Ben is gone again!

Off for another 6 weeks of work :(

I have to say though, the one good thing about Ben being away is I'm a lot more productive and my house gets super clean.  I was up at midnight, last night, cleaning my art cupboards :P lol

Some puricula we took the other day when we were down in Brisbane, for my bro's bday,
which I still have to post about too! eep too much to share!

I miss Ben already!

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Japan Day 11 - Odaiba

We started the day with the ever so yummy Mos Burger...nom nom!

I think it was here that Ben fell in love with the Mos Burger manager, a lovely Japanese girl, who seemed far to young to run the joint and was always delighted to see us or maybe delighted to see Ben :P

So up until this point I'd crammed in everything I wanted to do and now there were blanks left for Ben things. Ben had read about a haunted house in Odaiba (part of Tokyo) , my first reaction...
"ahhh Odaiba sucks, it's a Western boring sea port!"
I reminded myself that I needed to shut my trap and let Ben have a fun day :)

We got to Odaiba and as predicted boring modernism everywhere, blargh!

We make our way to try and find the arcade and my face lights up...what's in front of me?
A Hello Kitty wonderland..OMG!

This joint was my heaven and even had a Sanrio puricula machine!

The hello kitty land was connected to an arcade so Ben was able to get his masculinity back

We also got pretty obsessed with skill testers during our holiday.
I think I picked up some pretty mad skill tester skills :P

I finished off my hello kitty experience with none other than a Hello Kitty salmon pancake :P As you do!

There was more exploring to do

16 minute memory anyone? 

Two minute noodle vending machine!

Gachapon as far as the eye can see :P

We eventually discovered the haunted house

Ben's heart sunk when he saw that it was all fenced off...nooooooooo, luckily I can read and we simply had to press a button before an attendant arrived to let us in

At this point, I'll admit I was packing it. You know when you're so scared you become really serious and say ridiculous stuff to get out of doing the thing your scared of doing...that was me! I don't know how Ben convinced but eventually he did and I walked up those stairs.... petrified!

It took about 3 minutes of walking through the haunted house before realising it was actually not scary at all and pretty awesomely kitsch!

Ben was sure an actor was going to jump out of one of those bags, luckily my brain hadn't gone to that dark place and I was happily in my bubble of lame-ness and yes the lame-ness continued!

So that was fun!

Afterwards we explored what else Odaiba had to offer, as far as I could tell it was just a big mall spread out with arcades and shops and Ferris wheels and Hello Kitty pancake cafes :P

This themed mall even had a pet store, they sure do love their cuteness

We were just about to head home thinking we had explored everything when Ben happened to walk past Sega JoyPolis...noooooooooooooooooooooo

I thought I had taken all the arcading I could take but I knew I had to let Ben have his day of fun

So through the Sega doors we went

Funnily enough I have only a few pictures from this place, I'm not sure what to call it, it's not really a themepark, there are rides but then there are just a whole lot of arcade games, many many levels of arcade games actually!

No it really wasn't that bad and I kind of got into the shooting-ness.

Ben eventually saw my levels of enthusiasm were escaping and let me indulge in my favourite past time...puricula! But this time it wasn't just any old puricula it was DRESS UP PURICULA!
Man I could have died.
Suddenly I was loving Sega Joypolis!

Me in the change room, in my bunny costume

We choose, or maybe it was, I choose the 'love theme' where we had to do all the love poses.
I don't think we have ever laughed so much together

And that's where my pictures finish up, there were some other highlights from Sega World including this ride, or well walk through ride called 'Prison Break' which I'm guessing is a movie or video game or something. When Ben and I went to line up it was only Ben and I in the line. The Japanese ride attendee who would walk us through must of died a little when he realised we couldn't understand Japanese, but I have to say he did a stella acting job of staying in character, explaining the story line and creating suspense all with limited English :P  Probably my highlight... little bit scary, little bit kitsch!

