japan

in february i hopped on a plane to japan to visit john.

it was so great.

(very cold. but still great)

here is the view from john's apartment.

the day i arrived (a sunday) the sky was clear and you could see mt fuji. it was quite majestic. 

that day john showed me around the area and taught me how to get around, went to church, ate the most delicious strawberry sandwich, and had dinner with some branch members.

during the week john had to work during the day so i would tromp around japan s-o-l-o.

it was kind of fun. i would just kind of head out, grab a train or bus and see where it took me. 

 but i can't emphasis enough how cold it was.

i freezing the whole time.

there were so many cool things. i kept thinking 'this would be so cool... if i wasn't freezing'

i can't wait to go back when its not so cold.

here is some documentation of my week day adventures.



this is what i looked like the whole week. i wore my snow coat and bundled up.



a park near the base that had fountains
synced to music.

i loved the buses in Tokyo. amazing.

view from a park around the corner from JM's apartment.

hello kitty.

everything was bike friendly. this is a ramp up the stairs so you can easily bring your bike up.
love that.

in the evenings when john got done with work we would get to hang out.

we ate some really delicious food and explored a bit.

when i was too cold to go outside, we'd play speed or battleship.

(and for the record... i won the majority of the games. so i was happy.)

this guy had an awesome restaurant in the downstairs of his house
and cooked the food right in front of us.
move over benihana's.

at this place you place your order from a vending machine.
then hand the ticket to the hostess.
since neither of us speak the language its kind of like playing
food roulette.

one of the day's john gave me a tour of his ship that he works on.

it was really cool.

look how little the beds are! i would die.

on the weekend, we got to do a little exploring together. we went into to Tokyo.

first, we found the temple.

 

went to a shrine in the middle of a beautiful park. 

THEN, in another area of the park we found my favorite thing in all of japan. it was this area where a bunch of middle aged men and women dressed up like elvis and danced around.

i recognize that it doesn't sound that cool.

but it was so funny to me.

we walked around the harajuku district for awhile and then went to shibuya crossing.

we sat in starbucks, drank some hot chocolate, and watched thousands of people cross this intersection every few minutes. it was pretty amazing.

and entertaining.

monday morning (was a holiday, so john didn't have to work) we woke up super early so we could check out this fish market/auction.

we got a little lost getting there, so this nice man gave us a ride on the back his truck.

he let me drive. it was fun.

look how big those tuna are! gross. and cool?

all in all, although freezing cold, it was an amazing trip.

i did and saw a lot of cool stuff but by far my favorite thing was just hanging out with

this handsome devil.

he's pretty great.