Last actual day in Tokyo

So today we slept pretty late again but I woke up again earlyer to eat breakfast and to take a shower.
Todays post wont be long since I am finding myself a bit tired and sick so we are just going to stay at the hostel. But I dont mind, since we have done all of our major sight seeing allready, there is not much left to see and moneys allready running short so it fits us perfectly to leave this day empty and just pack and have fun here with the other people of the hostel.
Im making rice balls and cooking again, and we have the conputers, TV, other people etc. to keep us company so we will not be boored to the least. See you soon.

All my love to all you who have been reading my blog and to my family.
Robert

4 Day in Tokyo

So today we woke up really late since we had no time set for our wake up. I believe it was something like 11a.m. when I took my shower after waking up. I then went to eat breakfast to the comonroom and let Kimi sleep. I went to tell him the time at some point and he said he would still sleep a bit so I decided to go to the Supermarket to buy some groceries. I allso bought some boxed lunches.
Kim had woke up and come up and was just about to go to the nearby convenience store when I arived.
We hade decided to explore the nearby areas of Asakusa more in depth so on we went.
We walked through a shopping street and saw the asahi beer building allso. We went to a small mall and then to a starbucks. There we decided that we really didnt want to do anything today actually so we went back to our hostel at 6p.m. already. There I made food and we stayed there watching movies and stuff. Pretty booring I know but we wanted to have a lazy day. -

Backlogg from the past few days here in Tokyo (1st day in tokyo-3rd day)

So when we woke up on the 13th we had in plans to go and see the Hiroshima castle. We went as planed to the JR Hiroshima station to put our stuff in coin lockers and as we were making our way to them we had a quick bite at Mc D's, or more commonly known as McDonald's. Well after eating we noticed that it was pouring bucketful's from the sky and we of course were like "Hell no, we ain't gonna go out there". So we bought the tickets for the shinkansen to Tokyo and meanwhile, since we had time, looked around the station building shopping mall and I popped into Starbucks before boarding the train. The train ride took a long time and we had to change trains at Shin-Osaka. Since it was so early in Tokyo we decided to find our hostel (sakura hostel, not an official YH). We then took and left our stuff in our room, took a shower and then we went to explore the nearby areas in Asakusa. We went by the supermarket to by some groceries since I had dictated that I would make tonight's food. I made the easiest thing I could think of so... Spaghetti with meat sauce it was :)
The day was not specially long this time but we decided that it would be ok since we are this time not on a schedule so no waking up times and such.
The next morning we woke around about 10 a.m. and ate some breakfast that we had bought from the store. From there on we ventured to Harajuku and from there to Akihabara.
In Harajuku we wanted to go and see the COSPLAYers that usually hang around this area. On our last trip we didn't see any since it was raining. (COSPLAYer = Costume players, people who dress up as characters from different mangas and such).
After seeing some and after walking around in the blazing hot sun, we took the train to Akihabara station. Akihabara is known as the electric town in Tokyo since it's a whole area focused only on electronics and electronic appliances. They even sell international models from Europe and USA in here.
It's also known for the maid cafes, to which we actually went to. It was called maidreaming and the theme was pretty standard, you were the master and they were maids who had to talk "like" cats. The experience was hilarious even though for me it was the second time, but still. Kimi was about to die of embarrassment of being there but he had himself wanted to see it and so I was only going along with his wishes.
My friend Kosuke and I had made some arrangements for this particular evening, we had planed to go to an izakaya. (Izakaya = japanese bar). We came back to our hostel and took a shower before meeting him at the kaminarimon in asakunsa. We then walked there and had a blast, we were also entertained by a drunk Japanese man in the next room who was yelling loudly.
We drank until pretty late and then walked Kosuke to his station. We decided that we would do it again the next day. We came back to our hostel and continued to drink with some Americans.
The next day I was surprisingly waken by Kimi who had woke up early to take a shower. We decided to stay up and go get some breakfast. Kimi had a bad hungover and he didn't feel so good at first. After eating I went to the supermarket to buy the next days breakfast since we were out of food. After coming back we headed for the Ueno park regions to go and see some temples and the national museum and to go to the zoo. I really liked the national museum but the thing I loved the most was the zoo, since I of course am mentally 7 from inside :) We saw pandas, alligators, elephants, giraffes etc. My favorite were the penguins. We spent a really long time around ueno so when we came back we had barely time to take a shower before we had to go, and we came late of course. But we went to Shibuya, a huge ass district in japan full of stores and malls etc. We met Kosuke at the hachiko statue (a statue of a dog) and he showed us the way to the place where we were going. Today we were joined by some of his friends.
So we ate and drank and had a fun time. We came back to the hostel later and then I had to come to the computer to update this blog. Sorry about the delay.

