Week 16
Now on vacation with Sarah, we have been able to do more vacation-y stuff than when I was working. We booked a little karaoke room with a descent view for 1 hour for about $5 and we belted out "Let it go" from Frozen.
The karaoke hallways were cramped but the rooms were big enough for the two of us.
Later on in the week, Sarah booked a bike tour of Tokyo where we joined 5 other tourists and 2 guides and rode around Tokyo to see many interesting site seeing spots.
We saw Shinto Torii gates, the Imperial Palace, and many other interesting places... all while burning over 2000 calories on our 26 km trek.
On Thursday Sarah and I met up with another friend, and we went to a traditional ryokan by Mt. Fuji which had a cloudy but beautiful view of a nearby lake. It also reminded me that Japan has some pretty large spiders.
The first night we arrived we were rushed to our 9 COURSE meal before sleeping in a traditional Japanese room. The view out of our window was amazing and only marred by a big spider.
The next day we went out on a boat in the lake to get a good view of Fuji but the fog was too thick to see it. This is my artistic interpretation of what it probably would have looked like from our spot in the lake.
The day after the excursion, we went up on a gondola and had an even better view of the lake the and surrounding mountains. There was also a a lot of pictures of a bunny setting a tanuki (a raccoon dog) on fire and which I guess I didn't have the cultural background to fully appreciate.
Again the day was too cloudy so we didn't see Fuji but it probably looked like this.
As we left on the bus to heady back to Tokyo on Saturday, we say Fuji peaking out from behind the clouds so at least we could check that off of the list.
Back in Tokyo, we went to Asukusa and saw the a big temple with beautiful architecture and large festival grounds.
The next day, we went to Ueno Park and found a friendship festival between Japan and Pakistan. It was interesting to see the mixture of cultures and the wonderful smell of curry and ramen.
All in all, I am enjoying my vacation very very much :)