Japan

Days 1 & 2 (28 1/2 hours long)

We woke up at 3am on Monday morning feeling oddly refreshed. We went to bed around 8pm. We expected to be tired, but it wasn't nearly as bad as we thought it would be. My dad got to our house by 3:45am, and ended up waiting around for 30 minutes for us to finish everything before we left for the Airport.

We got to Philly with plenty of time to spare. There were only around a dozen people waiting in front of us for security, so we were able to rush through in a couple minutes. The TSA agent at the gate even practiced her Japanese on Manami. She seemed happy about that.

As we sat around waiting for the plane for Chicago, we sat next to a crazy Brazilian girl who was around 25 years old. She was telling me all about how Horseshoe crabs have been copyrighted because they can cure numerous forms of cancer due to the magnesium their blood.. yeah, she was nutty. She also said how her mom had a higher up job in the US government, and was secretly buying a house in Argentina because she "knew things and didn't want to be here when they happened."

Aside from that, we met this really nice United Airlines representative who singled us out because of Natsumi and my shaved head. He's a fellow shaved head guy. He wrote on our tickets that it was someone's birthday so that we got to board the plane before anyone else. He also put our 2 carry on bags into our seats a few minutes before the plane was able to be boarded. On top of that, they gave us a free upgrade to Economy Plus (the leg room of business), and finally allowed Natsumi to sit in the cockpit with the pilots. She really seemed to enjoy it, and it was my first time seeing the cockpit of a newer plane.

The flight to Chicago was quick enough. We were pretty hungry when we arrived, so we ate at this Cuban/Mexican (I'm not sure which) restaurant which was the #1 choice for food at O'Hare airport. The food was delicious. Lots of guacamole.

When we boarded our flight to Narita (Tokyo Airport), we were back in economy, but we had a bulkhead seat. What that means is there was a wall in front of us, instead of another seat. As a result, you're given quite a bit extra leg room. That was nice. I wasn't looking forward to taking a 13 hour flight with cramped legs. We also had all 4 seats in the center row. This plane (777) had a 3 - 4 - 2 layout. It was great, as it allowed Natsumi to lay down over 2 seats while Manami and I sat in the other 2.

This flight was long and unbelievably boring. The seats had an AC plugin and tons of free movies on their built in video screens. I ended up reading a lot (100 pages in this Mike Tyson book), watching a really bad movie, playing on my phone and the handheld PlayStation. Manami and Natsumi watched Despicable Me about 3 times and tried to sleep. Natsumi really didn't want to sleep this flight, but we were able to get her down for around 3-4 hours total.

This flight, while extremely boring, was fairly uneventful until around the last hour and a half. We were experiencing some turbulence and Natsumi wanted to be held. I picked her up no problem, and she seemed to be doing fine. Then a couple of minutes later, she turned her head and threw up down my entire right side. Shirt was only hit a little. It was mostly on my arm and leg. This was extremely liquid vomit. and soaked right into my shorts.

I ran to the restroom to clean off using the crappy in flight sinks. It worked for the most part, but my pants were soaking wet with no way to dry them. As a result, I went back to my seat in my t-shirt and underwear. The stewardess understood Natsumi getting sick, but still yelled at me for a possible disturbance. I personally didn't hear any complaints, but it's possible. I remained pantsless the remainder of the flight, before finally putting them on again after we landed. They were still very damp, but it was tolerable.

I guess a combination of the turbulence and Natsumi getting sick caused Manami to get sick as well. She was doing quite well, and no longer seems nervous on the plane. I remember how much she hated flying when we first met. Anyway, the rest of the flight was easy. We landed and went through customs.
To explain the time zone difference, the 13 hour flight took 26 hours. Yes, we're only flying for 13 hours, but we land 26 hours later (Japan is 13 hours ahead of us). We arrived around 2pm on Tuesday.

Then we took a 1 hour train ride from Narita airport to Tokyo station. From there, it was a 3 hour bullet train ride to Kyoto station. This ride was mostly a blur as we were in and out of consciousness during the ride. Our hotel is connected to Kyoto station, and Natsumi is quite enjoying watching the bullet trains fly past from our room. That said, our room is completely quiet. I guess they have strong sound deadening around here, because we don't even hear a whisper from the trains that roll past all day long when they're all of 100 feet away without any obstructions between us and them.

Anyway, finally at the hotel so it was time to go to bed. Everyone was exhausted, so we all went right to sleep around 8:30pm.

Click on the tiny pictures to make them bigger.
Here is Natsumi in the cockpit.
This is an old picture of Kyoto station. I didn't take any good ones this trip, so I'm just showing this one instead.

