Japan Trip Part 11

We woke up for our 8am breakfast. It was just like dinner, very traditional. After breakfast, I decided to get one last soak in the hot springs before we checked out. We gathered in the lobby at 10am, and the Inn took us down to the train station. We still had over an hour before departure, so we did some shopping. The main attraction for just about everyone except me and a couple of others was the Hello Kitty shop with a giant golden Kitty in front of it. I had already bought my Hello Kitty gift in Sapporo, so I had no interest. After about 5 minutes in the shop, I left to explore the rest of the town with Austin and Quixia. We found shop that sold some expensive hand made woodcrafts. I bought a small Hear no, see no, and speak no evil monkey statue, which current sits on my desk at work.

We took the train to Utsunomiya, which is apparently famous for its gyouza. There were at least five gyouza restaurants right by each other in the station. We split into three groups for lunch, since no one restaurant could accomodate us all. I ordered the spicy gyouza with a side of kimchee. From Utsunomiya we took the bullet train to Asakusa, Tokyo. Riding the train made me think of the Chemical Brothers video for Star Guitar. So started playing the song on my zune.

In Asakusa, we went to Kaminari mon. There was just tons of shops, most of it very touristy. I bought a lantern and a Shinsengumi coat. I also bought some tenugui bought they came from shops off the main road. After shopping alone, I finally found the main group. We walked slowly split off as we saw things that interested us, like the arcade for purikura or food. I stuck with Seiji for a while, but after dinner I decided I wanted to head back to the main shopping area to show a Fritzi the out of the way shops that sold tenugui. I was leading Fritzi and Quixia back to the station, when stopped at a Mister Donuts, because Quixia had get something. This stop caused me to get disoriented, or maybe I was already oriented wrong, but I started heading in the opposite direction of the station. After stopping a man for directions we started back and we met up with going to where we came from so we decided to tag along. He was looking for the Golden Kappa statue and the district where they make the realistic looking plastic food. We found the statue but it was fenced off, and we didn't manage to find the plastic food, probably because it was late and most of the stores were closed. We headed back to the station and we still had some time leftover to stop be the tenugui shops. After that, we hopped on a fairly crowded train which we managed to avoid most of the trip, and went back to Minako's house. We packed our things but before we did that I laid out all my goodies and took a picture.