So where to start. This is going to be a really really long blog because I have three whole days to cover. That is the longest yet, but I just couldn't write before I left on Friday. Friday with the kids was pretty good . They were pretty under control and I didn't have to raise my voice as much. My watch that I fixed for a second time is definitely not waterproof now, Don't know if I said that already. So it isn't broken , But there is condensation all up in it that won't go away and it makes the screen really hard to see. I keep forgetting to take it off and not get it wet, so hopefully I can find some rice or something and make that go away. I'm in Japan for goodness sakes so that shouldn't be that hard. But we'll see. The rest of Friday was pretty good. We revealed the Safari themed stage we decorated the night before to the kids and they like freaked out because they thought it was so cool. Our kids also voted for who they thought the best counselor was. Only a handful of my kids picked me, but I'm totally fine with that. I'm the iron hand in our classroom, so they liked Ms. Tink a little more. Especially since we got the papers for voting right after I had finished talking sternly to basically all of the kids. But I know they love me still. Nikolas put me, which made me smile , And so did Jaquin, who is my other favorite. I am going to miss these kids when I leave. My fricken backpack I bought is so huge, I don't see why I can't just take a couple of them with me when I go. But anyways. My favorite is this one kid in room 3 named Canan is probably one of the worst kids at camp. He doesn't listen and is defiant and thinks he's too cool for everything. Well on his paper he put me as his favorite counselor and then in the space where you can write reason he just drew a picture of me and him playing together. And this is like this tough ten year old kid. I thought it was the most adorable thing ever. It made me tear up a little. Even if I am only making a difference in a few of these kids' lives my whole trip in Japan is worth it. Unfortunately this day during the pie your counselor Ryu from room 5 got picked. I knew he was going to pick me to pie because he has been saying that literally from day 1. So his name got drawn and he stands up and points his finger at me and yells, Ms. Jasmine! I was like awe crap. So I got pied and it was all nasty hot outside and it started to smell so bad. But I had to rush home and take a shower. Julie and I left like 45 mins after work to head to Tokyo and find our hostel.
It was kind of scary going off with just the two of us, not because I feel unsafe at all in Tokyo, but because we are the two worst people at camp with direction! I am worse than her though because I just suck at everything related to directions. But I had everything written down on two pieces of paper that we needed to know for the weekend and we had our maps and stuff, so it wasn't that bad. We finally got to the Asakusa station, which was right near our Hostel. Asakusa is a district in the upper part of Tokyo. We get off at the station and kind of follow where I drew in our hotel on the map, and then just kept walking straight trying to figure out where it was. The signs were all in Kangi, so we didn't know how we were going to tell which one was ours. But as we were walking by one of the buildings we noticed there were like four or five backpackers standing in the lobby. So we went in , Since we figure that was probably our hotel. It definitely was which was nice. When we gave them our reservation number we got our deposit back in cash and then we had to pay for the hostel using a vending machine. Gosh, Japan is so cool. They have vending machines for absolutely everything. But anyways we paid at the vending machine. Then we had to take off our shoes and put them in this shoe locker thing at the front. Yo
u put in 100 yen deposit and then at the end your coin popped back out when you put their slipper things back in. Very cool. After we did that we turned in our locker key and got our room key. Right when we were checking in we met these two guys from England who were backpacking. They said they had been backpacking for like two months. That is so intense. That would be such an absolutely amazing experience. Can you imagine intensely traveling for that long of a time period? Although I'd imagine their bags would be so intensely heavy. Craziness. So after we checked in we went to the sixth floor, which was an all girls floor. That was kind of nice because unlike the other floors there was a padlock thing where we had to punch in a number to get in. Same with the women's public bath. It made me feel a lot safer. We open the door and start to walk to our "rooms." It was a capsule hotel !!!!! That was one of the things on my to do list, so I was very excited to see that all the rooms were little capsules. So as you are walking down the hall you have the