Our Trip to Yokkaichi

That's in Mie Prefecture, for those who want to know. :)

We had an awesome time staying with Chris and Apis over the last 4 days. Initial highlights of the trip included taking the Shinkansen (Bullet Train). It goes really, really fast. Here is a picture (note how ambitious the train is):



On the first day we got there kind of late, but we got some food and then basically went to bed. On the second day, we went out for Brazillian food for lunch! Mmmm...beef....and crocodile. Yes, crocodile does taste mysteriously like chicken. After the lunch, we went to a Manga store to look at arty stuff.

That night Toby (and I, kind of :)) made Hokkaido stew for Chris and Apis. We made so much we also had it for lunch on the third day. After that dinner, we watched Finding Nemo and the Two Towers, Extended Edition. Glad I saw the latter, it is totally different from the theater version! Anyone ticked off by the theatre version should definitely watch the extended edition.

On the third day, after a delicious lunch of Hokkaido stew, we decided to be touristy and take a trip to Ueno, which is about an hour/hour and a half from their apartment. Luckily Chris has a car. :D Ueno is famous for being the home of the first ninjas. There are lots of cute little ninja statues along the roads, but sadly I didn't get any pictures. I'm sure they are available on the internet. However, we did visit the home of Basho, a famous haiku poet. Here are two pictures:





At the same park where Basho's house stands, there also exists a huge castle, complete with moat. Really kewl. Here is a picture of the castle:



We went for some delicious deserts after that, notably with Mochi and fresh fruit and ice cream. Upon returning to the house, Chris made his famous spaghetti, which was huge and delicious. Mushrooms. We should eat more of those.

We watched Shaolin Soccer in japanese, which was strange but very funny. Today we came home on the Shinkansen and now I'm writing this.

For those who worry about what happened to the rest of the roll of film - it would be horrible to have to download a page of pictures, especially for those of you archaics with dial up internet. Thus, for those who would like to view all the pictures, I am working on a gallery at DeviantArt. It will take a while, so please be patient.