Thursday, July 21, 2011

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!

4 comments:

  1. Ah looks mighty cool Fee :)
    *big hugs* I'm sure Benny misses you too! But it's so awesome he's doing well, means you can go and see him again sometime :) He seems super cute!

    I love the photo of you and Ben with the umbrellas!

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  2. yeah so impressed by his recovery hey!
    Definitely will go and visit him again :)

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  3. i second the love of the photo with you + ben + umbrellas!

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  4. Ben thought of the shot and Mami took it :)
    So credit goes were credit is well deserved!!

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