Yukata cruise

My friend's combination birthday and farewell party was held on a cruise around Tokyo Bay. Everyone dressed up in yukatas, and it was all you can drink. It was super fun!

The Rainbow Bridge was spectacular in person as we went under it!

We tried so many times to get a nice shot with the sign, but this candid one was the best.

There was a dance show too! It wasn't traditional dancing though, it was hip hop. We were amazed that the dancers could move so well, a yukata isn't the easiest thing to dance in. Traditional dances are all about arm movements!

Aquarium

This is from last year, but I finally got around to editing it and making some background music to put in. Here's the big Pacific tank at the Osaka Kaiyukan aquarium, complete with whale shark!

A trip to Ginza and picnic

I went to Ginza recently to see a student's art show at a small gallery there. It was a pretty small show, but some of the art was pretty cool. I think this student is going to show in Paris soon as well. After the show, we walked around Ginza a little bit. Ginza is the super upscale district of Tokyo. Everywhere you turn there are luxury brand stores, and even regular stores have a Ginza makeover.

These pictures are from Uniqlo in Ginza. Uniqlo is like the Gap or Old Navy; inexpensive, basic clothes for everyone. Normally their store designs aren't anything special, but they had a really fancy store in Ginza. Electronic displays, spinning mannequins, super-modern store design. It was pretty awesome actually, but I don't need to take a trip to Ginza to buy Uniqlo clothes. There's a Uniqlo right in Shimokitazawa! 3 stories of totally plain store, but the clothes are the same.

That weekend we also went to Mogusaen for a picnic. This is the entranceway to Mogusaen park on the Keio line. It took a while to find it, since the stop is super local and there's no handy signposts leading the way. Then, when we finally got there, a park worker kindly informed us that the park was closed!! So we went to a bus stop across the street and ate our picnic lunch there.

We packed this awesome little homemade lunchbox. Fish, asparagus, and shumai (Chinese dumplings)! Delicious!

My outfit for the day. It wasn't too cold during the day, although it was really windy and at night I wished I had dressed a bit warmer. Notice my awesome new shoes!

The entrance to Mogusaen. I want to go back to this park sometime, it looked super cool from the little we saw of it at the entrance.

Birthday shenanigans

I went to a Mexican place in Shimokitazawa for my birthday with my coworkers. I'd never even seen it before even though I bike past the building every day on my way to and from work! It's on the 3rd floor, a teeny tiny place that apparently sometimes has live music as well. We ordered nachos, enchiladas, tacos, and paella (even though paella is Spanish). The enchiladas and tacos were super good, but the nachos didn't hold a candle to the homemade nachos I made with my friend recently. Then my coworkers sang me happy birthday, and the owner brought over a burrito with a candle in it, lol! She did it on her own, we didn't even order it. We were all actually really full at that point and could barely eat it. I got a margarita too, and it was good although it was tiny and there was a LOT of salt around the rim. The owner made it herself and strained it into my glass right at the table.

Catching up

The plum blossoms are coming out!

There's a park about a fifteen minute walk from my place, so I headed there the other day since the sun was shining and the temperature wasn't super cold. Hanegi park is known for its plum blossoms, and some were already starting to bloom! They're not in full bloom yet but there are some nice blossoms already.

Plum blossoms in Hanegi park

We missed the Setsubun festival, so we had to make our own. Here's a box of soybeans that a student gave Nick. You're supposed to throw some either out the door or at someone wearing a demon mask, and shout "Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi!" which means "Out demons! In luck!" Then you eat as many soybeans as your age, so I ate 27. That's a lot of soybeans.

Soybeans for luck

Nick served as the oni, wearing the little guy who came with our box of soybeans. He went outside in the hallway and we threw soybeans out the door at him while shouting. I don't know what my neighbors thought, lol.

What a cute demon mask

I also went with some friends to this great place in Kanda that serves Chicago style deep dish pizza and craft beers. It's run by Americans so it's authentic! It was really delicious. The beer was great too. I'm not a huge beer drinker but these were good.

Deep dish pizza and craft beer

Nick and I went for a one-day trip to go snowboarding at Naeba. It was really fun! The conditions were perfect, lots of snow on the ground but clear skies and sunshine! I'm slowly getting better at snowboarding, haha. I can make it down the mountain without falling at least, but I still have some trouble switching edges to carve properly. We're going again this weekend, to Shiga Kogen which held some of the Olympic events back when Nagano hosted! We're doing an overnight trip this time, so I'll have plenty of time to practice and then afterward we can soak in a hot spring rather than getting straight back on the bus, lol.