two sides of the hall of course, but then each wall had two rows of capsules: an upper and a lower capsule along each wall. Julie and I were all the way at the very end, and she was right above me. It was really small looking from the outside, and you couldn't stand up all the way. But it actually wasn't that bad once you got inside of it, and it was pretty roomy. It was just for sleeping anyways, so who needs rooms you can stand up in when the capsule ones are like 30 dollars cheaper ? I have seen capsules on like the travel channel and stuff, but I have never seen them in person, so it was so awesome to get to stay in one !!!!! It was Japanese style bedding again, so cushy mat things on the floor with the beany pillows and blankets on top. Although poor Julie didn't realize that the blankets were under the pillow so she slept the first night without blankets. That would have been a really ghetto place if they didn't even offer us blankets! In each of the capsule rooms there were little locker things since the room key wasn't for our actual room, it was for this. The "doors" to our rooms were little slidey things. But I smooshed all my stuff into it and we headed out to explore Asakusa at night. Everything in Japan closes so early, so we weren't able to do too too much, but it was really cool to get to see a little bit of the city at night. While we were exploring we came across this little restaurant that had gyoza for 100 yen. Those are the potsticker things I've had at a few of the other restaurants we've been to in Japan, and they are my favorite thing I've eaten. I couldn't believe they were so cheap because everywhere else we've been they've been like fo
ur dollars. We didn't really know where we were going most of the time. We just kept going down different side streets and remembering where we turned. Asakusa wasn't as big as some of the other districts in Tokyo we've been to so it wasn't bad. We also found this really awesome market where everything was extremely cheap! The coffee drinks were like 55 cents, which is insane! The other cool part about this market is that a lot of their stuff was Wal- Mart brand. Ya know, the Great Value? It was neat. I don't even think they have wal-marts here, but they get their stuff from the same company. I'm actually surprised they don't have wal-marts here. They have Starbucks on like every other street literally. Insanity. Then we also found a Lawson's that was everything 100 yen. So really cheap food. I packed a lot of peanut butter tortilla sandwiches and granola bars though so I was ok for the most part. That night after we were all finished we found our way back to the hostel and went up to get ready for the night. I think I kind of mentioned earlier that there were public bathrooms again. There was no way I could go like two full days without showering when there was one so readily available, so I just sucked it up and did it. It really wasn't as awkward as I thought it would be at all. Just kind of like eh. I guess I've really experienced the full Japan now. Sleeping on floor mats, a capsule, and public bathrooms. I slept so comfortably that night. Didn't even mind the thin floor mat.
The next morning we got up at like eight, which is crazy sleeping in for us, and it was much needed. After we got ready we rented a locker at the hostel for 200 yen for the whole day, which is like nothing. We can 'T keep the stuff in the capsule during the day even if you are staying multiple days because you re check in every day and pay per night. So it wasn't that bad though. I felt safer with the locker anyways. So after we did that we all headed out to see everything in Asakusa. We went to the Sensoji Temple which is the oldest temple in Tokyo, and the Asakusajinja Shrine, which is
another shrine lol. The cool thing about this place is that we have passed by it before when we went on one of our field trips and didn't know we'd get a chance to go back and actually see everything. On the way to the temple is Nakamise street, which is this really famous huge shopping street that is really old. It has tons of like traditional stuff plus lots of new crap and it leads right up to the shrine. We really enjoyed that. At the temple we both paid 100 yen and got our fortunes. How we did it was shake this like little round box thing and then a stick would come out with the number of the box you were supposed to open. After you open the box you take out one of the sheets of paper and that is your fortune. Julie got a bad fortune, which was really funny, and I got a good fortune. Mine said, "bad fortune in the past will change to be ggood, just like the crescent grows to be full , Your luck will grow to be good to the full. From the palace in the clouds, wealth and treasure will come to you. Make haste in doing whatever you want. The sooner the better. * Your wish will be realized. You should be righteous. * The person you are