Sooo... Japan!

So Favorite and I have been back from Japan for a while so I figured it was probably about time I posted pictures. This is going to be a long post so sit back and relax.

I met Favorite in San Francisco the night before our flight to Japan. The day of we got to the airport very early (there was no one at the international flights desk yet) and so we spend a huge amount of time waiting around. Then of course we spent another 12 hours on the flight. By the time we arrived in the Narita airport we had been awake about 18 hours ( we refused to sleep on the plane because we wanted to be able to sleep that night). We then spent another hour or so figuring out what train would take us toward our hotel and then another two hours on that train. When we finally stepped foot onto the streets of the Shinjuku area of Tokyo we were completely spent. AND we had no idea how to get to our hotel. After some wandering around Favorite saved us by combining some sweet map skills with some sweet police-officer-asking-skills to get us to the hotel. Dragging a huge suitcase around streets mobbed with people when you don't know where you are going is not the most fun thing when you've been up for almost 24 hours.

That night we went out and wandered into a nearby restaurant to eat. I tried my best to use our Japanese phrase book to get us some food and tea, but just to confound things more, we had happened into a Chinese food restaurant and I don't think anyone there understood Japanese either. After some pointing and awkward laughing and apologies Favorite and I ended up with some hot oolong tea, some fried noodle dish, and a plate of General Tso's chicken...

Okay, so obviously I could talk for hours telling in great detail the entire story of our trip, but I think I will save some of my words and let some pictures talk a bit.

Left: Shinjuku at night.













Right: Saw sculpture outside convention center.












Left: Giant cuckoo clock.












Right: Crowds in Harajuku on Sunday.










Left: Entrance to Meiji Shrine.











Right: Wedding at Shrine.










Below Left and Right: All dressed up in Harajuku


























Left: Mt Fuji.








Right: Imperial Gardens.













Left: HUGE Tree.












Right: Picnicking at the park







Left: Indoor bento picnic.













Right: Cherry Blossoms














Left: Assorted desserts with green tea.












Right: Outdoor bento picnic







Left: Big Green Dusty Guys.













Right: Assorted mochi.



So we had a great time. We caught the cherry blossom season perfectly, had a ton of delicious foods, and saw all kinds of crazy Japanese things. This post seems so lame to describe the trip. I took 549 pictures and just about all of them are of something different.