Friday, J-San, Alexis and I took off to meet our friends from language class Allie for a low key dinner at this place called monsoon. Now kudos if you are starting to notice a pattern of divine intervention whenever I attempt anything low key (hows that for believing in religion). Jenni told us that Allie sent us an email letting us know what time the dinner reservation was for, and she called her right before to let her know we would be joining.
What we realized later was that the email said what time Allie's finance and friend were having dinner, and that Allie was coming to meet up later. So we basically crashed the plans of two people we had never (or for me briefly) met before. It all ended up working out in a hilarious fashion which has become typical to my life. As the boys put it, there aren't enough English speakers for any of us to be picky about friends. After dinner we all ended up at at some other bar and continued with the drinks. In keeping with the theme of g-rated depictions, we'll fast forward to the end of the night where we find Jenni, Alexis and I, for some unforeseen reason, running from the bar and consequently Jenni spraining her ankle.
Jenni, Alexis, Allie and I, Prior to the Mad Dash:
We got the gimp into the cab and made it back to my apartment. We then set my alarm for 6:30 am and went to sleep. The plan was to meet at 7:15 at Asakusa Station in order to make the 8:00 am train. I awoke to Jenni yelling at me from the bottom bunk to wake up at 7:30 am... 15 minutes after we were supposed to have arrived at Asakusa. Ooooooops! Of course not only did we oversleep but I hadn't yet packed, we didn't have directions, we had no idea what the weather was like (Note: COLD), etcc. Not to mention the fact that swelling of Jenni's ankle resulting from our mad dash from the law was getting worse by the hour.
We got out of my flat in a record 10 minutes and hobbled towards the destination. We called David our organizer who, while patient, doesn't seem to find our propensity for disaster as charming as the rest of the world (ha ha ha). He told us to hurry and we did our best, although we were not a pretty sight on the metro ride.
Attempting Gladiator Moves:
Even with Jenni's janky ankle and my inability/refusal to rush for anyone we were still only about 45 minutes behind everyone. They left our tickets at the train station and we were well on our way...that is until we saw a Denny's appear like an Asian mirage!
Now even at home Denny's is a sacred delicacy that is very close to my Reisterstown bred heart, but in the land of noodles the idea of a greasy breakfast after a night like we had just had was to redefine the notion of temptation. Although we were already late, and our friends were waiting we went with the obvious choice to such a difficult quandary.
We decided with the way we look and felt it was best to not subject the group to our messy state just yet, but decided to keep the little excursion a secret. I mean technically we weren't really lying when we said we were on our way...
Looking Rough:
Shhhhhhh Don't Tell David:
After a rejuvenating breakfast, we were back on our way with much more pep in our steps. We upgraded our tickets to an express train and headed to Nikko! We arrived to Monique and David who decided they need to meet us at the gate of the station to prevent us from further deviating from the plan. Monique was waving a sign, a la chauffeur at the airport, that said "Lacie in Wonderland" on one side and "Loser" on the other.... clearly Monique does NOT like Jenni ;)
Our lovely Chaperones:
The group had only gotten as far as dropping off their luggage and eating lunch when we got there (lunch which I am confident was incomparable to the Denny's experience) so we didn't really miss all that much. Afterwards we headed to see the Temples and Shrines. Our first stop (and our only stop for that matter) was the Rinnoji Temple. It took us a while to realized all of the various buildings ("Subordinate Temples") we were seeing were part of the same Temple. It was seriously, seriously, seriously incredible! Apparently the history of the Temple goes back to 776 when the first part was built. My absolute favorite part of the temple was the Sanbutsu-doh hall. Sanbutsu means 3 buddahs and inside were these incredible gold coated buddahs. It was one of the coolest things I have seen. I had to steal a picture from the Internet because no cameras were allowed, and breaking the law in a Temple seems uncouth even for me.
Sanbatsu Buddah's:
Afterwards we walked around the Subordinate Temples, they were all so incredible and detailed. The Rinnoji Temple is obviously a Buddhist temple. I learned this is obvious because here (or perhaps everywhere) temples are Buddhist and shrines are shinto. We wandered around the different parts for a while but ended up running out of time before we could see the other temples/shrines in the area.
View of Rinnoji:
"Oooo Thats BIG":
Absorbing the Incense:
More Temples:
Me and the Cripple:
After the group of us who had only made it to one temple realized we were out of time we decided to wander around while we waited for our more tour-efficient friends to meet up. We decided to try the Nikko delicacy which was called yuba. Yuba is the skin of tofu and is served, or at least was served to us, in a soup broth with noodles. It was pretty good and I am always happy to try new food that isn't a rare type of species. Apparently tofu has the same sleep inducing stuff in it that turkey has...
The Boys Passed Out:
Since we didn't wait for the others to eat tofu, we left the tofu restaurant and proceeded to another restaurant so that everyone else could grab some food. On the way we passed a pretty bridge called the Shinkyo Sacred Bridge. It was awesome :)
Shinkyo Sacred Bridge:
Everyone at the restaurant:
After dinner we decided to hit up a Onsen. Basically these are like hottubs with naturally hot flowing water. Nikko has an outdoor one so we decided to throw caution, and our clothing, to the wind. While a bit awkward it was definitely relaxing and cool to experience such a big part of japanese culture.
Before we Onsend:
Once we got done the Onsen we were relaxed and ready to chill. We were all staying in this incredible lodge called the Nikko Park Lodge. It was basically like a hostel but super homey and everyone was super friendly. We just got a bunch of drinks and hung out. Suuuuuper fun! We also celebrated Mathew's 2(?) birthday. We bought him a cake, but in true Lace/Shelb fashion I grabbed it before he could eat it and shoved it in his face while he wasn't looking . Slightly hilarious...
Caking Matthew:
Monique and J-San:
Kiddies Chillen at the Lodge:
Kiddies Chillen at the Lodge:
Wow. You don't blog for like a week, then you write an entire volume. Several thoughts:
ReplyDelete1) No more g-rated depiction bullshit. You looked like absolute death on that subway train, and I believe that your loyal readers (or at least those not biologically related to you) are entitled to the full skinny.
2) Temple looked very cool. Excellent job with the figuring out not to break the law before being dragged off to jail. I owe you lunch for that when you come home.
3) Being something of an authority on cripples my own self, you've got yourself a cool cripple. She seems to have handled it far better than you handled your brief, Prada-induced cripple experience here (and I'm not just saying that because her way of handling it involved being naked in a hot tub with a bunch of strangers).
Oh, and stop crippling your friends.