Friday, June 15, 2007
My girlfriend, Celeste, came to visit me the night of June 7th until the morning of June 11th. She was in the Philippines visiting family, and her parents were kind enough to let her come to Japan to see Tokyo and visit me. I left work a little early on the 7th to go pick her up at Narita airport.
Narita is about an hour outside of Tokyo and it's a little bit of an endeavor to get there. You have to go on a subway and take the Narita Express line, which is at least a 55 minute ride.
The train station at Tokyo is PACKED. And it was a Thursday. I'd hate to see what it's like on a weekend.
The trains to Nartia are pretty nice. Although it's about 2700 yen, (About $22), you get a nice seat, and they push a little cart with bentos with food. I guess each train station offers a different lunch, and some people actually go around to places specifically for a chance to eat the special food that the train offers. It's called an "ekiben." Eki - Train Station, Ben - Short for "Bento" which is like a pre-made lunch.
Anyway, I finally made it to the effort and waiting for Celeste, and finally, after a little bit of wait, she made it! We hopped on a bus to get back to Celeste's hotel.
Her hotel was so nice! I guess the Hotel New Otani opened at the same time as the Olympics. It has a a 400 year garden and an art musuem. Over 1000 different rooms with 37 restaurants in the hotel. 
We didn't arrive until around 9:30 so we decided to get a quick bite to eat at a convenience store and rest up until tomorrow.
The next day we went to Asakusa. Celeste loved the little shops and was a little overwhelmed. She didn't know what to get; there were so many trinkets she wanted to take home for family. Eventually she didn't get anything.
Like I did last time I went, we washed our hands at the fountain, purified ourselves with the smoke, and got our fortune told.
I got a good fortune and Celeste got a Regular fortune.
Afterwards I wanted to take her to Takeshita-dori to go through the cool alley-way with the sub-culture fashion...except i got lost. Instead we just wandered around Shinjuku until night time. We found an arcade, and Celeste was amazed.
We also stopped at a product store, and again, Celeste was amazed.
Then we went back to Roppongi for dinner.
Exhausting day...
Stay tuned for Part 2!
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