good night!

Miyajima island

We went today to the nearby island of Miyajima where we climbed on a mountain and other things.
We woke up and I immediately started to make my preparations as apparently Kimi decided to snooze for a bit longer. After finally waking him up we started to make our way to the nearby JR station to take a train to Miyajima-guchi. From there we had to take a ferry which also was operated by JR to the island. It was hot outside. The first thing that greeted us outside ferry terminal were dears, a bunch load of wild dears. They laid in the sun and walked around freely, unafraid of humans. I patted a few, they were so cute.
We walked towards the famous floating torii that was in front of the famous floating shrine of Miyajima. We had to go inside it, but because it's summer the water level is a bit lower so it didn't float, rather just stood on top of the strand. We continued to look through some of the other temples at the island, they were so beautiful and majestic.
I will not lie, we were sweating at this point pretty heavily because of the sun. We slowly made our way to the cable cars to take them to mt.Misen located on the island (highest peak at those regions). After taking the amazing rope way there we had to walk over 1 km to the peak in the blazing sun. We were seriously swimming in sweat. We passed through the temple of the eternal flame, the flame inside has burned for over 1200 already. It's said to have been lit by a famous Buddhist priest. It's kept alive by adding some lumber to the fire. We then continued past some magnificent rock formations made by nature. After the long and sweaty walk we reached the peak and the observatory from where you had a 360 degree view of the surroundings. I ate an ice cream at the observatory and let me tell you, ice cream has never, EVER tasted so good!! We stayed there for a long while because it was so windy. The wind felt so good.
After that we walked down to the cable car terminal and took it down from where we started to make our way back to Hiroshima's center. We took the streetcar and just went strait to our ryokan to take a fricking shower and a bath. I was so relieved afterward since I had had felt so awful in the sweaty clothes. We then went walking from our ryokan to the city center where we ate and then came back to our ryokan. It was so late already that we didn't want to stay long.
So now were back at our ryokan, Tomorrow we are going to see the Hiroshima castle before heading to Tokyo where we will spend our remaining five days.

Osaka->Hiroshima

Today we woke up ready to leave for Hiroshima!! We had washed our clothes yesterday so we had to pack them before we could leave the YH. The YH had been an awesome place to stay in and the beds were comfy. We left our key back at the entrance and said our thanks and left. We took the train to Osaka station and bought our tickets but before leaving Kim wanted to see the Pokemon center, of course.
- What have you done today?
- Oh nothing. Just visited the POKEMON CENTER !
or that's what I at least think was going through his head.
No but in all seriousness it was awesome to re-live my childhood by walking through the poke-center.
We then went back to the station to take a train towards Shin-Osaka where we would change to the Shinkansen Sakura. We were in good time at Shin-Osaka so we ate at the Lotteria and I went to Starbucks to take a coffee, Yummy!
It took only ~1,5h to get to Hiroshima with the express train. We arrived at 3 o'clock at the station and took the streetcar from there to Konami-cho where our ryokan was. The owner, an old woman, was SUPER sweet and kind. She made us feel really at home and at ease here in Ryokan Sansui. I put up the name since I really, REALLY !!! Like it here. The place might not look much from the outside but from the inside it's a normal ryokan. But what makes it really special is the owners ;) It is also easy to find and to get to from allover town.
When we had done our settling in, we left to see the A-Bomb dome and Peace memorial Museum and Peace memorial park. The dome is really a good reminder for what happened and the museum also makes a valid point. And the city of Hiroshima wrights every year a plead to U.S.A. to decrease and finally abolish their nuclear weapons.
I 'aint no hippie but I really think that the world could be a better place without the constant threat of a nuclear war. 1100 nuclear warheads are located in Russia alone, and it's currently (officially at least) the biggest amount in the world. This was a good visit indeed. And the personal stories and photos of the destruction really gave me something new also.

