Another year, another birthday...

..and another birthday spent in Japan at that.

So for the first time in quite a few years, my birthday landed on a Saturday! Not only was it on a Saturday, it was on a long weekend (Monday being a public holiday! So exciting times to be had right?! Wrong! This weekend also happened to be the weekend of my school's culture festival (which I was expected to attend). Now the festival was actually on the Sunday, however we obviously needed a 'practice' day on Saturday which involved me coming into school, on my birthday, to sit at my desk doing nothing! Rubbish.

Luckily for me, I have a wonderful man in my life at the moment so he made sure that once I left school I had a brilliant birthday making and eating pizza and playing many a board game. (How civilised!)
It sounds rather tame but, apart from being incredibly enjoyable, there was a motive for keeping the weekend fairly quiet.

This brings me to my newest post about my brilliant birthday days in Tokyo!

So last time I posted about Tokyo was at New Years where I went up there to celebrate with my friends. This trip was going to be slightly different in theme and activities, but it promised to be an awesome one none the less.

So on Sunday evening (after leaving my school festival a little early), myself and Todd found ourselves on a plane bound for Tokyo. There's not much to say about this evening. We had a little adventure trying to get to the hotel, but in walking to it we did find a British pub just a five minute walk away, so the week was looking up from that point on. Eventually we found the hotel and collapsed onto the incredibly comfy bed, ready for the new day and the start of our wonderful trip.

The first activity planned for Monday was something that I have been, in all honesty, looking forward to the most since I came to Japan. Before I came to Japan, my interest in the country was grabbed and piqued by some brilliant Japanese animation films (anime) all from a single studio - Studio Ghibli. Happily, there is a Ghibli museum in Tokyo and months before coming to Toyko I booked tickets to go to it. We got there in good time and as soon as I got onto the premises I knew that this was going to be everything I had hoped and more! The outside was like something from a storybook - covered in ivy and other such plants. Inside just got better. The museum was simply magical! Doors, windows and staircases were covered with images from various movies and looked like something that had walk straight out of a fairytale. There was no set route to follow and visitors were encouraged to peruse any exhibits and the rooms in any order they chose. I was like a child in a sweet shop, dashing from thing to thing, not wanting to miss anything but not wanting to linger too long because I was so excited about seeing the next thing. Todd was extremely patient with me, following me around as I looked wide-eyed at the surroundings with a giant grin on my face. The highlight of the museum was walking up to the rooftop garden and seeing the giant statue of the robot from my all-time favourite movie, Laputa. I actually almost cried. I feel like a nerd in saying this but in all honesty being next to this giant and being able to touch it and get my photo with it was honestly a life-long dream, and a memory I will treasure forever.

seriously couldn't be happier at this point!

After meandering round the museum for a good couple of hours we finished our visit with a not-too-quick visit to the gift shop before making our move onwards. Not before receiving my birthday present from the boyfriend - an absolutely beautiful metal model of the robot from Laputa. I had a grin on my face for the entire day after that. The rest of the day (for me) kind of paled into insignificance compared to my wonderful morning, but we did have a nice time doing a bit more sightseeing. First off we went to see Tokyo Sky Tree. This thing was absolute huge! It hurt your neck trying to take it all in. Unfortunately we hadn't realised how busy it would be and the next time we could go up the tower was not for another few hours, right when we had planned to go to dinner (and we were very much looking forward to dinner!) So in the end we decided that we were good just seeing the tower and we were ready to move on. After this we made a brief stop at Asakusa shrine (see the last Toyko post for pictures) before heading back to the hotel to prepare for dinner.

stairs up to the robot

pretty window

even the man-hole cover was cool!

Tokyo Sky Tree

My birthday present! I love it!

