Day Two

It's the end of day two and I'm feeling pretty good. I adjusted to the time change pretty quickly. I slept great last night, and had a lot of energy today, except its all gone now, and here's why:

I got up fairly early this morning and showered for the first time in our super little bathroom. T hat was an... experience, but wasn't bad after I got the hang of it. After my shower, I grabbed some tasty breakfast downstairs, and everyone met up

for a quick team meeting before we headed out for the day. We first walked about 45 minutes or so to the Imperial Palace, the place where the emperor of Japan has lived for centuries. Around the palace, there were two very nice gardens we walked through and took some pictures of before heading to the Imperial Hotel, a Frank Lloyd Wright designed building that was actually General McArthur's headquarters during WWII.

From there we walked to Tokyo Station, and on the the way we stopped in to what will no doubt be the first of dozens of arcades we'll see. We then boarded the Toyko subway system, and it was off to the Thundergate for the spring festival that was going on there.

At the Thundergate we saw thousands of people dressed up in

traditional costumes participating in the Three Shrine Festival that was going on. After passing under the Thundergate, we broke up into smaller groups and did some shopping and got some lunch. I got some delicious shrimp tempura along with some noodles with a broth made from fish paste. After our meal and some more time spent wandering around the Thundergate, we boarded some tour boats to take us over to the Odaiba district, an island with lots of shopping and entertainment.

Once we arrived at Odaiba, we saw a woman and a trained monkey put on a very entertaining show (I've got video of this I can shoe everyone later), rode the GIANT ferris wheel on the island, and got some dinner at the food court of one of the 3 malls there. I had a great beef bowl that was mixed with rice and vegetables along with an egg yoke and served in a very hot cast iron bowl kind of like stir fry. We all had some green tea ice cream for dessert. It tastes way better than it sounds, believe me!

We then took an automated monorail to the closest subway station and then took a few more trains to get back to the hotel. Once we got back, a good portion of us bought alcohol out of the vending machine in the hotel and drank it in another student's room.

So that was my day for the most part. I was really amazed by all I saw, especially during the festival. It was nice to do a day of all tourist-y things, but tomorrow is our first company meeting, so I'm going to get some sleep (it's about 10:41pm here) Until tomrroow!