Traveling Fools

Sheesh! We are already leaving tomorrow. It seems like the past two weeks just flew by! Since our last blog we have done something everyday!

Day 6

We had another day in Kyoto where the girls got to try on kimono and the men got to try out pichenko. It turns out that our men are quite fantastic players and they ended up winning about 200 bucks each! Later we split up while the Jones headed to work, Kim and Jackson headed home to bed and Bill and Cynarc checked out Den Den. We’re surprised that Bill made it out of there intact as it is an area of 300 stores all dedicated to technology and electronics…

Day 7 through 10

Tokyo!

We took the Bullet Train to Tokyo today and our men are still basking in the glow of Pichenko, just seeing a parlor has their eyes glazing over in delight. (They managed to hit two more places this weekend and came out winners each time!) The girls settled in to the hotel and Jackson got to watch his first Star Wars movie with Auntie Bean while Kim and Cynth worked on the laundry (in tiny little washing machines)

We took in a tour of Tokyo on the Saturday and hit the major sights. We saw bonsai trees, had a harbour boat tour, zipped through the Ginza shopping district and ate a fancy BBQ (Japanese style of course) lunch. It was a great way to see a lot in a short time and not have to worry about finding each place.

On the Sunday we headed out on the town on our own. We found both the Sony building and the Apple building and had a ton of fun trying out all the new products. Then we walked through Ginza (and watched some of the Tokyo marathon) before heading to the Akihabara district. This is the electronics area of Tokyo – no surprise that we came here!

On our last day we traveled home to Osaka on the bullet train again. It was a very peaceful ride for us thanks to the new gameboy game that Jackson got in Tokyo!

Day 11

No trip to Osaka would be complete without a visit to the aquarium. Like everyone else we were stunned by all the different fish and sea life that we saw.

After the aquarium, we headed over to the Giant Ferris Wheel. It is apparently the largest one in the world so of course Jackson wanted to try it out. He was joined by Bill, Cynthia and Marc and they enjoyed a great view from the top. (And weren’t a bit scared right Bill?)

Then we decided to hit the marketplace for some supper and found Okonomiyaki! Yay! We stopped at some Ninja Statues to get a picture and were VERY surprised to find that one of the “statues” was a real person. We then proceeded into the house and were scared and surprised over and over by leaping ninja…

Day 12

Our last day to tour around was today and we decided to visit to an “Open Air Museum of Japanese Farmhouses”. This was a sprawling park where they have moved old houses from around Japan. It was interesting to get a glimpse of what life was like in the past. Most of the houses were from the Edo period (about 1600). The sun was shining and we had a great time taking pictures.

Jackson had a giveaway free for all as we let him give out all the rest of the Canadian coin tokens we made. We saw a couple of school groups even and they were so cute in their matching hats.

We like to pack a lot into a short visit!

Tomorrow we’re on our way home. We are sad to leave Japan and the Jones. We’ve had such a fantastic time – we couldn’t ask for better hosts!

And we want to leave the blog with the jumping pictures. Cynthia and Marc have started a tradition of taking jumping pictures in front of many major landmarks around the world and here are some of ours from Japan…

Sayonara!