Sayonara

Okay, it's time to say goodbye to Japan and move on to more recent events (since I'm now nearly four months behind in the blog...)

Here are a few somewhat random photos from the Japan trip this summer. Some of the other things we did are...

...go bowling with the cousins and aunt and uncle...



...stuff ourselves silly on shabu-shabu, also with the cousins...



...visit the shrine at Asakusa...



...and enjoy kaiten-zushi. (Kaiten-zushi is a sushi restaurant where the sushi is made in the kitchen and then runs its way around the dining area on a conveyer belt. When something you like comes past, you just pick it up off the belt and eat it. When you're finished, they calculate your bill based on how many plates you have. We ate quite a bit.)



Here we are at the train station as we're heading toward the airport to go to Guam.



Yours Truly in front of some parked trains. In the background you can also see one of the local "Book*Off" stores, which are a good place to go shopping for used CDs. They usually have a pretty good collection of CDs for Y250. There are places with better prices, but not nearly as close to Yumiko's mom's house as the two Book*Off stores that are within walking distance.



Rachel and Lisa getting hungry for some soft ice cream.



Yup, they have a few different flavors to choose from. And all from a shop that's about maybe 100 square feet. Lisa chose "rose" flavor (which you can't see in the photo, because it's right behind Rachel's head). It was weird -- it really did kind of taste like chewing on rose buds.



Yumiko's mom in the local Yodobashi Camera, as we're waiting to finalize her purchase of a new LCD television set and VCR/DVD recorder. Japan is cutting off analog TV broadcasting next year, so she thought it was a good time to get a new TV.



Us in the train station again, this time on the way to church.



And outside the building where Yumiko's home ward meets. Rachel wasn't feeling well this day, so she didn't make it.



Hanging out with the cousins in Yumiko's brother's apartment.



Rachel, the intrepid international traveller.



Us outside the hotel in Guam.



The Sumida River, not far from Yumiko's mom's house. The boat is a "water taxi". You can ride it up and down the river and out into Tokyo Bay. On the left behind the bridge you can just make out the Asahi Beer headquarters, which is right across the river from Asakusa. The building is designed to look like a giant glass of beer. You can also see the half-built Sky Tree in the background.



Here we are on the way home from church a different week. Rachel was wearing flip-flops, and managed to lose one down in the tracks as we were boarding the train, so we got off at the next stop and I went back a station to retrieve it. When we got to it, there was a big, ugly rat sniffing at it. I didn't know they had those in Japan. Yuck. Rachel scrubbed the flip-flop very well before she'd put it on her foot again.



On an escalator, changing trains. When I was first in Japan, there were mostly just stairs, but now train stations have lots of escalators and even elevators.



Eating some home-made pizza. Yumiko's mom likes to have us make pizza for her whenever we visit.



Helping her mom scrub the "rain doors". (I like to call them "blast doors.") Most houses have light metal doors that they can roll out across the windows to protect them from rain and wind as needed. Most people close and lock them every night as well. Yumiko's mom like to take them down and scrub them good every year or so.



Fortunately, no cars came down the street while we were doing it.



Yours Truly on an expedition to photograph the Mikasa, the world's oldest surviving battleship. The Mikasa was the flagship of the Japanese fleet in the Russo-Japanese war in 1905, when the Japanese fleet completely dominated and decimated the Russian fleet. (In the final decisive sea battle, the Japanese had a much smaller fleet, centered around the Mikasa and three other battleships. Despite being badly outnumbered, the Japanese sunk 11 Russian battleships, 4 cruisers, 6 destroyers, and three auxiliary ships, while another eight Russian ships were captured. The Japanese fleet lost three torpedo boats.)



Another shot of the gate leading into the grounds of the Asakusa shrine.



Lisa shopping for cameras at Yodobashi Camera. She ended up getting this model.



At the end of the trip we had a lot of luggage to check!



Back in the good ol' U.S. of A. You can see how excited everybody is at about the halfway point of the ~28 hour trip home.