Shinjuku Koen and Kichijoji

On Friday Jake and I decided to take it easy. We've been going non stop since we landed here, so both of us needed a little break. Plus, Marc and Billy had planned a big night out for us on Friday night, so we wanted to make sure and save our energy.

We slept in, and then took our time getting ready in the morning. It wasn't until after 11 that we finally made it out of the hotel. First order of business was to exchange some money, so we went to the citibank next to our hotel. If you ever find yourself in Japan, citibank is a great place to exchange money. They have english speaking tellers, which is nice because you have to fill out some paperwork, and they're good about explaining it to you. Also, citibank ATMs accept american cards, which is very convenient.

Next we went to Hana Maru for "breakfast". Hana Maru is the chain Udon place that we went to for lunch on our first day in Tokyo. I loved it, and was very excited to discover that they had a location right around the corner from our hotel. It was just as delicious the second time around, and it only cost us around 1000 yen($10) for both of our meals! I wish we had one of these places in Atlanta!

After that we walked over to Shinjuku Koen. This is a beautiful park/garden. It costs about 200 yen to get in, but it is so worth it. In typical Japanese style, everything in the park is perfectly taken care of. The Koen is divided into regional sections. Since we had plans to meet up with Marc at 2:00, we only really made it through the French garden and the Japanese garden. If we have time later in the trip, I'd love to go back and explore it more fully.

Marc gets off work early on Fridays, so we met up with him for a late lunch in Kichijoji. Kaiten sushi again! I could eat that every day. After lunch we walked around Kichijoji for a bit. There is a great pottery store there (the one that Jake thought was in Akihabara), so we picked up some souvenirs, and then we spent some time wandering around the park. The park has a little lake in it, and you can rent little paddle boats or rowboats. It was really funny to watch the rowboats. It seemed that people sat facing the back of the boat (just like I would), but then instead of pulling the oars towards them to make the front of the boat cut through the water, they were pushing the oars away from them making the back of the boat move forward. I'm not sure if that's how the Japanese do it, or if these people were just confused, but the only person we saw rowing correctly was a gaijin (foreigner).

By that time we needed to head back home, so we could get ready to go out!