It was pouring when we got to Mt Fuji where a Brit that LuAnn spotted saved us from a long walk in the rain by calling our hostel to get us a ride, since the payphone at the station was busted. Yay for friendly strangers! I really have to get a VOIP app. Not having an actual phone has periodically been an inconvenience. Just when we had sort of given up on Fuji the sun came out, against all forecasts, and then clouded back up again almost immediately after. We're starting to think mother nature is helping us on purpose. Anyway that's when I got this photo. I can say without hesitation it was worth the effort to get there for the view. It was beautiful.
It was still pretty cold up there so we opted to get the express train into Tokyo where we navigated to our hotel without incident, dropped our stuff and tried to make the most of our short stay. A short walk took us to Shinjuku-Goyen park and were completely knocked out by the Japanese gardens.
From there we caught the train down to Shibuya, the Times Square of Tokyo. Heavy wow factor.
After some killer sushi at Zanmai & some shopping we headed home & crashed out for the night.
Next morning we got up and made our way to the Tokyo National Museum in the pouring rain only to meet two other couples there equally dismayed to find out that pretty much all the museums in Tokyo are closed on Mondays. It's Monday? F******K! I had actually looked at the website before but like many such things here it was kind of hard to interpret correctly.
We regrouped and went to one that was open, the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum. It has no permanent collection and the major show there was some fairly amateur contemporary work which we enjoyed mocking mercilessly so it wasn't a total loss.
We had a fabulous lunch at nearby Ueno station, which I have to recommend as a great part of Tokyo, and made our way to the Kabukiza Kabuki theater and got some last minute tickets for that day's show, which was Miura no Ôsuke Ôbai Tazuna.
I got the English audio translation for LuAnn whilst I opted to read the synopsis and tried to figure out the Japanese. It was weird as snake suspenders, but hilarious. The costumes and sets were great but there wasn't much action. Mostly it was people sitting around dressed up and talking in exaggerated Japanese like every bad martial arts movie you ever saw. We both enjoyed it thoroughly. We are still trying to do something we've never done before every day and succeeding pretty well.
We made our way to Isetan (I pronounce it I, Satan) and checked out the crazy huge food court & ate some dumplings then trudged through the rain to Golden Gai, a famous little street of tiny bars, where we had some drinks & fried snacks and met that seemingly rare thing in our world travels, another American couple! Aaron and his wife were from San Diego and a nice breath of air from home, so to speak.
Tuesday we tried again for the museum and it was fantastic as expected. Had some noodles for lunch and headed home to relax before our trip to the robot restaurant. Dined at the local 'grill your own' place then headed out to the robot restaurant and holy cow, it was crazy fun. It's hard to describe so just click here: ロボットレストラン|トップページ
OK, so we're off to Bali. I'm going to miss Japan but the future beckons!
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