It’s the 5th of November in Kyoto, Japan...We had another amazing breakfast at Japanese Denny’s I had french toast again with liquefied kiwi that was awesome! Okay it was weird, but it tasted just like kiwi without the mess of having to chew ;-)...We decided to go to electric town again to return Eli’s camera.
After going back to electric town (Akihbara) we went to Asakusa a bit of a tourist trap, but very beautiful. There were lots of shrines and artful buildings. We got off the train with some students in uniform and they all stopped at this small statue to drop money in and rub his head, we think it’s good luck for exams. Anyhow that’s why there are tons of pictures with us rubbing a very smooth head :-p.
There was also a water fountain that we performed sort of a ritual at. It’s a very large fountain with water shooting out of dragons mouths, along the sides are cups attached to long sticks, you take on of the sticks and fill the cup with water from the dragons mouth, then place a little water in one hand and then the other and another dollop in your right hand that you drink. I think it’s a suppose to be cleansing, but who knows...After that we took some very nice pictures at a shrine garden all the beautiful foliage mixed as always with a lot of technology, that you could see just over the tree tops. Also saw some very large coi fish (may not be spelled right, feel free to correct). We left there around 2:30 or so to grab our luggage from the hostel and catch our train to Kyoto...
We left Tokyo station at 4:15 on a two hour bullet train which I slept through so no pictures :-( sorry guys.
After finding two taxis to take all seven of us to our house in Kyoto, we found our drivers didn’t know where we were suppose to be. So fun adventure, learning experience, slightly annoying and not to bad if we just breath and let go :-). Here we are in our Japanese style guest finally got to take my shoes off lol and am walking around in my socks, we have slippers, but I don’t know, too much work I guess :-p. We’re all very tired here and my computer won’t get internet access, so I don’t think I’ll be able to update very much, at least not with pictures :-(...I miss you all so much, I think sleep sounds wonderful right now, but mostly I need some alone time. I’m starting to understand why the Japanese grab every moment of privacy on the buses, trains, going from point A. to point B.
Goodnight yall,
Hannah.




French toast! at Japanese Denny's

KIWI! That you drink...
Money, Yen, whatever is pays for food (and other things I'm told)

Leaving the Sakura Hotel

Yoshinoya Japanese fast food

Electric town (Akihabara)

Sarah rubbing the statue for good luck

Eli doing the same

There is a picture of me doing this, but as it is my blog I have the right not to post terrible pictures of myself :-p

Asakusa
Giant shoe on building and Rachel the photographer

Really cool!


Fountain cleansing ritual (we think)

Me doing said ritual (hopefully the correct way)

Me in front of Buddha
The gardens, a major reason I went on this trip

Coy pond

And then my Camera died :-( I'll upload more pictures later of Kyoto! :-)

The 4th Tues

Here is a picture of the side menu, now who can figure out which ones are the dumplings? ;-)
Obviously very good, couldn't even take the time to take a picture :-( It was soo good! Dumplings with soy sauce and pork AMAZING!
Hey mom can we fix the red eye? oh yeah and the creepy sleep deprived face?
They all though they heard an icecream truck and were deciding whether they should jump out the window and chose 'em down :-)
Connor giving me double barrel, it's tradition he says :-P we're all watching a movie here...
Our hotel!

Alright so this was the least picture taking day for me, I had to charge...
I woke up at 5AM per usual, showered (in the super cool shower) and played on my laptop for a while. Ms. Becki (misspelled her name the first time :-() came down around 6 or 7 which was nice, a little company while the others slept (even Eli), after a time of playing on the laptop we decided to take a quick walk down the the 7/11 and get some breakfast...You saw the green doughnuts ;-) plus orange juice lovin' the orange juice!
We all just kind of hung out today, relaxed, though we did get our most expensive lunch so far 1000 yen each which is like $11 so really not bad...And get this it was Chinese food, our most expensive meal in Japan was Chinese food :-p...So afterwards we played with the idea of going back to electric to return Eli's camera, but decided to go back to the Sakura hotel where we've been staying (sorry didn't post a picture sooner x-)
Eli decided to we should watch a movie, okay it was really just seven very short films in Japanese (subtitled we're not that good). We watched them on Eli's computer in the guys room, turned out all the lights, because that was more hardcore? anyhow my lack of sleep caught up with me because I remember a fox wedding and then I was being woken up on the top bunk in the boys room, and everyone was not only no longer watching movies but they had gone on to other places lol...

