, a working temple located in Asakusa, an older area of Tokyo, as well as Nakamise-dori, a pedestrian shopping street with tons of little shops and food stands that overwhelm due to the sheer amount of stuff to see in each little shop. Dinner was eaten in sitting on the traditional tatami mats and low tables. We drank tea, beer, and ate sashimi (my first time!), tempura, a really tasty clear soup, and various other yummies (I don’t typically eat seafood of any kind due to an aversion to how the commercial fishing industry practices its trade, but I’m shelfing my protest for the duration of the trip due to the integral part seafood plays in the traditional food here). After dinner we headed home, and exhausted, pretty much immediately collapsed into bed.

Pictures from the Edo-Tokyo Museum

Pictures from around Ueno Park area in Toyko