waiting for will come soon. "So idk. Thought it was cool. Although some of the translation is a little bit off, which it always seems to be lol. I didn't know they actually had like legit bad fortunes lol. Poor Julie. After we did that we got off at the Shinagawa station on the metro and decided to walk around the Shiodome area. That area has a ton of huge skyscrapers including the Shiodome Tower, Shiodome Media Tower, Tokyo Shiodome Building. It was odd that they all had basically the same name though. But they were extremely impressive skyscrapers and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing them. After that we just kept walking and walking as we headed towards the station that I had written down which placed us near our theater to see the Lion King. It was a pretty far walk, but saved us quite a bit on traveling fare
and we got to see a lot of the city we hadn't seen before, so that was really cool. Finally we found the station like an hour and a half later. It was called Hamamatsucho station. We followed the directions I printed offline and found our theater! It was called the Four Seasons Shiki Theater, and our musical was in the Spring Theater. We walked up and knew we were heading to the right place because we could see the theater with a large picture of a lion on the side . After we picked up our tickets we went out exploring a little more and found this like port thing called Takeshiba Pier. It had this huge mast thing attached to the ground, so when you are in the distance it looks like a huge ship. We felt kind of duped, but the view of the city from the pier was awesome. We still had about an hour before we needed to meet up with Frankie and get to our seats, so we ended up falling asleep on a bench. It was a really relaxing thing since we had been walking for the entire day. Around four forty we headed back to the theater and found Frankie and took our seats. We were literally in the very last row in the entire theater in the balcony, but hey we paid thirty dollars so whatever. The only thing a
bout the seats that sucked just a little bit was when the Pride Rock thing got too high it cut off just the top of the people's heads. But it was still a great view. I absolutely loved it. I was incredibly impressed with the woman who played Rafiki and stuff. I wasn't bothered at all that the people playing the characters didn't have the traditional African sound or look. (That was something Frankie was worried about.) It was just plain awesome. Most of the characters had bomb voices, and the little kid who played cimba was awesome! It was interesting that they pronounced his name Shimba though instead of Cimba. Everything else was basically the same sounding. I loved hearing all my favorite Lion King songs in Japanese and recognizing what was going on even though I couldn't understand it. The costuming was so incredible. I've never seen the Lion King on stage before, so it was a real treat. Unfortunately, like at Cats, none of their merchandise was in Kangi so I didn't get a shirt that I could have gotten at any production of the Lion King. I really thought it would be not in English on the merchandise because all the signs and stuff for it weren 't. But oh well. Probably good that I didn't spend any more money considering that I still had the rest of the weekend to go. Oh and of course I got in trouble for taking a picture of the stage. Every single time. Gosh. I am just the least sneaky person ever I guess. But I had taken like four when the lady came up and made me show her my picture and delete it. At least she didn't know I had more than one so I still have them. I wish I could figure out how to make t
he screen dark so It wouldn't light up when I take pictures. After the musical was over we walked to rainbow bridge, which is a suspension bridge that connects Odaiba and Shinbaura. It was absolutely beautiful all lit up and stuff. In fact the entire city was just absolutely gorgeous! I loved walking through at night. After that we walked to the Tokyo Tower at night and ended up passing the Zojiji Temple to an ending festival. There were lanterns everywhere and 
it was awesome. The Tokyo Tower is beautiful at night also, and the pictures with the temple in the background are awesome. After we were done we headed back to Asakusa to find some food, but I was tired so after we all checked in Frankie and Julie went to dinner and I just went to the market we had been to the day before to get something small to eat and go to bed. At the market I got a pack of three doughnuts for 88 cents. The doughnuts here are awesome. Very different from American doughnuts though. They are less overly sweet and are more bready with a hint of sweet. It is perfect. Just like the Apple Tea I've had is just the right amount of sweet, but not too overly sweet. Not that I don't enjoy my sweets. I just think they should be done tactfully sometimes like this was.
