Hello Bullet Train

Unfortunately, I took no picture that pertain to this portion of the story.
As the title of this post suggests, my time in Tokyo had come to a close, and it was time for my to take the Bullet Train to Shizuoka. I had gone to the train station a day before to get a ticket. This step was unnecessary, but since I had never been on this kind of train before, it put me at ease.
I arrived at the station the day after, lugging my monster of a suitcase along. This train line's name is Shinkansen, and is known for holding the world record of "fastest rail vehicle." I'm guessing most of you have hear of it. It looks a little like this:

By little, I mean this is the actual train. I did not, however, take this photo. Yes, it was taken from Google Images. 

My cousin drove with my to the station to see me off and make sure I didn't head in the wrong direction. I soon left the comfort of his presence and began to wonder towards the correct platform. After accidentally entering the handicapped waiting room, I found the correct path to the platform and train. My train soon arrived, but I noticed that no one was entering. Not wanting to get into any sort of "situation," I decided to sit and watch what others did (which I have learned, when traveling, saves loads of embarrassment). Instead of immediately entering the open doors, people were lining up in front of them. I followed suit and stood in front of the empty train. A short while later, a large crew of ladies in pink uniforms entered the train and began cleaning, and flipping the directions of the seats. I realized that this was the end of line, and were "resetting" the train for the next go. Now I just had to wait until they were done.

Another foreigner soon walked up, looking very confused. He kept looking around, and I'm guessing he was wondering why no one getting on, too. Instead of waiting it out, he chose to try and enter. Those station conductors are quite vigilant, and as this man tried to enter, he was whistled and yelled at. Blushing very hard, and still looking very confused, he stepped back. I accidentally let out a little snort and chuckle, making the kid blush even harder. Poor guy...

One thing that I have learned about travel is that you must be willing to embarrass yourself. If your not, you will most likely have a miserable time. With the language barrier, differences in customs, and generally unknown territory, there is no way to be fully prepared. The best thing to do is suck it up and push forward. I have never been one to shy away from embarrassing herself, but even so, I need to keep in mind that this is just a slice of the cake. 

After the train was reset and cleaned, people began to board and I wondered to my seat. I had to travel to the back of my car to stick my suitcase behind the last row, as it was too large to fit in the overhead rack. It always feels uncomfortable leaving things unattended, but this is the way things are done here. People will just leave their purses and backpacks on a bench while they are grabbing a drink from the vending machine at the train station. It is weird being in such a trusting place, and it is probably pretty sad that I feel that way.  

As I headed back up the aisle, two nice Australian fellows stopped me to ask if I needed help putting my bag away. Looking back now, it was a rather odd question, seeing that I no longer had a suitcase with me. I gave a raised eyebrow and politely rejected. I settled into my seat and the train soon began to move. 

I stuck my earbuds in and turned on some Frank Sinatra, Somewhere Beyond the Sea to be exact, which I felt was very fitting. I watched the scenery speed past me. The high-rises soon turned into small houses which turned into farmland and mountains. Everything is so green in this country. I appreciate that there is always something strikingly beautiful, wherever you are in Japan, at least in my experience and mind. 

With an entrance into a tunnel and, subsequently, my view being blocked, I pulled my computer out to write a post in this very blog.  

About an hour later, I arrived in the town of Shizuoka. This is were I met the family that I will be staying with for the next two months. Angela, the matron of the family, found and led me to the car. I was rather excited about this, as the parking garage was an Automated Car Parking System. This means that a mechanical, multi-story system was used to transport cars to and from parking spaces to eliminate wasted space. I had never seen one of these before. It was pretty cool.

After a while of driving, we arrived in a little town part of the Shizuoka area called Shimada. This was my new home for the next couple of months, and I couldn't be happier. 

Making fun of trees is a knock on wood.

So this post is going to be very short, but I want to share one of my favorite places in Tokyo. 

It's pretty small. I found it during one of the first few days I arrived. While trying to find my way back to the apartment, I stumbled upon a bunch of sports fields. I sat and watched all the teams play a variety of sports. I can't quite put it into words, but many of the sports played here have very subtle difference than the ones back home, I noticed this especially with baseball. 

