Day 2- Feb 11. Today is a National Holiday in Japan so it is not so crowded around town. Mai meets us at our hotel and we venture off to Takashimaya food court. We walked around sampling mochi, eggplant, crackers and vinegar juice! Yes, you read that right. Vinegar Juice. My sample was apricot honey vinegar juice. It was quite good. Not great, only because I think it will be a short-lived fad, but it was pretty interesting and surprisingly tasty.

Mai was going to visit her grandmother so we went off on our own, making use of our one day metro passes and headed off to Shibuya... to yet another department store, Tokyu. We picked up some onigiri, croquettes ( I don't care for croquettes) and a small salad. After walking around for a bit we got back on the subway and went to Asakusa where we spent the rest of the day. We walked down the main path leading to the temple and sampled lots of little snacky things. I had some sweet rice drink that was pretty good. Both mom and I shook the box and selected a stick that had a number that referred to a box that held the fate of our future.. seems you can get one of 3 fortunes and regular, bad and very good... Why no GREAT fortunes? I don't know. Actually, we later learned that this temple is known for having lots of "bad" fortunes, so we know feel much better that both of us received "regular" fortunes. In fact, we were told our regular fortunes are actually better than regular.

After walking around quite a bit, we decided to call it a day and went back home to our apt, "Weekly Mansion Hotel" in Akasaka. We planned to eat ramen noodles at a shop we had spotted with Mai the night before. She told us it was famous for Kyushu style ramen. Well, we ate there, and..... well, boo hissy on Kyushu ramen. We didn't like it. My ramen was too oily and there were two types of pork in it, one piece was thinly sliced but very fatty and they other was a chunk of meat, very dark red in color, but sweet. I don't like my food to be sweet. So sorry, Kyushu ramen did not make the All Things GREAT list. Oh well. I am sure there will be plenty more ramen ventures and we are bound to get lucky at least once. After all we have regular fortunes, which are supposed to actually be better than regular!

We arrived at the airport on time and we went directly to the desk to buy an "airport limo combo" a.k.a.-  bus ticket +1-day metro pass. The service rep promptly gave me a ticket for the next bus leaving in .... oh no... 6 minutes!!! I left mom by a pole with the bags and ran frantically downstairs in search of a place to rent a cell phone. I found 3 options easily enough and went with the cheapest at first glance at Y250 per day from Softbank. I quickly picked out a phone and filled out all of the paperwork, BUT was told I needed my passport, so.... I ran back upstairs to grab my passport out of my bag where mom was and then ran back downstairs to the Softbank desk. Two minutes left...tick, tock, tick, tock. The rep was waiting on the phone for the amex rep to approve the transaction. AIYA!! 30 seconds left. Run back upstairs, calmly grab mom (uh huh).. and rush outside to station 6! Negative 17 seconds left. So,.... if you have been to Japan before, you know how this story ends. If not, well, there was a bus waiting at station #6, but it was not our bus, because everything leaves promptly ON TIME in Japan. (so, much like our pre-trip breakfast venture I came full circle ending at the starting line, back at the airport limo combo desk) after a rapid attempt to defy all odds against a ticking clock). I very hesitantly asked if I could change our tickets to a later bus, Whew! YES I CAN!

After a long and windy bus ride ( I don't think we will take a bus again), we arrive at the Grand Prince Hotel. I call Mai on my new rental cell phone and she comes to meet us from work and bring us to our hotel. Mai tells us our apt is about a 15min. walk from the hotel and asks mom if she wants to take a taxi. Mom says no. Everyone was worried about mom being able to walk around Tokyo as there is alot of walking to be done, but I do not like to walk and will give up much more quickly than mom. Anyway, we walk and walk and walk and walk and then we are there. We went to dinner at a local place Mai had researched... forgot to take pictures (I will get better). It was a small place, probably could hold 15 people max. There was a very happy, very loud table of 4 women next to us and a couple of smokers on the other side. (hmm.. they still allow smoking in restaurants in Tokyo. That was tough.) Anyway, we ate  mixed veggies, avocado tempura (really good), rolls wrapped in shiso (even better), mushrooms, 30 min tofu (GREAT) and several other small dishes. 

Mai walked us back home and that completed our first day in Tokyo.

 Feb 9, 10:34am.. Blog Initiation Day! Here we go. Welcome visitors, friends, family and all of you who should be working right now, but are taking time to read my blog. Thank you! We are sitting in the airport, waiting to see if we get on the plane. Looks good so far. We are #3 She/M and She/S. Shu/P and Shu/M are the only ones ahead of us.

We were ready to go bright and early this morning, so we ventured out on the LES in search of some breakfast before we headed out to the airport. We walked around the neighborhood for 15 minutes. Places were either closed or weren't serving breakfast until 8am. As we were giving up and almost back home, alas there was a place right outside of the building... Oh no! Was this a sign of how it would be when we got to Japan! Hmm.. Well, we are in search of ALL THINGS GREAT, so we'll just have to be prepared to travel through hill and dale to find the really great stuff. I do hope some things just appear though or we are going to tire really quickly.