And now for something completely different…

To celebrate our one year anniversary on Pohnpei, Christy and I decided to get the hell off Pohnpei for a week. So we went somewhere the complete opposite of our tiny rural island – Tokyo, Japan.

Needless to say, the culture shock was a little intense. I mean, imagine going from this:

…to this:

We had a seven-hour layover in Guam to begin the adjustment process. During this “adjustment” time, we ate at Burger King, nearly froze in the air conditioning, and experienced a complete sensory overload with all the illuminated advertisements.

Then, finally we arrived in Japan and met up with Kassi, my friend from college. She is teaching English in a suburb of Tokyo, so we stayed at her apartment, visited her kindergarten class (so cute!) and did our best to navigate the train system into the city.

Since the signs didn’t always have English translations, we relied a lot on the kindness of strangers to find our way around. Luckily for us, the entire population of Japan is overwhelmingly nice, so we had no shortage of help! I was blown away how people would go completely out of their way to help us out when they saw our panicked faces. We also had people come up to talk with us just because they wanted to practice their English. I love Japan!

Lots of reminders of our pre-Peace Corps life (“oh my god, it’s an ESCALATor!!!”), but we also encountered new technology, like floors that heat up and toilets that are smarter than us (there were so many buttons – we couldn’t figure out how on earth to operate them!!!!).

There were so many highlights of the trip – visits to lots of temples and shrines, a karaoke night with Kassi and her friends, delicious sushi dinners… Here are some pictures of more favorite moments!

Feeling overwhelmed by the big city, we stumbled upon a beautiful iris garden in Yoyogi Park:

Before entering a shrine or temple, everyone needs to cleanse their hands and mouth:

Christy and I at the Meiji Shrine, dedicated to the emperor who opened Japan to the West:

We went to Shibuya crossing, the busiest pedestrian intersection in the world – traffic stops at the same time from all directions and the pedestrians swarm in. We watched the chaos from the 2^nd floor of a Starbucks(!!!!):

We took a day trip to Kamakura to see the temples there. This is a zen temple:

Also in Kamakura, we saw this giant Buddha statue – it weighs over 120 tons and was constructed over 800 years ago:

This is my favorite picture from the trip – we were walking around outside the sumo stadium when these wrestlers came out and begrudgingly posed with us:

Amid the chaos of Shinjuku – more sensory overload:

Kassi took us to the Senoji Temple on Saturday – it was such a relief to have her as our navigator and translator on the weekend:

Another picture from the temple:

We walked around the outside of the Imperial Palace and Gardens, but weren’t allowed to go in L:

This is the Skytree, “the tallest free standing structure in the world.” We’re not exactly sure what a “free standing structure” is, but we’re pretty sure it’s some sort of architectural technicality that allows them to say it’s the “tallest.” (Despite the fact that it’s not even the tallest building in Japan, let alone in the whole world.):

We went to Harajuku to see the crazy fashion! These girls were taking pictures with tourists, so we joined in on the fun: