Tokyo Tower Video

I put a video up on Youtube that I took when I was in Tokyo Tower. If you are interested to see the view from the observation deck, you can check out the video here:

Tokyo/Saitama Adventures: Concert, Shopping & Hanging Out

Today I will be posting about my Tokyo/ Saitama trip that I took last week.

First, let me rewind a bit. On Friday (the 9th), my friends and I went out to dinner and then we went to a karaoke bar. It was me, Asha, Matt, Kim, Alex and Sarah. We had a great time. First, we ate super delicious food. Then, we sang our lungs out in a smokey karaoke bar. What else could we have asked for?

Anyway, by Sunday, 4 of us were really sick. I was having problems with my asthma and I felt feverish. Asha, Alex and Sarah were throwing up and having flu symptoms. I went to the doctor on Monday with Paul and found out that I had bronchitis. My other 3 friends had swine flu. Whoah!

I felt really sick on Monday, but I had tickets for a Mariza concert in Tokyo on Wednesday. I was really worried that I wouldn't feel better on time. However, I did feel better on Wednesday morning (the 14th), although not fully recovered. I rushed to the airport to catch my plane from Miyazaki to Tokyo. I arrived there right when they were boarding. Close Call!

Once I got to Haneda Airport, I had to take a bus and a train to Saitama, where my friends, Monica and Eric, live. It is also the place that I stayed at while I was there. Monica and Eric used to be my neighbors last year. They were Miyazaki ALTs, but now Eric is studying in Tokyo. Basically, Saitama is to Tokyo what New Jersey is to NYC. It's where many families live although a lot of its residents travel daily for jobs, shopping, entertainment, etc to Tokyo.

Anyway, by the time I arrived in Saitama, it was midday. Eric, Monica and I hung out a bit in their house and ate lunch. Then, Monica and I got ready to go to the Mariza concert. Mariza is a Portuguese fado singer. We were in the third row, so we were super close to her. The concert was AMAZING!!! The audience was mostly older Japanese people, but there were also people from all over the world. At one point, she asked where people were from. There were Portuguese people, of course, but there were also people from Russia, China, Italy, Iran, Mozambique, Angola, Sweden, etc. At one point, I grabbed Monica's hand and raised it and said "America". She came to us and asked us where we were from in the States. I said Jersey and Monica said California. Then, she talked about how she was going to Jersey for a concert next month. I was just super excited that she talked to me during her concert. SOOOO COOOOL!!!

I think that I used up too much of my energy on Wednesday night. On Thursday, Monica and I were tired and I still wasn't fully recovered from my bronchitis. We just ended up hanging out in her house, watching Nana (both the movie & anime) and just catching up on what had been going on in our lives lately.

On Friday, we met up with Eric at school. Eric is in grad school at Keio University, so he showed me around the university. It's beautiful. Then, we went to Tokyo Tower, which is nearby. When we got up to the observation deck, we were able to see great views of Tokyo from all sides.

Tokyo Tower

View from the Tower

There were also lookout windows on the floor. Scary! I was the one on the bottom that barely had her feet on the window. It was too scary for me. lol. Monica was rocking her moon boots though (^_-)
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On Saturday, Monica and I went to Harajuku to do some shopping. I went to Harajuku the last time I was in Saitama when I was helping Eric and Monica move and I really like it there. Our goal was to go to H&M & Forever 21 (I haven't been to a Forever 21 since I left the States and I haven't been to an H&M since I went to Hong Kong last May) , but somehow, we kept getting distracting by all of the cute stores on our way there. I bought tons of things. I bought a black hat for the winter. It was my second one that I bought that day because I bought a pink one in Saitama before getting on the train. I also bought hair accessories, 2 skirts (1 skirt was kind of tutu like), scarf, boots, and cute socks. My goal was to buy a winter coat, but I didn't find any that I really liked. I wish I could have bought a super cute lolita outfit, but they are really expensive. Monica had to leave to go to a farewell party for a friend, so poor Eric, who had met up with us, had to follow me around while I went from store to store. lol.
Anther highlight, I ate Wendys. Why is Wendys a highlight? Well, Miyazaki doesn't have any, so I hadn't had Wendys since I left the States, which was over a year ago. It was mighty delicious, but they had no baked potatoes. I really wanted one.


On Sunday, I decided to do some more shopping/ sightseeing before catching a train to the airport. Monica and I went to Akihabara because I wanted some cute headphones. Akihabara is like a men's world. It's full of electronics stores & stores that have anime products. Because of this, there are tons of guys all over the place. At one point, we were crossing a busy intersection and it was like a sea of men walking our way from the opposite side. Do I exaggerate? I don't think so.

Akihabara also has a lot of maid cafes, so there are girls in cute maid costumes passing out flyers for the cafes that they work at. I would have loved to go to one just to check it out. It must be really cute, but we didn't really have that much time. In Akihabara, I did find cute, pink headphones for cheap and a nice keyboard for my laptop. Woohoo!!!

