Sushi, Buddhas, and Japanese School Girls

Our last two days in Tokyo FLEW by...but they were great!

On Monday morning we woke up early, ate a delicious American/European breakfast at our hotel (pretty relieved to not eat a Japanese breakfast again), and prepared for a day of sightseeing.

The first place we visited was Asakusa, where the Senso-Ji temple is. After the first gate of the temple is a long street with vendors selling all kinds of Japanese tourist souvenirs! Of course, Diana and I loved this street and we took our time looking at all the adorable things you could buy. We purchased some items of course! Dad waited for us in front of the temple while we shopped.

The tourist street on the way to the temple:


In normal Allen style, he made some new friends while waiting for us, four Japanese school girls who wanted to practice some of their English. They were there on a school trip, "traveling school".

More of the temple:

It is always interesting to me how there are these temples and old historic places in the middle of a huge city, hidden by sky scrapers, malls, and restaurants. If you didn't know to look for them, they would be hard to just run into.

After the temple, we decided to do something a little more modern and check out The Ginza, the major shopping area in Tokyo. From Prada to H&M, they had just about everything expensive, stylish, hip, and classic you could imagine when it comes to fashion and accessories.

Mom and dad at the major cross streets of The Ginza:

Mom and Dad headed home, and Diana and spent an hour or so more looking around...we didn't buy anything though. As mom would say, we had a successful shopping trip...more like a bad shopping trip in my mind!

That night we decided it was time to eat some REAL Japanese sushi. We went to a small sushi restaurant in the building across from our hotel. It was really yummy, and now we can say we ate at a sushi bar in Japan!

Sushi bar:

On our last day in Japan, we checked with our trusty concierge Ben to be sure we had seen the no brainer sights in Japan, and decided to head out of the city to Kamakura (the name of the sushi restaurant in Los Gatos). It's a small beach town with a lot of history...aka lots of temples and old stuff.

Our first stop was to see the Kotokuin Daibutsu (Great Buddha).

The Great Buddha with the Henderson/Bocskai family:

We were not the only toursits there! There were a number of younger children there with their schools. Three little girls came up and asked me to sign a piece of paper for them. I think that maybe it was a school assignment of some type - Find a white person, introduce yourself, and have them sign your book. Haha. I felt special :) One of the girls was even named Sara!

My fan club (hehe):

After the big Buddha we found another temple, the Hase-dera temple. They had lots of Buddhas on display at this temple and a pretty garden. They also had a creepy cave you could walk through. In one part of the cave, you could buy a little Buddha figure, and it looked like you were supposed to leave it in the cave because there were hundreds of little Buddhas in the cave. Im not buying a cute little Buddha and LEAVING it somewhere. That's silly ;)

Diana and I at the entrance of the temple:

Koi fishies in the garden:

We were tired, so it was time to go back to our hotel....but we were not the only ones tired!

Four sleepy boys on the train:

These boys provided me with a lot of entertainment on the ride home, so much that I went into one of my famous laugh fits. I was giggling, crying, and laughing uncontrollably for a really long time. The boy with the blue baseball hat could not stay awake for the life of him. He was holding his pencil and his homework in his hand but he kept dropping them and falling over on his friends next to him. The one of the far left kept falling asleep on stragers and watching their recction to him was a crack up. It was pretty darn hilarious, especially because the boy in between the two of them was SO irritated at both them sleeping and undoubtedly my histeric laughter at his friends. But it was a cleansing laugh, I love laughing like that!

After some rest we went to the hotel bar for free cocktails!

Me!

Then it was time for our last dinner in Japan....Italian food!! It was rather yummy.

At the restaurant:

Tomorrow morning we head off to Shanghai, China where Per will meet us for a weekend there!