Preliminary Tokyo Post!

Dear Judith,

We just got home this afternoon from Tokyo, and it was fantastic! Amy, Rhonda, and I arrived on Wednesday night into Narita, then just barely made it to our hotel in Tokyo in time to keep our reservation.
We stayed at a backpacker's hotel. It was cheap and clean, though none of us ever got a great night's sleep. Our rooms were very small, but sufficient for the amount of time we spent in them.

We woke up early on Thursday morning and headed to Ueno Station where one of the most amazing things happened: Rhonda and I got Starbucks! I've missed it very much. I mean, Java Joe's is nice, but I haven't even been there for over a month.

We left the station and saw our first signs of autumn. Rhonda and I played in the leaves for a bit which was simply lovely. We went to Ueno Zoo and walked around, seeing all sorts of wonderful creatures. Unfortunately, Ling-Ling, the Giant Panda died on April 30th from heart failure.

After leaving the zoo, we went to my favorite shrine. There, we saw the fire of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A man went to his uncle's house in Hiroshima after the bombs were dropped and found an ember still burning. He kept it burning in his house as a reminder of the violence. This temple has been keeping it burning since he died as a memorial to those who were killed by the bombs.

On Thursday, we went to Tokyo tower and a park around there. It was one of the most beautiful places I've ever been, full of beautiful fall trees. We went to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building observation deck. Unfortunately, it was foggy so we couldn't see too far but it was still a nice view.

On Friday, we went to the Hie Jinja shrine and temple. It was stunning. We ate our first real meal in Harajuku for dinner, and wandered around for awhile. We tried to find the SDA church and looked around for about an hour and a half. We finally found it, just in time for vespers.
That's where we met Jasmine, a British woman who's teaching English at the SDA Language school in Harajuku. She invited us to the church in Nagayama with the youth group and we gratefully accepted.

We woke up early on Sabbath morning to meet her at the church. We walked to the station together and took a very long and expensive ride to Nagayama with about half of the group. Sabbath school was nice, and church was conducted in Japanese. We met the rest of the youth group and everyone was so warm and accepting. We left them to go see the Imperial Gardens with plans to meet back up for dinner.
The Gardens were closed by the time we got there, so we went back to Harajuku and saw some Cos-Play, but not much. We found the guys and went to a really cool restaurant where we laughed the evening away.
We woke up very early this morning in order to catch our flight back home. The experience was great, the new friends were awesome, and Tokyo was breathtakingly beautiful. I'll post pictures later.

Miss you and love you!