Since we had a little bit of time left, I decided to go to Ginza to buy some shoes that I saw at the Muji store on the first day I arrived in Tokyo. ( We were window shopping before the concert. )

Shopping in Harajuku

Akihabara
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I had fun on my trip and I bought a lot of goodies.
It was hard to leave Eric and Monica again. They are such cool people. I miss them being my neighbors. Although I think I was at their apartment way too often when they lived in Miyazaki. lol.

I want to go to Tokyo again in the future. Actually, I wouldn't mind just living there for a year. How cool would that be? (^_^)

Silver Week 2009 Trip - Kansai Region- "for the culture & the boys"

Last month during Silver Week, September 19th to the 23rd, Asha and I took a trip to the Kansai region of Japan. We stayed in a hostel, J-Hoppers, in Osaka the whole time, but we took trains to visit Kyoto and Nara as well. The trip was a lot of fun.

We took a plane from Miyazaki to Osaka on Saturday evening. When we arrived at Osaka, we had to figure out a way to get to the hostel. Of course we ended up getting a little bit lost. One of the directions that the hostel gave us was to turn and walk down the colorful street. By the time we arrived in Osaka, it was already dark, so the street wasn't really all that colorful. lol. We had no idea why the hostel had written that on their website until we walked down the street in the morning and realized that it indeed was colorful. lol.

Since we arrived late, we had to look for a restaurant that was still open. This was a challenge because a lot of them were closed or were closing. Then, we happened to find a Brazilian lounge with food. This made me super happy because I hadn't had any Brazilian food in so long. It was also really cool to hear a mixture of Portuguese and Japanese. Most of the people there were either Brazilian immigrants or children of immigrants, so they would mix both languages when they were talking. It was really cool. It was also nice to finally understand what people were saying around me. lol. (^_^)

The rest of the time we were there, we mostly tried to go to different temples in Kyoto. For example, we went to Fushimi Inari Shrine, Sanjusangen-do Temple and Kiyomizu-dera Temple. We also went to Gion where we ran into a Maiko (apprentice geisha) and we went to a flee market in To-Ji Temple. Kyoto is really an amazing place. I recommend it to anyone who is traveling to Japan.

On the last day we were in Kansai, we went to Nara. We went to Todai-ji Temple. The temple is known for having a huge bronze statue of Buddha. It was an amazing site. SInce it was our last day, we still tried to make it to Kyoto for one last temple, Kinkaku-Ji, but it was already closed when we got there. Oopppss! I guess if we ever have a chance to go back to Kyoto in the future, that temple has to be on the top of our list of things to see.

Throughout the trip we had certain quotes that both of us said a lot. For example, Asha would usually say "I'm here for the culture and the boys" and she was right. lol. We saw a lot of cute boys. I fell in love with a waiter in Osaka. He was GORGEOUS, but if you ask Asha about him, she will say "Uhhh...no I don't think so. He was not cute". lol. I thought he was soooo cute!
I also had a crush on the "Information Desk" worker at the Osaka train station. Yes, we took the trip "for the culture and the boys".

Then, there were the boys that we didn't want around us. In one of the trains from Tokyo to Osaka, there were a group of young guys sitting across from us, who were super obnoxious. They were trying to figure out what to say to us in English. Of course, the only thing they seemed to know and thought was appropriate to say to us was "Sex Friend? I like sex" and "I have penis", except they pronounced it as "penes". We ended up leaving the train and catching another one.

The quote that I kept saying on our trip was "Let's see what happens". A lot of times, we didn't exactly know how to get to certain places and we weren't sure what people were telling us, but I would just say "Let's see what happens" and hope that the train and/or bus would get us to the right destination. It worked, for the most part. We did get lost a couple of times, but it was mostly OK.

We did have other weird moments in Kyoto that had nothing to do with the opposite sex or our bad sense of direction. Once, we were on a train from Osaka to Kyoto. Half way there, everyone was told to get off of the train. All of us had to then wait on the track for another train. We have no idea what happened.

This happened to us again, but on a bus. We were on a bus going to Kyoto Station. The bus was full. At one stop, this guy, who seemed to have special needs, put his hands to his head and ran to the front of the bus and got off. Two older people followed after him. When this happened, the bus driver decided to kick all of us off the bus. Asha and I had already commented on how stressed the bus driver looked, so it was both a surprise and yet not shocking when he told all of us to get off. lol.

All in all, it was a great trip. Osaka is a typical busy city & Kyoto and Nara are beautiful. There are so many more things that I would like to see, but I didn't have the chance to, so I would definitely like to go back.

This is me at Fushimi Inari Shrine

This is the Maiko (apprentice Geisha) we saw in Gion. Asha took this picture.

This is me at Kyoto Station.



For more pictures of my trip to Osaka, Kyoto, and Nara you can go to my Flickr Silver Week Album:
www.flickr.com/photos/stefy29/sets/72157622438285894/