Day 14 - Tokyo…ANOTHER Earthquake!

Posted on July 14, 2008
Filed Under Australia - The land down under, Japan, Holidays, Breaking news, A "How-to" tutorial of insanity, Photography - All about the photos Baby! | Leave a Comment

As a woman, I must admit that I love to shop and with the end of our holiday looming we were in dire need of souvenirs for friends, family and work colleagues. We had managed to pick up a few small things in Kyoto and Mt Fuji but now it was time for the big guns…

We took the train to Asakusa where we found the best market ever! More stores than I could count with everything from paper fans to kimonos, key chains to beautifully painted porcelain dishes, mobile phone trinkets to gold statues…and so much more.

We wandered from stand to stand trying to figure out what gift would suit which person and trying not to buy things for ourselves. This was gift shopping!

Alas, I have no control…lol I bought 2 yukutas for myself while choosing one for my mother and best mate Maggy.  I bought a painted porcelain fan for Sandy and one for myself because they were too beautiful to choose between.

Laden with bags we stopped for brunch in a little café above the markets. I had a rice omelette with miso soup (OMG YUM) and Sandy stuck to non-Japanese food in the form of cinnamon toast with whipped cream (also yummy…lol)

By the time the proprietor had stopped piling food on our table, I had to use the facilities pretty badly. We hadn’t seen any public washrooms anywhere in the markets so figured this was our last chance. I asked where the toilet was and was pointed to the back of the café whereupon I found…a single Japanese style toilet.

Uh oh.

Up until now, I had always manage to find (or wait until I found) a western style toilet. In the end, desperation won out and I managed to successfully use the facilities without falling in or embarrassing myself. I did however warn Sandy before she got up and she chose to wait. LOL

We made our way down to the end of the markets where we found…another temple!

 

(They really are EVERYWHERE) What was new, was that the fortune shirne had bilingual fortunes. Sandy had gotten one in Ueno but as it was written in Kanji, she didn’t know whether to keep it or not. (If it is a bad fortune, you are meant to tie it to the shrine where the wind blows the bad luck away from you.) She had planned on bringing it back to the Ryokan to ask the staff dor a translation but somewhere between Ueno and home…. It disappeared.

Sandy was very disappointed and upset that her fist fortune in Japan (something she had been really looking forward to) had disappeared and she didn’t know whether the bad luck would stay with her.  I reasoned that if it was bad luck, it blew away on its own…a good thing!

In any case, we had found another shrine and one with English! Sandy pulled twice and both times got terrible fortunes. Both were tied to the shrine post haste. The third time was obviously a charm (Sandy was determined to get a good fortune.) She finally got one that was positive… an excellent keepsake of our trip to Japan!

The Bad Fortune

To Sandy’s chagrin, the first fortune I pulled out was glowing. It couldn’t have gotten any better. I think I may frame it, if I ever remember to pull it out of my “Japan” file at home.

Back at the hotel, we desperately made an attempt to pack our souvenir spoils into our already bulging suitcases.  We looked at the pile of shopping carnage (bags, boxes and paper removed to make packing easier) and wondered how in the world we were going to get this all back home.

Time to do some strategic paring down of our “necessities.”  Anything that got ruined in the wash, socks with holes worn in them from incessant walking … bin. Anything not needed back home (travel soaps, shampoos, creams etc…) got put on the table for our use on the last day and then binned. I lost my favourite pair of jeans to a split in the leg that I have hoped to repair but gave in and tossed them in lieu of my new yukatas. It was a difficult process but in the end, we managed to pack everything.

We had popped into the local corner store to pick up dinner and drinks on the way home.  I had bought what looked to be a juice box and Sandy had gotten us a treat…a butterscotch sundae. Thr juice box turned out to be Jello and the butterscotch sundae turned out to be made with actual scotch. It reeked of alcohol. Needless to say, we ate it anyway *grin*I decided to make a documentary video of our room in Tokyo for our families and we had a good time showing the room, the shopping carnage and our horror movie bathroom which we both agreed was so creepy we could picture ourselves being murdered horribly within its walls.

As we sat reviewing the tape, the floor started rolling under our feet… AGAIN!

This time, we were awake and alert so we ran into the doorway and waited for the earthquake to finish. It was at least twice as long, and much stronger than the one we had our first night in the Ryokan. I cannot stress how much the building swayed during these quakes. We started looking at the cracks in the walls with new eyes and thanked our lucky stars that we were leaving the next day.
Here’s the link to the news story

I wasn’t able to find a news story for the first one. Obviously, it wasn’t big enough to merit more than a mention on the news.

We both went to sleep knowing that it was our last day in Japan. We’d be flying out of Narita airport at 5pm and 8pm the next day.

Sadness…

[Post to Twitter] Tweet This