5/26 - Back to Tokyo

i don't typically like sweet things very much but i love japanese bread and pastries. they are lighter (or at least seem to be) and taste so good. next to the hotel, we found a bakery and had a wonderful breakfast. we even bought a pastry for the road but i think pauline finished it before we got on the bus.....

one of the foods osaka is famous for is this fried pancake called okonomiyaki (not the kind we eat for breakfast but more like something you would have for lunch or dinner). we had not gotten a chance to eat it but we found a restaurant (also next to the hotel) that had them. however, they did not open until 11 a.m. and since our bus was leaving at 11:15, we weren't sure if we would be able to get one. so we went to the restaurant a little before 11 only to find out that it would take about 15 minutes to prepare (and we certainly didn't want to risk missing the bus or worse, making everyone wait). thinking we were out of luck, we proceeded to the train station where we were able to find a frozen box of these pancakes (which meant we could take them back to share w/ our friends in tokyo).

once again, the trip to tokyo on the shinkansen was super fast and after a little gift shopping and a quick run for ramen and gyoza near suntory hall, we headed back to our friends' place (while a group of musicians went to the tokyo dome to catch a yomiuri giants baseball game). we had plans for dinner w/ our friends and after some deliberating, we decided on sushi (when in japan, one can never have enough sushi, or ramen for that matter...). they took us to this really cool place where the sushi comes around on a conveyor belt (which exists in the states - pauline and i went to one in hawaii) but the unique thing was you could actually order using a keypad from your booth. when the order was coming close, the keypad would beep to let you know the sushi was approaching. it was a lot of fun, and delicious too of course.



close-up of the keypad















before - deciding what to order















after - i don't think josiah had room for even one more

as you can see, we ate well. although we weren't that close to home, we decided walking would be a good idea to at least work off a fraction of what we consumed. when we got home, we played an incredibly fun (and addicting) card game called nertz (requires quick thinking and even quicker hands - i will have to explain this in another blog altogether) and after another refreshing peach coolish, we called it a night. we definitely need our rest as we will be facing a tokyo symphony baseball team seeking revenge early in the morning.