Tokyo

This weekend I went to Numata (the city north of Shibukawa) and hung out with some JETs. This was the first time I experienced an earthquake. We were sitting in the izakaya (bar restaurant) and all of a sudden the floor started to shake. I acutally thought I may have had too much to drink and was losing my sense of balance, but the Japanese people we were hanging out with reassured us that it was indeed our first Japanese "jishin". The night was fun. I'd say the highlight was the gyoza stuffed chicken wings (think a gyoza aka potsticker, and instead of that dough outside, there is a chicken wing surrounding that wonderful garlic pork mixture). I stayed over at a friend's house in Gokan (i think) and woke up early Saturday morning to head out to Tokyo.

It had been over a year since I saw my friend Keimo. He and I decided to head to Odaiba and see the FUJI TV summer festival. There was a lot going on and they had a stamp scavenger hunt. So he and I spent the day exploring the studio and collecting the stamps. We were able to see a mock setup of the drama Galileo, visit the Mecha Ike beach, and even see some Beijing Olympic memorabilia. At the end, our prize was some seeds for some kind of plant (obviously they are lost somewhere in my room by now).
Odaiba is beautiful at night. There is a small scale version of the Statue of Liberty right next to the Kua Aina on the outer edge of Aqua City mall. Across the water is Rainbow bridge. It was really nice, but I had to hop on the train and head home before we knew it!