Sorry for the late postings guys!!!! Just remember these posts were written well in the past!

The day after New years, we went to the Imperial Palace, turns out Emperor Akihito was gonna show himself to the likes of the lowly public. Back in the day, Japan was “ruled” by its emperor, not only that but the Emperor was divine! DIVINE! …. Lol Well, he isn’t anymore, the Americans made sure of that after World War II, but the Imperial bloodline continues and the Imperial Family is still alive, and I was super excited to be able lay eyes on Japan’s Emperor. The Emperor only comes out twice a year, on his birthday, and the 2nd of January. We were lucky enough to be there!

We took the subway to Tokyo station on the borders of Ginza where we met up with another old friend: Chris! YAY! Remember Chris? “Do you like bubbles?” I went to Korea with Chris, a lot of fun this guy, an Epic piece of Aussie man.

We walked into the Imperial Palace grounds and followed the crowd to where the Emperor was going to come out. We didn’t know WHEN he was supposed to come out, or if he had already, or if we missed it, or anything. We just went. We walked to the big crowd of people in front of this pretty huge building that had a big glass room protruding out of it, I guessed that’s where the Emperor would be.

He’s the old dude on the left

Next thing you know, not 5 minutes after we arrived, the Emperor came out! Everyone started waving these plastic Japanese flags we received on the walk in. I got video and photo’s of the 4 or 5 people who were in the glass room, I didn’t actually know which one the emperor was so I took snaps of all of them. He spoke, I didn’t understand anything, then he went away. Yay!

We started walking over to a park thing nearby, I began to crash again. The exhaustion was really catching up to me. It sucked, and I felt as though I was dragging the group down. =’(

We decided to check out Yasukuni Shrine, it’s pretty famous and it was nearby. It’s also quite controversial as it enshrined the Japanese War Criminals. We went and checked it out, again there was 12938719283719283 people at the shrine itself so we didn’t get so close. But we enjoyed the stalls of food and random items lining the walk up to the shrine. We also saw a bit of conflict, there was a guy dressed in what we think was a Japanese soldiers uniform. He was old and could have possibly served in the war. So this confict was some Japanese men harassing this dude and rubbing what looked like onigiri (rice ball) in his hair and face. Poor old fella. I guess. Dunno, but there was 1 of him and 18278 of them, and he had rice in his hair.

After the shrine we made our way to Tokyo tower, also in the same area of Tokyo. Tokyo tower was cool, it is a rip off of the Eifelle tower, except 9 metres taller (take that France). The view from the top was awesome, really enjoyed it. It was touristy and so there isn’t much to say as there is no depth to seeing a city at night time, but it was cool, we had fun, got some good snaps!

I was even able to take a couple cool snaps in the surrounding area, so excuse me as i throw in a few random photo’s i was really pleased with:

The next day we checked out the Ghibli museum. Studio Ghibli, the Disney of Japan, is responsibly for animations such as Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, Ponyo…. Really great work. So we made our way to the outer Tokyo to check it out. Turns out they were SOLD OUT! Ahh! So we couldn’t get in. We were supposed to buy tickets in advance, but we didn’t know. So… Mission failed. We went to a nearby Lawson (convenience store) and bought tickets from there for the Thursday (our last day in Tokyo).

It was still early and the others were gonna check out Ueno and Asakusa, but the exhaustion was just too much for me now. I had to abandon ship, returned to the Hostel and slept all day. You could say this was a waste of a day, but here I am sitting on a bus from Hakodate to Sapporo writing this blog, having made the most of the past week or so, and felt great every day since my catch up on rest. Much needed.

I discovered early into my arrival at Tokyo that vitality during this trip is something I would have to consciously tend to every day so I can make it through the days and have a good time. I hadn’t been treating my body the best in the nights coming up to Tokyo, well, I didn’t treat it any different to how I normally would, but on this trip I now know that I have to take care of myself better. We travel everyday, and walk all day everyday, sometimes carrying an extra Jace worth of weight on my back, and this wears us down quite a bit. I can’t stay up till 1 or 2am every night, I need rest and food regularly.

Ciao for Now!