Saturday was a pretty big day! We were going to go see the Imperial Palace, where the Emperor lives, as well as some of downtown Tokyo! One of the things I noticed on our way there and back, was that honestly, Japan is like 1 endless huge city. You know how sometimes, when you're on the highway or even when your driving through a city, it comes and goes right? There is eventually an end and then you see well, something different? It's not like that here!!! Haha it's like an endless city, at least for the hour we were on the train! I've never seen so many continuous big buildings in my life!
Ok well anyway, so we took a train to Tokyo, and walked around the enormous Imperial Gardens that surround the Palace. Unfortunately, we weren't able to actually go inside the palace, but I guess there are a couple days out of the year that they open the gates and allow people in! It would be absolutely INSANEEEE to go on one of those days, but it would be such a cool experience to see what's inside!
This pic really isn't great, but from afar this is what the palace looked like:
Later we got to go see a little of downtown. It wasn't quite as crowded as I imagined, but then again I wasn't on the most popular street, plus it wasn't one of their packed times of the day haha. But anyway, we went inside a Sony museum, and it was kinda cool cuz we got to see some crazy stuff they don't really sell in stores. One thing me and Trev tried out were these um individual 3D movie headsets, which were really really cool!!! Hahaha it definitely reminded me of the Sims, where like, the only video game options to buy for your house are these individual headsets. But these are actually real!!! So that was pretty fun. :)
These are a couple pictures of what downtown looked like :)
These are a couple pictures of what downtown looked like :)
We got to go into other stores, but we were with boys who don't like to shop so we're gonna have to save that bit for another day. I can't wait!!! :)
Sunday was also a pretty big day! Today was the day of the Mikoshi Parade (I probably spelled that wrong, sorry), where the parade starts outside of the Navy Base and ends inside, and we open the doors to Japanese and people without military I.D. It was a lot of fun! And finally, I got to experience the crowds of Japan. It was absolutely PACKED in that little street! Many Japanese people were coming just to order like 5 American pizza's to take back to their homes, cuz as you may know, the food here is quite a bit different than it is back home and the Japanese people love it. Anyways, there were pretty much 2 different types of "floats", if you wanna call it that, and tons of them! So one was sort of like, perhaps an introduction to the shrine, so people from that town or part of town would have instruments and idk it looked and sounded pretty cool haha.
The second type was much more entertaining most times. A ton of people all worked together to hold a big shrine. And let me just warn you now!!! Many of the native Japanese people, for some reason that I cannot seem to grasp, think that wearing pants is very unimportant! Like half of the men in the parade decided to wear a "long shirt" with no pants, only by long I mean doesn't really cover the butt so isn't long at all, and I saw many bottoms that day!! In this particular video, you can see how short some of the shirts were!
And idk if you've seen it yet on facebook, but one of the Japanese people from that um float (idk what to call it haha) came up to me, and my brother and dad, and asked us to hold it! It was pretty cool cuz I didn't see ANY other American's getting to do that! And then we got a little prize for holding it too ;) I was a little sad cuz I was a little too short to put the bar thing on my shoulder, but I pretended and at least held it up with my hand :}
The second type was much more entertaining most times. A ton of people all worked together to hold a big shrine. And let me just warn you now!!! Many of the native Japanese people, for some reason that I cannot seem to grasp, think that wearing pants is very unimportant! Like half of the men in the parade decided to wear a "long shirt" with no pants, only by long I mean doesn't really cover the butt so isn't long at all, and I saw many bottoms that day!! In this particular video, you can see how short some of the shirts were!
And idk if you've seen it yet on facebook, but one of the Japanese people from that um float (idk what to call it haha) came up to me, and my brother and dad, and asked us to hold it! It was pretty cool cuz I didn't see ANY other American's getting to do that! And then we got a little prize for holding it too ;) I was a little sad cuz I was a little too short to put the bar thing on my shoulder, but I pretended and at least held it up with my hand :}
After we were told to go back to the audience, we were given these cute little gifts for participating! This is what they were:
There were a few other things that we saw, like someone dressed as a dragon thing haha. And with a few of the floats, there were people wearing masks that looked a little bit freaky haha.