After the visit we went to the inner parts of the city to find the famous Okonomimura, a place with only Okonomiyaki stores, where we ate. [Okonomiyaki= a type of Japanese Pizza/pancake, containing cabbage, meat etc.] It was super delicious. Since we are in Hiroshima, they have their own style of making the Okonomiyaki, in Osaka they have also their own style which is also the most common since it's easy to make at home also. The Osaka or the "normal" Okonomiyaki is made essentially by simply mixing all the ingredients in to the batter. We then strolled down the big streets until we decided to take the streetcar back to our ryokan. Tomorrow I have planed for us to go to Miyajima. So for now good night.

Osaka sightseeing

So, finally our real day in Osaka begins. We woke up and went to the 7/11 to buy some sandwiches and beverages for our breakfast. We ate them near the stadium where our hostel was located. From there we then continued to walk to the Osaka botanical garden and museum of natural history. The garden was big and beautiful, I mean really big! The sun was blazing on the sky and Kimi decided to take his shirt off. We then wandered around for a while and rested at a rest stop and then continued via the rose garden to the museum. The museum was not so big but it was interesting and since the entrance fee was only 300 yen to get inside the botanical garden and the museum, we found this even more comforting. But as I said it was a good museum. Then we made our painful way to the station in the sun. We then took the Osaka loop line to go and see Osaka Castle. It was hot and the sun was blazing. We were so glad when we noticed that inside they had air conditioning. We looked around for a while and then we went back to the station and took the train to Namba station where we then ate at an Italian restaurant and after that we walked around the big shopping streets around the station like Dotonbori and Den-Den Town :) It was fun and we even saw some people from the local maid cafes trying to get some customers to come to their cafe. It was funny since they were in their whole get up. We walked around these streets for about 4-5 hours looking at stuff and browsing. It was fun.
We then taught about going to the Asian Pasific Tradecenter in Osaka harbor but on our way we decided not to go since we were afraid that we didn't have enough time to go there and then come back to our hostel, since it closes at 11 p.m.  So back towards our hostel we came. We arrived at the nearby station at somewhere around 8 p.m. and we then started our quest to find a place to eat. After a short while we decided on a ramen shop and went there to eat some ramen. [Ramen= Chinese noodles served in a soup with "add on"s] .

The staff were really friendly and very humble and it gave the perfect ending to this day. 

We then walked to our hostel to wash our clothes and to take a shower.  Now since I have written this I'll go get some sleep. Bye 

