August – The Beginning of The End

Exactly two weeks left of my year abroad. Which means… check stuff off the want-to-go-to list!

For your viewing pleasure in this rendition of MasiyInJapan, we have the Sky Tree, a proper fireworks festival, and a couple of museums. Mitch hadn’t seen the Sky Tree yet, and it’s quite a fun place to hang out. They had a cute summer festival going on in the grounds too, so that was a bonus!

We came to the sky tree to check out the planetarium thing as much as the views;

The sunset was pretty.

Mitch doing his best deep fried fish face.

So ready for stars to whoosh over our heads!

We found a Ghibli shop!

Summer festival thing.

Dinner; our favourite!

Got our feet nibbled by fishies while watching the festival and the lights.

Next on the summer to-do list in Japan; a fireworks night. Coming from the UK where fireworks mean gloves, hot drinks, and lots of layers; going to a display when it’s so hot I want portable paddling pools for shoes was very odd. But the festive atmosphere was still in tact, and they might have the season backwards, but at least it’s still a night time activity! Mitch and I looked up a supposedly good display near us and had a wonder over. They take them very seriously here; selling seats and plots for picnics months in advance. But pretty things that go bang in the sky rock regardless of whether you have a seat in a pen or a spot on the floor, so we had a great time.

Amazingly huge daruma on our walk from the station

Ready to go!

Tickets! We made it!

Pens and seats for those far more organised than us

Food time

Naturally, if you can pick the flavour you want on your shaved ice… why not all of them!

Delicious sugary goodness

Mitch and his festi-food

Definitely a fun evening if it involves candy floss

Quite the crowd!

Pretty 🙂

This was their crowning piece; a big old string of glow

Very very busy getting out!

And on the third day of August, my true love gave to me, tickets to museums ♪

We checked out both the Edo Tokyo Museum, and the Meguro Parasite Museum. Both pretty awesome, one grosser than the other! If you’re squeamish, try and ignore the severed turtle head picture. Sorry not sorry.

The building alone is pretty cool!

Giant bridge inside? Ok, cool!

I love Japan’s early pottery style. looks so cute.

Got to see a bit of Taiko too.

A collection of gross for all to behold.

Yum!

This…. was inside someone.

We went to check out the castle there to see if it was actually an awesome medieval themed love hotel… just a normal love hotel. no themeing. sad.

In prep for the last few trips left to us in Japan, I decided to grab a new happy snap camera. I forgot to mention, but the dust on Mt. Fuji completely ruined the last one I had, and it was about 8 years old at that point. So here I am with my absolutely glorious new Nikon that shoots better than my DSLR!

Shinjuku and jacket potatoes

On the 12th of December, Bekah, Sam and I decided that it was high time for some jacket potatoes! So we agreed to meet at Sam’s at around 6.15, after Sam and I had run some errands in Shinjuku and Bekah in Ikebukuro. The most interesting thing about the day was that I went while it was still light! I haven’t done that yet really haha. So I got to see some cool things from the train:

Random run down looking building that is not only supposedly a pizzeria, but also has a gate to oblivion!!

Traditional looking something in the belly of a modern looking something

 

Once I got to Shinjuku and found Sam we went to a very cool ice cream place that he’d told me about; what sounds better than ice cream dipped in hot chocolate? Nothing. So we went and it was awesome.

I had vanilla and salted caramel 🙂 The hot chocolate tasted like pure melted chocolate and spooing a mouthful of that with ice cream in was amazing. Grom rocks!

 

The next mission was to get Sam some rainbow towels he’d been umming and aahing over for a while from the 100 yen shop, then off to a really tall building to go to the Nikon shop. I needed to find out how much it would cost to fix my zoom lens but ‘popping to the Nikon shop’ took waaaaay longer than it should have because I’m a numpty and took us the wrong way 😛 But once we got there it was awesome; the shop was on the 28th floor or so, so the view was amazing! And the inside was pretty spangly too. The downside is they want about £70 to fix my lens so at some point I’ll suck it up and pay it…. Gah.

Sams new towels

Funky mirror pillars make for fun photos

Bad quality but that’s the view!

The shop itself

 

We then went to meet Bekah who we’d left sitting in a cafe for an hour because we were so late -.- But once we got to Sam’s a good time was had by all! Jacket potatoes, Lucy (Sam’s flatmate) improvising Christmas songs on her new shamisen, DS games and so on 🙂