Sunny Real Bird
Japan Journal

Tokyo: May 11-14

We have finally arrived! The flight was interesting from Billings to Salt Lake City. I fainted for a couple seconds; I think it might have been lack of sleep or all the turbulence. I’m feeling fine now except for the culture shock. The city is so big with so many people. I can’t believe how many people populate this country. My group seems to be okay; the first couple of nights we had a couple of rowdy people but it wasn’t that bad. The second day we rode the subway and there were so many people on it, it was like stuffing a bunch of sardines into a can. We rode to the temple and saw some monks and a priest. Then, we walked down from the temple took a couple pictures of a display of asuki canisters. The walk from the temple was very pretty with good scenery. Entrance to the Meiji Shrine That's me in the center Schoolgirls at the entrance to the Meiji Shrine Our next destination was to the local shopping district were I walked the backstreets and got a glimpse of some of the living conditions and how such a small room can jam so much clothes for display. Our dinner was interesting: we went to a restaurant near our Hotel and our waiter spoke little English and we all ordered a chicken and he said it was enough for two and when we got it, it was the size of a little appetizer. The next day, Ashley and I rode the train to another area, which had a mile long strip of shops. My goal was to find a cute but cheap purse. I still was getting to know the rate of our money and yen. I walked into little store of purses and they were of sale and I saw this cute little white butterfly purse and I thought it was $24 American dollars or other words 2,400 yen but actually it was $240. So, returning the bag was very frustrating because I never really had to deal with that. But, everything got cleared up with my credit card and we went on to Shibuya. This was the place of all places in Tokyo. It was a shopping district with thousands of people that dressed very differently but fashionable. The people dressed with so many styles and the hair was different. Yet, the shopping was still very expensive. We also visited Tokyo Tower which is a little bigger then the tower in Paris. We ate at McDonalds which was gross--the meat tasted way different but the fries were better. I ran into a language barrier there I wanted to order a “number 6” and in return I got 6 coca-cola drinks.