Alright! So the second morning in Tokyo was spent entirely trying to find the Sakura House Hostel in Asakusa, Tokyo. It took quite a while, but it was SO much nicer than the Mayflower House. For instance, we weren't sharing our unsecured bathroom with a random tenant and there were no dogs. The hostel was awesome and I would definitely stay there again.
To be honest, I can't really remember what we did during the day, but I know at night we went to the VAMPIRE CAFE which was one of the most awesome experiences I've ever had. It also involved navigating my first entirely in Japanese phone call which was horrifying. The vampire cafe is not just a name - the ENTIRE place is decorated. The waitstaff is all wearing full vampire gear, including face paint and fangs and capes. The food is ALL themed. I got cross-shaped pieces of toast with spreads, for instance. I'll have pictures up later but all I can say is: if you go to Tokyo, you must go to the Vampire Cafe. If you're lucky, maybe you can sit at the table that is actually a real coffin!
Saturday in Tokyo was probably my favorite day because it was spent at.... TOKYO DISNEYLAND! Going to Disneyland Paris was one of the highlights of my time in Paris, so naturally I had to make it over to Tokyo Disneyland. Space Mountain was incredible. I wish I could ride that rollercoaster all day. Surprisingly, we only saw maybe 5 other foreigners at the park. We were expecting a lot more. We were at Disney from 10 AM to 10 PM so we were pretty exhausted by the end.
Sunday was pretty leisurely. After a brief visit to Akihabara, Steff and I trained it up to Ueno Park. Ueno Park is absolutely gorgeous. I spent most of the time in the Tokyo National Museum which was GREAT. They had a free English tour, and they had a free set up where you were able to make your own woodblock print! Woodblock prints are essentially my favorite art form of all time. To make them, a series of plates are carved - one for each color - and then dipped in ink and applied sequentially to the same paper. Each template has only the raised parts that will need whatever color is being used for that template. I'm not describing it very well, but if I could spend my life studying woodblock prints, I would.
Sunday night was awesome because I got to see AKI!!!!!!!! While I'm making very good friends out of my fellow Yamaguchi JETs, at this point I hadn't seen anyone I'd known for more than a few weeks in quite some time. We grabbed dinner in Shinjuku and hung out until our bus back to Hiroshima left. Seeing a friend made me day and I highly encourage all of you to visit me in Japan ASAP. I'll provide the futons!
Anyway, we caught our 10-hour bus ride back to Hiroshima and then had 5 minutes to catch our 2.5-hour train back to Hofu, at which point we passed out completely.
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