After our quick trip to the countryside, we had to come back to Tokyo. We took the bullet train - shinkansen - all around on our trip to Kyoto - Hiroshima - Gero, so we had to ride back to Nagoya on a morning express train to catch the shinkansen back to Tokyo.
As a side note, if you ever decide to travel to Japan, you must get a Japan Rail Pass, which only people living outside of Japan can buy and use. If you are going to ride on the bullet train even once round trip, a 7-day pass will pay for itself. We bought a 7-day pass for about $250, and a one-way ticket from Tokyo to Nagoya would have cost $110. So, yeah... get the rail pass for sure. You can order it on the internet.
So, anyway, this was our last shinkansen ride in Japan. And my laptop battery was dead so I just played on my phone.
Here are my goofy pictures, including some stats about how fast we were moving at the time (thanks, Snapchat!)
And a video (thanks again, Snapchat - let's see if it works!)
So, why was I in such a hurry to get back to Tokyo?? Well, there was a special teacher from Erpenbeck I had to see!!! Here are some pictures of me, my kids, and Ms. Fogle, hanging out in Shibuya, which is an area of Tokyo. She had arrived in Japan while we were away from Tokyo and rented a place in Shibuya. We had to see her before she left to climb Mt. Fuji tomorrow!! (She is in way better shape than me, just saying!) We had kara-age, which is basically chicken nuggets, as my girls would say. With rice. And soup. It was good. :)
We had our bags with us from our trip to Kyoto, Hiroshima, and Gero. We met Ms. Fogle in the train station at Shibuya and I tried to rent a coin locker for our suitcase, but they were all full!! So we had to just drag it around the crowded streets with us. What a pain.
Bershka - my girls said it's kind of like H&M, or a nicer Forever 21. Ellie bought a shirt here for about $10 - cheap! And of course, Disney!! Ms. Fogle took us to this Disney store because she thought it had a great design - it was all decked out for the new Alice in Wonderland movie, and it was very cool on the inside too! It had a spiral staircase to save space, as it was a very tall, narrow building.
These little characters are called Tsum-tsum - it's some kind of game app here in Japan. My girls are addicted to it, and they found these Star Wars, Marvel, and Disney Tsum-tsum stuffed animal characters at Disney. They come in various sizes, and Hannah talked me into one that looked like Pooh.
Captain America Tsum-tsum:
Hannah is so excited that she got a Pooh Tsum-tsum. Ms. Fogle is too!!
We had to say goodbye and head back to my friend Rie's house. We only have a couple more days here! I still have a few things to catch up on before we go though!!