Day 19 Sayonara Japan

Thank you very much for Showa host family ! This is our last "Mina-san" picture!!!











Tami and Grant will stay in Japan a bit longer.

Just before leaving Japan!

Day 18 Tokyo Skytree, River Cruise and Akihabara again!

Last full day in Japan! Tokyo Skytree station.

Our popular Japan "Cute culture" called Gudetama (Lazy Egg)

Tami did Gacha-gacha-pon machine to get Gudetama Stickers

Almost everyone went up the Tokyo Skytree

At the Tokyo SkyTree @Candy shop. Handmade special candy. Amazing! This Skytree candy starts out as warm and gooey, then is stre-e-e-e-etched to a thin tiny piece of candy!

In the afternoon Tami, Mallissa and Zurn-sensei went on the Sumida river cruise. The picture below is at the station.

They got off the river cruise at Hamarikyu Garden with a famous, relaxing Japanese garden.

The rest of people went to visit Akihabara and Ueno (American street market) again. Akihabara team did huge last minute shopping!

Day 17 #1 Hostfamily

Here is our album with our #1 host family!

Day 16 Ueno, Akihabara, back with #1 host family

Our "cubicles" at Capsule Hotel!

Today we met at Mister Donut, then we all went to Ameyokocho ("American street") in Ueno. Lots of open-air shops and restaurants jammed right next to each other.

Then we went to Akihabara (famous "electric town") and looked at all the amazing sights.

Really good fruit on a skewer!

At Ameyokocho

Fish for sale, next to luggage, next to rice crackers!

Ray:

So we (most of us) stayed at the Capsule Hotel last night. It was dirty, looked sketchy, but the rooms (capsules) were bigger than I thought. I mean, I could actually sit up straight! (That is, if I didn't have my head.) All in all it wasn't as horrible as I thought it was going to be. The most unexpected downside was that the TV programs weren't very good.

Getting our big luggage from coin lockers in Tokyo station

Traveling from Tokyo to Minami-Sakurai and our host families!

Alex:

We ended up at a Maid Cafe in Akihabara after a couple hours of wandering. I personally didn't want to go, but Tyler and Khalil did and I didn't want to be alone. I thought it was really kind of weird and I got really uncomfortable. The first thing she says as the maid seats us in their restaurant is, "You're my master". Tyler and I both got parfaits and Khalil got some magic drink. The maid said we all had to do a spell over our food to make it taste better. Overall an experience I could live without.

Day 15 Back to Tokyo, Ghibli, Asakusa

Today we took the bullet train back to Tokyo from Hiroshima. 

It was cloudy but we could see Mt. Fuji briefly as the Shinkansen zipped along.

Mt. Fuji in distance

When we got to Tokyo we put our big luggage into coin lockers and headed to the Studio Ghibli Museum. Ghibli makes very popular animated movies like Totoro, Spirited Away, Ponyo, and many others. The museum was amazing.

Afterwards we dropped our small backpacks at the hotel we are staying at. Then we visited Asakusa area, which has a gate with a huge paper lantern!

We asked a passer-by to take our group picture, they took 6 photos! 

We could see the Tokyo Skytree and took some great photos.

Tokyo Skytree

Tokyo Skytree in the clouds! It looked very dramatic.

View of Asakusa open-air shops 

Then we went to dinner at a Japanese-style Izakaya restaurant. It was great and lots of food to share!

Then we did Karaoke and had a lot of fun when everyone joined in.