St. Louis

St. Louis was soooo much fun. It was a little hectic getting out of here with only 2 days to recover from Japan but we made it and didn't forget anything. We got there on Thursday and had a rental car so headed to one of my cousins places where we were staying. That night was the rehearsal/rehearsal dinner which was a lot of fun. Friday we got to run around taking care of last minute details and our whole side of the family got to put together the programs, which might seem not so fun, but when the wine was flowing and the family was laughing, we had a really fun time with it, and 350 programs were put together in the blink of an eye. We had an assembly line going. Michael punched the holes, I cut the ribbon, some people were stringing the ribbon through the programs and others where tying the ribbon onto the programs. We had bbq for dinner and swam in the pool and had a nice fun evening. The wedding day was busy and fun. The actually wedding was beautiful. They had the big huge Catholic ceremony and didn't drag or seem too long. In fact I thought it was pretty short for the big Catholic ceremony. The bride was stunning and her and the groom were so in love. It was a adorable. The reception was a lot of fun too. Our table was dubbed the "Texas Table" by the DJ. They even played deep in the heart of Texas and made us all get up and dance. It was funny. Sunday before we left we went to an open house at the newlyweds newly purchased house. It was really cute, made Michael and I both miss our little house in Lubbock. We were exhuasted by now, it was a very hectic weekend and it finally caught up to all of us. I took a nap on the plane and we got home and went to bed pretty early. So that was the weekend, very fun, and very quick. I have a ton of pictures which I'll be putting on our website here in the next couple days but here are a few for fun.

My brother Joe, Michael and I after the wedding
(They were both Groomsmen)

Jeff and Jana, the Happy Couple

My normal family and my long lost family that I hadn't met before

Leaving Tokyo

Our last day was Monday. We got up at 6 and since we had so much time to pack the day before we were completely ready to go except for the stuff we needed in the morning. We went down for one last amazing breakfast at the buffet at 7 and left at 8:25 to head to the airport. On the way to the airport we passed a few Tokyo sights that we didn't get to (tokyo tower, rainbow bridge, panasonic building, disneyland!) So that was cool.

Michael in the Hotel Lobby waiting for the shuttle

Hotel Lobby
Entrance to Shinjuku I-land (taken from the bus)
I-land is one of the billion underground malls located everywhere.

Shinjuku station from bus window

On the bus we ended up at Shinjuku station during the time everyone was heading to work
Look at all those people!! The picture doesn't do justice, there were people in every direction as far as the eyes could see.

Tokyo Tower from the bus

The Rainbow Bridge on a foggy day from the bus

Rice fields on the way to the airport

Michael and I on the plane back to Dallas

We really had an amazing time. We were sad the time passed so fast. Generally we are not big city people but we really really loved Tokyo and a few times even said, that it was really a place that we could live and be really happy! Which is odd because if Dallas is too big for us, I'm not sure why the most populated city in the world at 35 million people in a very tight small area is ok for us. We are strange people and don't make much sence. I suppose its the land area that we don't like big and the big population isn't that bad. *Enlightening Moment* We had forgotten how much we enjoyed walking everywhere in Europe and how much we wish we could do that here and it was nice to be able to do that for a short while again. I really wish I could write down every little thing we saw and every opinion and thought I have on Tokyo, but it would take forever. It was interesting being in a place that could be so insane, chaotic, crazy and peaceful calm and charming all at the same time. Hopefully we will make it back again to see more of the country of Japan and not just Tokyo, though I'd like more time in Tokyo as well!!

Going Back to Sunday

Sunday we really didn't do much at all. Our bodies at some point decided they were going to shut down on us. We walked down to the Shinjuku area where there are about a billion dept. stores and other shops. We grabbed a cup of coffee and people watched for a bit and then walked around the stores for a while, grabbed food for lunch and took it back to the hotel and ate and had a couple Japanese beers. It was about 1:00 and we just stayed at the hotel the rest of the day. We were exhuasted, not sleepy at all, just really really tired, so we spent the rest of the day winding down the trip, packing and getting ready to go.

