Minato Mirai, Hanami Party, Tokyo, Karaoke, so many things!

Life here has continued to be extremely busy, which is why this update is coming kind of late and will have a lot of content. Since posting last I have traveled and done many things, I will try to present them to you in the most organized fashion possible. Let's get on with the pictures. This took an extremely long time to do, so please enjoy aAs always, you can click on the picture to see the original size of it, which is much larger.

When I last posted, I promised to show you Minato Mirai, which I had just visited. It's this port area in Yokohama that's a touristy attraction. They have this gigantic ferris wheel and the largest building in Japan, both of which you can see here. We went to this one viewing area across the water, which has an amazing view of it.

We were also right next to a gigantic cruise ship.

Here's a closer up shot of the ferris wheel/landmark tower.



This is a video I took of Minato Mirai with my camera, so you can see all the pretty light shows that the ferris wheel creates.

Next thing on the list is the Hanami party our Japanese student buddies threw for us. A hanami party is where you go to a large park, set up a picnic, drink, and observe the tons of cherry blossoms. The park we went to was absolutely gigantic, what you see here is maybe 1/5th of the entire park. It was probably one of the most fun days we have had here.

Here is our picnic site, fully stocked with food, beer, and pretty blossom trees.

Here's me with a lot of the Japanese student buddies. The girl in the front and center is Mamiko, one of my awesome buddies.


And here's me with another one of my 3 buddies, Hiro. Hiro is one of the funniest and most awesome guys I will ever meet. And of course I had to sport my Pleepleus from Three Sheets t-shirt, what other shirt could be more appropriate for day drinking?

Group shot of almost everyone in the program as well as some of the buddies.


Very pretty cherry blossoms

Me and my awesome buddy Mamiko, who is much shorter than myself, which we have discussed many times.

Me and some of the other buddies (Mamiko is the only one which is "my buddy" but really, we all hang out with everyone's buddies). The guy in the middle is Atsu, who speaks close-to-perfect English and has an initially very surprising British accent. The girl who is not Mamiko is Ema, another awesome buddy. Really, the buddies are the most amazing people, this program is so much better because of them. The amount of stuff they do for us is ridiculous.

And now for my three favorite pictures of Hiro from that day. Nice drinking face. We taught him how to shotgun a beer that day and he loved it so much that he did it like five times, no joke.

Hiro never ceases to amaze.

Oh Hiro, what are you doing. This picture makes me laugh every time I look at it. This concludes the Hanami Party section of the post.

And now for my first trip to Tokyo. On our way to Shibuya, where they have that gigantic intersection known as "scramble crossing"

Tommy Lee Jones is one of the spokespeople for Boss Coffee in Japan. Cool

First view of Shibuya's scramble crossing while still in the train station.

Now actually down in the crossing. Going here for the first time is one of the most awe-inspiring things I have ever seen.


Me in front of the crossing

Of the many buildings with a screen built in

Wide view of scramble crossing, which is always super crowded.

Strange/amusing sign. What else can I say?

Some awesomely strange architecture with a Disney store at the bottom

Japan's Starbucks knock-off coffee shop with an awesome name. I actually see these pretty frequently.

Decided to try the Italian restaurant in Tokyo called "Italian Tomato." It was alright.

Walking the streets during the day.

Took a short train ride over to Harujuku, which is a major fashion district in Tokyo. Here is the main road, lined with all types of stores as well as tons of people.

Some more of Harujuku, now night time.

We then went back to Shibuya, wanted to see what it looks like at night. Here is the same crossing but with a lot of lights now.

Walking through the streets at night.

End of my trip to Tokyo, now on to some karaoke!

Decided to go karaoke'ing one night, here was our booth.

You know that I sang Rick Astley, video of it here

And here I will throw in a couple of random photos, mainly of me eating.

Group of us, including one buddy, eating out at a local restaurant.

In the dining room of the dorm. Our host people cooked yakisoba for us all and it was delicious.

Eating at another restaurant in Yokohama. The food here is quite delicious and almost always very cheap.

And for the last photo of this update, a group shot after we all went out to a place called Kappa Sushi. If you ever visit me here in Japan, I promise I will take you there, because it's amazing and ridiculously cheap.


Alright, well that finally does it for this update. This took many hours to complete, so I hope you enjoyed it. Like I said last time, I probably won't continue to be this thorough in all the updates because it takes so much time and work to do unfortunately. Thanks for reading and see you next time!