Right now, I have cold patches on my feet. We have walked our feet raw and we still have two days left. I'm not ready to live though. Figures, since we're just learning to navigate the complicated Tokyo transportation system and find our way through the streets around our hotel. This place is such a maze. It seems as if there is always something to discover around the corner. Bikes come from every direction and unfortunately some people seem to have committed the impossible: forgetting how to ride a bike. I fear I will get hit by someone on a bike. Scary stuff.
Today we woke up early again and made our way to Kamakura via the JR. (We made one of the best decisions in our lives before we went to Japan, and that was to purchase the Japan Rail pass. It saved us a considerable amount of money.) The names of all the lines of the JR are hard to keep straight. Somehow we got to our destination Hase. There the big buddha Daibutsu awaited us. We even paid 20 Yen to go inside of it. It was pretty amazing. On the way back down were tiny gift shops with Buddha everything and the usual trinkets that attract tourists' money.
On our way back to Ikebukuro, we decided to stop and check out Harajuku. There we discovered the wonderful Daiso 100 Yen shop. Four floors of crazy, useful, useless, cute things on the cheap. There was a huge crowd in the area since it was sunday and a popular area anyway. When people lined up on the sidewalks on both sides of the street waiting for the light to change, I felt as if we were going to war. Harajuku is somewhat of a rebellious fashion district. As one book put it, it's where people go to see and be seen in the latest, craziest fashions. There were lots of clothing shops and even this T shirt shop that had their shirts in plastic tubes. The entire floor of that shop was black and white with manga art covering it. The shirts were only 1500 Yen which was surprising and later made me regret that I hadn't picked any up. There were kids everywhere dressed in their cosplay garb. It is a mystery to me how they keep their hair all spiky like that. The girls were all rolling around little luggages which Valerie assumed was to carry their costumes. I don't doubt it seeing how most of them dressed.
We decided to head back to Ikebukuro since our feet were killing us and we hadn't eaten a good meal yet. We had to drop Valerie's bags of goodies at the hotel before we headed out again to walk around a bit. We've already found a favorite eating spot called Wakana so we eventually ended up there after shopping a bit more. Now we're back at the hotel to rest our weary bones. Tomorrow should start earlier than the rest.
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