Japan Day 1-2

• I know you all wanted to hear about my Japan adventure but I have been so busy every since my return I hardly had a chance to unpack. In fact, my carry on bag is still sitting in the living room area much to Tokey Pokey’s delight; jump on the bag, jump off the bag, jump on the bag, jump off the bag etc. Although it has been a while, I will try my best to remember the events that will interest you all most. I’ll leave the mushy romantic stuff to a minimum.
• So before I went to Japan I needed to get the rail pass. Apparently, you can not buy the Japan Rail Pass in Japan; it needs to be purchased through a travel agency or through JAL before you get there. So Lucas got his from a travel agency in the US and I tried calling JAL to get mine. They took down my flight information and said ‘yes’ then hung up. I had no idea what that meant. So I figured I would just figure it out at the airport. Well I went to the airport and the first person I talked to had no idea that JAL sold rail passes, not a promising start. She then asked her manager, who also had no clue. I asked if there was anyone else around that I could speak to and she pointed to a reservation desk. I walked over there and said “Rail Pass” and he pulled up a ticket with my name on it. Oh thank goodness! He had it all ready to go. So who ever I gave my info to over the phone did do something with it. I was happy to see things were going my way after all, until I hit a road block, of course! I pulled out Korean won to pay for the ticket and he said, “No, only Japanese yen or U.S. dollar.” What? I am still in Korea correct?!?! I had to take out more money from the ATM and exchange it to yen so I could get my rail pass. Long story short, I finally got the stupid pass. Which was a good thing because Lucas and I took the trains all over Japan. We went from Tokyo to Kyoto to Osaka and back again.
• Our first full day in Tokyo we went to a beautiful cherry blossom garden. I couldn’t believe our luck. These trees bloom for 2 weeks out of the year and we were there to witness it. I really can’t describe how beautiful it was. But I got some amazing photos to prove it. I really wanted to paint a picture of it though. There were so many people in the park painting.
That first day we also went to an electrons mega mall. But what I liked best was going to the fish market and beer museum. We went to the Tsukji Fish Market and found ourselves a great little shop to have sushi at. Freshest sushi I have ever had. Oh and for those of you who don’t know yet, I did start eating fish so I truly could enjoy the sushi.
After a sushi lunch, we went to the Yebisu Beer Museum. It wasn’t much of a museum although it had a few cool items like an old music box and some paintings of Japanese flappers. The good part was getting draft Yebisu beers.
• Day 2 we took the bullet rain from Tokyo to Osaka. It is unbelievably expensive! It was close to 100$ one way, for a 3 hour train trip. But it was the bullet train so I guess 3 hours was making good time compared to other trains we could have taken. Since we already bought our rail passes, we already paid for using as many trains as we wanted to for 7 days.
In Osaka we walked around a mega mall and went to a fish market as well. I saw the world’s largest edamame beans at that market! They were the size of a giants thumbs!!!
Lucas also went to and onsen, which is a bathhouse, at our hotel. I couldn’t go because I had tattoos, the sign said that I must refrain from, “drunkenness and tattooed.” So I just sat with a beer in a bubble bath and read my book in the tub while Lucas was making new friends. You need to ask him to tell that story.