Konnichiwa

A few months ago Jeremy and I hit the 5 year mark. We decided to celebrate with a trip to someplace we've never been. Japan was the winner. When asked "why Japan?" The best answer we could come up with was "why not?" So after some quick planning we hopped on a plane to our oriental adventure.
And I do literally mean hopped on a plane. We flew standby, which has it's pros and cons. This flight happened to by all pro. Direct business elite from SLC to Tokyo. The vacation began at take off.

Upon arrival, we wearily found our train into the city, wandered around until we found our hotel, then crashed around 8 p.m. I think that holds the record for earliest bedtime ever.
Well come 3:30 a.m. we were awake so after trying to sleep for a couple more hours we gave up and went to the Tsukiji fish market, the largest fish market in the world. This is how Japan says good morning.....

This place was amazing. It's all wholesale for the restaurants but for some strange reason they let tourists wander around. I took a million pictures but I'll spare the queasy stomachs and move along.
The freshest sushi breakfast we will ever have.

After getting cleaned up a bit we hit the town. This is Shibuya crossing. You can't tell in the picture but this is a massive intersection these people are walking through. I still can't believe how many people there were EVERYWHERE.
The famous Hachiko Statue
These are all pictures of Shinkuju

Our morning run around the Imperial Palace and Yaksukuni-jinja. Beautiful, hot and humid.




Shopping on Takeshita-dori and Omote-sando.

We happened upon a really cool Japanese dance festival. There were hundreds of groups. It was really amazing.
I missed my golden photo op but here is a little sample of some cos-play girls on the jinju-bashi.
Meiji-jingu

We happened upon another dance festival on the other side of Tokyo that same day. This one was a Samba festival kind of like Carnival in Rio. I want this to be a G rated blog so I didn't post any pictures of what most of the costumes looked like.
Our river cruise down the Sumida-gawa, ending in Tokyo Bay.
Unfortunately we still wanted to hang out in the area where the cruise took off from so as soon as it ended, which happened to be next to our hotel, we hopped on a train and walked for half an hour again back to old Edo to find this little Tempura restaurant. No it's not easy to find a specific restaurant when you don't read Kanji. We thought a map would suffice but maps really only help when you can recognize the street you are on. After looking incredibly lost and hungry, and not being able to find anyone who spoke english enough to help us, a couple of strangers, approached us and asked if we needed help. One of them happened to be from Murray but had been living there for years. They walked us to the door of the restaurant and we had a delicious meal.
Yes we were the only Americans in the upstairs Japanese section of the restaurant. We must of had clueless looks on our faces a few times after the food was served because there was a really nice older Japanese couple across the way from us that kept smiling at us and giving us little tips.
After dinner we participated in another truly Japanese activity. I'm still not sure if it should be called an Onsen or Sento, but either way we soaked our weary bones in hot mineral water and it felt great.

On Sunday we went to church in Ikebukuro with an old family friend. Elder Stewart here is practically my little brother and it was so good to see him in action in the mission field. In case you were wondering, the Lords work is moving forward in Tokyo with the help of some fabulous hardworking young men and women.

After church we ended the Tokyo segment of our trip by grabbing a Bento box for lunch (no I don't recognize what's in it either), while we ate on the Shinkansen (bullet train) on our way to Kyoto.In Kyoto we stayed at a Ryokan, a traditional Japanese Inn.
Breafast the next morning: fish, miso soup, vegetables I didn't recognize, tofu and rice.

Temples in Kyoto

At one of the temples we ate a Buddhist vegan meal of tofu. Not very exciting for most people but I loved it. They brought us tofu served about 10 different ways.

We visited Nara, which is even older than Kyoto. Here we found Todai-ji, the largest wooden building in the world. Inside is the largest Buddha.

Behind Buddha there is a hole the size of Buddha's nose carved in this pole. If you squeeze through it you are ensured enlightenment. You can see by my friend Randy's face that it wasn't easy. But if I seem a little different to you, it must be because of this.

For some reason there are hundreds of deer that roam the park with the temples in Nara. This deer got a little friendly with this Japanese lady as she convinced Jeremy to sign a petition for world peace or something.
Kyoto wilderness.

We played with the monkey's
and hiked through a bamboo forest.

Our last meal, unagi. Yummy!

Okay I know I have to stop but I'll just add a few more random pics and be done. I promise.

Our trip home literally brought new meaning to the phrase "I've had a long day". This is where standby meets the cons. We missed our flight to SLC so we went to Honolulu for the day. That was great until we got fried, couldn't get a flight to SLC and got stuck in San Francisco. That's the short version but this blog is long enough. Sayonara!