Hey Kids,
I am just going to jump right into Day 2...no intros.
Thursday morning Amber had WANTED to wake up at some gawd-awful hour and go to some fish market on the other side of the earth at 4:30am when all the fishermen bring in their catch of the day and all the restaurants flock like pigeons to get a piece of the action. Then all the restaurants serve fresh sushi breakfast with the catch of the day. All this great fun ENDS by 6:00am. As most of you know, I am NOT a morning person...never put it past my sister to come up with ways to torture me within HOURS of arriving. Fortunately, John told us that the trains don't start running until 4:30am and by the time we got there, it would all be over with. PHEW! Dodged THAT bullet. We would have had to get up at 3:00am at the LATEST to start THAT trek. So instead, we went with Plan B...Kamakura. This is the place that Paul and I have planned a million times to go to but always ended up doing something else. So we got up Thursday morning and did some train hopping to Kamakura. On the train ride there, my sister informed me that my fingernails were too long, I was in need of an eyebrow wax, and the zit on my chin was in need of some picking. Yes, it was already beginning to feel like home, even MILES away from the U.S.
When we got to Shinjuku, Amber wanted to get some "potstickers" at a place in the train station which ended up being very yummy. I had never tried them before (most Japanese food is not very tasty so I have not been very adventurous with food experimentation). So I am glad that Amber is such the enthusiast when it comes to trying new things. I finally found something I can eat besides McDonald's. After lunch, we caught the train to Kamakura and rented bikes to ride around the city on. Kamakura has lots of temples and gardens, it was very cool. We saw the big Buddha and went into his belly (that sounds cooler than it was...there was no action in there, nothing to see, no guts or nothin'). Then Amber and I decided to check out the souvenir counter. She wanted to get some postcards to send back home so I decided to check out all the little gadgets while she picked through cards. I saw these little red containers with red tassels attached to the bottom. I decided to have a little peak inside the container thingy and found a little gold Buddha inside. Rachel: "LOOK, AMBER, THERE'S A LITTLE BUDDHA INSIDE!"
Amber: "Where?"
I pried the container open a little more and shook it so that the Buddha was more visible..
Rachel: "SEE?"
Japanese sales lady "NO OPEN!!!"
Everyone turns to look at the stupid American shaking Buddha out of his safety container.
Rachel: "Ok, you about done here, Amber?"
Dumb American retreats to her bike.
From there we decided to find a few other temples (maybe we could find some dumb Americans who were abusing Buddha and point and laugh at them and tell the store clerk).
As we biked along, we kept passing by cute little shops so we decided to stop and check them out. By then, I was in the mood for some ice-cream. We found a soft-serve ice-cream shop but the only flavors were green and purple. I could give you a MILLION guesses and you would NEVER guess what the purple flavor was...no, not grape or berry. That would be too American. But this stuff was selling like hotcakes (mind you, old Japanese woman were the ones licking it up like dogs on a peanut-butter covered nipple). So by the time we made it to the front of the line, I asked what these two delightful flavors might be, because the natives sure where loving it. "green tea and sweet potato." WHAT?! And if THAT did not sound tempting enough, you could get them in a TWIST!!! Before my stomach could even finish turning, my very excited sister was already taking her first lick. She wasn't kidding about trying new things when she got here. She's a good sport like that. And being the good sport that I am, I had one lick of hers, then decided that my initial stomach-turning reaction was justified. YUCK!
Afterward, we jumped on our bikes and headed for the next temple. The next ones were really cool. There were several temples all set in a beautiful garden that had many levels. There were also several ponds with huge goldfish (like huge carp but with white and orange and red coloring. We took lots of pictures. Of course mine all came out fuzzy so I am hoping that Amber has better luck when she gets her pictures developed.
We had to get the bikes back to the bike place by 5:00pm so we headed back after those temples. After we dropped off the bikes, we found another store with potstickers. I wanted to find a place to sit inside of the store, the place was rather big and sometimes those kinds of places have areas where you can sit and enjoy the fresh food you just purchased. I tried to ask the cashier if they had a place to sit and eat. She did not speak English so eventually, there were three cashier ladies gathering around to try to understand me. Finally, I pretended like I was sitting down, I mimed sitting down and they all said "OHHHHHHHHHH!" and giggled and pointed up the steps. So I headed up the steps but found that no such seating area existed. That's when Amber pointed to the bathrooms and said, "They thought you wanted to know where the bathrooms were." They thought I was miming squatting on the toilet. Lovely. That explains the giggling. So we decided to go outside and sit on the bench at the bus stop and have our little goodies.
Afterward, we caught the train back to Tobitakyu. We wanted to freshen up and head back out for the evening. Ten minutes after we got back, there was a knock knock knockin' at the door. My new roommate had arrived. And I will leave you with that cliff hanger because I am already over my time limit...
Love me
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