Day 2, Sanjusangen-do in Kyoto

Shorty after arriving at the hotel, the Granvia not the Gand Via (sorry :p), we headed off for the Sanjusangen-do.  It holds 1,001 kannons (deities) but no pictures were allowed inside the building that held them.

The largest wooden building in Japan that held the 1,001 Kannons.

The Inari Shrine that brings good fortune!

Day 2, Shinkansen Tokyo to Kyoto

After the Tsukiji Market we went on the Shinkansen (Japanese Bullet Train) to Kyoto.  It was unfortunately a foggy day so Mt. Fuji was nowhere to be seen.  My mom slept while my dad and I ate some delicious pastries.  I got the melon pastry :).  Two hours later we arrived in Kyoto!  We're staying at the Grand Via Hotel so the walk from the train station to the hotel is less than 2 minutes.  The toilet in the hotel room is amazing.  The lid automatically opens so when I walked into the bathroom it scared me half to death.  The seat is preheated and there is a remote with 15 options.  It makes using the bathroom a whole new experience. 

 A tip for future Shinkansen riders: if you are traveling with other people and want to sit with them get the reserved seating.  Also, the tickets are expensive.  Three reserved tickets from Tokyo to Kyoto cost about 40,000yen. 

some pictures I snapped on the ride

 this one is a bit blurry but I liked the ferris wheel in the background 

flower arrangement at the Grand Via Hotel

who cares about the amazing spiderman the amazing toilet is where it's at

the remote for the toilet

Day 2 Tokyo, Tsukiji Market

We started off day 2 with a delicious breakfast at the Hilton.  I ate all the smoked salmon :).  Then we went downstairs from the Hilton to the Subway (very convenient) and made our way to the world's largest fish market, Tsukiji Market! If you want upclose encounters with all sorts of fish and sea animals dead or alive, skip Sea World and go to the Tsukiji Market! The market was the liveliest market I have ever been to!  It was like Black Friday on roids.  There were lots of shoppers, lots of suppliers, lots of fish and lots of motorized vehicles speeding around.  A tip for anyone going in the future, wear closed toed shoes. 

Crossing the street to the fish market, very hard to do.

                                                                          Octopus

The motorized cart vehicles that almost flattened us, multiple times.

squid

Biggest Blue Fin Tuna I have ever seen

Hilton Hotel in Shinjuku, night 1

                                        The view from our room.  Hilton Shinjuku 36th floor

                                      another great view from the room

                                     They left a paper crane and chocolates on the bed!

yummy

Mom and Dad wearing the hotel pajamas :p

                                               Mom "reading" the giant newspaper

Day 0.5

I made it to Japan!  The flight was 10.5 hours and I sat by two boys who may or may not have used the bathroom the whole way(they never left their seats).  I was concerned.  After 10 and a half hours of eating lots of just plain yummy food ( Ben & Jerry's was served!), watching movies and tv shows,    keeping tabs on who went to the bathroom and, oh yeah, studying Japanese for a whole hour, I arrived in Narita!  I then exchanged my money for yen and took the airport limo (a shuttle bus) to what I thought was supposed to drop me off to the Hilton where I would meet up with my parents.  Being who I am, things did not go according to plans.  I got off of the bus and lo and behold the Hilton was nowhere in sight.  I was then told that I could take a complimentary bus to the Hilton but when I got to the bus stop I saw that the last bus had left 10 minutes ago.  So there I was in a crowded plaza in the middle of Tokyo with no cell phone.  After asking around in my bad Japanese I found that I had two options, take a taxi or walk 15 minutes to the hotel.  Thinking that 15 minutes is not far at all, I decided to pick the latter, did I mention that it was raining?  After asking some very nice people and a policeman where the Hilton was, my year of Japanese studying paid off and I finally found the Hilton.
It was the nicest Hilton I have ever set foot in.  Of course after a long flight a 2 hour bus ride and a 20 minute walk in the rain I was not looking like all the other guests in the hotel.  Some nice worker came up to me either thinking that I was a vagabond that was lost or that i was a lost foreigner and helped me to my room where I met up with my parents *my dad was sleeping.