Ok so I'm not going to lie, a lot of our trip was actually planned around the different meals we wanted to have! Monday's meal? None other than TGI Fridays!! Brilliant! Actually it wasn't so good for us as, because we've been so deprived of this kind of (dare I say it.. shitty) food, we absolutely gorged ourselves and then felt horrendously ill for pretty much the entire rest of the trip! It was soooo worth it though. You don't realise how even little things become simply sublime when you can't get them ordinarily, made clear to us by our delicious start of chicken wings, fried mac and cheese, potato skins and onion rings! Beautiful. Needless to say, neither of us finished our main meal!
But anyway, you don't want to hear about food you can get at home, so moving on.

reading the instructions

Tuesday then saw us reluctantly setting our alarm for 3:30am!!! Our destination? Tsukiji fish market - a must see in Tokyo apparently. We had planned well for this and booked a hotel a mere 10 minutes walking distance from the place, but we were advised to get to the place well before 5am when the first group of tourists would be shown around the tuna auction room, as this was a first come first served event and is very popular. So we got there early and were glad we did because there was already a sizable amount of people waiting there. Only 120 people are allowed to watch each day in two groups of 60. Luckily we got into the first group and at 5:25 we headed over to the auction warehouse. Lined on the floor of this warehouse were hundreds of tuna. Now I am now aware of how naive I was about tuna. I figured because I get it in little cans that tuna can't be that big. How wrong I was! Some of the fish were bigger than me! It was crazy. We spent most of our allotted time watching different men (not a woman in sight) checking different parts of the tuna deciding which ones to bid for. God knows what they were looking for, but it was extremely interesting to watch. Then an auction started up. It was very brief, preceded by a warning bell, and consisted of one man shouting indistinguishable words (not just because they were Japanese) and just looking a bit silly actually. It was fun to watch. In no time at all our time was over and we headed out into the breaking daylight. After that our plan was to head to one of the sushi shops in the vicinity to grab some extra fresh sushi. However, after standing in the non-moving line for 20 minutes we discussed amongst ourselves and realised that neither of us actually wanted sushi (both feeling a little ill still from the night before) and so decided to head back to the hotel and back to bed.
Good decision indeed.

these things were huge!

checking for who knows what

auction man

 So Tuesday take 2 and first things first, remember that British pub I told you about 5 mins from our hotel? Oh yes we went there for lunch. I had a wonderful tasting 'roast beef' and mash (with gravy) whilst Todd went for the traditional fish and chips. Lovely.

Then we continued our journey on to the man-made island of Odaiba. Here we went on a rather large ferris wheel to get a view of Tokyo (as we couldn't go up Sky Tree the day before) and then headed to our next exciting activity - the trick art museum. I'm not going to say much about this place. All I will say is we had a brilliant time taking these pictures, and I would just like to remind you before you look at them that every single shot is a 2D image flat against the wall (apart from us obviously!) Enjoy!

Alright! So after the trick art museum we went for a quick look at the life size(?) Gundam statue (a very famous anime). If I thought my robot was big, this thing was phenomenal! After that it was a brief look at the Fuji TV building before heading back to the hotel ready for our last night shinanigans.

huge gundam statue!!

our menu!

Our evening plans were rather interesting. First up we headed for dinner at a themed restaurant - Ninja style! From the moment we walked up to the front door (a single black door on the side of a building), we knew we were in for a treat! We had a ninja pop out of a hole in the wall to show us to our table, constantly telling us to watch our heads as we weaved in and out of passageways with waterfalls, treasure and even a drawbridge! It was crazy. Once we got to our table we were given our menu which was written on a scroll! We both ordered a set meal and thoroughly enjoyed every single course, from our ninja star cracker starter, to our hot stone cooked soup, my absolutely delicious sweet and sour pork, and a little ninja mango dessert to top it off! We were very full by the end of it but very content.

ninja star cracker and pate

stone cooked soup - cooked at the table!

delicious sushi, but I was struggling at this point!

