Japan Day 7

We woke up to a rainy day in Tatebayashi

Benny came and picked us up from the hotel to go and wait for Mami at the train station

We were told we must follow Benny's plan today which involved us going to visit his Uni in Tokyo where he is studying English...

Actually I'll pause here and say I recently did a guest blog over at the etsy team I'm involved with and it gives a little story about Benny, if you're interested, anyway!

So we were off to Waseda Uni for the day!

Ben, Benny and Mami all pumped for the big day ahead

Look by Day 7 our whites are still white!

We eventually arrived somewhere in Tokyo

got the directions sorted and made our way to Waseda Uni

We got to the Uni way early, as Benny pointed out this is a good quality of the Japanese people so we sat down...somewhere :P

Ben drew Benny, Mami was bored and some girls were trying to sneakily take my picture on their mobiles :)

Eventually it was time to meet our tour group

Benny had arranged for one of his fellow classmates to give us a tour around the grounds in English

See that building behind that was the only real after effects I saw of the earthquake and probably only really noticed it cause Benny pointed it out. It was an older building that didn't have the earthquake infrastructure in place. Benny said that it will eventually be pulled down and a new building built in it's place

there was a lot of posing happening on this tour

we're trying, or at least the whities are to mimic the statues grumpy or is it stoic face?

I would try and tell you the tour group peeps names but I've honestly forgotten. I do remember the girls saying my costume looked like it was the Japanese flag and when I tried to explain the clown element I think it got a lost slightly in translation. They also thought Ben was trying to be Jack Sparrow. I liked the Japanese flag though and they went on to further suggest I was there to "help Japan". We actually got a lot of nice comments about being  in Japan as the foreigners numbers had dramatically decreased, so that was nice!

Anyway back to the tour, we saw

the beautiful Waseda Uni gardens

a concert

dancers

lecture hall

stray cats

it was an unusual tour :P

we eventually grabbed some lunch at the cafeteria

Ben tried his first taste of nato, aka fermented soy beans. Didn't go down so well! I think it's a right of passage for all westerners to attempt Nato though!

The day eventually wrapped up and we headed back to our hotel, not before having one last meal with Benny

on the roof top gardens

I must say when we got back to our rooms and after saying our goodbyes, the tears fell.... I miss Benny!