We got up the next morning at like seven thirty and left around eight. We headed right to Shibuya to see the sights there and then to head to Harajuku to see stuff and go shopping. We figured it was ok to shop as much as we did because it would be our last big like shopping weekend since the next two weekends (which are our last ones) we are traveling and going further and don't want to carry stuff. In Shibuya right after you get off the train there is the Shibuya dog, which
ended up being a lot smaller than we thought it would be. A little bit lame. But then there is the huge Times Squareish crossing where people are just hustling across the street and all the billboards and stuff in the background. Very cool. We went up to the second floor of the Starbucks that was on that street and took pictures of the crossing. After that we started heading towards the Meiji Jingu shrine and Yoyogi park, which is right next to Harajuku. We ended up going the wrong way just a little and ended up on the opposite side of Takeshita Dori street that we wanted, but it wasn't that big of a deal. Takeshita Dori is the main street of Harajuku that we had been down before with all the shopping and the people in ridiculous clothes and such. It is just awesome in general. Right before we got there we found Forever 21 and H & M Japan style. It was awesome. Forever 21 was just ok, but H & M had some really awesome things. I got two dresses and an awesome jacket for like 2200 yen. Bomb! One of the dresses I got Frankie especially approved of because it looks just awesome. It is going to look so hot with the black heels I got the other day. Then we hit the actual Takeshita Dori street and Julie and I just went a little nuts. I mean what girl doesn't like a shopping spree. Even if it is a controlled and limited one. I quite a bit more, but it is all good stuff. We visited the 100 yen store along the street because it is the biggest one in Tokyo. It was like three floors and it had tons of costumes and more stuff than has been at the other ones. Although I have done most of my souvenir shopping so I didn 'T have to get that much. I did find this awesome like feather mask thing that I will use if the music department actually does end up having a masquerade like we've been talking about. Definitely planning on helping to plan that one. But The 390 and 500 yen stores we found were also super awesome. At one of the stores I got my brother an awesome shirt that I hope he will appreciate. Oh translations. Some of them are just so comical. I don't know why it is the style here to have everything on clothing written in English. Just like how in their J-Pop songs the artists throw in random English words or phrases. It is just the hip thing to do here. Frankie ended up peacing out part way through and going home, but Julie and I just stayed and stayed. Around two we headed to the shrine, which was in Yoyogi park area. The shrine was pretty cool, and it was surrounded b
y thousands and thousands of trees. The best part about this shrine in particular is that on Sundays traditional weddings are held there. We watched one for a little while and got to snap some pictures of it. I thought it was absolutely beautiful and awesome. Once we finished with everything in Harajuku we headed back to the station and caught the train to Yokohama. That night in Yokohama there was an intense fireworks festival called the Kanagawa Shimbun Fireworks Festival. We didn't exactly know where to go since I ended up losing the piece of paper that I had everything written down in sometime during the day. Or it just got eaten by my backpack, which is entirely possible. I fit everything I had bought throughout the weekend into my absolutely massive backpack, and it looked like the backpack the backpackers we had seen during the weekend had been carrying around. Like all intense like. I think it probably weighed more than I do, or at least as much as a couple of my kids. Anyways, we didn't know where we were going so once we got off in Yokohama we just followed all the people in Kimonos and ended up taking the Minomatinori subway to Rinku Park, which is where everyone was heading to watch them. It was really cool because it was right next to the bay in Yokohama and very close to the fireworks. We got there around four thirty and it was already extremely crowded. (The show didn't start until sevenish) I ended up leaving Julie at our spot a couple of times and trying to find water . There were people selling it for like four dollars amongst all the store things that were set up, but I tried to find a vending machine instead. Sadly everything except the lame stuff was all sold out so I had to just buy a couple of little drinks. As I was walking to find the drinks I ended up walking into the actual park, (we were just on the outskirts) and there were literally millions of people all over the place. I've never seen it this crowded. It is so different from American like fireworks shows on the 4th. Instead of blankets, everyone brings tarps to sit on, which I guess is actually smarter because you won't get it like dirty. But people came super early to tape off spots and then just left them there til the show started. That would not fly in the USA. If you are reserving a spot for people there better be someone there watching it, or outta luck. Anyways after trying to find Randi for a while and giving up we just sat and ended up watching the aweso
me fireworks from our view. It was the most impressive fireworks show I have ever seen by far. They like would do a ten minute round of fireworks, pause, reload, and then set off even more. It was intense! Each round got better and better. Like holy crap, I can't even describe it. Sadly my camera died like two seconds into the fireworks show so Julie took like eight thousand pictures. She just held her camera beside her and kept snapping . So she has like over a thousand pictures on her memory card right now lol. I have never seen purple fireworks either besides this. I can't even describe most of it. Although of course in Japan style there were even cute fireworks. Like they made smiley faces and hearts and other cutesy things ha ha. The best thing was probably the crowd's reactions. They were all literally oohing and aweing during the entire show. It was fricken adorable! The other amazing part was that the boom from the fireworks that were really loud not only hurt my ears, But it echoed from behind us on the buildings. How cool is that. There were two booms for the bigger fireworks. The boom from the explosion, and then the boom from it bouncing back off the tall skyscrapers! We ended up leaving like right before the last round because all of Yokohama and more were there watching the fireworks and the trains were going to be crazy. As we were running back to the station we could see the city at night. It was much more lit up even than Tokyo was the night before, Probably because there were so many people in their apartments and stuff watching the fireworks. The city was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen in my life. Amazing!! !!! W e got to the station when many other people did, but before the biggest rush of people, so although we had to stand on the trains at least we actually got on them. We made it back to the Sagamino station finally and as we were walking back to our base there was another festival going on in the park we were passing by. Although definitely did not look as cool as the firework festival was. My back hurt so incredibly bad on that walk back. Can't even describe it. Ah. I had so much fun this weekend, Although I can't believe I only have two weekends left before I leave. Sad. I love Camp Adventure / Japan!