Takashimaya Times Square in Shinjuku
A GIANT department store

Train Tracks from Shinjuku Station

Adorable Japanese Kid

Another adorable Japanese kid who is the size of the umbrella

Michael in the business district of Shinjuku
We passed this just about every day

Lunch- Sandwhiches and a bunch of bread

Michael after stuffing himself with bread

Comin' Back is Always Rough

The worst part of the trip for me is always coming home. Not because of the jetlag and the laundry and that stuff but actually leaving wherever we are. The nice flight attendant was asking us if we were excited to come back home and that she found that she has never been anywhere that she wasn't ready to come home. I just agreed with her because she was super sweet and I didn't have the heart, or energy to tell her otherwise :o) Our flight home was uneventful and shorter then the one over. To get there we were in the air for 13+ hours. On the way back, the flight only took 10+ hours. You could tell it was faster too. We were up for 25.5 hours with just little plane naps in between which don't really count. 30 minute nap here, 20 minute nap there. Needless to say, we were exhuasted when we landed and forced ourselves to stay up. Michael went to work to do a couple things for a project, I came home and decided to go to Tai Chi to get some blood flowing back through my system. Turned out not to be the smartest idea because at the begining of class while we were doing our breathing excersizes I started to get a little vertigo going on and it continued for the rest of the hour. So that was interesting. Michael met me up at the Spring Creek branch of TI (where we go to the gym) right after he left work and made it there right when class was over. We hopped in the car, swung by the grocery store for milk, bananas, bread and deli meat, came home, got ready for bed and crawled under the covers. I think we did pretty good staying up till 5:30. We slept good and woke up this morning at 4:00. Looks like we will get over our jet lag easier here then we did when we got to Tokyo. YEA!! Today and tomorrow we are getting things ready to leave again to head to St. Louis. It's like a big layover where we can do lots of laundry. So we are going to be busy

Monday/Monday

This has been the longest day ever!! We left Tokyo at 12:25am Monday Morning Tokyo time and got back here Dallas time Monday morning at 9:45am... and we are JET LAGGED like crazy, so you'll still have to wait for our Sunday pictures and all that junk. just wanted to let everyone know we made it home... :o( Not sad that we made it, just sad that we had to come back.

Sunday/Monday

We are getting ready to head to the airport for our long flight home. Its 7:30am here and we have a shuttle coming for us at 8:20 so time to start checking out. I'll write about Sunday when we get home!! I can't believe its time to come back already. The time went fast!

I'll write on the other side of the world.

Saturday

uggg, the weather outside was HORRIBLE today. Yesterday it was all rainy which made today, humid and yucky. Not like Austin humid, but like Houston humid. We both felt yucky and sticky all day long. We didn't take a ton of pictures nywhere because we were mostly just in shops. We headed to an area of Tokyo called, "Harajuku" There is a mix of really high end stores like Louis Viton and lower end stores that sell second hand clothing. The people is what you come here for. This is where all the young people come to look for the latest crazy styles and show off their clothing. I didn't want to just start snapping picture of people so don't have any to show, but the dress here is crazy. We spent the whole day in this area, found a Danish Pastry shop, which was very good, but still not authentic Danish.... We also went to a big park and saw another big shrine and several weddings where they were in traditional dresses. We retired to the room after this because we both felt disguisting and needed showers and later went on a search for an ATM machine that accepts foriegn cards. After 2 hours, we still didn't find anything, but we saw a lot in the process and it is still amazing how HUGE the Metro station is that is right up the street. Since we couldn't find anywhere to get money, and basically nowhere accepts credit cards here, we came back and got room service since we could just charge it to the room. So here we are... pletly of money in our bank account but can't get to it.. so we are poor..in tokyo. Thankfully this morning we found a couple places to find an ATM machine that will work. We were real close last night, just never quite made it to the right places.

I couldn't get these pictures to format correctly or in order or with titlles to match up. So I posted them without titles or what they are .Blogger is acting crazy today... but none the less here are some pictures from our day! P.S. We are finally over our jet lag just in time to come home..on Monday...

Friday

We started off the morning with not much of a plan and headed down to the Ginza district which is known for its shopping (Armani, Yves St. Lauren… ect.) We grabbed a cup of coffee and watched the world go by at a cute little café because it was raining out… and it continued to rain all day long. Cafes are a pretty big deal here we have noticed. Not the way they are trendy in the states, but the way they are just cafes like in Europe. After coffee we walked around, saw a big Kabuki theatre and headed to the Sony Building. This was pretty cool. They have a big Sony showroom where on display is Sony’s newest gadgets, some of which are yet to be released and prototypes. Cool cameras, TVs, computers, headphones, stereos. Some of the new computers that are coming out look so incredible, as did everything else in there. One floor had the new BMW model sitting out and that thing was GEOURGOUS! It was a red Z4 Beemer…. Hot lookin’ car! We both think we need some... His and Her Z4’s!!