Kyoto -> Osaka

Today we woke up a bit... tired ? After yesterdays BBQ and beer consuming we were not so eager to raise up early. I took a shower and then we were of. We had to take our luggage out and go find a coin locker since the room was to be overhanded back at 10.00 a.m. So off we went. We took a quick bite at the Delifrance cafe and then went walking towards the nearest subway station. We took the subway towards the Kinkaku ji but since it does not go all the way to kinkakuji michi we had to take a buss to get there. The weather was just perfect and the place was just beautiful beyond belief! It was a lot smaller than I had imagined but still it packed the aesthetic punch that is so much talked about. We were sweating in the scorning hot sun when we started to walk down the street towards the city center. We found a small game store selling used games from days of old and also new ones. My friend decided that he wanted to find a controller to Nintendo 64 and to our surprise when I asked the man (in japanese of course) THEY HAD IT!! Man what an amazing and magical store and guess what, it was only 1500 yens (15 euros) and it should cost, as it is not manufactured any more, a lot more. So... Only in Japan moment number #109.
Any how, we then walked passed a JR station and decided to be lazy and just take the train to Kyoto station. Two older school girls at the station found us interesting apparently since they giggled and took photos of us and man were they embaraced when I revealed that I spoke Japanese.  
From there we went to get our stuff from the coin lockers and took the train to Osaka. It was no trouble finding the directions to the next train as such, but we, or should we say I, managed to take the wrong type of train. Instead of taking the local train we took the rapid which skipped a lot of stops, including ours. Well we noticed only after a good while so we had to take the local train back. What an amateur mistake to do. But it brought me memories from my last visit since it was the exact same thing that I did when I was going to my friends, Mihos, house. Saved again by the JR pass. 
Then we arrived to the right station and found easily our Youth hostel. My god it's hard to miss, It's in the fricking stadium!!! And the room we have is a really nice one, Pretty, clean, own balcony, Tv. Nice. 
I ate my bento that I bought from the 7/11 near the station. [Bento= boxed lunch]. 
Then we went for a walk around the nearby area and found a supermarket, hundred yen shop and other stuff. We came back only to find this place packed full of French people, apparently on some kind of training  camp.




Well we are going to take a bath at the public bath here. Nighty night.

Today's play date ! :)

We woke up at the normal 9. a.m. to take a shower and to get some breakfast. Today is another special day for us since today we were meeting my friends at minami kusatsu station. We are were going to a special place called BB's, it's a sort of amusement place for young people. There we play'd air hockey, arcade games, ate ice cream and played AIR SOFT!!!! We spent over 4 hours here or more (more i presume). Then we said our goodbyes and walked to the station and took the next train to Kyoto. I had made reservations to an all you can eat Japanese BBQ joint for 21 o'clock so we had just barely time to walk back to our ryokan to freshen up and then we already had to leave so that we could make it for our reservation. The food, I mean, OH MY GOOD GOD!!!!!!!!!!!! IT was AMAZING! we had 90 minutes to order stuff and oh did we. We ordered meat, rice, more meat, beer, more meat and oh some more meat, and finally when our time was about to end and we had to make our final order, we took some beer's and I took a chocolate cupcake for desert. It was mouth melting good. Later on we stumbled somehow standing back to our ryokan.

 

Good night.

spoiling ourselves on a saturday at KINOSAKI ONSEN!

9.a.m. the alarm goes of and we wake up. Today is a bit special, we have to change our room temporarily because of the mishap with the reservation I have told you earlier about but no problems there, we just took our stuff out of the room and that was that. Today we're doing a trip outside of Kyoto to Kinosaki onsen. It's  located about 3 hours from Kyoto and is a hot spring town, small but beautiful and most important renowned  for it's hot springs. We ate our breakfast at Delifrance, near the station. This is the place I have written about during my last trip to Japan, last winter. They still served the delicious Croisant with a serving of sallad and a cold cut and coffee, so this is what I chose again and took a melonpan or "melon" bread as an extra delight for myself. The name for this sweet bun comes from the shape of the surface since it is cut to diamond shapes before going to the own, giving it, when ready, the shape of an small "melon".

Morning set

I myself have tried to make these sweets at home since they are so delicious and recommend you do so also.
Here is a link to a good recipe: http://home-baking.net/english/bread/melon-bread.php. I encourage you to have a go! 

Well back to my day. We then walked to the station and ordered the tickets to Kinosaki onsen, the JR-Pass saved us some money again since the train going there is operated by JR. Yay! 

