Japanese Alps

Today we took a train ride into the Japanese Alps!  Wow are they beautiful.  I tried to take pictures from the train and just a few came out halfway decent.  Most of the pictures had too much glare or were too blurry from the speed of the train.

Guillermo getting ready to enjoy a Bento Box lunch picked up from one of the train stations.  

We shared both of these boxes.  Everything was delicious!

So, we are staying in a town called Takayama.  It is a precious little town and it is very cool here with rain on and off ever since we got here.  The place where we are staying is a typical Japanese place and it is everything I have ever dreamed of as far as a Japanese house.

As soon as we got to the place where we would be staying, they served us tea in our room.

In the room where the staff set up our beds while we had dinner in a dining room.  It was exactly as I pictured a Japanese room.

We had a fantastic dinner in the house in the evening.  Of course, I forgot to take my camera to dinner but fortunately, Fernando remembered so hopefully one of these days I'll get some pictures from him to put on here of our first authentic Japanese dinner.  It was quite an experience.  They called us from our room to our personal dining room where we sat on the floor at a short table.  They brought course after course of interesting and delicious food that by the time dinner was over, we were totally stuffed!

After dinner, we took a nice hot shower in their big bath room which also had a huge hot tub that we soaked in for a few minutes.  If you wanted a private bath, then you locked the door.  If not, then you just leave the door unlocked and anyone could come in and take a shower or get in the tub with you.  We opted to lock the door.  Then they provided us with robes called yakatas. This is all just so interesting and awesome.

Downtown Tokyo

What a nice day we had today!  The sky was clear blue and the weather was just fantastic.  Perfect day for a trip into Tokyo!
Guillermo and I started off the morning riding bikes to the nearby mall - yes, Guillermo rode the bike and he rode it well!  We did a little looking around in the mall until it was time to meet Eva and Fernando by the grocery store.  When they got there, we went to the mall's food court to have lunch.  We had a good noodle soup and some good tempura.
Then we got on the trains to an area called Harajuku.  This district is known for the Meiji Shrine, expensive stores and outrageously dressed teens.  It was all quite interesting!  We headed to the Shrine first after getting off the train.  Walking through a nice forest of trees, the walkway to the shrine was very calming. First thing we came upon was a Chrysanthemum display which was just beautiful.  They say that these flowers represent the Imperial Family.

There were also chrysanthemums made into bonsai.  There were some impressive displays.

Here we are approaching the shrine.

And this little girl was just so adorable in her little kimono.

At the Shrine, it was interesting to see how people would throw in a coin into an offering area, then clap twice and then bow.  We were also very lucky to see a wedding procession while we were there!  When we saw this procession coming out, we were so excited!

We saw at least 3 other wedding parties and they couldn't have asked for a nicer day on which to get married!

From the park where the shrine was, we walked out onto Jingu Bridge and saw lots of dogs dressed up - possibly for Halloween.  Here are a few pictures of that!

From that bridge we walked down onto the grand shopping boulevard of Omote-sando.  Most, if not all, stores WAY out of our price range.  We found a nice little cafe to have tea time in, and after standing in line for about 20 minutes just to get in, we had some really good tea, coffee and little desserts.  Some nice Japanese lady was kind enough to take a picture of the four of us along the boulevard afterwards.

Then we got on a train again and headed for the district of Shibuya.  This area was exactly what I pictured when I thought of Tokyo.  It was wild, and colorful and crowded and busy and just teeming with life.  We had to do the Shibuya Crossing which is this MASSIVE intersection!  When we were crossing the street here, it was amazing and just made you exclaim - Wow, this is exactly how I pictured Tokyo!!!

Here is a view of Shibuya crossing from the train station.

Video taken while waiting to do the crossing.

Walk in the late afternoon

The typhoons have left the area and this afternoon it stopped raining and eventually the clouds started clearing up and the sun came out.  Perfect time to take a nice stroll through the park that is close to Eva and Fernando's apartment.  The weather was cool and lovely.

From the park, we walked to the university where Fernando and Eva do their lab work.  It was so interesting touring that lab.

Earthquake!!

During the night!  The epicenter was 300 miles from us, out in the ocean, so it wasn't felt that strongly where we are but we did feel it.  It was 2:10am, and I thought Guillermo was shaking his legs in bed for some reason, and Guillermo thought I was shaking mine.  It was a weird feeling - it was like the bed was on vibrate or something.  Very surreal.   We thought maybe that we were experiencing an earthquake, but it wasn't until we got up the next morning that we found out for certain that there had been an earthquake during the night.  A 7.1 magnitude. Good thing it was so far out to sea.  We read it generated little tsunamis but no damage done anywhere.

