After essentially backpacking through Western Japan (we decided that sleeping on buses and cafeterias constituted of such an adventurous title) we are back on the 'grind' per se in Tsukuba. Well, Ray is.
I'm still on lounge time for another 11 days.
We took the 8 hour overnight bus ride in style- Ray slept and I got lost in the rest stop. Talk about scary. We stopped about 4:30 am somewhere off a Japanese highway (since the bus didn't have a restroom!) and I decided to give it a try.
Side note: Japanese bathrooms are even cleaner than the metro. It's like using your own in your room!
In my sleep-deprived state I failed to note where our bus was parked. I got on no less than 12 buses before I found Ray standing outside of ours calling my name because the bus was leaving and I was not on it. Wouldn't that have been an adventure..
We arrived in Tokyo around 6:30 am, just in time for the sun to rise and it still be freezing cold. To say I was sore from the ride was an understatement. I didn't sleep a wink.
We headed towards the train station to get tickets for the day's adventure: Tokyo Sea Life Park, home of four different types of penguins!
After stumbling around the area to store our luggage and buy tickets, we had plenty of time to kill so hunted (literally) for some breakfast.
The Japanese idea of breakfast is nonexistent, and very few things are open before 8 am. So, we posted up at the doorway of Gusto Cafe and were the first ones in the door. The server must have thought that all people in Japan speak Japanese, because she just started rattling off questions and directions in her language, and didn't take a hint when I stared blankly at her during pauses.
In my defense, I was tired and starving, and an hour and half post-bus ride I still had little feeling in my knees and shoulders. The question WWJD doesn't apply here, because he can obviously speak Japanese.
Either she was really oblivious or really trying to piss me off, because after taking our order (which I had to use hand gestures for!) she brought me a newspaper... completely in Japanese.
Women.
After the tiniest breakfast ever we headed to the aquarium, went on a mile-long adventure hike to see the bay (totally unplanned) and finally made it to the entrance.
The aquarium was built inside of a sphere in an earthquake-proof building built into the ground. You entered on the top floor and worked your way down. I had never seen two of the four types of penguins that lived at the zoo, so it was a real treat. Along with the surprise green turtle and green turtle babies!
(I LOVE sea turtles & penguins...)
They divided the aquariums by oceans, so each section was another ocean, more or less. Apparently, the custom here is that when someone thinks you've stared at a particular tank long enough, they start ramming you with their stroller.
True story.
It was really packed, and people were quite rude, but I managed to refrain from assaulting anyone (or shoving the stroller back at them!) and eventually the crowds spanned out through the complex.
There were quite a few things we saw, and if it weren't for the pictures we took I may not have even remembered we saw them. Packing as much into five days as we have, and on such little sleep, I had a hard time remembering where I was most of the time.
But there were a great deal of things we had never seen before. (Rather than upload a whole bunch and make this page huge, I have created a photo web site and will post info for it soon.. so keep checking back to the blog!)
Aside from the penguins and sea turtles, which would obviously be my favorites, Ray & I agreed the coolest animal was a mudskipper-type fish. They live outside of the water and jump around to get from place to place. They're basically amphibians.. but fish.. they're cool.
The cooks forgot to take the heads off of my lunch, with made for an interesting experience. I also will expand on my previous observation that the Japanese will fry anything: as a side to my lunch, I had some kind of fried crab chowder. It was good, but seriously? I'm going to need angioplasty by the time I leave here.
I also managed to fall asleep on the cafeteria table for about an hour... that must have been funny to watch.
I got up the courage to pet the sharks and rays in the petting tank.. and I got Ray to do it, too! One of them was like my personal pet for the few minutes we were there... he came up and just sat in front of me waiting for me to pet him.
I secretly named him Sharkey.
We hadn't intended to stay 6 hours in the park, but we did and ended up catching the penguin feeding.. which made me kind of angry. In the US (well, at least at all the US penguin exhibits I've been to, which is probably more than I care to admit) the penguin "trainers" keep a record of how many fish each penguin eats to ensure that each is getting adequate nutrition and vitamins (which they hide in the fish.) Here the trainer was like "here fish" and dumped buckets of fish right on top of all the penguins and let them fight over it.
I hope that all of them get enough to eat... sounds like a great way for the little ones to starve and the big ones to get fatter. It's not even like they're replicating the wild, since there penguins chase a large amount of fish rather than a set amount of dead ones in a cage.
It was disappointing not getting my new favorite meal of soy ramen with pork, but I attempted yet again to make tonkatsu.. and failed epically.
I think that if I attempt to make it a third time I will do much better. In our sleep-deprived state we managed to purchase bacon instead of pork cutlets. In our defense, they were grouped to be the size of cutlets and there's only one word we know: pork. It was clearly printed on the package.
Apparently, I tried to write this post from my bed after dinner, but by the time Ray finished the e-mail he was writing and handed me the computer, I fell asleep. My goal for today is to sort through the hundreds (yes, hundreds!) of pictures we've taken and upload them to my computer. Our stupid camera doesn't organize them, so there's pictures from May mixed in with our Japan shots.. so annoying!
At least our trip will be well documented.
Most of the excitement is over with for the trip, save another trip to Tokyo on Wednesday and some Tsukuba sights we haven't yet seen. I'm definitely bummed that I'll be leaving in just a short week, without Ray. Pray his research goes well so he doesn't have to stay even longer!
The next couple of days, at least for me, get to be wake up, stay in pj's all day, change into workout clothes, change, shower, go back into pj's, sleep, repeat. My kind of vacation, for sure.