The rest of Tokyo

 On our 3rd day we took a bus tour and saw Tokyo Tower-looks like the Eiffel but is orange

 We rode up to the top and saw neat views out the windows

 I have never had a coke with Japanese on the can

 This is the Imperial Palace-home of the emperor and his wife-huge piece of land but they are the only 2 people who live there and there are 2 holidays a year that the public is allowed to enter.

 Views of Tokyo from the bus windows

 What happens to a tired, jet lagged 4 year old who spends too much time sitting on a bus

 This was in the area near the sensoji temple that was our tours last stop-we walked through this market area to get to the temple

 The tall building behind everyone is the Tokyo Sky Tree-opened just this spring and now the tallest building in Tokyo-we didn't go up inside it because you had to have advance tickets but it was a really neat looking building

 Yes we were happy to find another McDonalds to eat at-met a woman in there who is a teacher and used to live near Eau Claire Wisconsin, where Chris and Jodi used to live-small world!

Below are pictures from a market, shopping area near McDonald's and the train station we needed to get back to our hotel-this might have been a little disconcerting to me if I hadn't been to the wet market here in Manila.  Stalls of shoes for sale, right next door to the raw fish with heads still attached.

 fruit on a stick for sale-pineapple and melon slices

 don't have a clue what most of this stuff is

 Back at our hotel-one of the highlights of my trip-seeing my Japanese high school friend Yuki and meeting her little boys!

Children can bond over ice cream and pokemon cards even if 2 speak only Japanese and the others only English

When we were in high school, Yuki always told me that she wanted me to come to Japan and eat sushi with her-well I did come and no I didn't eat any sushi!

This was the view of the moon out of our hotel window that night!

We took a bus trip to Mt.Fuji-one of those thing we debated about b/c it is a little far from Tokyo, but decided that since this may be our only time in Japan ever, we should go there.

 Our tour guide was very good!

 Views of moral suburban areas of Tokyo-out the bus windows

 The Mt. Fuji visitor center

 Again, too much time sitting still on a bus and we lose this one!

 Souvenir shops and lots of people at the 5th station of Mt. Fuji-this is the highest point that you can drive up to.

 Inside one of the stores

 These white clouds were what we saw when looking up toward the top of the mountain but we can say that we have been to the tallest mtn. in Japan.

 There was a post office there and we mailed ourselves a postcard! It still took a MONTH to get to us in Manila-that is how long it usually takes letters to get from here to the US.

 Ryan was very excited to get to "eat Mt. Fuji"

 Our interesting Japanese restaurant lunch-there was a bowl of rice in the empty space on my try-Scott ate it.  We all found parts of things we liked-the shrimp were awesome but no one got very excited about this bowl of soup that looked like it had worms in it!

 That is the peak of Mt. Fuji hiding in the clouds just above the treeline

 Above, inside the restaurant
Below, some more pictures of the peak of Mt. Fuji-which is almost always covered in clouds we were told

 driving to our next stop

 I didn't know they had hydrangeas in Japan

 We rode these really neat cablecars up this mountain and came back down on the bus to cross the river on a pirate ship!

 We walked up some more to see the steam coming out of vents and see/smell the sulphur pools

 told you we rode a pirate ship!

 On the way back to Tokyo we rode their high speed bullet train-this was really fun to me b/c one of the MANY train books that the boys had when they were little mentioned the Shinkansen and we got to ride one.  They get up to 200mph on long stretches of track but we didn't get to go that fast-still it was very neat!

 Can you tell who likes trains the most?????

 Now I know why my mother told me to close the book and look out the window more when we traveled-oh well I guess he comes by it honestly.  I am just happy that while we were home, Greg bought me my very own kindle-with a touchscreen-so that I don't have to share with Scott anymore!

 Below is THE Tokyo train station-I had wanted to see it however the pictures weren't that great b/c of all the barriers up for renovating the outside and it was dark by the time we got back

 We are about to lose her again!



On our last day we went to Odaibe-a man made island just off Tokyo-it took us a VERY long time to get to the area by train and got off when we could see the huge ferris wheel that we wanted to ride

 Then we ended up having to walk across this long tunnel/bridge to actually get there!

 There is a Toyota demo place there-but you could only play their driving games if you had a Japanese driver's license-Scott and Ryan liked the pokemon car.  We didn't have a whole lot of time to spend here, knowing how long it would take us to get back to the hotel, check out, and get started on the trek back to the airport.  There were some neat museums out there and a copy of the Statue of Liberty and we were hoping to ride a water taxi in the bay.  However all we had time for was the really cool ferris wheel ride and to grab lunch!

 I was surprised for what a tourist-y area, the people at the ferris wheel didn't speak English and there were no English signs here.

Pictures from our ferris wheel car windows

 That building has a hole in it!

 our lunch destination below

 Grammy-we saw another one!

 I was surprised that Ashley didn't beg to go in this Hello Kitty store-we would have never gotten her out of there!

 The rainbow bridge-it is lit up and very pretty at night-from what I have seen online-we were always so tired at night from our day's activities and jet lag that we never ventured out at night.

 The children in the hotel provided kimonos

 2 peas in a pod!

 We took a different route on the way back to the airport and drove by Tokyo Disney-neat to see even if just from the road

 Here we are on the plane again-thankfully from Tokyo to Manila is only 4 hours! 

 We did have to laugh, just a little, when we got to Manila and heard that the luggage container had shifted during flight and had gotten stuck so our luggage couldn't be unloaded-I think it was after midnight when we finally got back to the house and in bed!