It was kind of scary going off with just the two of us, not because I feel unsafe at all in Tokyo, but because we are the two worst people at camp with direction! I am worse than her though because I just suck at everything related to directions. But I had everything written down on two pieces of paper that we needed to know for the weekend and we had our maps and stuff, so it wasn't that bad. We finally got to the Asakusa station, which was right near our Hostel. Asakusa is a district in the upper part of Tokyo. We get off at the station and kind of follow where I drew in our hotel on the map, and then just kept walking straight trying to figure out where it was. The signs were all in Kangi, so we didn't know how we were going to tell which one was ours. But as we were walking by one of the buildings we noticed there were like four or five backpackers standing in the lobby. So we went in , Since we figure that was probably our hotel. It definitely was which was nice. When we gave them our reservation number we got our deposit back in cash and then we had to pay for the hostel using a vending machine. Gosh, Japan is so cool. They have vending machines for absolutely everything. But anyways we paid at the vending machine. Then we had to take off our shoes and put them in this shoe locker thing at the front. Yo
u put in 100 yen deposit and then at the end your coin popped back out when you put their slipper things back in. Very cool. After we did that we turned in our locker key and got our room key. Right when we were checking in we met these two guys from England who were backpacking. They said they had been backpacking for like two months. That is so intense. That would be such an absolutely amazing experience. Can you imagine intensely traveling for that long of a time period? Although I'd imagine their bags would be so intensely heavy. Craziness. So after we checked in we went to the sixth floor, which was an all girls floor. That was kind of nice because unlike the other floors there was a padlock thing where we had to punch in a number to get in. Same with the women's public bath. It made me feel a lot safer. We open the door and start to walk to our "rooms." It was a capsule hotel !!!!! That was one of the things on my to do list, so I was very excited to see that all the rooms were little capsules. So as you are walking down the hall you have the two sides of the hall of course, but then each wall had two rows of capsules: an upper and a lower capsule along each wall. Julie and I were all the way at the very end, and she was right above me. It was really small looking from the outside, and you couldn't stand up all the way. But it actually wasn't that bad once you got inside of it, and it was pretty roomy. It was just for sleeping anyways, so who needs rooms you can stand up in when the capsule ones are like 30 dollars cheaper ? I have seen capsules on like the travel channel and stuff, but I have never seen them in person, so it was so awesome to get to stay in one !!!!! It was Japanese style bedding again, so cushy mat things on the floor with the beany pillows and blankets on top. Although poor Julie didn't realize that the blankets were under the pillow so she slept the first night without blankets. That would have been a really ghetto place if they didn't even offer us blankets! In each of the capsule rooms there were little locker things since the room key wasn't for our actual room, it was for this. The "doors" to our rooms were little slidey things. But I smooshed all my stuff into it and we headed out to explore Asakusa at night. Everything in Japan closes so early, so we weren't able to do too too much, but it was really cool to get to see a little bit of the city at night. While we were exploring we came across this little restaurant that had gyoza for 100 yen. Those are the potsticker things I've had at a few of the other restaurants we've been to in Japan, and they are my favorite thing I've eaten. I couldn't believe they were so cheap because everywhere else we've been they've been like fo
ur dollars. We didn't really know where we were going most of the time. We just kept going down different side streets and remembering where we turned. Asakusa wasn't as big as some of the other districts in Tokyo we've been to so it wasn't bad. We also found this really awesome market where everything was extremely cheap! The coffee drinks were like 55 cents, which is insane! The other cool part about this market is that a lot of their stuff was Wal- Mart brand. Ya know, the Great Value? It was neat. I don't even think they have wal-marts here, but they get their stuff from the same company. I'm actually surprised they don't have wal-marts here. They have Starbucks on like every other street literally. Insanity. Then we also found a Lawson's that was everything 100 yen. So really cheap food. I packed a lot of peanut butter tortilla sandwiches and granola bars though so I was ok for the most part. That night after we were all