After Sony we walked to a park to find the Imperial Palace. The park was pretty and the Palace was beautiful. We could only look from the outside because the Emperor and his family live there. After all this we came back to the hotel to eat some lunch and get dry and rest our feet. After lunch I took Michael to the top of the Government building (Its is basically a block or two from the hotel.) so he could see the view and then we went back to Shinjuku (Crazy town as we call it). We bought two cheap shirts from the GAP because we were really hot in our long sleeve shirts and jackets and we looked goofy without our jackets because we were both in tennis shoes this time out. So we did that and walked around and found a big department store which reminded us of a few of the big department stores in Copenhagen. We hit up the big food section on the bottom floor and grabbed some local wine, sake cheese and bread for dinner and walked around for a bit, came back to the hotel and ate, it was still raining at this point so we just stayed here the rest of the night.

Michael buying Metro Tickets

Woman in Kimono

Kabuki Theatre

Imperial Palace

Imperial Palace at Gaurd Gate
I'm facing what is in the picture above. Its funny that you look one direction and see that, and look the other and see this.
Us at Imperial Palace


Michael at Government Building. See him in the window?

Me with the view

Thursday

This was our first FULL day together and we were busy busy. This was our first trip on the Metro and our ride started in Shinjuku which claims to be the busiest Metro station..IN THE WORLD!!! We wound up there about 9am and it was a big psycho to say the least. 2 million people pass through it everyday!!! Visions of blurred people just running by, blurred because it was a nonstop see of business suits. We made our way to Asakusa where we saw a temple
and a pagoda

and a cute little shopping stripHeres the entance to those places:







They were all really pretty, but we didn’t spend much time there because we felt it was a little to touristy for our tastes. So we wondered around to some back streets and into some neighborhoods which was amazing. On our way, we saw a smaller temple where there was a young couple that seemed like they were taking engagement pictures in their kimonos
There were houses with little bitty doorways, potted plants everywhere, little local shops selling everything from cloths to fish bait and tons of adorable restaurants and best of all; we were by far the only ones around that weren’t locals. It reminded me of old Japan. I feel in love with a little barber shop so took a picture. A little old lady walked by us and I think was laughing at me! I guess its not everyday someone takes a picture of the local barber shop...


From here we wondered our way to Akihabara where we went to Electronics City. This was of course, heaven for Michael, we wondered through some tiny hall ways to see TONS of capacitors, transistors, resistors, connectors, switches, cables… everything. It was an incredible site.

Then we walked the streets here that were filled with all sorts of new electronics from phones to cameras to video games. There were soooo many games for all the game systems, it makes best buy look like a teeny tiney little store that doesn't sell much of anything.

Elevators

Inside those elevators

The Game scene here is very interesting. Especially for the two of us who grew up playing video games!! No matter the age of people here they all seem to be playing them. We went into what I would describe as an arcade which was 5 stories tall and we wondered our way up to the top, they had every new and old school game you could imagine being played. The pink building is the arcade we went in. We also popped into a Slots/Pachinko building which was very similar to the arcades, but they were playing for money and it was again 5 stories tall. The slots and pachinko machines were all cartoony not what you would expect to see. Both had the crazy loud music that you see in the movies (If you haven’t seen Lost in Translation, I would recommend it. I loved the movie, but can’t wait to see it again after being here. It paints a very vivid precise picture of what Tokyo is, at least in my opinion.) Throughout the day we saw tons of the young teenage crowd walking around in their new style of clothing. Michael and I refer to it as Harajuku clothes, but I can’t even describe it. Girls wearing cloths that look like little bo peep, but in a French maid style, others with big black shoes and knee high socks that are striped black and pink. I’ll have to get some pictures of them. You also see a lot of people in their school uniforms. We got stuck in rain for the last hour of our trip so after all that we had killed about 7 hours and our feet, so we came back with the intention of going somewhere else later, but just went to eat and came back and relaxed. By the end of the day we decided that Tokyo is like a big cartoon that came to life.


Today it is still really rainy but we are about to go brave the weather...so here we go!!