Bye-byeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!

If my apartment had a sound system like every other building in Japan, it would have “Auld Lang Syne” on repeat since today is the day that my place completely empties out of visitors- temporarily! Since I had to go back to work today (boo!), everyone took off with his/her lovely JR railpass off to Kyoto and other far-off places like Nara and Hiroshima. Laddie and Karen will be back Friday, then Brady and Ed will return Saturday for a night out in Tokyo before everyone leaves on Sunday.

On Sunday, we went into Tokyo and had an awesome time in Asakusa (“Old Edo”) and Harajuku/Ometesando. Asakusa has a more historic feel to it with a very cool temple at the end of a long pedestrian shopping strip. My favorite shrine is the one protecting against the raccoon dog. It’s the one with the large statue surrounded by tiny figures wearing little red hats.

Harajuku was awesome! I had never been on the main shopping street that parallels Ometesando-dori. I loved it. It was a very energetic scene. Before we went to the shopping street, we saw the Goth kids on the bridge and the greasers dancing in the park. We got snickety-snacks there that were uniformly delicious with the exception of Brady’s yucky half-raw fishcake meatballs.

After Harajuku, we had the train ride from hell back since we were all tired. I was tired to the point of having us head the wrong way for 20 minutes, which led to a 40 minute delay. As a result, we got to the sushi go-round super late, about 10 minutes before the last order. So rather than have a nice, leisurely “Oh, that looks lovely, please grab that from the conveyer belt for me” type of dinner, we had a hurriedly ordered (but delicious!) dinner straight from the menu.

Monday, we went to the ship for a tour, which was awesome b/c a friend of mine on duty took us down to the engine rooms. Total bonus! Everyone got to climb down the scary ladders to DC central and 2 Main Machinery Room (MMR). We also toured the medical spaces, Foc’sle, and Flight Deck.

Afterwards, we went to Kamakura and saw the Kannon-Hase, the Great Buddha, and went shopping.

Tuesday, we went to Hakone and the Open Air Museum. Even cooler for me was that we continued up the mountain by cable car and then across huge steaming rock fields by a gondola-type ride. It was great! Then we went back to the sushi go-round where we had the real experience since we had about an hour before closing this time.

So, until Friday, I will be a boring worker bee in the most Catch-22 like workplace I’ve ever been in.

BTW, the “Auld Lang Syne” thing is not a joke. When things are closing, the song will play REPEATEDLY for 10 minutes. It gets old, really quickly.