vacay days 22-23 : farewell, tokyo.

trained it back to tokyo early wednesday morning and headed to the park hyatt hotel (as made famous by lost in translation) where we decided to splurge for our last night in the city / country. ridiculous. absolutely ridiculous. we lunched at a small yakitori place called echigoya in omoide yokocho, a tiny alley beneath the shinjuku train station, then went back to the hotel for afternoon tea in the peak lounge.

from there, we jumped out to mitaka where the ghibli museum is - and holy freaking cow. it is such an awesome place. there is one room / permanent exhibit where miyazaki "demonstrates" the principles of animation, but really, he's just showing off what a master he is. all visitors also get 3 film frames from one of his movies as their ticket. and entry to watch a short produced by the studio. the one we saw was about sumo wrestling rats - which was especially funny after having been to a real sumo tournament earlier in the trip. no photos or videos were allowed inside though, and it's too hard to explain, but anyone who gets the chance to go absolutely must. it's mind-blowing.

after grabbing dinner-to-go at the train station, we went back to the hotel and spent some time at the pool, then went up to the new york bar (again, from lost in translation) for drinks and live jazz. i had three sicilianas (a mimosa, but with blood orange juice!! - so tasty).

thursday morning, we breakfasted at the hotel before checking out and heading to the airport. our flight left tokyo at 3pm on thursday.. and arrived in los angeles nine hours later, at 8am on thursday morning. trippy.

the trip was exhausting in so many ways, yet so much fun. quite an experience, but it is definitely good to be home.

vacay day 21 : last day in kyoto.

we took today pretty easy, no serious agenda. first we wandered through nishiki market, saw another temple, and explored kyoto station. it is a gorgeous, gorgeous train station. and massive as well. on the way back to our hotel area, we were walking on a riverside path when it suddenly started to pour (when half an hour earlier it had been hot and sunny), and we were luckily able to run under a bridge for shelter. after an hour or so without any sign of clearing up, we ran up to the street level and grabbed a taxi instead. after dinnering on some udon, we walked around some more, specifically over in gion, where we spotted 3 geisha! they were all in a hurry and avoiding tourist cameras however.

anyway, now we're all packed and ready to head back to tokyo in the morning.