Well we still had some time before the train left so we spent this time spinning around at the JR Isetan, a mall inside the station. We bought some sandwiches and sodas to the train and boarded. After a few hours and just one small change of trains we were finally there. The sight was amazing, this little town with cool houses from times of ye' old. The views that had passed us on the train were already breath taking but this took it to another level since we actually could breath history and bathe in it (literally). We took of to the first onsen, and man oh man was it good. Fist there is the outside of the onsen where there is a foot bath. The water was warm and refreshing. We sat there a good while until we moved inside. We then took and bought the pass for one day to allow us to go to every onsen in the town! The ticket was really cheap, only 1000 yens and convenient. Inside we went through  the men's changing room to the men's bathing area. There was an inside part and an outside part. We went through all the inside baths + the steam sauna that we found, then we went upstairs for the outside bath, it was my favorite. There was also a normal sauna outside but it is different from the Finnish saunas since you can't throw water on the heater, sad but acceptable. Then we went and washed and were on our way. We bought our tickets back in an early phase of this trip since we wanted to make sure that we got seats on the train back. Well then after buying the tickets we went to our next bath that was much more hotter. We passed on our way some local gift shops and from there we bought some famous Ramune soft drinks to drink while walking. We then walked pass a little stand that sold foods. We decided to try the famous Onsen tamago witch literally means "hot spring egg". You prepare it by putting the raw eggs in a bag and then putting it in a hot spring for about ten minutes. The egg is by this time soft but not cocked hard. We bought some local beers to go with it and it was good. I myself like hard boiled eggs but still it's a great gimmick and a delicious treat anyway! 

We had to leave shortly after this so that we would not miss our train. I wished that we had have more time here, but sadly we came on a Saturday so the trains didn't go so late anymore so we had to take the 18.18 train back which was the last one today. 

 
We were tired on our way back because we had had such a relaxing day and when we arrived back at Kyoto we went to eat since we had not done so on the whole day, with the exception of the sandwiches and the eggs. We then came back to our room and did our laundry and went to sleep.

first real day in kyoto

So today we woke up as allways at 9.a.m. since we have noticed that this is a good time to wake up if not even earlier. Today we ate our bread and strawberry jelly with our coffee, cortecy of the ryokan of course, and then made our way outside. Today the weather was not the best possible since it was raining quite alot.
We started of by walking to the famous Sanjuusangendo temple that was actually right next to our ryokan. This particular temple is known for it's 1001 Buddha statues sculptured by hand and gilded. The sight, even though I've already seen it once, was immaculate, astonishing, breath taking ! Each and every one of them unik, no one was completely the same. After spending a good while here we finally left. We then proceeded to spin around for awhile not really sure where to go since it was a kind of damp and rainy weather so we thought that it might be best to stay inside. We thought for a while of going to the Kyoto national museum but then hesitated after seeing the outsides being renovated and decided that we didn't want to go. So we went to look at nearby shrines and found a few and man were they beautiful with their gardens. We then went to the nearby seven eleven to withdraw some money as it started to rain a bit again. We decided that, since we were hungry, we would eat. We walked to the nearest CoCoIchi restuarant and had a delicious curry meal before continuing. The weather was looking a bit better so we went on with my original plans of visiting the Kyomizudera, or "pure water tempel" that is a landmark for Kyoto. It's picturesque beauty and it's charming surrounding really make it on of the many "must see's" of Kyoto.
Kyoto has so many things to see and offers new experiences for every day so it is a perfect place for a longer stay.
Well on we went and saw the grounds and the temple and drank some of the famous pure water since it was the temple for pure water :)
Afterwards we walked down the long streets filled with stands selling everything, I bough a packet of local sweets and ate a macha ice-cream. [Macha = Japanese powdered green tea].

It started soon raining so we turned back towards our ryokan to rest for a while. On our way I popped in to a local pottery shop and bought a tea cup and a pan. Now I just need the tea, (note to self ).
We bought some cup noodles and other goods from the convenience store and ate them at the ryokan. It was getting pretty late already so we decided to quickly take a shower and go to the mall since the weather had gotten worse and there was nothing to do outside. I bought some clothes and Kimi looked around. We are going to come back tomorrow to by him a new belt since they took his belt buckle at the helsinki-vantaa airport since it was in a form of a grenade, lucky him huh?
After all this we came back and went on the computer for a while and then strait to bed so that we would be well rested for tomorrow.

