Wednesday was good despite the morning

I took the day off work on Wednesday and we decided to go to Kamakura to see the Daibutsu and take advantage of the nice weather. However before heading out to Kamakura, I wanted to run an errand of my own. So, in about a month I will be heading to China for two weeks with my wonderful travel buddy, Lauren. In order to go to China, nearly everyone needs a visa. This is a huge pain in the butt and I will think seriously before I decide to visit another country with a visa requirement. First, the office is only open on weekdays from 9am to noon; that means I have to use my personal days to head into Tokyo and take care of this mess. So Wednesday morning was day one.

The embassy is in Roppongi - about and hour and a half from my house. The application form asks you to type the answers, I don't have a printer at home, so I was running around Roppongi with poor Michael in tow trying to find a convenience store that could print my document. That turned out to be an impossibility. So I got pretty frustrated and Michael kept his usual calm and just ran around with me. Finally I say heck with it and we just go to the embassy without my application. Turns out that despite the instructions to TYPE the form, they have them there for you to complete by hand. The whole place was set up like the DMV with numbers and automated voices telling you whose turn it was. Luckily the line went really fast and we were out of there in about 30 minutes. And I have to go back tomorrow (Tuesday) to pick up my passport again - taking more personal time - LAME!

So after the whole embassy adventure, we grabbed a quick lunch and then made our way to the original destination of Kamakura to see the Daibutsu. Again the Daibutsu was completely huge and overwhelming. Michael really enjoyed seeing it and was also impressed by its imposing size. We even got to walk inside the Buddha this time and Michael rubbed his belly from the inside for good luck. I followed suit because who doesn't need a little extra luck on their side?

After spending a little time gazing at the Buddha, we did some souvenir shopping (this time no gifts were left on the train!) and caught the bus for the station. We grabbed a snack and took the train back into Tokyo. This week we spent a ton of time on the train and a lot of that time was spent standing because we were never quite fast enough to get the seats! Once back in Tokyo, I took Michael to see the temple where I spent New Year's Eve. We walked into the Temple and there were some people doing Zen meditation with a monk.

Zojo-ji Temple is right in front of Tokyo Tower; so after our Zen watching, we hoofed it up to the Tower and went all out for the Tokyo Tower experience. We bought the Amusement Pack tickets which include admittance to four museums and the observation deck of the tower. We bought our ticket and headed up to the first observation deck of two. On that level there was a cafe and some live music so we enjoyed taking in the sights of Tokyo and killed some time until it was dark and we could see all the city lights. When the sun set, we made our way up to the second observation deck and the scene was wonderful. I had been to Tokyo Tower 3 times before, but had never gone at night, so it was a new view of Tokyo and really incredible. Tokyo is so huge that it seems to stretch forever in all directions.

After the view from the top, we went to the museums to check it out. You should check out the pictures I will post because some of them are really great! First we went to the wax museum, and let me tell you - they got nothin' on Madam Tussaud! They do mention her as being the one to perfect the art of wax figures, but clearly none of her work was in this little museum. I did take some pictures though and I tried to include the name tags so you could see who the wax figure is supposed to be.

They have a Guinness World Records museum and tons of fun facts about the insane things people do. The tallest man puts me to absolute shame; I mean normal people make me look tiny, but this guy - I am the ant under his foot. We decided that we need to buy a book, but then decided not to buy one because the records change too often to keep properly updated.

Next we went to a short anime about some kind of super villains trying to ruin a movie about super heroes....I think. Honestly, I think Michael understood it better than I did, haha. It was fun and 3-D so that was a huge plus! After that we went to the Trick Art museum though. I have some really great Engrish pictures from that gallery and the whole thing was so much fun. The museum is interactive and all the paintings are even one step more real than trompel'oile! I hope you oooh and aaah at our pictures.

Then to end this night, we took the train back home and made TACOS!!! Mom sent Michael with a taco kit for me because I miss Mexican food so much. It was delicious and here is my formal request for another taco kit please, Mom! It was fun to cook actually. I really don't mind it when I am cooking with/for someone else. More stories to follow.