finished we found our way back to the hostel and went up to get ready for the night. I think I kind of mentioned earlier that there were public bathrooms again. There was no way I could go like two full days without showering when there was one so readily available, so I just sucked it up and did it. It really wasn't as awkward as I thought it would be at all. Just kind of like eh. I guess I've really experienced the full Japan now. Sleeping on floor mats, a capsule, and public bathrooms. I slept so comfortably that night. Didn't even mind the thin floor mat.The next morning we got up at like eight, which is crazy sleeping in for us, and it was much needed. After we got ready we rented a locker at the hostel for 200 yen for the whole day, which is like nothing. We can 'T keep the stuff in the capsule during the day even if you are staying multiple days because you re check in every day and pay per night. So it wasn't that bad though. I felt safer with the locker anyways. So after we did that we all headed out to see everything in Asakusa. We went to the Sensoji Temple which is the oldest temple in Tokyo, and the Asakusajinja Shrine, which is
another shrine lol. The cool thing about this place is that we have passed by it before when we went on one of our field trips and didn't know we'd get a chance to go back and actually see everything. On the way to the temple is Nakamise street, which is this really famous huge shopping street that is really old. It has tons of like traditional stuff plus lots of new crap and it leads right up to the shrine. We really enjoyed that. At the temple we both paid 100 yen and got our fortunes. How we did it was shake this like little round box thing and then a stick would come out with the number of the box you were supposed to open. After you open the box you take out one of the sheets of paper and that is your fortune. Julie got a bad fortune, which was really funny, and I got a good fortune. Mine said, "bad fortune in the past will change to be ggood, just like the crescent grows to be full , Your luck will grow to be good to the full. From the palace in the clouds, wealth and treasure will come to you. Make haste in doing whatever you want. The sooner the better. * Your wish will be realized. You should be righteous. * The person you are waiting for will come soon. "So idk. Thought it was cool. Although some of the translation is a little bit off, which it always seems to be lol. I didn't know they actually had like legit bad fortunes lol. Poor Julie. After we did that we got off at the Shinagawa station on the metro and decided to walk around the Shiodome area. That area has a ton of huge skyscrapers including the Shiodome Tower, Shiodome Media Tower, Tokyo Shiodome Building. It was odd that they all had basically the same name though. But they were extremely impressive skyscrapers and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing them. After that we just kept walking and walking as we headed towards the station that I had written down which placed us near our theater to see the Lion King. It was a pretty far walk, but saved us quite a bit on traveling fare
and we got to see a lot of the city we hadn't seen before, so that was really cool. Finally we found the station like an hour and a half later. It was called Hamamatsucho station. We followed the directions I printed offline and found our theater! It was called the Four Seasons Shiki Theater, and our musical was in the Spring Theater. We walked up and knew we were heading to the right place because we could see the theater with a large picture of a lion on the side . After we picked up our tickets we went out exploring a little more and found this like port thing called Takeshiba Pier. It had this huge mast thing attached to the ground, so when you are in the distance it looks like a huge ship. We felt kind of duped, but the view of the city from the pier was awesome. We still had about an hour before we needed to meet up with Frankie and get to our seats, so we ended up falling asleep on a bench. It was a really relaxing thing since we had been walking for the entire day. Around four forty we headed back to the theater and found Frankie and took our seats. We were literally in the very last row in the entire theater in the balcony, but hey we paid thirty dollars so whatever. The only thing a
