blog by luke

Early start today as we had to meet our good friend, Hiroe. Had another walking breakfast, the shops were already out of Peanut Butter pocket sandwiches so went for what I assume is cloud flavour, it was cream, it was amazing.

Cas made a quick stop to buy a drink from one of the new vending machines in Japan, the display is all digital now. It's quite cool, touch screen as you'd expect. Very futuristic.

We arranged to meet at Shinagawa but wasn't here for long, only got a single picture before we met up with the rest of Hiroe's friends, Genta, Mayu and Takako.

As before, Hiroe had been amazing and planned the trip and drawn up a schedule. I love the little doodles.

The service station was like any other, what made it interesting was the views, as it was in the middle of the sea. There are pictures of the views later, but here's a REALLY creepy Rilakkuma. The short stumpy legs were so scary when it moved.

Outside were some creepy looking dog things, Henry looks like he's squashing the poor thing, I went for the surf pose.

The view outside was great but it was damn windy so didn't want to stay out here for long. It wasn't so busy, guess many people don't stay for the view.

On display was part of the drill that made the tunnel, it was quite impressive, can't imagine a drill that big.

And of course, we all knew this was going to happen.

We went back inside to use the Time Capsule Post. Hiroe explained it but I still wasn't sure what it was or why were were writing a post card to ourselves as instructed. Guess we'll find out when we get home.

Back in the car I fell asleep, when I woke up we were in Kamakura. Our first destination was Komachi Dori, I street full of small shops and restaurants. It was a short walk to get there.

Komachi Dori was nice, really busy but it was one of the main tourist destinations so it was to be expected.

There was a sweet shop here with a huge range, looking at the following photo, I now only regret getting one (ice cream flavour) of these snacks, they're amazing.

I also got Pocky Panda (amazing) and a jelly cider drink (amazing).

We were looking to eat lunch here but the restaurants were so small they couldn't seat the 8 of us. Pro-tip, travel in smaller groups when in small parts of Japan.

Eventually, we found a small place on one of the back streets. Hiroe ordered most of the menu for us all to share. It was easier than explaining to me which ones were chicken. Glad she did, tried new things AND had chicken, win win!

The next stop was a temple near to Komachi Dori, I'm guessing the main tourist attraction in the area but I forgot the name.

It was a short walk to the temple, the road leading up had a few food stalls, it was a nice walk.

On the way I stopped to get a grape covered in purple. It was just like a toffee apple, but with a giant grape.

Some more pictures of the walk.

Before the temple was a place to wash your hands. These are common before temples, many people will wash their hands, some will drink the water. All for spirtual reasons, Henry was just thirsty.

Here is a picture of the bottom of the temple.

As the climb was so tiring (not really) we needed a rest at the top. Hiroe got a good photo, one of my favourites so far.

And one of Hiroe and her friends too.

Back in the car and off to our next destination, the giant buddah statue. We got an awesome photo here, spelling out Kamakura. Brings back good memories of doing similar 2 years ago in Fuji.

Saw someone using an iPad to take pictures. It really annoys me when I see people doing this as it's the worst method to take a picture, EVER.

We found some Cherry Blossom, Hiroe was happy.

The next destination was Shichiniga-hama, a place on the coast where you can get a nice view of Mt. Fuji. We timed it well and arrived at sunset, beautiful! Sadly, my camera skills couldn't caputre the moment well.

We went to Bills for pancakes, a pre-dinner snack. The pancakes were lovely, very light and fluffy drowned in maple syrup.

Back in Tokyo for a later dinner, Hiroe took us for a Monja Party, which is named from the type of food, Monjayaki and Okonomiyaki, we had no trouble getting a table here, we got an entire room.

We had to prepare our own food here, it was a lot of fun. We ordered a few bowls to cook, Jas braved the sea food one.

Here are some of the other bowls, try guess which one was chicken.

I wish the following picture looked better than the results of a messy night out but, this is Monjayaki...

Next we made Okonmiyaki which looks better.

We continued the evening with drinks until it got late and we had to go our seperate ways. It was a lovely day, easily the best of the trip. Hiroe is amazing at planning these days, we'll see her again in a few days when she takes us around Yokohama, her hometown.

I wish I had a nice group photo to end the post but they're all on other cameras, i'll edit one in later so for now, my mini haul.

I had to wake up early today to get to Kichijoji, which is the otherside of Tokyo. I have never been there before but amazingly, I managed to get up on time and accidently get on the right train.

I arrived in Kichijoji and exited the station into a shopping mall, this is quite common for Japan.

The weather wasn't so great today, quite windy and a little cold though we still made our way to the local park. Despite it being early April, the cherry blossom wasn't out yet.

Despite the weather and lack of cherry blossom, we had a nice stroll around the park though we passed this miserable looking bear outside a Freshness Burger, clearly not happy with the weather.

The shopping center is outdoor, seperate to the one connected to the station which is an underground mall, more on that later.

My friend decided it would be best to do this shopping center today as it's mostly covered by a glass roof and outdoors. The first place we visited was a sweets and snack store, I managed to find some interesting oreos and other bits, you'll see them all in my swag shot at end of post.

To cut a long post short, we strolled around the shops, there is a small Kiddy Land here and a department store with some neat stuff. Didn't take that many pictures but here's some of the character specific shops.

This is a little bit random, but this character looks like Gizmo, I just wanted to share that with you.

Oh and we found a Moomin Ice Cream shop, those things freak me out. We didn't go in but here it is anyway.

We ended up at Mos Burger for lunch, one of the better fast food burger joints. I went for the Katsu Burger, which was pretty good! We spent ages in here catching up, hardly the place but it started to rain.

The rain didn't seem to stop, this must have been the storm we heard about. We made a break for it and headed to get some after lunch desert at Mister Donut. If you don't know, it's the best donut shop in Japan, stomps all over Krispy Kreme. They had some spring special flavours, so we got two to try.

These were good but the one with the colour sprinkles was much better than the other which had a weird almond-like paste in it that clashed with the other flavours too much.

When we left it was still raining and very windy, we headed into the underground shopping mall by the station. These types of shopping malls are common in stations but they creep me out, not sure why, just feels kinda spooky.

When we got out of the station we headed to Starbucks for a drink, we saw outside that the rain and wind had got much worse and also saw reports on the news. My friend got a call from her mother, trains were being suspended. This never happens in Japan, meaning it was bad.

I've NEVER seen or heard of disruptions on the trains in Japan, the above picture has 59 reports of service disruption, the red is bad. It was silly to try leave now (or maybe wise) so we continued our day. While strolling we noticed some of the shops had closed because of the storm, again, never seen a shop close because of this.

Later in the evening the place seemed to come to life, there was a lot more of the younger crowd here heading for the hidden side alley izukayas and whatever else. It's quite a nice area, don't think we explored it enough but the weather was crap.

We ended up in a random Ramen place for dinner, there were tons to choose from but we went with this place.

This was another vending machine service place, with no english. I ordered a standard pork ramen and my friend got a miso flavoured dish.

The food was delicious, though it might not have been because I'm used to crap London ramen. My friend seemed to enjoy it though which was a good sign. After the ramen we had a check of the trains, still not great so went and sat in a coffee shop.

Ending the post here because the details are boring for you but fun for me. A great day and a lovely chance to catch up with an old friend I haven't seen since my first visit to Japan in 2006.

Oh and here's the haul for today, sweets!