So our new plan was to take two day trips, one on Saturday and one on Monday. This turned out ok since the forecast said that it was supposed to rain all day Saturday and Sunday. Well it didn't end up raining today, but that's ok too. I still like our plan.
We woke up on Saturday and leisured in the morning until we finally hopped onto a train for Kawagoe around 1:00 PM. Kawagoe is supposed to be a throwback town where many of the "Edo" period buildings are still in tact. Essentially, it's a tourist town, but with only four or five real things to see we figured we would spend a few hours there and head back. We didn't know we could have easily spent an entire day there since there are so many random little stores.
Kawagoe's actually really convenient for us to go to as the Seibu-Shinjuku line has an express train that gets there in less than an hour and only costs 480 Yen. It actually wasn't raining too hard when we got there and we had picked up some free guidebooks in Shinjuku so we knew which way to go. It was actually a bit cold, though; V warmed up with a cup of Cocoa and we hit the road.First guy we saw was this guy decked out in a blazer that looked like it was peeled off a couch. You can't see his front, but his tie and shirt were even crazier. Some people in Japan just dress absolutely insane and I have no idea why. It sure is interesting though.
We walked up towards the shopping district and found little shops selling antiques, dolls, and other crafts. It's hard to buy anything like that though when you're stay in Japan is only temporary. We did see this one shop that had everything that had to do with dogs. There were even couple people inside sipping coffee with their pets in a sort of dog cafe.
We got to a livelier part of town eventually and from there on out it was nonstop shops. We bought some snacks at a beans shop, went into a crafts store and bought a cute pair of bunny statues. I really don't know what it is about Kawagoe and bunnies, but there were little crafts dedicated to them all over town. I know that Japanese people like their cat statues, but I had never seen so many rabbit themed things before. It was awesome.There was a shop with these amazing handcrafted knives. I would have given a lot of this stuff more consideration if all of it hadn't been totally unnecessary. A lot of stores also had random giant statues outside. No idea what that's about, but here's a cool hippo one:
The end of the street is highlighted by an alley area called Sweets Alley. I'm not exactly sure what the name in Japanese is, but Kawagoe is famous for sweet potatoes. And when we got there I realized I didn't know how to say sweet potatoes in Japanese either. I figured it out when I saw a picture of a sweet potato and the word "おいも" next to it. We bought sweet potato senbei, sweet potato ice cream, sweet potato beer, and a bunch of random other stuff.
You can only see the edge of it here, but the loaf of bread on the right is pretty big (maybe 3-4 feet long?). We'd seen it on TV before and so we wanted to try it, but it's way too much to eat. We'll hopefully be able to share it with other people later this week. V looked kinda French carrying it around since she had an umbrella and was wearing a cardigan with a scarf around her neck. Except it's not French bread and she's not French.
We finished up Sweets Alley and realized it was 5:00 PM. All the other sites including a temple and a museum had already closed. Kawagoe is famous for one of its gardens, and we considered trekking across to check it out. However, it had gotten colder and started to rain much harder. So, we went to look at the bell tower nearby and just decided to head home.
Not the best trip planning, but we had fun. We can come back so easily, so it didn't really feel like that big of a waste. When we got to the train station there was this incessant screeching in the entire area. I had no idea what was going on, but I realized that there was a giant flock of birds just circling the area and hanging out in this one big tree. The whole thing was pretty ominous, but it won't keep us from coming back to explore all the stuff we didn't get to see.
Also I want more sweet potato ice cream. It was way better than I thought it would be.Woke up today and ran out the door to catch the final showing of Hanamizuki. Literally, this movie would not be in the theater after the 11:30 AM showing this morning. Surprisingly, it was basically sold out, and we had to separate to get seats for the movie. For those who don't know, movie theaters in Asia generally give you seat numbers. I sat next to these two middle school girls, one of which was sniffling and blowing her nose throughout the movie. I thought she was sick or something, but at a certain point she actually started crying. The movie was a real tearjerker, so I told her it was gonna be ok and we cried together.
No but seriously, it was a good movie. The dialogue was super simple, and there wasn't really anything we didn't understand. I'm glad we went to watch the movie even though movie theaters in Japan are super expensive. We paid 1500 Yen each with a student discount. Also, the cheapest showings are actually the ones late at night since a lot of people can't stay to watch a movie lest they miss their train.
We walked home from there and passed a Shinjuku artists festival with people doing puppet shows, magic shows, and all sorts of other stuff. We passed by this guy who had a magic routine timed to music, but he didn't do anything for the two minutes we watched him. He danced for two seconds and then went into a pose waiting for the next song to cue him. I commented to V that if this was America, someone would have shouted, "You suck!" by now. I miss home.
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