After the parade was over, we went to go eat lunch, and this really sweet Japanese lady came up to me, not speaking much English, and gave me 4 tickets to some movie!! She was trying to explain to me what they were, but I really didn't understand and I had to ask people for translations later on. But it turns out each ticket was worth 1300 yen, which is idk maybe $16 per ticket?? So it was a pretty pricey gift! But very very nice of her :)
Lastly, the next day on Monday, me and my mom decided to go exploring outside of the base in town on our own for the first time!!! There is something else that I realized about living here- if you find a nice store you like, inside there will always be like, at least 4 stories of more stores! In other words, wherever you go is almost like a mall or something haha cuz so far, I have not once seen a store on its own! But like I said before, Japan is like an endless big city. So many of those big buildings are like stories and stories of like, shopping! So going out in town was really fun :) We found a French store that had reallyyyy good baked goods! AND there's a little Hawaiian bakery called Leonard's with those um cream puff things, I think called Malasadas, that were all over in Hawaii! We found lots of cool stuff just at this one place by one of the train stations, and I know we will definitely be going back ;)
After the parade was over, we went to go eat lunch, and this really sweet Japanese lady came up to me, not speaking much English, and gave me 4 tickets to some movie!! She was trying to explain to me what they were, but I really didn't understand and I had to ask people for translations later on. But it turns out each ticket was worth 1300 yen, which is idk maybe $16 per ticket?? So it was a pretty pricey gift! But very very nice of her :)
Lastly, the next day on Monday, me and my mom decided to go exploring outside of the base in town on our own for the first time!!! There is something else that I realized about living here- if you find a nice store you like, inside there will always be like, at least 4 stories of more stores! In other words, wherever you go is almost like a mall or something haha cuz so far, I have not once seen a store on its own! But like I said before, Japan is like an endless big city. So many of those big buildings are like stories and stories of like, shopping! So going out in town was really fun :) We found a French store that had reallyyyy good baked goods! AND there's a little Hawaiian bakery called Leonard's with those um cream puff things, I think called Malasadas, that were all over in Hawaii! We found lots of cool stuff just at this one place by one of the train stations, and I know we will definitely be going back ;)
This was a little shopping plaza that we walked through to get to the other shopping place called "More's", which is the one by the train station. This place is really cute, and ranges from having of little grocery types of stores, to hair salons, to places to buy phones! It's also on a street called Blue Street, and I wish I would have taken a picture, but it is named because in the past it was referred to "Blues Street" because there were many jazz artists that played everywhere on the street. So on the ground there are trumpets and on benches there are molded guys playing saxophones! But now it is called "Blue Street" because the ground on the road is speckled blue!! So I will have to get pictures of that eventually ;)
Oh I guess there is one more thing that happened, I GOT MY LICENSE!!!! So now I can drive here, and on the left side of the road...... Only, I'm scared and I think I will just stick to riding the train :} Well, until next time! Talk to you soon!!!
Rhianna
PS. I guess I forgot one more thing. Here they have these coffee drinks that are called "Mt. Rainier Coffee", a product of Seattle. Idk I just thought it was cool because I've never even seen this kind of coffee in Seattle, and out of all places to have coffee, (even though we are the makers of Starbucks ;) they have more coffee from Seattle!
Ok, now that's really all I have to say ;) I'll write soon! Bye! :)
PS. I guess I forgot one more thing. Here they have these coffee drinks that are called "Mt. Rainier Coffee", a product of Seattle. Idk I just thought it was cool because I've never even seen this kind of coffee in Seattle, and out of all places to have coffee, (even though we are the makers of Starbucks ;) they have more coffee from Seattle!
0 件のコメント:
コメントを投稿