Azaleas, Ueno Zoo, and the Lock Up!

On Thursday, we decided to take a little trip the Ueno Zoo, and when we arrived, we were surprised to find a huge Azalea Festival going on in front of the zoo called the Satsuki Azalea Festival! There were people auctioning off the bigger azaleas, which were beautiful, and then they were selling smaller ones on the side. We all bought little ones for our rooms! They're so cute!

Our azaleas! Tyler's is white,
Kelly's is red!

The zoo had the most amazing vending machine ever. You put in your coins, choose a drink, and then it puts a paper cup out, pours the soda and fills the cup with ice. So amazing. 

Chickens in the zoo's petting zoo
satisfied our need for animals
for a while. CHEEKEENS!

On Saturday, we went with the group to the Lock Up, a horror-themed restaurant in Shibuya! It was super cool. In the middle of our meal, the lights turned off and people in scary masks and costume were grabbing their hands through the windows in our cell and coming in and scaring everyone. Amazing. The drinks were all super cool horror-themed as well.

Scary! 

Asakusa!

We visited the largest temple in Tokyo at Asakusa on Saturday, as well as Akihabara and Ueno. It was really fun! There were a ton of people there and a ton of touristy booths. Super happy.

Us and Yuri! =D

A bunch of school girls randomly stopped us and asked us to take a picture with them. Of course we agreed! SO CUTE.

Smelling the smoke!

In Asakusa, we got our fortunes (you shake a stick out of a metal cylinder and draw the number on it from a drawer), and all three of us had really bad ones! D= A man told us it was really uncommon for a group of three to all draw such bad fortunes, so we went to the temple and prayed them away. 

Akihabara

Unfortunately, I think my bad fortune is coming true because the next day, we went rice planting, and I think sloshing around in the mud and water infected one of the cuts on my feet. =( We had fun anyways with our rice farming hats. Oh and we weren't informed of the extremely deadly snakes until after we got off the bus...

The exploring begins!

We've been walking like crazy all over Tokyo for the past two days. Sorry for the lack of updates, but we've been so tired by the end of the day. On our first day, Tyler and I went to Kamata, a station about ten to fifteen minutes away by train by ourselves. We had no clue what we were doing. We tried to be adventurous and go even further, but we got scared and turned around. Then Tyler's card stopped working at the gate. He kept trying to swipe it through other gates, but they kept buzzing and blocking him from leaving. This went on for a good five minutes, and by the end of it, there was a good sized crowd of Japanese salary men laughing at him from the other side. It was sad but hilarious. We ate tempura in Kamata and bought slippers -- but there are NO sizes big enough for Tyler's feet. We have to wear them in the dorm, so he crams into tiny shoes every day. 

We went back later and visited an AWESOME
anime store. It was HUGE.

Yesterday we went to Shinjuku and Shibuya. We saw the Hachiko statue, but it was too dark, so we didn't get pictures. We'll definitely go again. More to come soon! Akihabara, Asakusa and Ueno! Ja mata!

The famous crosswalk in Shibuya!

Tempura Tendon!

We're here!

It took 17 hours, but we're here! We're pretty tired, so this won't be the greatest update ever. We were in Narita Airport for hours, walking back and forth across a giant fourth floor, trying to find our cell phone rental business. We were pretty much sweating by the end of it, but we found them! Everyone probably thought we were crazy walking back and forth the whole time.

We got to the dorms though, eventually. >_>

After walking around the little area we're in and grabbing some food at a noodle house (which was SUPER CUTE -- we got lots of happy candies from the shop owner afterwards), we started unpacking, and I was giving Tyler crap about how much better my room was...until we got to unpacking my room and found a mutant, Japanese cockroach on my window and then its friend behind my closet. Here's what we did (Tyler's also standing on a chair):

I'm scared to sleep!

We screamed a lot.

Anyways, we're going to crash and die of jet lag, but Japan is SOOOO pretty and green. We'll have many happy stories and adventures to update you all on in the near future.