Nagoya ->Kyoto

So again we woke up at 9 a.m. so that we could leave the room in time since you had to check out at 10 a.m. so that they could make the room for the next guests who were coming. So we took our stuff and thanked the kanrinin-san [Kanrinin-san = Landlord or, as in this case, owner]. We went to eat breakfast at the nearby Komeda's Café from where we then walked shortly to the metro station. We left our stuff in a coin locker at Nagoya station and went for a walk around the city center. These coin lockers are seriously handy when traveling here in Japan.
We found a buffé* that we decided to visit after a short spin around the block. It was during this time that they had the lunch special so it only costed 750 yen and it was an all you can eat. [Side note* In japan the Buffes that are all you can eat style, are called VIKING's "baikingu"] There were different foods and drinks that we tried and had an all and all filling meal. We then shortly after finishing eating (there was a time limi, 45 min ) we went to get our stuff and took the Nozomi express train to Kyoto, it  only took 40 minutes to get to Kyoto so we were in good time there. Kyoto really is one of my favorite places in Japan since it's so quaint and friendly big "LITTLE" city. We then took of to find our Ryokan.


I tried and remember the routs there that I did pretty well until we had to find the right crossing to the part of town where I had'nt yet spent so much time in. Well after a couple of long walks and turnarounds we were given the right direction by a kind old man who noticed that we were lost. I love the friendliness that roams throughout whole Kyoto, everybody's so kind and helpful. We then found the right place went in for a little surprise. There was no answer at the door when we called in and rang the bell. We went inside and hollered and then an woman came to great us. Apparently she had been upstairs making the beds for another guest. We soon found out that there had been a mishap with our reservation. They didn't find it but were able to get us a room and gave us a generous discount on top of that. We only had to wait since she did not have the room ready so we left our stuff there and went out. I wanted to go to a Internet cafe to write on my blog and to check my mail and such so that's what we did. Kimi went to get a small bite while I was on the computer.
After finishing we went back towards our ryokan and settled in. We took a shower and after a while went out to a convenience store. We bought some bread, strawberry jam and coffee. We then proceeded back and went to sleep

Nagoya (third day)

After leaving the last nights far behind we woke up gladly, but tiredly, at 9 a.m. to start another glorious day of exploring and adventure. We had a few ideas as to where we were going to go, for example: The Toyota car and manufacturing museum, Nagoya castle etc. So we left towards the subway station at kamimaezu to take the subway towards Nagoya sta. we then proceeded to go to the info to inquire about the tour bus that I had read about in the travel pamphlet that I had. We were soon pointed to the right direction and bought the whole day pass, for just 500 yens, for the tour buss from the driver. First stop was the Toyota museum, and boy you bet that it was amazing. I had no Idea that they started off by making machines at first. They first made prototypes for industrial use looms to make fabrics and then they started producing them. Then later on they switched to making other cool things like prototypes for microscopes etc. and then of course came the probably best part of the whole museum, The car museum room. And let me tell you something, this is absolutely something you should see if in Japan and in Nagoya. There were the process of building the car laid out on display from start to finish and there were the most cool old, retro, modern and even futuristic models on display at the room. This was well worth visiting I can tell you with certainty. And as we still are young and dumb, me and Kimi went to the children's area to play and drive with "race cars". :) We had fun.

