dianaschnuth

I seriously doubt I’m going to get through blogging the remainder of our Japan trip in the next few days. We’ll see, though.

When we last left off, we had just finished walking through the Meguro Parasitological Museum. Considering that it was free, and that we got to see elephantitis of the nuts, we felt it had been worth our time.

As we made our way back to the subway station, we saw that the city was finally awake and alive, unlike when we’d first arrived. Sure, salarymen and women had been crowding the crosswalks on their way to work, but no restaurants or retail stores had been open yet…
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Don’t laugh. I know it’s been almost six months since I blogged about last year’s Japan trip, and nearly a year since we took said trip. I just feel like I should really finish documenting the last awesome vacation before we go on another one.

When we last left off, we had just finished Day Two of Seven. So far, we’d gotten to Japan, gone on a day tour, and took our first trip on the subway to Akihabara. On Day Three, we visit the Meguro Parasitological Museum, peruse the awesome otaku-centric stores at Nakano Broadway, and eat dinner at the Curry Lab…
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When we last left the Dynamic Tokyo Tour, we had just arrived by boat in Asakusa.

Along with the rest of the tour group, we walked to the Kaminarimon Gate (“Thunder Gate”), the entrance to the Nakamise Dori, the shopping avenue which runs from the gate up to the Sensoji Temple. Historically, shopkeepers would sell their wares to pilgrims traveling to the temple. In modern times, they’re mainly selling to tourists, pilgrims of a different type.

A Japanese couple who wasn’t part of our tour group approached us and asked us to take a photo of them in front of the gate — a standard tourist picture. Then, as appears to be polite among tourists, they asked if they could take our photo for us. It hadn’t been a photo I would have sought out or asked a stranger to take, but I’m glad they offered, because this is now one of my favorite “Us in Japan” photos, just because it’s so obvious where we are.

For more Japan travelogue, read on…

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I know it’s been a while, and you’d probably given up on me actually finishing the narrative of our trip to Tokyo in May. Even though some of the freshness of the moment has faded, I do want to document the rest of what happened in Japan. You might want to review the previous entries to get yourself back up to speed on our trip so far.

Day 2 in Japan was the Dynamic Tokyo Tour; so far, we’d visited the Tokyo Tower, participated in a group tea ceremony, seen 500-year-old bonsai trees, and had a Japanese BBQ lunch. Next on the agenda was a visit to the Imperial Palace grounds…

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