Naeba

Naeba

On January first we did hatsumode, which just means the first shrine visit of the year. We went to this famous shrine in Fuchu, about twenty minutes from my place by train. It was super crowded, but not as crowded as Meiji shrine was last year! I bought a little charm to protect health. It seems to be working, I've had some minor colds but nothing that lasted longer than a couple days, haha.

Okunidama shrine, where we did hatsumode

We got some crazy snow in Tokyo, too! It was a crazy snowstorm, the trains were all delayed and a bunch of JR trains actually stopped in the afternoon. My friend's girlfriend had to get a taxi home because her train line stopped. I was lucky, my train was about 20 minutes late but at least it was still running! It was the most snow Tokyo has seen in years. I thought about taking my snowboard out and snowboarding down the streets, lol. Unfortunately it only lasted the one day, so I still had to go to work on Tuesday!

It snowed in Tokyo, a lot!

Okunidama shrine again

Summer vacation

Fashion's night out, posing with a Hilfiger model!

 I finally made it to Fashion's Night Out, the annual fashion event that goes on in major cities.  I went with my friend and we went into a bunch of stores, each one doing their own event.  We had complimentary champage and wine, and a dried fruits and nuts platter at Maison Martin Margiela, and we took a photo with this Tommy Hilfiger model.  We wanted to take a picture at Michael Kors because they had all sorts of fun props, but the line was too long.  There was a cool photoshoot contest going on at Omotesando Hills, but we got there just when it finished!!  It was super fun though, I'm definitely going to try to go again next year!

Wearing our yukatas on the train!

 After going to the beach at Zushi, we went back to my place and changed into our yukatas to go see some fireworks.  It was kind of hilarious, we had no idea how to put them on so we looked up a tutorial on youtube and our friends basically tied the obi for us, pausing every two seconds because it's really complicated! We had been drinking mojitos at the beach too, so were kind of tipsy already.  It's amazing that we managed to get those things on at all!

This soda is really gross!

 I walked past this soda being prominently displayed at the drugstore by my school for like a week before I finally decided I had to try it.  It was not good!  I thought that maybe by some magic chemical process coffee soda could taste good, but no.  It is so gross. I couldn't even finish it!

Tokyo bay fireworks!

 I went to see the fireworks at Tokyo bay too, with a couple friends.  I wore my yukata again so that was cool. The fireworks are great, but it's really crowded! We went to an izakaya afterward just so we wouldn't have to deal with the crowds on the trains.

Mt Takao beer garden!

 We climbed Mt Takao, which is a small mountain right outside Tokyo. It's a pretty easy climb, it only takes about an hour to the top, but we went in the afternoon so we were sweating buckets on the way up!  It was soooo hot!  Fortunately there is a beer garden at the top during the summer : )  So we went and had all you can drink and all you can eat for two hours at the top of a mountain!  You can take a cable car to the top, but you appreciate the beer garden way more if you hike it!

Hanging out on my friend's balcony with sparklers and a kiddie pool!

Then afterward we went to my friend's place who lives just a couple stops from Takao and we lit sparklers and wet our feet in a kiddie pool!  We tried to fill it all the way up, but without a hose it was really difficult. We were lugging a plastic drawer from his storage container from the bathtub to the balcony, and we gave up after like five extremely heavy runs. It was super fun though!

Fujikyu part 2

Fuji Q

Dodonpa

We were going to do a cat pose for Dodonpa, but as you can see it didn't quite work out as planned!  I look like I'm doing flamenco, and Lyndsey has some sort of crab pincer thing going on, lol.  Justin and Yuki got angry cat and cute cat poses down though, haha.  As a measure of how fast we are going, note that Lyndsey and I both normally have bangs!

Fujiyama

Check that drop on Fujiyama!  I think it used to hold a world record, but it was beat.

This

This American dude was in the line for Takabisha.  Note how he's making the shape of the drop with his hand.

Then, this

Yes, American dude peed his pants.  No, I have no idea why he is American.  He showed up on the outside of the Takabisha line too, saying "Whaaat?  You're not going to riiiide?"  A bit cheeky of him to tease other people when he couldn't take the terror himself!

Haunted hospital

The outside of the haunted hospital was pretty cool.  Even though it wasn't as scary as it could have been, it was still really atmospheric and cool.  Every room (and there are a LOT of rooms, it's huge) is fully committed to the theme.  Apparently it's going to change soon into a prison break scenario though...

Evangelion world

There was some sort of theme walkthrough exhibition based on an anime that I saw in college that is really popular in Japan.  Here we are posing as Charlie's Angels at this cool lit up desk.

That middle red one is the one we couldn't ride because of maintenance

These are the four major coasters!  We couldn't do Eejanaika, but at least we did Takabisha twice.