There was also another attraction called 'house of the living dolls' where we had to walk through a dark corridor and be scared by a cute Japanese girl standing in the shadows. We then sat down in a dark room and listened to a Japanese story. At this point I was so glad I couldn't understand Japanese cause I think I would have peep my pants from the scariness!

Before leaving we went on this half pipe snowboard ride. I wussed out (again!) whilst waiting in line, but the line attendant, stopped us and when I explained through charades that I didn't want to go on the ride cause I thought I would throw up he simply said I wouldn't. So I gulped down my terrified-ness and experience snowboarding like never before.

I'll stop rambling now, but I'll just say despite my reservations at the start of the day it actually turned out pretty stellar!  Ben and I headed back to Asakusa, got a kebab for dinner (sshhh, it's sort of Japanese-ey) and spent the night watching the manga movie Makoto!

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Japan Day 8 Lake Haruna (Part 1)

So we woke up to our last day in Tatebayashi and got to have breakfast with Mami and my old supervisor, Aoki, which was super nice!

Ben and I with Aoki!

The breakfast itself was quite strange even by Japanese standards, not to say that Japanese breakfast's are weird, just different.  This particular breakfast was the Japanese version of a Western breakfast, I think...

Eggs, croissants, pastries, all pretty standard but then...Japanese curry and yakisoba (fried noodles) which altogether, just didn't sit right in our stomachs, plus more, non-milk, milk beverages

After Breakfast we said goodbye to Aoki, who had crept away from her School duties to join us, thanks Aoki! Mami, Ben and I headed off to the acrade for puricula!

Big Eyed Puricula makes a return, he he!

Then we said our final goodbyes to Mami :( And we're off to see Teruko, my favourite teacher I use to work with back in the day.   The last time I saw Teruko she had a tiny baby, named Haruna, in her arms, Haruna is now the oldest of three! Time flies, eek!

It's really fun to play with kids because they don't understand/care that you can't understand what they're saying, so they just keep repeating the word, usually slowly, loudly and more frequently :P Its amazing how much you can communicate without an understanding of words too. I think we lose that when we get older and instead gain an embarrassment of not understanding, which really only limits us in the end.

Teruko is the loveliest lady and she said, although she doesn't think her English is 100% she is all for just giving it a go, brilliant, I should be inspired to do the same with Japanese!

Because we had not long eaten, Teruko was kind enough, to pack up her amazingly delicious lunch into the cutest bento boxes for us! She also made sure we would be on the right train to catch the last bus to Lake Haruna, where we were headed for the night.  I asked, if her daughter Haruna was named after the lake, but I think it's just a pretty name :)

So our visit went quickly and next thing, there were more goodbyes and we're on the train bound north for Lake Haruna!

Well train than bus! Turns out we had 10 minutes to hop off the train, locate the bus terminal and then find our bus. Which is normally pretty simple, but when you can't speak/read Japanese it can be a bit more tricky. Since I sort of knew my way around, we found the bus depot pretty quickly but then we needed to know what number bus to hop on. We went to the desk and had a very intense conversation. Ben finally worked out the lady was worried for us, because that was the last bus and we couldn't get back home, until the morning. So after lots of 'no worries' were exchanged (dai jo bo!) She pointed to the bus and we jumped on, smiling that the travel gods had smiled upon us again!

My plan when we got to Lake Haruna was to camp but when we actually got to lake Haruna,

Ben and I muttered something like this..

"OH my, isn't it beautiful...lets find a hotel!"

They couple of hotels that we could work out were hotels, further up street, looked mighty pricey. Using my deductive skills, I suggested we go for the hotel that was slightly behind the place, right on the lake, I thought it might be a bit cheaper for having slightly tainted views :P Ben was in agreeance and we rocked up.

Again the communication issues emerged but Ben, by this stage had perfected the dodgey, Westerner sign language moves and we somehow  managed to get ourselves a room at what we thought was a steal at 80 bucks for the night, for the two of us!

Stay tuned for our room!

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