cute and yummy dessert

 Another amazing part of the experience was that we got our own private magic show at our table. A 'ninja' came over to perform 'ninja magic' to us, and by the end I was well and truly convinced that this guy had ninja powers. Two of the tricks he did really stand out to me and will make my mind melt until the day I die! At one point the guy had three coins - a black one, a silver one and a bronze one. He asked me to pick one (silver) and Todd to pick one (black). He then put all three coins into my hand and made me cover them with my other hand. Now this is very important that you understand... I HAD ALL THREE COINS INSIDE MY CUPPED HANDS. He then asked me to shake the coins a bit and whilst I was doing that he was doing silly hand gestures off to the side. Now at this point I felt a bit awkward because I didn't know where he was going with the trick and I was prepared to be thoroughly embarrassed when I opened my hands and nothing had changed. However, after his little build up the ninja asked me to stopped shaking my hands and show us the coins.... which I did.... show... the... TWO COINS LEFT IN MY HAND!!!! I DON'T UNDERSTAND!!!! Nothing had changed, or so I thought, I had all three coins in my hand and shook all three coins the entire time. The guy didn't touch me at any point. THE COINS WERE IN MY HAND AND THEN ONE WASN'T. Absolute mind melt! He whips out the bronze coin (the one that neither of us had chosen) out from his pocket!!! Absolutely amazing!
Ok so the next trick I want to talk about was just as befuddling. At one point he asked me to pick a card, which I did, and then he gave it to Todd to write a 'love note' on it. (Todd wrote 'proud of you', a little in-saying we have together). He then went on to perform pretty crazy tricks with this card that I don't understand how he did it, but at the same time you know that they are just very good at what they do, are really quick with their hands, and there is a logical explanation for it. However, what wasn't logical was the last trick he did. I placed the card back onto the top of the pile and he was like, actually, you can keep it. So I picked up the card again, but it had changed! He turned over the cards to show that it had completely disappeared from the deck. Now this is the second brain melting part. He opens up a pocket of his sleeve and takes out a wallet. He unzips the middle part of this wallet and pulls out a little envelope. This envelope is sealed with a pen cross over the seal. He gives the envelope to me and I get to open it. And low and behold there is my card!!! I will never understand how he managed to do this but this was a huge highlight of the trip for me and something I think that will stay with me forever!
Anyway, enough of the ninjas, moving on to the guns!

That's right. You heard me. Guns!

Ok so not proper guns, air guns which shoot pellets. But still, how random is it that you can go to a bar, order a drink, then get given a gun menu to peruse and choose a gun to shoot - from pistols to fully automatic machine guns! Awesome. It was really quite a surreal time. For a start myself and Todd were the only customers in the bar meaning we had one server who looked after us the whole time. After ordering our drinks we got straight onto it, looking through the 'menu' to see what we fancied trying. Each gun ranged from 300 - 1000 yen and we decided to try a selection, a pistol each, a machine gun, a shotgun and I think we tried one other pistol. We tried the same machine gun and shotgun but different pistols. I would just like to make it clear now that I was better than Todd! How do I know? Well obviously we were shooting at targets and we got to keep our paper targets afterwards. After comparing mine to Todd's I think we could both see that I got better shots than he did! Haha. So to give you an idea of the process, we were led into a narrow but long shooting range room (one person at a time) and asked to put on goggles. We were then handed the newly loaded gun and was left to it! Crazy. But lots of fun. The only time I felt a little silly was when I tried the shotgun. Todd went first and looked great shooting off and then cocking the gun back to shoot again. In fact, he made it look easy, which it certainly wasn't! I physically couldn't use one hand to pull the gun back, I couldn't even rest the butt on the table to cock the gun that way. Nope. I had to use my entire upper body to cock the gun - both hands pulling down the thing whilst resting the butt on my stomach. Yes I know I looked ridiculous and I now have so much more respect for people who can use these guns properly. Anyway it was really great fun and topped off a great last night.

what shall we chose?!

Here you are... have fun!

Feeling good!

Knocking the targets down!

oooh yeah!

My first try!

Yes, yes, I look silly I know!

 So after a fun night of ninjas, magic, and guns, it was time to head back to the hotel to sleep.

So because our flight left at 3:20pm we didn't have much planned for Wednesday. We had a little lie-in and checked out of the hotel around 11. We headed over to Shibuya to see the famous crossing and the statue of Hachiko (the loyal dog). After walking around in a fruitless attempt to find omiyage, we decided to move on. We made a quick stop at Sengakuji temple to visit the graves of the 47 ronin. 

(famous story, for more information go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forty-seven_Ronin)

It was very peaceful with only a couple of visitors besides us so it was a nice way to wind down the trip.

It was then on to the airport for souvenir purchasing (lots of Tokyo banana gifts for me!), a quick lunch and then an uneventful trip back to Tokushima.

It was an absolutely wonderful trip and a great way to celebrate my birthday. Add to that, me and Todd were still friends after a trip together and I can officially count it as a win!!!

Very happy, very lucky.