Back to Tokyo

Saturday, Brad arrived in Japan for a visit. I went early so that I could make the most of the trip. I visited the Tokyo Temple and wandered around a few of the districts. Here are some highlights (I also must say that I was there with my friend Jon).

Suddenly Santa! You could say that I am a great ambassador for western culture to these kids. I took a minorly creepy photo of me dressed as Santa...they didn't appear to be as excited as I thought they should have been. I guess they are desensitized to big white guys now.  

 Best part of the Tokyo Temple? A&W Root Beer vending machine.

 I also visited the World's Smallest (I assume) LDS bookstore! It is roughly the size of my bedroom. 

I felt like Godzilla walking around. I knocked at least 7 things over. 

 We ate some wings from a little shack. They were delicious and relatively expensive. Those are two good words to describe Tokyo.

We found ourselves in the middle of a big shopping district in Ueno. I was in the mood to buy some useless garbage.

 Having only visited Asian markets and Asian parts of cities before coming to Japan, I felt like this was a good depiction of "real Asia."

 I think this is a Pachinko parlor. I just liked it because it had pirates on the top!

 Ah...the useless crap I bought. See that around my neck? That is bling. Bling is super cool jewlery that sets you apart from the general population by the sheer gawdyness and weight. It was a tossup between a rhinestone microphone and a rhinestone giant U.S. quarter. I went with the mic for Karaoke purposes in the future. You better believe I wore it around Tokyo.

On to the better item. You may notice that I look pretty awesome and fearsome in this picture. That is because I have what looks like a samurai sword on my back. Yeah. I bought what looks like a samurai sword. However, it is not a samurai sword. It is a SAMURAI UMBRELLA! I had seen these on the internet, but this was fairly cheap. I bought it as soon as I saw it. It has a holder that makes it sling over your shoulder so it looks like you are a samurai warrior. The nice man who sold it to me also showed me that when the top gets wet (as it would when it rains), all of the symbols of the samurai clans become visible. So impossibly cool. 

 After that, we went to Akihabara, which is a district known for technology and electronics. 

The buildings are tall and interesting.  

... 

 I'm a rebel who takes pictures while crossing the street. 

 This is the largest electronics store in the world.

After that, I went to pick up Brad from the airport. It was a long day for us both, but we made it back. The next afternoon we went up to the Paul Rusch place to see the surroundings and get some ice cream. Here you can see the mountains and Fuji in the background. 

 You can't really tell, but it was cold. 

We stuck our feet in the foot onsen (hot spring). It was really, really hot. I guess I don't know what I expected... All of the Japanese folks thought it was quite entertaining to see two giant white dudes chillin' in the footbath.