The weather outside was scorching hot and as we sat outside under the roof waiting for the tour buss we dreamed of drinking something cold. We hopped on the buss and went to the Nagoya Castle. It is one of the   famous castles of Japan even tough it is a reconstruction, the original was burnt during the second world war. Nevertheless the reconstruction is made by utilizing old techniques and similar materials and even some originals and it was made in the same style. The new castle is very beautiful and the surrounding gardens and structures make this one of the "Must visit" places in Nagoya. Before we entered there to the castle grounds we took of and went to one of my favorite Curry chain restaurants in Japan, CoCoIch. After packing our guts full of curry-licious goodness we went inside. It was beautiful indeed. After spending a good while there we left. We then headed for a famous shopping street. While walking towards the Nagoya station we found a 100yen shop and went inside. Surprised that not everything was a 100 yen we browsed for the cheap stuff.    I bought four different types of Pocky sticks (chocolate covered sticks) and also other sweets for home, then we decided that it would be cool to eat some cup noodles tonight so we bought some meat cup noodles to take with us to the ryokan. From there we headed straight to the Ryokan, put our clothes in the washer, ate our cup noodles, took a bath/sauna+beer/shower combination and took our clothes out of the dryer (to which they had magically been put into by, surprise, surprise, ME) and then went to our room to drink some beers. Sleep came easy that night allso. 

second day madness

Tsukiji

After a very long and good nights sleep we finally woke up at 6.30 a.m., we had slept for 12 consecutive hours and felt great. we got up and packed our bags since Kosuke had to go to work that day and we were leaving for Nagoya in the evening so we found it best to take our stuff now and put them in a coin locker at the station. So after Kosuke had prepared us a breakfast and we had ate it , we left for the train station. Kosuke took the same train that we, towards Tokyo station, and hopped off after a couple of stops. We said our goodbyes and planed to meet again when we come back to Tokyo on the 13.7. We then got of at Tokyo station and went to the coin lockers to put our stuff away. It was around 10 o´clock when we had finished closing the locker door. I suggested that we go to the Tsukiji fish market since it was still so early. We had missed of course the famous auctioning of tuna fish but it was still open for regular shopping and general browsing.

tamagoyaki

It was amazing! Stinky but amazing. We went around the lot and through the selling areas and even visited the local shrine inside this place. It was a little shrine inside of the huge selling area.
We went to a small selling district that was right next to the fish market to browse around. I spotted a tamagoyaki vendor and vent to by myself one. Kimi tasted a bit from me and bought one too (only 100Yen). [TAMAGOYAKI=fried beaten eggs, these are usually available in different forms, for example: soy tamagoyaki, sweet tamagoyaki, dashi tamagoyaki etc.] We ate the sweet tamagoyaki, It was delicious but weird. :)

We walked around for a while and found ourselves soon in a yard with a big palace sort of building which turned out to be the Tsukiji shrine or something like that. It was a big western like building with large towers and two wings from the main building.

 

We just looked around for a while and left for the train station again. We took the train and went to Harajuku hoping to find some cosplaying people who usually hang around  Harajuku. Well we did´t stay for so long so we didn´t see any but we decided that we will come back next time since this time we only went to mcdonalds to have a chicken burger to Kiddy land just for laughs and to a mall. Kiddy land is a children´s store full of toys and other fun stuff. We then went to a big mall and ended our stay with some starbucks coffee. We took the train to Tokyo station and started to make our way to Nagoya.
Well everything seemed to go well at first, we got seats at the non-reserved car of the Kodama rapid train for Nagoya and sat down and relaxed. Time went by and it was already 7P.M. when we arrived and it was then when reality hit us bad. We didn´t know the way there since we dind´t have the address or telephone number written down so we had to find a place with W-LAN. Of course no such place was found after painstaking 1 hours and we ate in between. So I decided that I had to call to a friend to ask if they could do it for us. So first I tried Kosuke, but he did not answer, so I then finally tried Miho and thank god she and her boyfriend answered and got us the number and address. We then called the Ryokan and asked for directions.[Ryokan=Japanese style inn] We got our directions and headed to the metro station and finally after few wrong turns arrived at the ryokan. The personal was very understanding and helpful. We decided to go take a bath and were delighted to find a SAUNA !!!!! In the public bathing area. Sadly it was already closed so we decided to go there tomorrow, but we still took a shower and bathed in the big warm water pool. Needles to say that after all that we went through and the relaxing bath, we fell asleep quickly.