hello from japan,,

i am afraid i won't be able to post any pictures until i get back home. i guess leaving my laptop at home was not as smart as i thought it would be. laurie brought her notebook and casey has a laptop, i figured i would just borrow theirs when they were available. i was not counting on casey's computer being out of commission and i don't want to use up space on laurie's notebook, so... no pictures. i am a lousy photographer anyway.

we had an uneventful, (but long) flight on wednesday. we left boston, shortly after 9:30, for washington dc, than onto narita. with the time change, it was thursday afternoon when we arrived. once through immigration and customs, we took a shuttle bus from the airport to the hotel chieko had booked for us. it was old, but clean and very comfortable. i took a nap and then we took walk and got some refreshments. we went to bed early, we were tired and had to get up and ready, fairly early, for our sight seeing tour on friday morning.

we both woke up before the alarm and the wake up call at 7 on friday, so we had a leisurely morning. we had breakfast at the hotel, it was really inexpensive compared to some of the menus we had seen... 1000 yen for 3 breads (danishes, bread and cheese bowl, pastries, pizza, plain and filled croissants, donuts and more) soup and a beverage. i chose the bread and cheese bowl, a small danish and a hum (ham) and cheese croissant. laurie also had a small cheese danish and a plain croissant and a cute little (well not so little) doggie shaped chocolate pastry. we split the hum and cheese croissant, the bread and cheese bowl and the doggie danish. the soup was some kind of egg drop and our beverage of choice was english tea. everything was very tasty and we were quite full, since we don't normally eat soup and 3 pastries.. other than the little danish, the portions were quite generous.

we checked out and went to wait for our tour guide. we signed up for a 3 hour tour (a three hour tour). we left promptly (promptness is important here, i would be shaming myself all over the place if i lived here) at 8:05 (i think, haha) to pick up people at other hotels and arrived at the start of the tour site (promptly at 9) and some people departed our bus for other tours (mt fuji, can't remember the others).

our tour guide was a funny man, i didn't catch his name, but he was quite amusing.

first stop... tokyo tower. we took the packed elevator up, got a 360 degree view of the city and a look down from the floor window, yikes!! it was really really hot so laurie and i got ice cream cones (a vanilla/green tea twist.. delicious) according to mr. tour guide, tokyo tower is disaster proof,(earthquakes, typhoons). he said the only thing that can destroy it is godzilla.

our next stop was at the meiji shrine. it is a shinto shrine, (one of the two religions in japan, the other is buddism) we beautified ourselves before entering, by washing our hands, first left, then right and rinsing out our mouths. mr. tour guide told us that some couples still get married at the shrine and we did see one newly married couple having their picture taken with their family. we also saw a new baby, he said people bring their babies to the shrine to be blessed.

then it was a drive through the city to the imperial palace, the garden was closed so we didn't get to see it. figures.. closed on fridays!! along the way we stopped for photos of the akaska guest house, where IMPORTANT visit ors to tokyo stay. it was formerly the imperial residence..

we ended our tour at the "world famous" ginza shopping district. we were overwhelmed. we got directions to the sanrio store and were in hello kitty heaven until it was time to find our way to haneda airport for the flight to komatsu.

mr. tour guide had given us directions to 2 train stations, depending on where we ended our shopping, with the name of the stop we needed to take the monorail to the airport. of course we got off one stop to early because i thought we got on at the "get off at the first stop" station... even though it wasn't the right stop name. anyway, we got back on, then off at the correct stop, onto the monorail and yay we made it to the airport. one thing we had done at the airport in narita, was to sent our suitcase directly to casey and chieko's so we didn't have to lug it through tokyo and we also didn't need to check a bag a haneda. we only had our 100 pound back packs to deal with and back surgery may be needed when we get home.

casey and ray picked us up at the komatsu airport. i don't know if ray recognized me from video chatting or not, but he smiled and didn't cry until we were driving. once we got here, i needed to shower my filthy sweatiness and we enjoyed a lovely glass of wine and some CABOT cheese and crackers...

okay this post is way long...