Sayonara Japan

Here we are finally, for they last day of my family's trip to Japan. I managed to milk it for about 10 blog posts, so I'm definitely happy. It was a great vacation, so there's that, too.

The last day for me was rounding up a few odds and ends. The rest of my family left two days later, but I still needed find some souveniers to spend the rest of the yen I had in my pocket. We also never got a chance to see any of the crazy dressing Harajuku girls, so the family trotted out to Harajuku because it's also home to an Oriental Bazaar where souveniers could be had.

Unfortunately, being New Years, the Oriental Bazaar was not open, and once again none of the Harajuku girls were out. This was a pretty big bummer, but we found a few things to do. First we went to check out a place called Meiji Jingu in Harajuku which is a shrine to emporer Meiji. Since it was New Years, this place was ridiculously crowded. Ahem, see below.

We walked along with the crowd close to the temple, then decided to turn back again since we weren't sure what to do when we actually got to the temple and it would have taken forever. This is a wall of lanterns we saw along the way, I'm not really sure what their meaning is though.

This place was home to a souvenier shop, which we did check out. This was my jackpot because they had just about everything I wanted as far as gifts from Japan go. I managed to blow most of the rest of my wad of cash at the place. Heading back to the subway, we ran into this group of four girls in traditional Japanese outfits. They were super nice.

We had our last family meal together for at least 6 months at this really good okonomiyaki restaurant I'll talk more about in a future food post. Here's a photo of the fam anyway:

Since we were there in Harajuku, which has a ridiculous concentration of ice cream crepe stands, we decided to see what the big deal was about.

In short, I recommend. Mine was something filled with custard, chocolate, bananas, and whipped cream. Kelsey enjoyed her's, too:

That was the end for me as we headed off to the subway station to say goodbye. A Japanese girl nicely took this photo of the family:

A quick goodbye to limit tears, and I was on my way out of Japan.

My trip back was a bit ridiculous, I got to the airport just in time even though I arrived two hours early. It was a big travel day and there was a big pileup at the check in counter. I made it to my plane about half an hour before it took off, so that was OK. I made it to the Korean airport where I realized that I had forgotten my Korean ID card, so I was really nervous about making it through immigration. This ended up not being a deal at all, so that was OK, too.

I next took the subway to the bus station where the last bus to my town had left about an hour before I got there. This meant I was going to spend the night in a spa under the bus terminal. I took a shower there, which was nice, but the sleeping room was like torture. It was about 90 degrees in there so I was sweating and these guys kept making a bunch of noise. They kept sighing in their sleep like madmen everytime I was close to sleeping, so I didn't sleep a lot. I caught the 6:30 a.m. bus to my town, which was even worse than the spa. It was really really hot on the bus, and due to the amount of snow falling the trip took 3 and a quarter hours as opposed to the 1:30 it is supposed to take. Just torture. It was nice to be home, anyway.

Stay tuned for my last two posts about Japan. One will be about the souveniers I bough and another about the food.

A Japanese New Years Eve

Here we were, New Years Eve, in Tokyo, Japan. Most guidebooks and Japanese tourism experts recommend to travel to Japan pretty much anytime EXCEPT New Years. The reason for this is that New Years in Japan is like Christmas in the States. Everybody is traveling and visiting family, and nothing is open. So yeah, this was the worst time to go to Japan, but it was our only option.

Our New Years Eve started with a trip to Harajuku. This is a place known for trendy clothes shopping and teens that dress in a completely outlandish mismatched style. This is what we were looking for, some of these Harajuku girls, but they didn't seem to come out at all on New Years Eve. There were, however a lot of food stands and a lot of people due to the holiday:

We all treated ourselves to some chocolate bananas, here's Amber and Kelsey obtaining bananas in the background of my delicious white chocolate banana:

There were some really nice side streets with shops and art studios in Harajuku. It was nice to escape the mob of people for a while. Here's Amber, Dave, and Kelsey undernearth a Harajuku archway:

There were some pretty strange, random sightings in Harajuku, including this store display:

For whatever reason there is a store called Condomania in Harajuku:

My dad had to go home due to an oncoming cold, which gave the fish lovers in our family a chance to get some sushi. There was a great conveyor belt sushi shop in Harajuku which was one of the highlights. This restaurant is set up like a bar, except the bar is next to a conveyor belt which brings delicious sushi. I'll talk more about this in an upcoming post devoted to food in Japan.

Harajuku also has a primary shopping street. As you can see, it was really, really ridiculous, so we didn't end up going into any shops. They were all open, though, so it was nice to know that we could have gone. This place which houses an oriental bazaar was closed the entire New Year Holiday, so I think I missed out on some prime souvenier opportunities.

The day was finished in Harajuku and we went back to rest before a New Years Eve celebration. My parents stayed at home and celebrated by resting their feet for a night, but Amber, Dave, Kelsey, and I went out to Rippongi with our Australian friends. Rippongi is home to Tokyo Tower, this giant orange and white tower which held one of the larger celebrations that night.
We made it to the subway stop in Rippongi about ten minutes before midnight, so we didn't have a long time to stake out a good setting. We stopped in front of this large temple area that filled, so we couldn't have gotten in very easily. It left us a good view of the tower, which was nice.

There was a large countdown which we couldn't understand because it was in Japanese, and then at the stroke of midnight everybody in the temple released a white balloon with a New Years wish tied to it. It was a great sight, but didn't show up well on camera.
I did get at least one nice shot in my first photos of 2010:

So that was the end of an entire decade, the zeros or oughts or whatever. Let's hope that the tens are just as great or better. Happy New Year.