We started this morning by waking up at 12:30am (JPN). Natsumi just did not want to sleep, and she didn't want us to either. We managed to fight her off until around 2am, but couldn't last any longer so we took a walk to 7 & i Holdings (Japan's version of 7-11)We picked up a bunch of snacks and drinks to much on. Rice balls, single packaged Belgian Waffle's. Popcorn... Everything was junk food, but it's a quick and cheapish way to put something in our belly. After walking back to the hotel and eating it all, we were tired again, so back to bed. Fortunately, she slept until around 7:30am this time. Now our day could officially begin.

We took a bus to the Thousand Steps Temple. It's a part of the really historic part of Kyoto, and it's a gorgeous temple. We actually visited the place 5 years ago on my first trip to Kyoto. A lot has changed in the fact that now lots of areas are blocked off that previously were not. "Do Not Cross" lines all over the place. They were in the middle of redoing a lot of the ground around the Temple to prevent landslides. There were a lot of bulldozers and such working on shaping the hills again.

After we left the temple area, we started walking through the city itself. It's clean and nice, just the way I remembered it. We stopped and got delicious soft serve ice cream from a store. This stuff is different than American flavors. It's very tasty, but also light. It doesn't sit heavily in your stomach the way something like Dairy Queen would. Anyway, I had vanilla, Manami had Green tea, and Natsumi shared ours.

We were feeling tired again, so we went back to the hotel for a nap. We slept a while though, waking up some 3-4 hours later. Manami has a favorite type of donut, and it's something called Mr. Donut. We walked over to the shop and picked a few up, then took a bus ride over to the Shogun Castle. I read about it on a message board and wanted to check the place out. Natsumi is having all kinds of difficulty staying awake now. As we rode on the bus, we kept trying to jostle her awake. She would open her eyes for a second, then shut them again. Eventually she started to scream. Fortunately, we were off of the bus at the Temple by then, so it was easy to let her scream. It also woke her up.

Also, we noticed that it started getting dark around 5pm out here. It's been a good comfortable temperature (low 80's), but it's pretty humid out. Fortunately, we've had overcast days, so it hasn't been really hot like it could have been if it were sunny.

When we got to the castle, we noticed that it was closed for the day. We ended up getting there around 15 minutes after the doors shut. Oh well. It was also time to eat the donuts in question, so we found a park bench and sat down. The donuts were good, as was the Melon soda that we bought. But there were huge mosquitos flying around that kept attacking Manami and Natsumi. That became motivation for us to head back to our hotel for the time being.

Shortly there after, we met up with Manami's aunt. We're going to have dinner with that family tonight, but her Aunt was the first one to arrive. She's fascinated with Natsumi. Lots of "Kawaii" (cute!) is heard. We make our way to Donguri for dinner. It's a Japanese Pancake restaurant, but this isn't a breakfast style pancake. Shortly after sitting down, Manami's uncle and 2 cousins arrive.

The Donguri place serves courses of food. You sit around a table with a large cooking surface in the middle to cook the things you're eating. The first course was a noodle with kimchi seasoning. Kimchi is a hot (spicy) korean vegetable. The noodles were slightly spicy and tasted great. Second course came out as a beef and rice combination It tasted a lot like ribs, and we had to cut the meat apart with our hot plate scraper things. Third course was some of the pancakes in question. They brought out 4 different ones. One had cheese (looked like a small personal pizza), one was breaded, and others had spinach and other vegetables. We each had parts of all of them, and it was good. Then the final course were more of the spicy noodles from the first course again. Great way to finish the meal.

We figured that was it for the night, but then Manami's uncle asked if we wanted to go out to a bar next. I wasn't sure, as I was already 3 beers deep (Suntory), but we decided to join anyway. It was another restaurant though. Not just a bar. They took us upstairs to sit at the table. The uncle and I each enjoyed some fine Sake (I've never been a Sake person, but this stuff was delicious). The first is Ju-yon-dai, which had the taste of pears. This stuff is costs around $100 per bottle, so it's a super premium. It's from the Yamagata area, which is where Manami's grandparents are from. We're actually headed over there when we leave here in 2 days. The other type of Sake we had is Souku, which is from Kyoto (where we're at right now). It was also good. Very smooth, but not as sweet as the Yamagata stuff. That said, I can't complain.

We also had a little ice cream while we had the drinks and had a fun time talking about nonsense. Her uncle is actually a Volley Ball coach at the local highschool, and I talked to him about an Anime that focuses on it. He watches it also, so we talked about it a bit.

When we finally made it back to our hotel, I showered after Manami and Natsumi were finished. It was finally around 12:15am when I went to bed.

Click on the smaller images to make them larger.
Here's a picture of the start of the Thousand Steps temple thing in Kyoto. Unfortunately, I don't know the real name of the place.

Here's a shot of Natsumi enjoying Mister Donut after we forced her to wake up.

This is the first part of our meal at Donguri.