July 10th and 11th

Last post for this trip! :0

July 10^th was a very, very long day. We started off cleaning up the apartment, and left to go to Ueno to find souvenirs. After that we went back to the apartment packed up all our stuff and left. We hopped from different train lines until we were running down the platform to find a non-reserved car on the Narita Airport Express. Yes, the airport train. We were finally taking the long flight back. At 6:45pm JST (Japan Standard Time) we took off. Despite trying to sleep on the plane, the day was not over. We woke up and landed in Dallas, Texas at 4:10pm CT (Central Time), seeming like we had time traveled. With a good chunk left in the day we set out to a little town for dinner, and came along really cool, giant wind chimes. 

*Ben in the left picture is around 5ft, to get the idea of the size of the chimes.

July 11^th, we woke up early, at 4:30am in order to get ourselves, prepared, fed, and to the airport on time to catch the flight back to New Jersey. The flight back here wasn’t bad, it was 3.5 hours, and we landed in NJ around 11. We were able to make our way back home, get lunch, and restock up with groceries, all before 2:00.

And thus my blog updates for this summer concludes. Bye!  

July 9

Today we took another train; actually we took many trains to get from Kyoto back to Tokyo. It was raining the entire time, but we decided to walk around in the rain anyways and do some last minute souvenir shopping, and grocery shopping. Also, we decided to play around on trains again. Trying to figure out stations, only to get off and go back the way we came, as well as getting stuck in a station and the only way to leave was to lie to the guy we got on the wrong train. Oh well. Tomorrow we board a plane to Dallas, for a stop over and start our journey home. Anyways, I didn’t really take any pictures, so no video, but I did take this cool one of my father’s umbrella, and edited a bit, so enjoy this random umbrella picture. 

July 8

Wow, so a lot happened today. My video does not include all of it, one reason of trying to keep them short (not like the two-parter from earlier), another because we weren’t allowed to take pictures in some places. We went to a temple with 3 parts, and then we climbed up a mountain. Today’s video includes, water, rocks, attempts of butterflies, temple pagodas, cats, mushrooms, and lots and lots of reddish orange shrine gates. 

July 7

Beach, fish, jellyfish, turtles, starfish, rocks, and more beach. Cool. Oh yeah, and rain, lots of rain. Please enjoy today’s video of the beach that has a very long name, Japan! J

July 6

 Temples, Trains, and Totally cool dancers. Please enjoy today's video of the many museums that we went to. However, the temple disallowed us to take pictures inside, so there is only views from the outside.

July 5

Brought to you today:

Track 0: going nowhere and going there fast.

An obsession of taking pictures of railroads and cats.

What bamboo…? Oh, that bamboo.  

 Please don’t get your pet snake stuck in the doors of the train, Thank you.  

and MONKEYS!! 

July 4th

Today we went to find my camera…Hooray! So now enjoy a video that includes a very interesting building we explored today.

(Lukas got the new camera)

July 3rd

Although I usually combine travel days with next day, today we walked around Kyoto after we arrived and I was able to take pictures. 

July 1st and 2nd

July 1^st, happy Canada day! We spent the entire day jumping from train to train getting from Hakone to Hiroshima. 

July 2^nd, we walked around Hiroshima today, the place where the first Atomic bomb was dropped in human history. It is surprising to know that within the span of 70 years, the city has been rebuilt, and only the peace memorial and museum allude to the city that was once there.