Japan Day Three (the evening)

So we started our night by going to Dinner to eat my all time favourite japanese food... okonomiyaki, a cabbage-esque pancake that gets lots of delicious things added to it!

as a side bonus you get to cook it at your table, which is always an added novelty!

We then wandered the streets of asakusa

revisited sensoji

which has an eery coolness to it at night

Found out asakusa has a few arcades which didn't help our gambling problem aka skill testing!

We tried a few times on this one, even managed to get the claw stuck and had to get some assistance, in the end I think the arcade guy just felt sorry for us, came over, opened it up and asked us if this yellow hello kitty was the one we were going for *fee nods enthusiastically* and he  hands it over, awwww!
She never left my bag the whole trip

I also got stopped by a little old lady to tell me I was "kawaii" aka cute, awww!
Hang on what are little old ladies doing wandering the streets at night! Gotta love Japan

Perhaps she was at the pachinko, aka pokies. We found these lovely statues outside one, in our night time wanders

sake vending machine, anyone?

and of course we had to do some puricula!

I miss you dearly Japan!

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Japan Day Three (second part)

ah vending machines one of every corner!

So where was I? Um yes, on our way to Ueno.   Ueno was a scary place to visit on a bike, we'd park outside a shop, look in and go out to find our bikes gone! 2 minutes and someone stole it!!! No wait, nobody steals in Japan, they just freak out when you park somewhere you shouldn't park and move your bike into a more appropriate area, ahh! One time though, actually after this awesome toy shop

blythes...fee heaven

Yes after that toy shop we came out to find our bikes with a stern notice attached to them! Eek, time to grab some lunch and leave ueno!

Nikkuman! Best bloody things from the combini and under 2 bucks, geez who was the silly person that started the rumour, Japan is expensive, pfft!

Now Ueno to Asakusa (where our hotel is) is only a 20 minute walk which we'd learn to be very familiar with over the next two weeks! But for some reason I stuffed up! If there is one thing I'm proud of it's my amazing sense of direction, but boy oh boy did I stuff up this time

We got lost, very lost and ended up at the Koban aka police box to get some directions, eek, but hey, on our lost adventures we did come across these rad statues!

Graff hunting, can't avoid it when you're dating someone like Ben!

Ghost patrol, melbourne artist represent! woot!

afternoon snack sushi

and convenience store aka combini custard filled waffle! Ahh japan you do food so well!!

and chocolate!

and fireworks!

Boy this is getting image heavy again, might make this a three part-er!
Stay tuned for our evening adventures!

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Japan Day Three (the morning)

After having a nice sleep in and meeting our neighbourhood cat which Ben named, 'scratch'

we decided to hire bikes after seeing a flyer in the hotel lobby. We got on our bikes and biked 5 minutes to sensoji temple, a pretty famous temple and luckily in our hood, Asakusa!

of course I chose the pink bike!

Ahhh pretty gardens around the temple!!

Ever since the flight, I went from feeling queasy to feeling fluey. I had read that Japanese people visiting sensoji  use their hands to float the incense smoke towards whatever body part ails them. In my case, pretty much everywhere!

You can see the big black bowl where the incense gets burnt from!
I have to report a few days in and I was feeling 100% better!

We also made sure to wash our hands in the dragon water! My friend Benny later told us that Japanese people wash their hands and rinse their mouth, so that when they go to pray, their hands which they hold together in prayer and their mouths which silently speak their thoughts are clean!

At sensoji we also got our fortunes. You pay 100 yen (around a dollar), then you shake that silver box you can see in the pic and out comes a stick. The stick has a corresponding number on it which you then have to find the corresponding drawer and that's where you get your fortune from. Ben got "best fortune" whilst I only received "good fortune"!

I also re-discovered the non amazing-ness that is Japanese drinks, actually this ice tea went down pretty good, but I made a lot of drink mistakes the rest of the holidays!

Isn't this the best sight, little old ladies riding bikes, damn their amazing healthy fit culture!

So after our temple fun-ness we biked our way to Ueno, the district over. This post is getting a little image heavy though, so for now it's

to be continued....

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Japan Day Two

So this is where I last left you guys, the sun did rise

And I hit my second wind, or maybe that was Ben, who greeted everyone at 5am with a very genki good morning
"ohayo gozaimasu"
people were amused to say the least

We wandered the burbs of shinjuku and eventually stumbled upon some sort of concerete park.  It was here Ben decided to sleep on the water feature

whilst I decided to sit in some sort of delusional sleep deprived state

I nodded off a couple of times, eventually was woken by the morning dog walkers, damn you dog walkers!

So we kept wandering, trying to kill the hours until check in at 3pm

we stumbled into a pretty park

homeless cat man! We're just like you minus the cats!

Anyway we wandered around shinjuku until it was late enough to catch the first train to ueno. This was part of my itinerary which went something like "if tired sleep at ueno park"

So that was the plan. The photos after this get a bit sparse but let's say that, the Ueno park I remember, i.e. the lush open grass spaces for cherry blossoms picnics, were now patches of dirt and few and far between. We eventually chucked down our $2 ponchos in some inappropriate spot and preceded to sleep

As we nodded off we had the delightful discovery of finding out we were right in the middle of these homies

Gosh do Crows make a bloody racket, we eventually relocated where we maybe got 3 hours sleep all up and then simply decided to make our way to our hotel...way before check in

And it was here our luck turned, the lovely hotel man let us in, no questions asked!

We headed straight for the hot shower!

ahh look at you beautiful ryokan carpet

us after our delightful showers! Look how happy we look, all clean and refreshed, ahhhh!!
and of course the obligatory lame yakata tourist shot!

So we must of had a third wind by this stage and actually spent the evening arcading, eating gyoza and feeling happy that we had somewhere to sleep that night!

Learn from us though and make sure you have somewhere to sleep every night :P

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