Godzilla Defeated by Team America

Perin and I are ever vigilant for another uprising from Godzilla, but I think he knows when he's met his match (yes, Godzilla is a he).

We had a great day of people watching in Harajuku. We saw some teenage goths all dressed up, a dog wearing sunglasses being carried around, the entire Miami Dolphins cheerleading team (no, they wouldn't all pose for a photo with me), and all kinds of people and craziness. I know it's already winter in North America, but the winter fashion rage here is puffy jackets made out of a shiny synthetic material. Only one color is appropriate though: black.　Pictures are difficult to upload with the technology we brought with us, so they'll have to wait until we find an Internet cafe. Sorry!

From there we powered through the Meiji Shrine and wandered down to Shibuya and had an excellent bento box lunch. In general, the food is much healthier here, but every morsel contains copious amounts of sodium (making it taste even better). Another successful day on Tokyo's public transportation left us feeling pleased and we celebrated with a dinner from 7-11. We got noddle bowls and we discovered that 7-11 brand Demon sake was not as fantastical good as it claimed to be.

Yesterday, we got up at 4:30am to take a taxi to the fish market so we could watch the giant tuna auction. It was pretty exciting and I'm glad we went, but not understanding anything made it difficult to know whether or not they sold for $40,000 or $500,000. We had super cheap, fresh, and delicious sushi for breakfast at 7am then wandered all over Tokyo.

After spending time looking for wooden buildings from the Edo period, we took the subway into the busiest station in Tokyo and poured out with the rest of the sararimen. Took some pictures, went back to the hotel for a 3-hour power nap, then walked to Asakusa (including the plastic food displays part of town), took a ferry downriver and saw Ginza (we missed the Kabuki showing we thought about attending).

Today we took a highspeed train to Kyoto and I got car sick from everything moving by too fast! Perin did fine though. We got here (insignificant drama) just in time for our tour of the Imperial Palace and we had to get something to eat very quicly. There was only one place that could turn around a meal that fast: mick-a-dick-a-roo (McDonalds). We did make it almost 72 hours in Japan before eating it...

The palace was great, as was Nijo Castle. The castle had floors designed to squeak so no assassins could sneak up on the Shogun (or anyone) and kill them. Hundreds of years later, they still work, which was pretty impressive. Shoes weren't allowed and we put on slippers to walk through the castle.

A big pet peeve of mine is stereotypical Asian shuffling. It so loud and annoying, I always want to tell people to lift their damn feet. Well today, I was forced to become one of the shufflers I so despise. They didn't really have any slippers in my size and they didn't stay on your feet very well and the only way to keep them on was to noisily shuffle everywhere. Maybe everyone is conditioned to walk around like that from a young age?

Tomorrow should be a more relaxing day of temples, naps, and snacks. Mmmm. Naps.