Japan - Day 2 (Narita and…Anna!!!)

We started off the day with going for that stroll we wanted to go on around Yotsukaido. It was very nice. Walking around Japan definitely feels like you’re walking around in an anime half the time, and there are also no shortage of great characters for your show.

Keiko came with us and took us to visit an old person’s home in the neighborhood. It was very nice. The workers there prepared beautiful, fresh flowers to set out on the table that were from their own garden. The entire place was actually made from a normal home, which gave it a really nice vibe. I would love to live there when I’m old! But then again, I would love to live in Japan any time.

After visiting the old person’s home we walked back to the house, passing through forests and rice fields along the way. As you can see, Japan is a very beautiful country.
Lei and I then headed off to Narita where we would visit a temple and then go meet Anna at the airport.

Now it was time to pick up Anna!!! We were so excited to see her!! The first two minutes of seeing her were great, and then right after that we were all too exhausted to function. Anna had just come off an eight hour flight, and Lei and I had been awake since 4:30AM. Jetlag is very real.

We hopped on a train to Asakusa to visit the Senso-ji temple. This is a very famous temple in Tokyo and so of course we needed to go check it out.

We got some good photos, but we actually were unable to get the best one at the dumpling shop.
After visiting the temple we decided we really needed to get a little bite to eat. We walked around and Lei and I found some food we thought looked pretty good. Anna wasn’t into that, and she found something that she would love:

Fried chicken!!

Unfortunately for her, even though the sign said open, the shop was decidely closed.
We walked around some more and decided to go in search of dumplings. Dumplings are really more chinese food, but last time Anna was in Asia she visited China. We all speak zero to no Japanese and it seems like most Japanese don’t speak a ton of English, but we were able to communicate with one guy that we wanted gyoza (dumplings).

Us - “Hi, do you have dumplings?"

Him - “Uhhhh…"

Us - “Somebody look up dumplings"

“ugh, I should know this"

“My internet is being slow"

“OH! It’s gyoza. Duh! I knew that"

Him - “Gyoza….."

(he wasn’t super helpful"

Us - “Gyoza wa doko desuka?"

Him - “Go…and turn left! no!….go..straight! And you see tiger. Tiger gyoza”

Anna - “Mahalo!"

We never saw a tiger (we still have doubts about whether there really was one), but somehow we were able to find a gyoza shop.

We were so happy. We each decided to get six gyoza and got a little help ordring from an old Japanese couple that was sitting next to us. As they were about to leave they told us that they would cover our bill! We were very happily surprised and they told us “Welcome to Japan” (They said it in Japanese first but we didn’t understand).

We asked them if we could take a photo together, but the woman quickly said “No Photo!” and bolted out the door. hahaha.

After getting our gyoza we headed to Seiko to meet up with Trevor (an old friend that Mike and I stayed with before) and went to eat dinner.

Dinner. was. amazing.

We had tonkatsu and I think it was the best I’ve ever had. One thing that I really loved is that we actually crushed our own sesame seeds and put it in the katsu sauce.

After eating we were completely exhausted and welcomed a solid night of sleep.