After sitting for a while, I chose to press on and try to figure out where I was. I soon arrived at this vaguely open gate leading to some sort of park thing. Looking back now, I'm fairly sure it was a service entrance, but I still went in. On my way on this tiny little driveway, I found this. 

What? Stuff on fire? I like this place better already (I'm still not quite sure why this was happening).

Anyway, I pressed on and entered on a nice little stone path. It led to a wooded area. The trees twisted overhead and weaved some sort of canopy above me.

Butterflies where flapping about, with the songs of both birds and cicadas (don't even get me started on those guys) following me wherever I walked. I soon ran into a small river with a path parrelling it. A little ways down this trail, there was a cute little stone bridge. It was all very romantic. I sat on the edge and looked down on the koi gliding through the murky water. 
This was the view from my seat: 

The bridge was quite steep, and couples would run up to the top and let gravity push them a little further on the way down. They would hold hands and giggle too hard. It's funny how media has portrayed these kinds of bridges as romantic, and that a good part of the population believes so also. Not that it is a bad thing, but I've always wondered why we think of certain things in the way we do.

After sticking in my earbuds and listening to something sentimental, I hopped off the bridge's railing and ventured further into the park. I soon came across a long boardwalk extending into a large pond that said river connected to. I strolled around the pond, watching the various kinds of ducks swim around and the schoolkids running off together. After following the path as far as I could, I came to actual entrance of the park and found a plaque (partially in English) explaining where and what this park was all about. It is a place called Arisugawanomiya Memorial Park. It was beautiful. I felt as if I had stepped off of the street and into someplace magical.

I'm Just Saiyan

The next day I thought I would indulge my more disconcerting side and decided to visit a part of Tokyo called Akihabara. To give some sort of reference on what this place it like, every time I have heard an American explain it, the descriptions goes along the lines of 'nerd town.'
Anyway, being a small fan of animation, I thought it would be fun to look around. Unfortunately, at this point of my trip, I was neither bold enough nor confident enough in my communication to actually buy anything, so I just stuck to mostly window shopping. However, here in Japan, vending machines are widely popular, which I cant complain about. There was one particular shop that I wanted to find. It was entirely composed of vending machines for various figurines and merchandise of anime and other cutesy products. I bought a few things there and went to search around. The main street is full of high-rises, comprised mostly of duty-free shops and huge arcades of sorts. These duty-free shops are everywhere, and they can have up to eight floors each. You couldn't walk two blocks without seeing one. I decided to visit a few of the manga shops, which ended up having five to nine floors. Let me tell you, there is so much freaking manga. I went about browsing there, trying to find all the ones I had hear of.
I soon left and found myself in one of the duty-free shops. They mostly have electronic related products, but they also have many, many figurines. I am both impressed and disgusted by the figurine maker's attention to detail (that can be taken many different ways). Needless to say, I wore this face for a large part of the day (especially when I accidentally entered the adult manga section):

See! look at that attention to detail!
I spent most of the day walking around looking at nerdy stuff and other pop culture items, so I was a happy girl. That night, I went out with James and Masami for dinner. It was a vegan-y place and I enjoyed one of the best desserts I have ever had the pleasure to eat. Plus it was adorable.

Beyond my little cake thing, I also had this stellar drink. It is basically steamed soymilk with ginger and cinnamon, and it was a little slice of heaven.

I guess this is as good of a time as any to introduce these two to you readers. Look at how cute they are:

Just to clear up any confusion with who these people are, James is my cousin, or to be more precise, my mothers cousin. Masami is his wife, shes a pretty awesome lady. I've been staying with them for my time in Tokyo. They are two pretty cool cats and I am my words can't describe how grateful I am that I have had the chance to get to know them. 

And thus concludes this day in Tokyo. I know I have so much writing to catch up on, and I am kicking myself for not getting on it sooner. However, these posts are coming along slowly, but surely. 

I bid you all a farewell. 

A+ anime puns in the title right???