So while I could have continued sleeping and at the time would have liked too, that empty plate of food at the top of the page was totally worth the cold wind, the grogginess and the slight vertigo :-)

I think everyone had a good relaxing time, the 4th was about lazing around, the 5th we go to Kyoto!

Later,
Hannah.

more pictures

Becky :-)
GREEN DOUGHNUTS! and orange juice, this was Becky and my breakfast :-)

The view from a very large, at the top of a government building...
Udon noodles, basically I had ramen for supper it was good :-)

This is a good dude ;-) (insert inside joke here) he protects against bad luck...
Those are elevators with a view to the outside, very cool...
First group shot in electric town in Tokyo!
We were going to go to the imperial palace, but they were closed, we got a good pic of the outside though :-)
Japan guide books from the hostel...
Japanese denny's I ate french toast which I never do, but it was actually very good :-)

Here I am on the second day, I'm blurring but hey can't focus 'em all...Also really early in the morning lol



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Pictures yall ;-)

From LA



Part of our group...after arriving in LA



Because my mother threatened me to not come home without pictures of myself :-p


The gals...




The guys



Me too hungry to take a picture before I ate it ;-)




5AM up again before most, but what a beautiful morning in LA...



Waiting for the van to take us to LAX...



Waiting to board the plane to JAPAN! okay it wasn't that exciting at the time, but hey I can embellish :-p



Another self portrait for mom and another terribly optimistic picture before the 11hr flight :-(


These are the sights that made the 11hr trip worth every painful, ear popping second...







Again to hungry to take a picture before eating ;-) that did have some kind of pork or perhaps beef on top, Japanese fast food is amazing!



Alright that's it for now, I need to upload again we had a very eventful day yesterday which would be the 3rd now I believe it's the 4th here in the early AM...

Mom fixed the credit card! I'm so happy, mom you are the best of the best of the best! I like an idiot didn't tell the bank "hey I'm going to Japan let me withdrawal cash" But my wonderful intelligent mother was able to figure it out and I'm so very, very happy!

Love you guys, will update more later...Now I'm going to get cash and food! at 6am god this time change is weird :-p

The Flight, the Arrival, The Trains oh my!

Hello everyone, I'm here finally after a 5hr flight to LA, a one night stay at a motel and then an 11hr grueling flight! I'll tell you somewhere between the first 4hrs feelings like 11 and that last 3hrs I didn't think it was worth it I mean I hurt all over, and needed some serious space, but when I got here, wow. I'll admit the airport wasn't awesome though I did get a cool picture of a welcome to Japan sign



Which was cool! I think the moment it hit me we were really here was on the 1hr train ride to the subway station. Out the window I saw some rice fields which were laid across the land, and then these houses that looked like something out of a history book along with giant billboards and fancy small cars. It was like somehow tradition and modern life had melded together so well it just seemed right looking at it...So I didn't get so many pictures of that (sorry mom) but I was so tired and so involved in watching this new land pass me by I couldn't bring myself too look away long enough to take a picture. Now I did eventually fall asleep before we hit our stop, but to be fair I was very tired and knew I would have three whole weeks to delve deeper into the mystery that is Japan....



There is so much more, and I will update later, but for now I'll leave you with some shots of the food we ate in the plane (just for you Alice ;-)









There are more, but I'll leave you with the optimistic picture of me before the 11hr flight ;-)