Sarah's visit to Japan

I'm a little behind on the blog, 3 months or so! This one is about the beginning of our summer vacation 2011.

June 10, 2011 was the kids' last day of school and, even more importantly, it was the day that Sarah Giglio arrived in Japan for a 10 day visit with us. We were all super excited to see her!

Meeting Sarah at the airport

Fortunately, it hadn't gotten very hot yet but that was partly because of all the rain we were getting. We didn't let it spoil our fun though. The day after she arrived, we went to Nara to see the giant statue of the Buddha and the free roaming deer.

Nara was the first permanent capital of Japan and has 8 UNESCO World Heritage sites. We went to see the main Buddhist temple, Todai-ji.1200 deer run free in the park surrounding the temple. In pre-Buddhist times they were considered messengers of the gods. Today, they have the status of National Treasures.

Bamboo Forest on the perimeter of Nara-koen (Nara park)

Lazy deer

Someone told us that if you bowed to the deer, they will bow back. Katie and Laura tried but the deer didn't seem too impressed!

This Buddha is one of the largest bronze statues in the world.

Pagoda in the woods

Later we took Sarah to her first Japanese dining experience at a yakitory restaurant. It's kind of the Japanese equivalent of fast food. The dishes are all cheap and of fairly low quality and high fat content. Most of the meat is served on sticks and the vegetables are drowned in butter. Our kids love it! Sarah tried some of the chicken but was happiest with a baked potato and rice.

Two days later we headed for Tokyo on the shinkansen (bullet train). Our family had been there before to watch Matt in the Tokyo Marathon, but there were still lots of areas we hadn't seen.

The Tokyo Tower was modeled on the Eiffel Tower in Paris but it is a little bit taller and a bright orange/red.

From the tower we could see a shrine with a cemetery nestled in a small park surrounded by skyscrapers. 

We went to Hirajuku to see the cosplay kids. These are teenagers who appear at the Jingu-bashi bridge on the weekends dressed in goth make-up, punk outfits, and anime inspired costumes.

Across the street is the Meiji-Jingu shrine. It was huge and bustling, the busiest shrine I've seen in Japan. We were able to witness part of a Japanese Shinto wedding. It was really cool to see.

The bride is seated in the back, surrounded by guest in formal  kimono

Monks in procession

The groom and bride

A separate event. We we're sure what it was commemorating but the procession was beautiful!

We also went to Shibuya Crossing,one of the worlds most famous 4 way intersections. The number of people crossing the street was incredible! This is an enormous shopping area. The number of stores was almost overwhelming. We also walked all around the outside of Shibuya station but we never did find the famous statue of  Hachiko, the dog who waited at the station for his owner for 11 years after the owner died. It's a famous meeting spot in Tokyo, but somehow we completely missed it! :)

We went to Shinjuku at night to see all the neon lights. The lights were a bit dimmer than usual due to the power shortages but it was still amazing!

It was a lot of touring in a short period of time and it felt like we spent half the time on the very crowded trains!

We went souvenir shopping at Nakamise-dori, the shopping street in front of the famous Senso-ji temple in Asakusa, and never even bothered to go see the temple!

I've seen lots of men in kimono since moving to Japan, but this guy was unique. I think he may have been an off duty  sumo wrestler.

We spent 3 days in Tokyo and were pretty worn out by the time we got home, but Matt, Nathan and Sarah gamely headed off to see the Hanshin Tigers baseball team play that afternoon. As I've mentioned in an earlier blog, going to a Japanese baseball game is very different than going to an American one!

Our last adventure was to spend the day in Kyoto at the Golden Pavilion, Kinkaku-ji. The trip there was very long, crowded and hot but the pavilion was absolutely gorgeous! It was originally built as a retirement villa for a Shogun but was later turned into a temple. The building is covered in gold leaf and is surrounded by gorgeous gardens and ponds.

Matt's birthday was on June 18th and Father's day was June 19th.We planned our trip back to the States so that we'd be able to spend both days with him. On June 20th, Sarah, the kids and I headed back to the States.

We really enjoyed Sarah's visit! She's a fantastic guest and having visitors forces us to go out and see new areas of Japan we haven't visited and to revisit some of our favorite places. Now that we know we only have 10 months left, we'll have to start doing a better job of that on our own...unless someone else wants to come see us!