bout the seats that sucked just a little bit was when the Pride Rock thing got too high it cut off just the top of the people's heads. But it was still a great view. I absolutely loved it. I was incredibly impressed with the woman who played Rafiki and stuff. I wasn't bothered at all that the people playing the characters didn't have the traditional African sound or look. (That was something Frankie was worried about.) It was just plain awesome. Most of the characters had bomb voices, and the little kid who played cimba was awesome! It was interesting that they pronounced his name Shimba though instead of Cimba. Everything else was basically the same sounding. I loved hearing all my favorite Lion King songs in Japanese and recognizing what was going on even though I couldn't understand it. The costuming was so incredible. I've never seen the Lion King on stage before, so it was a real treat. Unfortunately, like at Cats, none of their merchandise was in Kangi so I didn't get a shirt that I could have gotten at any production of the Lion King. I really thought it would be not in English on the merchandise because all the signs and stuff for it weren 't. But oh well. Probably good that I didn't spend any more money considering that I still had the rest of the weekend to go. Oh and of course I got in trouble for taking a picture of the stage. Every single time. Gosh. I am just the least sneaky person ever I guess. But I had taken like four when the lady came up and made me show her my picture and delete it. At least she didn't know I had more than one so I still have them. I wish I could figure out how to make t
he screen dark so It wouldn't light up when I take pictures. After the musical was over we walked to rainbow bridge, which is a suspension bridge that connects Odaiba and Shinbaura. It was absolutely beautiful all lit up and stuff. In fact the entire city was just absolutely gorgeous! I loved walking through at night. After that we walked to the Tokyo Tower at night and ended up passing the Zojiji Temple to an ending festival. There were lanterns everywhere and 
it was awesome. The Tokyo Tower is beautiful at night also, and the pictures with the temple in the background are awesome. After we were done we headed back to Asakusa to find some food, but I was tired so after we all checked in Frankie and Julie went to dinner and I just went to the market we had been to the day before to get something small to eat and go to bed. At the market I got a pack of three doughnuts for 88 cents. The doughnuts here are awesome. Very different from American doughnuts though. They are less overly sweet and are more bready with a hint of sweet. It is perfect. Just like the Apple Tea I've had is just the right amount of sweet, but not too overly sweet. Not that I don't enjoy my sweets. I just think they should be done tactfully sometimes like this was.We got up the next morning at like seven thirty and left around eight. We headed right to Shibuya to see the sights there and then to head to Harajuku to see stuff and go shopping. We figured it was ok to shop as much as we did because it would be our last big like shopping weekend since the next two weekends (which are our last ones) we are traveling and going further and don't want to carry stuff. In Shibuya right after you get off the train there is the Shibuya dog, which
ended up being a lot smaller than we thought it would be. A little bit lame. But then there is the huge Times Squareish crossing where people are just hustling across the street and all the billboards and stuff in the background. Very cool. We went up to the second floor of the Starbucks that was on that street and took pictures of the crossing. After that we started heading towards the Meiji Jingu shrine and Yoyogi park, which is right next to Harajuku. We ended up going the wrong way just a little and ended up on the opposite side of Takeshita Dori street that we wanted, but it wasn't that big of a deal. Takeshita Dori is the main street of Harajuku that we had been down before with all the shopping and the people in ridiculous clothes and such. It is just awesome in general. Right before we got there we found Forever 21 and H & M Japan style. It was awesome. Forever 21 was just ok, but H & M had some really awesome things. I got two dresses and an awesome jacket for like 2200 yen. Bomb! One of the dresses I got Frankie especially approved of because it looks just awesome. It is going to look so hot with the black heels I got the other day. Then we hit the actual Takeshita Dori street and Julie and I just went a little nuts. I mean what girl doesn't like a shopping spree. Even if it is a controlled and limited one. I quite a bit more, but it is all good stuff. We visited the 100 yen store along the street because it is the biggest one in Tokyo. It was like three floors and it had tons of costumes and more stuff than has been at the other ones. Although I have done most of my souvenir shopping so I didn 'T have to get that much. I did find this awesome like feather mask thing that I will use if the music department actually does end up having a masquerade like we've been talking about. Definitely planning on helping to plan that one. But The 390 and 500 yen stores we found were also super awesome. At one of the stores I got my brother an awesome shirt that I hope he will appreciate. Oh translations. Some of them are just so comical. I don't know why it is the style here to have everything on clothing written in English. Just like how in their J-Pop songs the artists throw in random English words or phrases. It is just the hip thing to do here. Frankie ended up peacing out part way through and going home, but Julie and I just stayed and stayed. Around two we headed to the shrine, which was in Yoyogi park area. The shrine was pretty cool, and it was surrounded b
