across the universe

Monday:

We took the train and went to Shinjuku and went to the largest English language bookstore in Tokyo. My mom got two bird books in Japanese and we got an origami book, two novels and a cookbook that treats American food as foreign cuisine. It's really quite interesting. Although, their pizza recipe was just using plain tomato sauce without any seasoning. Then we walked around a few department stores and then went back. By the train station here, we went for yakiniku and ate a lot of grilled meat...so yummy.

Tuesday:

Took the train to the Tokyo National Museum. They have four buildings, and one was closed because they rotate all the artifacts on display every three months and was being switched. We did see the Japanese Art building and Japanese Archaeology and a traveling exhibit on Maori (from New Zealand) stuff. For dinner when we got back we cooked some cherry blossom soba noodles and had fake crab (which in Japan tastes just like real crab, it's much better than fake american crab) with it.

Wednesday:

I took the train with Silke to Yokohama to meet a history teacher to go to the Yokohama City Archives on a field trip. There were supposed to be four other people but they never got there. We walked around with the two teachers and looked at docks and a big boat and then went to Chinatown and had dim sum for lunch. It was a LOT more expensive than Chinatown is in Chicago and seemed very clean and Japanese and not particularly interesting. But the food was really good. The archive was about as exciting as an archive could be, we met someone who worked there and he showed us their finding aids and talked in Japanese a bunch. Then we walked around their small museum with him and looked at the old photos they had on display. It was interesting. Then we took the train back but there was some sort of accident on the rapid train(maybe because of the wind, a different line was marked as having accident delay and wind). So we had to take a local train to the other local slow train that goes to Inage. So the hour and a half trip to Yokohama ended up taking two and a half hours back.

Thursday:

Today we went to Chiba and shopped. I got a light gray rain-trench coat with a full skirt. My mom got a pair of shoes. We had some really good tempura for lunch. For dinner we went to a grocery store in a department store in Chiba and bought two kinds of mushrooms and had mushroom and onion risotto for dinner. It was okay, but the mushrooms didn't really taste like anything so it wasn't as exciting as it could have been.

Tomorrow we are going to go to Harajuku and go to a large souvenier shop. Saturday we are going to Nikko and spending the night. Monday my mom is going back. Tuesday I am going to sit around and not do anything. I don't think I can take many more days of walking around all day looking at stuff and getting to bed later than normal. My legs have recovered from mountain climbing, though, just in time to go to another mountain :/

Now I am going to go read the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy before I go to bed.