Hotel Monselaton Chiba

... headed to Tokyo DisneySea. (Get it?
Disneyland and DisneySea?
Clever.) This park was built
about eight years ago and has a stellar reputation in the theme park geek
community (I am a card carrying member) as being the best designed park on
earth, and it certainly lived up to my expectations. (Elizabeth had a different feeling. It’s not a Magic Kingdom style park, so it
doesn’t have a traditional “Disney” feel to it.) I ...

... We had a map but it had no street names so we navigated carefully by landmarks - for example head for the railway bridge and turn right! We soon came to a large temple gate leading to the Zojoji Buddhist temple, and a Shogun cemetery beyond with impressive granite headstones. We looked in the temple, briefly, the incense was suffocating! Over the road we came to a park area and walked through a delightful garden, down a little gully with a stream running through ...

... looking beautiful. Just a totally different feel to it - not to mention that it was full of people lunching around the gardens. We found the Koi pond and managed to find about three very docile beautifully coloured ones near a foot bridge. Then wandered to sit on a bench and eat out bakery goods and drink our weird purchases from the vending machine. Nat had a Lemon Ice Tea (9 out of 10), I had a hot chocolate 'Chocoteen' (8 out of 10 - only loses points because I ...

... kids. They seated us in the front and proceded to perform tradtional Japanese drumming and dance. The kids did some great powerpoint presentations on Japan, and the superintendet and principal gave speeches to thank us and the City of Portland for it's support in the sister city relationship, etc. It was really nicely done and the school was beautiful. Afterwards we attended a Tanabata Festival outside of Tokyo. Once a year two stars (sorry I can't remember their names) meet ...

... actual dog at National Museum of Natural Science in Shibuya. So I relaxed near hachi's statue and read his plaque. Just a bit of background knowledge Hachi was born on 11-10-1923 and died of heartworm on 3-8-1935. He was born in the Odate, Akita Prefecture, and Hachi's species of dog is Akita by the way I really want one they look and are so awesome! He saw his master off to work at the stations gates and ...

... got so flustered and nervous, she forgot all her English. She fussed with us like I've never experienced before, making us sit while she proceeded breathlessly to bring out sushi, beer, juice, cookies, little cakes, sake, sour plums, rice, other assorted unidentifiable objects, more beer, more sweets, and so on. Every once in a while she would stop and show me some ornament with english writing on it. Katsushi said she wants to learn english so badly ...

... given a fresh garden salad with French vinaigrette was unbelievably good. A cold fish starter of 2 prawns and a slice of smoked salmon, a warm chicken risotto and an apple slice with cream .... this was the bog's bollocks. It was so good I actually video taped it ...... hdv baby, in all it's glory! Anyway, after an introduction like that, Tokyo was always going ...

... near her hometown, and I`d since heard other travellers giving it high praise. So on Thursday, I got the early metro to Shimbashi Station before trying to find the right train line to get to Kamakura, which was something of a challenge, but I was just about able to get my train at 8am on what was an absolutely glorious day... Somehow I was almost skint again, so my first task in Kamakura was to draw some money out of the just opened for business Post Office. I ...

... is like Times Square before the '90's clean up. That area is more of a nightlife / 'red light' district so we decided to come back sometime after dark! That night we headed out to Roppongi where we met up with Jade and his girlfriend, Masa (thanks Dave for hooking us up w/ Jade!). We spent a great night with them and learned lots about the Japanese & Asian cultures. For dinner we went to a Izakaya-type restaurant (pub style, you get lots of small dishes and share!). The ...

... the screen for long periods of time, sipping their sake and pretending to ignore me waving my arms. When I got off the plane and got to the customs counter, the woman wanted to see my certificate of eligibility. So there I was, fossicking around in my bag for it. It would have been less amusing if I hadn't stored all my extra layers of clothes in there during the flight when I almost combusted from the heat. Particularly when I have to pull out my stripy thermals and place them on ...