Tachikawa Regent Hotel

... I let out a deep sigh of relief when I saw him at customs (his flight came in one hour before mine). ATG bro for navigating the airports on your own!

We went through customs which was kind of cool. They took a retinal scan! I felt like I was in a sci-fi movie. Got my checked in luggage and then I needed to make a stop in the restroom. That was my first encounter with the squat toilet! I don ...

As it was a weekend, the trend of hasty moving around visits mellowed down a bit. It was close to noon time by the time we got up and ready to head to one Tokyo Metropolitan Government Office. This building was one of the tallest twin towers with a free view at the very top. From here on a clear morning day, one could see all the way towards the snow capped Mount Fuji. Unfortunately, this was not one.

Nevertheless, this was a good place to give a general view of the city ...

... about looking for a knob that looks like that in the picture. I finally find it at the bottom of the wash machine (of course!) and turn the knob. Presto! The water comes and I push the start button again. 40 minutes later I hear beep-beep-beep-beep again and it appears as if my clothes have been washed - success! On to the dryer. No, there are no dryers here in Japan because most people hang their clothes outside to dry. However in my fancy apartment, the ...

de retour a tokyo pour la derniere nuit.. ce matin je suis aller au tsukiji fish market. qui est supposement tres impressionnant, mais en fait il n'est pas tellement plus gros que les autres marcher ou je suis aller dans les derniers jours. Par contre, tout ce vend beaucoup plus cher.. A l'exception des tres gros poisson, la variete de poisson et de fruit mere est la meme que dans ...

... we were done and I found it to be quite good. I am glad that they did not tell me what we were eating; because I am certain I would have not tried it. It was eel!! Afterwards we went to a Buddhist temple in Asakusa. There was this mile-long line of little shops leading up to the place, mostly selling trinkes, good luck charms and candy; one could not get to the temple without walking past maybe 200 of them. This area was crowded with ...

... rice paddies were replaced with skyscrapers. After arriving at Nippori I needed to transfer onto a suburban line. Mashed potato must feel more comfortable than this. Welcome to the sardine tin that is a Tokyo train. The Shinjuku district was not, at first, what I imagined a Tokyo district to look like. There's a lot of construction work going on, and lots of people buzzing around and there's something ...

... for Saturday, she then got me a voucher for a one night stay at the Ramada Inn, and meal tickets for breakfast, lunch, and dinner at the airport. I checked into the hotel, had a microwave dinner, emailed an update to my girlfriend, and then went to bed. Upon awaking, I took a long bath, ironed my clothes, and had beef jerkey and gas station donuts for breakfast. Looking at my ticket I noticed it was for flight 175 and not flight 61. Flight 175 departed 2 hours earlier ...

... if we can drink water yet) and headed off to look for dinner. We hit a strip with a ton of restaurants, all of which are very small and seat only about 10-15 people in each. Most consist of ¡§bar¡¨ style eating where the chef serves you from behind a bar rather than at waited tables. They are all very elegant looking and seem delicious to me. Chris looks concerns because all of the menus outside are in Japanese kanji characters only! There is definitely ...

... cauliflower, rolls, cheese, yogurt and fresh fruit. After breakfast we headed to the opening ceremonies where all these government officials came to welcome us, and congratulate us on being accepted into the JET program. The ballroom is huge and we were seated by our prefectures. I was so excited to finally meet people who are actually going to be living near me. There are 12 new JET's in my prefecture at this orientation, and about 15 that were in group A so ...

... It was quite cool hearing about it from her. Mum and I decided to take her advice and have a look at the sacred park. The statues in there were so ancient, and still quite beautiful in a simple kind of way. After we paid our respects we started to walk down to the Temple itself, it is here that you notice thousands of tiny little concrete statues with red beanies, red bibs and bright windmills lined up along the side of the Temple ...