Today Cambria and I had a free day with our host family from Utsunomiya. Our family lives an hour and a half away from Utsunomiya so when we brought up Nikko they said it was to far away so they brought up a few spots in Tokyo we hadn’t been to yet. We got up around 8:15am and had breakfast at the house with our host daughter. We had coffee and toast with butter and honey for breakfast. After that we headed out on the road the the train station.

Once we got to the train station our host dad dropped us off and then it was just us and our host daughter, we took about a half hour ride to the Tokyo Skytree. We got to the Skytree, bought our tickets, and headed up in the elevator. It was gorgeous! Unfortunately it was pretty cloudy so we were not able to see Mount Fuji. We then went to go stand on the glass floor and look down below us. Next we bought another ticket to go up to the highest point of the Skytree. This was really amazing to see all the buildings that make up Tokyo. There were so many more buildings than I was expecting, it is a very full city.

After, we grabbed lunch in the Skytree. We had crepes and they were very delicious!

On our way to the train we stopped to do a photo booth together. It was very fun to do but there was not enough time to pose between pictures so some of them are very awkward. 🙂

Next, we made our way to Asakusa. There we adventured through all the small shops and visited the temple. We got fortunes with our host daughter and unfortunately we all got bad luck. So, to make the bad luck go way we had to tie our fortunes up on a rack.

For our final destination of the day, we made our way to Ueno Park. We wanted to go to the zoo, but by the time we got there it had closed. We decided to make our way to Shinobazu Pond. We walked around the entire pond looking at all the koi fish on our way and pointing out every dog to each other. When we got close to the end we took a swan paddle boat out on the lake. We had so much fun paddling through the lake in a giant pink flamingo that we named Kirk.

Finally, we grabbed some noodles for dinner from a stand in the park and sat down on a park bench to eat. Once we were all done with dinner we made our way back to the train station to head home for the night. It was a very fun day!

Reflection:

I continue to be amazed by the kindness of the Japanese culture. I had a cough last night and this morning when we went to breakfast they had three different cold medicines lined up for me to use. ☺️

Something I have realized by being here is how thankful I am for the ease of communication back home. I don’t know what we would’ve done with out google translate. Our home stay does not speak much English, so we rely heavily on google translate to communicate and to have a conversation and bond with our host family. When traveling with our host daughter it was very nice to be with someone who could read the bus/train signs and help us figure out where to go.

Overall, Japan has been an amazing and eye-opening experience! 🇯🇵