Tokyo Trip Part 4

Day 3 continued...
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I forgot to add that the tour we're on was set up through the concierge desk at the New Sanno. I set it up ahead of time because I heard that on weekends they are usually full in advance. They picked us up at the hotel in the morning and would have taken us back if we hadn't skipped out of the tour early...
After stopping at the Meiji Shrine our tour continued with driving past Akasaka Guest House and the National Diet (government) building. Both of those were on the wrong side of the bus for me to get pictures. The next place we stopped was the Imperial Palace East Gardens. 

Tokyo Trip Part 3

After our afternoon of Sumo we took the bus back to the hotel and then headed out to see some more of Tokyo! The New Sanno Hotel is a little less than 1/2 mile from the nearest train station, so pretty convenient to walk. It's also in a great central location so it's only a few stops to some of the most popular areas. We decided to check out Shibuya, an area "popular with young people with lots of restaurants and like Times Square" according to the hotel concierge. I think it was 2 stops away on the train. I don't really know if it's like Times Square because I've never been to NYC, but I have to think it's similar. Shibuya has an intersection that is famous because all the traffic stops to allow pedestrians to cross in all directions at once. It's a very busy intersection. This brings me to mention something that I DON'T LIKE about Japan (there aren't that many)...there is no consistency with what side of the sidewalk/stairs to walk on! Ugh, every time I meet someone on the sidewalk I never know which side they're going to pick, and if I try to always go right I think sometimes I would just get run off the sidewalk. In the train stations, one will have signs saying the right side of the stairs is up, but then the next station up will be on the left. Same with escalators. Sigh, it's not that big of a deal, and it's probably like that some in the USA I just never noticed it. Haha, ok off my tangent...

This is the major intersection in Shibuya.

We found a yakiniku restaurant to have dinner. It was called Anrakutei. I think we had a couple types of beef and some pork. 

The light above our table was a little low...
it was hard to see each other if we sat up straight.

Tokyo Trip Part 2 (Sumo)

After our lunch it was time to meet up with the group and head to the Sumo Tournament! Here's a couple shots from the bus...

Front of ticket.

Back of ticket...No entry is allowed for gangsters! Haha!

Tokyo Trip Part 1

Tokyo! So exciting! I really didn't know much about the city before we went other than it is the largest city in the world. I felt like if I read about things to see and do I'd end up disappointed if I didn't see EVERYTHING. Better to try going with the flow? Well, after trying that I felt like we wasted some time deciding what to do...maybe better to at least do a little research before going somewhere like this. Lesson learned!

We signed up with the ITT office (Information, Tours & Tickets, I think) to go on this 4 day trip to Tokyo for a Sumo Tournament. 

Day 1 was traveling to Tokyo by bus, evening of free time.

Day 2 was morning of free time, afternoon Sumo, evening free time.

Day 3 was a free day.

Day 4 was traveling back to Misawa.

So day 1...

The bus ride took somewhere around 9 1/2 hours to get to the hotel. We stayed at the New Sanno which is a hotel for U.S. Military members at a very good location in Tokyo. 

Beautiful scenery during the drive.

This was on a vending machine. Kinda creepy...

Love that you can buy a pre-filled ice cream cone!

Cape Shiriya and Wild Horses

We had a beautiful Saturday and decided to try to complete our tour of "the hatchet" (Shimokita Peninsula) coastline. On a previous trip we'd made it around the south, west and part of the north coastline, this trip we went up the east coast to the northeast point, Shiriyazaki (Cape Shiriya). There are some horses that live at Shiriyazaki, whether or not they are actually "wild" or not is up for debate. They are in a very large fenced preserve area and willingly follow caretakers. Lots of people go right up to them and pet and feed them...we kept a "safe" distance. They are not little horses and with mamas close by we didn't get too close to the babies either. The coast of Shiriyazaki is covered in trash just like any typical northern Japan beach, but other than that it was very pretty!

Love that so many of the roads are lined with flowers!

GBR & Misawa Adventure Race

Sunday, September 1st, 9:00am! Woohoo! It's GAME DAY! GO BIG RED! Wait, what's that? The game was Saturday, August 31st at 7:00pm? Not for us! Ugh, we may have waited the same number of hours for the season to start, but it seemed soooo much longer since it wasn't until Sunday! We're gonna have to get used to this, games will be on Sundays and most will be at 1:00am because Nebraska plays a lot of morning games this year :( And even if our game is later there will probably be other good games on before ours that will be worth watching...which will mean a lot of short Friday night naps and EARLY Sunday mornings.
If our games aren't on BTN or American Forces Network channels hopefully we will be able to find a website to stream them from, if not it may become a long season in this house!

What better way to celebrate than with some red champagne??

On September 7th, Keenan and several of his co-workers participated in the Misawa Adventure Race...some people took it pretty seriously, others were more about just having fun...see below!