The Fish Ate My Feet

Warning, this post contains several explicit photos of my, and others feet. If you have a disliking or repulsion to feet, I recommend skipping this post.

Anyway, this post is about last Sunday, the last day of the Buddha's Birthday 3 day weekend, which was awesome. On Sunday I made the trip to Seoul to meet with Megan and her sister, Becky, to do something called Dr. Fish. There aren't really any doctors involved, but there are definitely fish. You basically put your feet in a fish tank for 15 minutes to allow a bunch of little fish to eat the dead skin off of your feet. The same fish that have eaten dead skin from countless other's feet. But it's best to not think about that.

So this thing was actually really cheap, it only cost 2000 won for the 15 minutes, although you have to buy a coffee or tea along with that. The first thing that happens is shoe and sock removal, and then a girl washes your feet in a sink. Who would want to have her job? Anybody?

Here is what the fish tank looks like:

So we started the clock and dunked our feet. One of the best parts of the experience is just seeing peoples faces and reactions to the fish. Here's Megan, surprisingly restrained:

Becky was a little bit more uneasy about it:

And me:

Let's just say that it really tickles and is super off-putting at first. It took me about 8 minutes to get used to it, but then the last 7 minutes I was able to sit back and enjoy the experience. Now here's some pictures of my feet:

The fish found a nice spot on the inside of my right ankle:

Why not, one more picture of my feet:
Afterward, my feet did actually feel really good and I was happy that I did it. Who knows, maybe I'll go back.

New Years Day

This post is going to be short, but sweet. Well, short at least. New Years Day was one of recovery, we only ventured out to visit one sight while Kelsey stayed in and watched Back to the Future.

We figure since we were in Japan, why not do what the Japanese do? There's some kind of popular phrase about Rome like that. We went to check out the Sensoji Temple in Asakusa and found out that this really is what all the Japanese are doing.

The area we visited is called Asakusa, a pretty cool name which also ends in USA. It is home to a large Japanese brewery called Asahi. I found out later that this picture I had taken is of the Asahi headquarters, where the building on the left (slightly obstructed) is made to look like a mug of frosty ale. There's also a giant yellow blob.

So we made it to the area of the temple and it turned out a few hundred thousand people also wanted to visit that day.

The direct line for the temple was super long. Like three blocks down the row of souvenier shops and then another block or two. PACKED. We snuck down a side alleyway to try to get a peek and found sort of a shortcut to the temple. We got lucky and the traffic controllers let people from the sides in across the main route to go to the shops. We went in there, ducked inside of a shop, and joined the main route. We weren't going inside the temple anyway, so it wasn't that bad of a thing to do. This is a view of the shop alley:

This is one of the impressive temple buildings, but I don't think it's the main one. How's that for informative?

A dog we met along the way:

This was one of my favorites, this 5 story pagoda. Impressive:

We walked up near the temple, then went off to the side because we weren't sure what we would do once inside the temple. It was nice that all along the sides were stands with great Japanese food. By great Japanese food I mean all of the chocolate bananas you could ever want.

Here's one of the non-chocolate banana food stands:

This is a coy pond that I enjoyed:

Well, like I said, this one post is nice and short. I expect the one tomorrow to be more exciting since we went to Tokyo National Museum and the Edo Tokyo Museum. I took about 200 pictures that day so check back tomorrow.