Fish Market

Today we took trains to Tokyo to visit the Fish Market.  We left the apartment around 8am and got to the market around 9:30.  So, we were on the trains a long time!

 Most of the activity in the Fish Market happens between 5am and 8am, so by the time we got there, things had quieted down.  Although it was quite hectic anyway when we were there - people rushing back and forth, little trucks zipping down the aisles, some people pulling carts.  We constantly had to be on the alert for things coming up behind us.  We can't imagine what it must be like at around 6am in this market!

  

There were acres and acres of fish in boxes

So many interesting things to see

These shells were huge!

Pretty octopus

One huge fish head!

 Stall owners would come here to get a block of ice which would ride up a shaft to be crushed and then the owner would stand below and catch the ice in a box as it was being crushed.

Getting ready to cut some tuna with that HUGE knife.

More pretty octopus.

After leaving the Fish Market, we walked through an outer market where all kinds of things are sold.  Here we are eating some egg dish that was actually a little sweet.

This stall that was selling all kinds of mushrooms.

 We had no idea, but they drive on the opposite side in Japan!

A picture of Tokyo, and also you can see how the cars are all driving on the left side of the street.

There are two typhoons off the coast of Japan right now.  We've had some rain and mist every single day and tomorrow one of the typhoons will be passing fairly close to the east coast of Japan.  Both typhoons are expected to stay away from Japan and go out to sea, but we will still get rains from them.  Tomorrow is supposed to be rainy and windy, so our plan is to stay put until that passes.

We are in Japan!

Backtracking a little to get this blog caught up again -

Monday, October 21st.
After a leisurely morning, we left on our drive to Houston at around 12:30pm.  We drove to my friend Melanie's house where we will be spending the night tonight.  We got to her house around 5:10 and had a most wonderful evening with her and her husband Buck.  We went to bed that night so excited about our trip the following day.  Of course, knowing we were going on such a big trip (and also being in a new place) we didn't sleep as well that night as we would have liked.  Surely was no fault of the comfortable bed and the nice room we were in - that's just how we are before taking a trip!

Tuesday, October 22nd.
Melanie took us to the airport at 7:30 this morning for our 9am flight to Seattle.  The flight left somewhat late but it got us to Seattle on time.  The plane flew really close to Mount Rainier and that was such a beautiful sight to see.  We actually could see 4 volcanic peaks from the plane as we were flying - Mount Rainier, Mount Hood, Mount St. Helens and not sure about the 4th one.  It was about a 4 hour flight.  We were so glad to have broken up our flight with a stop in Seattle instead of getting a non-stop from Houston to Tokyo.  We were ready, by the time the plane landed in Seattle, to get out of our seats and walk around a little and get something good to eat.  The plane to Tokyo took off just a little late and we were on our way!  Wow, Nippon Airlines is a nice airline to fly with!  We made sure to get something to eat before we got on the plane because our paperwork had said no meal would be served on the plane.  That was so wrong because almost immediately they started bringing little things for us to munch on and the next thing we knew, they were serving a meal!  So, that was our first Japanese meal and I should have taken a picture of it!

We had thought the flight from Seattle to Tokyo would be an 11 hour flight but shortly after we took off, we noticed on the flight map that it said 8+ hours to destination.  When we saw that we were so surprised and felt like this leg of the trip wasn't going to be that bad after all.   We had decent seats in that they weren't a tight fit and there seemed to be plenty of leg room but they were only two together so we really couldn't stretch out to lie down.  Here's a picture of our plane just passing the International Date Line.  And just like that we went from October 22nd to October 23 in an instant.

The time went quickly though and before we knew it, we were getting ready to land in Tokyo.  That was such an unbelievable feeling to see Japan down below and to know that we were soon going to be in Japan!!  And we didn't feel all that tired!  I guess we were just too excited and happy knowing we were about to see Fernando and Eva.

They met us as we came out of the baggage and customs area.  How nice it was to see Fernando waving to us as we looked around for them in the crowd of people!  Now it was on to catching 3 different trains for the hour long trip to their apartment.  At that point, it was about 2:30am for us.  And actually, it wasn't until we were on the last train that we started feeling the tiredness set in.  Once at Fernando's apartment, we had a nice dinner and then turned in early.