Tokyo!

Which is in Japan, in case you're confused.

I hate goodbyes and had to do a lot of goodbye-ing the whole week. Monday I had lunch with my boss. Tuesday was an office going away party. Wednesday was the going away happy hour. Thursday I ran around to find my birth control before our trip, and Friday I had to officially say goodbye to my coworkers.

One of them surprised me with this picture frame! It's hard to tell but it's the entire ACS Staff with RBG! I think I'll use it as a way to humble brag in my new apartment. "Oh yes...in the course of my nonprofit work I got to meet two Supreme Court Justices...social justice is just soooOOOooooOO rewarding...blah blah blah."


Also on my last day we got burritos at my favorite burrito place in DC! I can't think of a better way to go out than that! Then walked to the White house and ate lunch there. Later my coworkers brought out wine, cheese, grapes and crackers and we had another little mini party. I was actually pretty busy though helping tie up loose ends, but that was a welcome distraction from all the people trying to hug and cry over me.

This is how goodbyes make me feel.

After work I went to CVS, went to Walmart, went to CVS again to get my birth control and finished packing. It was a pretty unceremonious exit to DC, but in the morning when I woke up, there were prostitutes outside! I'd never seen them before. And it was warm and raining so they were kind of like splashing around in the puddles in between trying to entice people. It could've been a lot sadder.

I flew to Toronto, met up with Zack and then we flew to Tokyo! It was a pretty uneventful flight and Zack even managed to sleep a little--good work Zack!

Zack wearing a bib to prove to the waitress we
understood her instructions

Then we had to make our way to our hotel, which, according to google maps, looked really difficult. It wasn't that difficult, but it did involved three separate trains. Also, I  asked for instructions to Yotsuya and it turns out we wanted to go to Yotsuya Sanchome. They're only about 3/4 of a mile apart, but we had all of our luggage, so we asked a police officer how to get to the right place and he showed us. But, in the course of asking him, I left my directions with him! It was a only a little bit of a bummer though because we knew we were close and the map kind of sucked anyway. BUT, when we got off the train at the right stop, the police officer was there on his bike and gave me back the directions! He biked to the next stop just to return basically useless directions. Very Japan.

 Then we got to the hotel, showered and went out to dinner. we were so tired we just stopped at the first restaurant that advertised an English menu. It turned out to be sukiyaki, which is sort of like what they do at Benihana, but smaller. The waitress made us wear bibs. At first I was not about that life, but it turned out to be a good plan because a lot of the fat/grease popped up and would've gotten on our clothes otherwise. It was really good and there was a group of families getting absolutely wasted next to us. They gave us some of their fried rice, and probably would've given us some shots, but we were too tired to stick around.

 We struggled to make it to 8:30pm before going to sleep, and ended up waking up at 5:45 and leaving by 6:15 the next morning. we were too early for Starbucks and had to walk around a little bit to find somewhere selling coffee. In the end it turned out to be okay that we woke up so early because we walked around this shrine in the middle of Tokyo called Meiji Jingu that's really beautiful, but would've been way too hot later in the day.

After walking around there we walked around Harajuku, which you might remember from Gwen Stefani. It was full of a lot of cool shops that were closed. We're probably going to go back when we're in Tokyo at the end of our trip.

After that we went to the Tokyo Metropolitan Building, which is really tall so you can get a good view of the city. And, unlike the Tokyo Tower and Tokyo Skytree, it's free! And, we were also super into that it was air conditioned. It was also really nice because they labeled all the buildings we were looking at. This is a picture of the Tokyo Metropolitan Building Number 2. And if you follow we on snapchat, which I mean, everyone should, you got to see a video from the top as well.

not Niagara at all

After that we walked around another park, which advertised "Niagara Falls Tokyo." We thought that was hilarious, and we were correct in expecting it to be underwhelming. It was. It's a fountain. A pretty decent fountain, but definitely just a fountain. Then we went and got lunch. It was actually a Chinese restaurant, which made it super difficult to order, because it's like Japanese translations of words I don't know. Finally the waitress just asked us "chicken or pork?" and brought us what she thought we wanted. It worked out.

