Visiting Friends

In the morning, JD was not feeling so well.  He had a cough and his poor voice was messed up.  He said his chest felt like it was vibrating when he talked.  I asked my friend what kind of medicine we should buy to help him get better and she suggested a couple different ones.  When it got late enough, for most of the stores to be open, we got out and looked for a pharmacy.  We also got breakfast since we were going to be out.  It took a while, but we finally found the drug store and discover that medicine here is really expensive!  Three times as much as it is in the US.  I was really surprized.  JD really needed it so we bought the medicine my friend suggested and we went back to the hotel to rest and have breakfast.  We weren't planning on meeting my friend until 1230 so he had a couple of hours to rest.

When 1230 arrived, we met my friend Airi in Yurakucho.  It's close to Tokyo city so there were many expensive things such as Hermes.  We exchanged gifts (As is customary) then looked for a place to have luch.  We had lunch at Freshness Burger and talked for a while.  I hadn't seen her since she left the US back in March, so it was good to finally catch up.  She doesn't get to speak English much so we only spoke English the entire time we were together.  She really likes English.  We walked around the streets for a while window shopping, then it started to rain really hard so we rushed inside the nearest department store and had some pastries.  They really like pastries here.  I think they have some in every city.  We talked for a while longer then we needed to go because I was meeting another friend of mine, Kaori.  I met here when I was here last year attending Sophia University.

We met her in Shibuya, which is a popular shopping district in Tokyo.  We went shopping for a while waiting for her American boyfriend to arrive.  They are really cute because he only speaks to her in Japanese and she only speaks to him in English.  She knows a lot of coloquial English because of him.  Which I find to be extremely helpful.  Especially since she is planning on studying in America next year.

After we met up with her boyfriend, we all went to Genki Sushi.  It's like a revolving sushi bar but cooler.  At one point, we made paper cranes and put them on the food trays to return to the chefs.  We thought it was funny.  Kaori said that she accidentally did that one time and has been leaving paper cranes at every restaraunt ever since.

Her boyfriend had to leave and Kaori came with us to go to the sky tree.  She said that she didn't want to be the third wheel but we told her that we would love having her with us.  So she came and was very excited.

We paid our fair to get to the top (Actually the middle)  and went inside an awesomely lit elevator and climbed up.  It went up really fast.  It took about ten seconds.  When I have gone up towers before it took a long time.  But this one was super fast.  My ears were popping. lol  The view was amazing!  There was so much to see!  You could see all the way to the ocean.  It really made Japan seem so small.  It doesn't seem that way when you are here.  Everything just seems unusually close together but up in the tower, it really put into perspective the actual size of the country.  I was dissapointed that my camera could not capture the awesomeness of the views but I did my best. 

They had an interactive screen where you could zoom in on different areas and see the history behind that location, and toggle between day and nigh view.  It was really cool.

To go all the way to the tip, you had to pay more.  So we did and that was even more amazing.  You could see so much more!  There was one room that had the floor light up so it looked like you were standing in a sparkle wonderland.  I really liked it.  They even had an area where you could stand on the glass and look down.  It was trippy.  I didn't like that too much.  One guy was really afaid.  He kept saying he was going to die and had to slowly shuffle off the glass because he thought stepping was going to break it.  His girlfriend was laughing really hard.

We decended, again it went really fast, and looked at some of the shops inside the sky tree.  We found a photo booth and took pictures together in it.  I was wearing green shorts and apparently the machine took it as part of the backing like a green screen so it looks like I'm part of the picture.  It's really funny.

We were out so late that we missed the last bus so we had to take the subway back to the hotel.  It was confusing and I was grateful Kaori was still with us because she asked for directions and explained how to get back.