Around the World in 330 Days: Brian's Fulbright Journey in China and Elsewhere: Days 149-150: End of Japan Trip

Wednesday was the last full day of our Tokyo trip. The day began with eating at the buffet in the hotel again...I really do like their scrambled eggs, iced tea, brie cheese, and salmon trout especially. They also have a different pasta every day; today it was a pesto pasta. We decided to go to the Snoopy Museum in Roppongi first because it was a time-sensitive issue. So first we went to this convenience store called Lawson's, where we read online that we were supposed to buy tickets. We had problems figuring out the machine. An employee in there tried to help us; in fact, she knew what we were talking about. The machine said the tickets were sold out. Undaunted, we decided to take the subway there anyway, even after the Studio Ghibli Museum fiasco. And I'm so glad we did! It was a cute museum--small but a lot of fun. Images of the Peanuts characters pervaded the place. The first room we walked into had a mural of Charlie Brown and Snoopy made up of old comic strips; it was very clever. This same room also had a plethora of photographs showing Charles Schulz's life. Then we entered a room showing a brief animated clip called "Love Is Wonderful," which turned out to be the theme of the gallery while we were there. Lots of comics that related to "love" themes in Peanuts: Lucy and Schroeder; Linus and Sally; and even more obscure ones, like Linus and Truffles. They showed us another animation, that reinforced all the love relationships of all the characters. "Love is the whole world," it proclaimed at the end. We also enjoyed perusing their gift shop, where we bought some cool stuff, and then we even went to the Blanket Cafe, where I got a sandwich out of a dog dish. :) Outside, when we left, they had these lights on a tree that animated themselves, and I saw a dancing Snoopy--and someone had made a Snoopy snowman. This place totally appealed to the kid in me, and I loved it.

Pics from the Snoopy Museum:

The Charlie Brown and Snoopy mural.

Snoopy and Woodstock.

Photo of Schulz and his dog Sparky.

Time cover of the Peanuts gang.

Valentine's Day Peanuts comic.

Poster for the gallery theme.

After the museum, though, was the most stressful part of the trip. We had a horrible time figuring how to get to the anime store in Nakuna, Nakuna Broadway, that Kerry wanted to get to. He just wanted to give up and go home, but I kept insisting we press on. Tokyo subways are HORRIBLY confusing. We did get there, eventually, but, sadly, the store wasn't much to speak of, and half of it was closing when we got there. It just basically confirmed for me Tokyo's obsession with anime and its portrayal of nearly-naked women within it. I saw more naked or half naked women in this one store than I have in an entire life of TV. I felt that I was in an adult video store.

A couple of the more tame examples:

Adam and Eve?

A powerful gang of females.

Soon after, we decided to go back to the sushi place we went to the previous night: Kazuna Sushi. It wasn't as good as the previous night, but it was still good. Tonight I had a salmon and avocado carpaccio, along with the same sashimi platter I ordered the night before. I have discovered that I LOVE UNI. It is sooooooo good. I can never seem to find it in the USA, either. Maybe I'm just not looking in the right places. I wasn't thrilled that they sat us downstairs, though, and tonight, unlike last night, they made us use a computer tablet to order. And some of the stuff we wanted wasn't easily found on there. We decided to go home soon after.

I don't have a lot to say about Thursday other than it was a long travel day: we got up about 7:30, ate the buffet breakfast, finished packing, got onto the hotel shuttle, rode about 110 minutes to our terminal, and then checked in. Fortunately check in and immigration was super easy in Japan (not surprisingly, more streamlined than China). However, our flight was delayed two hours. Sigh. The flight wasn't too bad, but it was three hours long. And, of course, immigration takes a lot longer in China. Leaving the plane, I noticed that, on ANA, everyone got their bags at the same time and then filed out at once. This is different from the American and Chinese ways of filing out of the plane row by row. Consequently, because we had to stop for the bathroom on the way out, EVERYONE had already grabbed their luggage ahead of us, and two airport staff were about to take our bags away to the "lost luggage" area, but we nabbed them just in time. Customs in China was pretty easy; we just simply went through the "Nothing to Declare" line. And then we grabbed a taxi, which, of course, took a while to get us home: it was snowing in Shanghai, on top of everything else. We arrived home at about 8:15 pm Shanghai time, 9:15 pm Tokyo time. Travel, travel, travel was the theme.

Some trip pics: