Nippon Ni+

Day 2: I met up with Yuriko (it was good to see her again!) and her friend Yoshiko. Together we went to the Tokyo Sky Tree (the new Tokyo Tower). It wont be finished until 2012... so its only about 30% built now. Then we went to some other cool spots. We went to Shinokubo (korean district in tokyo) and saw a few Korean fan memorobilia shops. Some Korean actors and singers are quite popular in Japan. And I took them to a Korean restaurant where they could have kimchi 김치 and Naengmyun 냉면 and taught them how to eat Korean style. After that, we headed to Shinjuku. Near the station, on the bridge, were some girls dressed up in cosplay outfits so I took my photo with them. We went into the nearby Meiji temple, but it immediately started raining. We eventually made our way around the shrine though. This is the largest temple in Tokyo and the torii arch is the biggest of its kind in Japan...I think. At the temple, we got our fortunes. I got the Japanese fortune and Yuriko and Yoshiko got theirs in English. I only remember one of them now... something about the mirror of life and how you view yourself and others in the mirror. Another friend of hers met up with us as we left the temple and we wandered around until we eventually found our way to Shibuya. I got to see the statue of Hachiko the dog at the station there, which was cool because I had written a question about it for the English Listening test that my school held a few days ago.

We went to a nice restaurant that was in the basement of a building. The atmosphere was very traditional, yet still classy. I got to try some Japanese shochu (like sake, but stronger... maybe 25% or 30% alcoholic content). I wanted to order the horse sashimi but the waitress said they were all out... but we got a variety of food and it was all quite good. One of the dishes was raw meat (chicken, maybe) with a raw egg on top of it. Then you mix it together and eat it. During the meal there was an earthquake (there would be a few noteworthy earthquakes this week). I couldnt feel it, but everyone else could and we could see the blinds and lamps swaying from the impact of the earthquake.