Fun in the Rain

I thought that would be a nice way to open this post. Anyway we had yesterday off due to rain and got to go around with Keichi (Or maybe it's Kenichi, I'm not sure at this point) and see some stuff in the area. Our first stop was a town done in what was apparently Swiss style after an anime called "Heidi, Girl of the Alps". The place had a very impressive tulip garden. It was mostly an outdoor place, and since it was raining it was just us. Unfortunately I kept getting raindrops on my lens so lots of my pictures aren't that great.



After our trip to the Swiss alps, we had lunch at Dennys. Now when I first saw the sign I thought to myself "Dennys? Really? I do this at home all the time." Well, as it turns out, Denny's in Japan is way more awesome. To start with, the menu is 15 pages long, mostly of Japanese style food, but they had some super delicious looking stuff that stood out. I went ahead and ordered two of them. One was this crazy chocolate sunday, and the other was mango pancakes. They were both incredibly tasty. Here are pictures, try not to drool on the keyboard.



After that we headed to the big shrine located near Yamanashi University, who's name I've totally forgotten. It was a nice place but what made it for me was the little museum located on site. Inside was some old Samurai armor and weapons. (I love this kind of stuff) of course there were scrolls and riding gear and fans and stuff, but I was too busy staring at the Spears and helmets to really take much notice. Unfortunately no photo's were allowed inside.

That's Rachel with her little stuffed chicken outside the Gate to the shrine. (You can also see Keichi standing under the gate) I found this picture particularly appropriate because there were chickens hanging out inside the shrine itself to get out of the rain.

Oh yeah, This was also outside the museum. Now I know Hello Kitty is popular, but I didn't think it had made it so far as to earn a statue at a shrine. This thing was carved out of stone and sitting right outside of the museum at the shrine.

After the shrine we headed to the big shopping mall. From the outside it looked way bigger the the Santa Rosa mall. But I think that was mostly because the parking structure was attached to the mall. (It was actually on the roof) But judging from how long it took me to get around inside, it was only a little bit bigger the the one at home. But still, I got to see some nifty Japanese style shops. The clothing stores are basically the same, but all the rest was pretty interesting. Got some gifts for people and some stuff for myself.

The rest of the day involved going to an onsen and then dinner back at the Orchard, followed by relaxing at the house. I spent some time showing Anthony some AMV's (anime music video). Turns out that he's a manga fan, so I showed him some that involved his favorites. He hadn't seen any before I don't think, but it seemed like he really liked them.

Before I end this for tonight, I just wanted to mention what was going on in the news here yesterday. The big story was this: Some farmer got their box of bees stolen. Today there was a Some kind of City wide announcement over loudspeaker by the bee company and it seems like everybody had to take their bee boxes back for inspection or something. It was hard to translate with it echoing off the mountains combined with the sound lag between the different speakers. But yeah, bees are serious business.

Good night,

~Daniel