Arigato gozaimasu Nihon

Yesterday started out with shopping our way through Harajuku and
moving on to the open air market in Ueno. Here we found all sorts of
produce, street food vendors, clothing, and tea shops. After walking
for a while and working up an appetite, we ate at a western style
cafeteria restaurant called the Harvester serving up chicken pita
sandwiches.

After lunch, we stopped into an arcade and played some Typing of the
Dead. Its a video game that normally has two guns for players to
shoot zombies on the screen called House of the Dead. The japanese
version has two keyboards instead and you have to type the words on
the screen to kill the zombies. Christie smoked me as I more or less
embarassed myself with my poor typing skills.

Nick had planned out a dinner at an all you can eat Korean barbecue
restaurant with grills on your table. When we arrived, we found out
they were full, and had to search elsewhere. Luckily, just around the
corner was a conveyer belt sushi restaurant. We popped in through the
star trek door (these are everywhere) and had a seat around a small
square station in the middle of the room. Inside this were two sushi
chefs, completely surrounded by a rotating conveyer belt. Diners just
grab whatever they want off the conveyer and the chefs fill the holes
with more plates of sushi. Each plate had 2 pieces of nigiri (sashimi
slice on top of rice) or 4 rolls on it. Plates are color coded
corresponding to how much they cost, but most were either 99 or 126
yen ($.90 - $1.15). You can even make special requests, if you know
the japanese name of the sushi you want :) After Christie had a
couple plates worth, I accumulated a stack of 10 plates and settled
the bill. All told, it cost about 11 or 12 dollars for the two of us.

We decided to fill in the cracks at an english pub nearby and have a
guiness and some edamame (soy beans for snacking). One final stop at
a convenience store to pick up some French Consomme flavored Pringles,
and we were back at the ryokan.

Sadly, we had to pack up this morning and head for the airport. We
thanked our hosts for their hospitality, snapped a group photo, and
rode some trains to the airport. Here we said our final goodbyes and
made our way to the terminal. Our airplane had been struck by
lightning in Hawaii, so we had a small delay. After that it was
smooth sailing back home, only to find a huge ice dam on our front
porch. Yesterday we were shopping and eating sushi in Tokyo, and
today we are chipping ice off our porch in Minnesota. Home sweet
home, I guess :)

Traveling to Japan has taught us more than we could have dreamed about
Japanese people, culture, and history....But we have also learned a
lot about ourselves along the way. During our travels, we were
humbled by the Japanese people, amazed by their technology, and
belittled by their history. And so another chapter draws to a close
in this long, amazing journey.

-Scott and Christie