y thousands and thousands of trees. The best part about this shrine in particular is that on Sundays traditional weddings are held there. We watched one for a little while and got to snap some pictures of it. I thought it was absolutely beautiful and awesome. Once we finished with everything in Harajuku we headed back to the station and caught the train to Yokohama. That night in Yokohama there was an intense fireworks festival called the Kanagawa Shimbun Fireworks Festival. We didn't exactly know where to go since I ended up losing the piece of paper that I had everything written down in sometime during the day. Or it just got eaten by my backpack, which is entirely possible. I fit everything I had bought throughout the weekend into my absolutely massive backpack, and it looked like the backpack the backpackers we had seen during the weekend had been carrying around. Like all intense like. I think it probably weighed more than I do, or at least as much as a couple of my kids. Anyways, we didn't know where we were going so once we got off in Yokohama we just followed all the people in Kimonos and ended up taking the Minomatinori subway to Rinku Park, which is where everyone was heading to watch them. It was really cool because it was right next to the bay in Yokohama and very close to the fireworks. We got there around four thirty and it was already extremely crowded. (The show didn't start until sevenish) I ended up leaving Julie at our spot a couple of times and trying to find water . There were people selling it for like four dollars amongst all the store things that were set up, but I tried to find a vending machine instead. Sadly everything except the lame stuff was all sold out so I had to just buy a couple of little drinks. As I was walking to find the drinks I ended up walking into the actual park, (we were just on the outskirts) and there were literally millions of people all over the place. I've never seen it this crowded. It is so different from American like fireworks shows on the 4th. Instead of blankets, everyone brings tarps to sit on, which I guess is actually smarter because you won't get it like dirty. But people came super early to tape off spots and then just left them there til the show started. That would not fly in the USA. If you are reserving a spot for people there better be someone there watching it, or outta luck. Anyways after trying to find Randi for a while and giving up we just sat and ended up watching the aweso
me fireworks from our view. It was the most impressive fireworks show I have ever seen by far. They like would do a ten minute round of fireworks, pause, reload, and then set off even more. It was intense! Each round got better and better. Like holy crap, I can't even describe it. Sadly my camera died like two seconds into the fireworks show so Julie took like eight thousand pictures. She just held her camera beside her and kept snapping . So she has like over a thousand pictures on her memory card right now lol. I have never seen purple fireworks either besides this. I can't even describe most of it. Although of course in Japan style there were even cute fireworks. Like they made smiley faces and hearts and other cutesy things ha ha. The best thing was probably the crowd's reactions. They were all literally oohing and aweing during the entire show. It was fricken adorable! The other amazing part was that the boom from the fireworks that were really loud not only hurt my ears, But it echoed from behind us on the buildings. How cool is that. There were two booms for the bigger fireworks. The boom from the explosion, and then the boom from it bouncing back off the tall skyscrapers! We ended up leaving like right before the last round because all of Yokohama and more were there watching the fireworks and the trains were going to be crazy. As we were running back to the station we could see the city at night. It was much more lit up even than Tokyo was the night before, Probably because there were so many people in their apartments and stuff watching the fireworks. The city was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen in my life. Amazing!! !!! W e got to the station when many other people did, but before the biggest rush of people, so although we had to stand on the trains at least we actually got on them. We made it back to the Sagamino station finally and as we were walking back to our base there was another festival going on in the park we were passing by. Although definitely did not look as cool as the firework festival was. My back hurt so incredibly bad on that walk back. Can't even describe it. Ah. I had so much fun this weekend, Although I can't believe I only have two weekends left before I leave. Sad. I love Camp Adventure / Japan!
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