Then we walked around Shinjuku and the department stores. There was even a Krispy Kreme. After that we were pretty much dying so we went back to the hotel and took a two hour nap. Then we woke up, went to Ginza, and had some pretty mediocre Thai food. We managed to stay up til 11, but that was only because of the nap.


Tuesday we went to the Edo Tokyo Museum to learn about earlyish Japanese history. I used my excellent Japanese skills to lie and say I'm a college student so I could get a 120 yen discount. I mean...I will be a student in like a month. So it's not really a lie. This is a part of Japan's history that I'm not sure familiar with. I've never really committed to keeping my Shogunates separate--I only know about the last one that collapse and made things change. The museum was interesting, but I still haven't really internalized the history at all. Oh well. I'll just watch the Last Samurai a few more times and hope that straightens me out.

The museum was really good for reminding me of CART though:

Here we have Taylor teaching some young students in Edo era Tokyo

Here we have Ashely helping a woman give birth.

The last sentence of this description shows that Ashely's techniques at this time probably would've hurt about as much as they helped. Get it together, Edo era Ashely.

This is a list of epidemics that hit Edo. I can't tell what they are, but they made me think of Teeners.

This is Zack on two ridiculous bicycles. 

One woman told him he was "the coolest" while I took his picture on this bike. What. 

This is Zack as a sumo wrestler.

After the museum we went to Asakusa, which is a more old-timey part of Tokyo. Mostly it was an incredibly touristy and crowded part of Tokyo. the main attraction there is Senso-ji, a buddhist shrine, surrounded by a ton of cheap, crowded shops selling stereotypical Japanese stuff. I was too hot to care a ton about it. If you follow me on instagram, which should be everyone except Taylor, you already saw a picture of the pagoda there. We ate lunch, walked around, and then got moving onto Akihabara.

you weren't supposed to take pictures, but I did!
I'm a real rebel.

Akihabara is called the "electric city" and has a ton of video game/electronic/sex shops. Definitely a weird vibe, but worth seeing. A lot of the video game and manga stuff was lost on me, but it was all unique and would be hard to find in a different city! We went into a 6 story sex shop, but I was only allowed on the first four floors and had to send Zack up to the top two. He said there wasn't much interesting except those fleshlights and a bunch of nervous dudes. I'll pass.

Then we wandered into an arcade. I think they're too whelming. There's music from like 19 different games, lights all over, and just generally too much going on Also, probably my lack of interest in video games makes them less interesting. But, we did play air hockey though and I beat Zack! Worth it.

Zack was so into his big toast.
And it was HUGE.

 After that we went to Ginza to see the imperial palace. First we needed a snack though so we stopped at this fancy French cafe. It was overpriced, but pretty worth it since we were so hot and tired. Also this ended up being our dinner, even if that wasn't the plan.

 Then we walked to the imperial palace and managed to find like five exits, and not a single entrance. I guess that makes sense. You don't want a bunch of ways to get into the castle?

Then we went home, collapsed and rested out feet. Tuesday we ended up walking around 32,000 steps. Which is like 14.5 miles. Props to Fitbit for keeping those stats. It takes an hour and a half to get to the airport so we had to wake up pretty early the next day anyway to get ready to come to Osaka.

While we were at the airport this absolutely wasted man walked up to us and tried starting up a conversation. He told us how we used to live in Finland with his wife. But that was too cold. So they moved to Japan. But then he decided to move to Melbourne for three months, and his wife wasn't happy with that. But then he came back after 10 days and was going to surprise her. But she said she wanted a divorce and that he friend was staying at their house so he shouldn't come back. Then he passed out on the seats and almost missed the flight.

Then when we landed we heard him yelling into his phone that he was going to "fuck someone up." So yeah, he's really our new best friend and it's sad we didn't get to know him well.

Now we're in Osaka with my grandparents and things will probably move a little slower. And that's not necessarily a bad thing!