Today we sadly left Tokyo to move on the the indescribable amazingness of a Ryokan or a traditional Japanese style home or hotel. The train ride was about two hours long but we drove through the most amazing countryside. After you leave the city things take on a different kind of beauty. There were tons of cute homes all neat and tidy surrounded on all sides by jungle bushes! There were also houses built in clusters all the way up the mountains and Japan mountains are real mountains, not like those we have in Oklahoma.
Once we got to the Ryokan we checked in an opened our door to the most adorable room ever on earth! The floor was covered in Tatami mats and you, or course had to take off your shoes before you came in. There were also slippers meant to just be used in the bathroom, which was weird, but whatever. The toilet was also weird with about a thousand buttons and when you flushed it automatically turned on the sink to guilt you into hand washing. After we and the other couple we shared a room with got settled we went to go eat dinner at a ramen shop. Our cook had no teeth. His food was awesome. Then my female roommate and I decided to use the Onsen, or volcano hot spring. Yes it was public. Yes it was nude. After the first time you do it it's not that awkward. We did however get constantly stared at because we were white and they were concerned that we didn't know how to properly use the bath. After each person made sure we were doing things right, they pretty much left us alone except for one lady who insisted on making friends. She only knew like 10 English words, but she was really sweet, and totally thought we were lesbians on our honeymoon together which took a lot of explaining/miming to correct. It was a very good an relaxing day and the Futons (floor beds) are seriously comfortable. See you all soon!

Love
Dacia & Walter

So today was the "free day" as well as our last full day in Tokyo. Part of the group wanted to do more shopping, but we had spent more than enough money, not to mention that our feet were killing us, so we slept in. After waking up at about 11 we got ready to go with the other half of the group to a place called "Ice Cream City" which was poorly located in a mall called "Sunshine City". Come on guys don't you know that the sun is Ice Cream's worst enemy? All bad jokes aside, the rest of what I am about to say is true. Ice Cream Town is ran by a sinister looking cat with a monocle. He is actually the good guy as his nemesis is a giant flock of birds with helmets. To increase your understanding I would suggest comparing this place to the love child of Disney + Chuck E Cheese, but about ten years into the future and twice as evil. The place took up three floors of the mall and each floor was about the size of the biggest department store in Quail Springs Mall. To get to the up escalator, you had to navigate the cemetery maze, and pass a mysterious black guy singing next to a corpse.... most of the kids had on a belt connected to what I'm fairly sure were the scanners from Ghostbusters. The belts would shriek, and the kids would madly reel in the imaginary ghost/fish/bird/god knows what. Some kids had eggs with top hats that they had to smush up against other eggs or objects in the ice cream death maze in order to complete the egg domination side quest. I'm sure it would have been less weird if we knew what was going on, but as we didn't, it was scary. And we got lost looking for food....twice. On the bright side, when we stumbled upon an arcade while looking for the cemetery escalator walter won me an animal from the crane machine. As we are in Japan, it was not a bear, but a kitty complete with sumo diaper, fan, and batwings...? Looking back, it was actually lots of fun but oh my lord was it scary while we were lost in crazy land.

Love
Dacia & Walter

Sorry for the delay everyone, I'll be writing three blogs today, but only one right now. Come to find out our hotel only provides us with 24 hours of internet then you have to pay. But here is what I would have wrote if we had access:
Oh Akihabara....how we love you. You fill our shopping bags with weird toys, our eyes with 18+ images, and our tummies with the best food of all time. Akihabara is well known for it's Otaku culture, which is the Japanese way of saying horny nerd. Yes, we went to horny nerd city. Awesome. First off, the adult only stores were hilarious. The first floor is fill of cat, and Sailor Moon, and Dragonball Z outfits...which are apparently attractive to some people. That's as far as we went though, because the other floors were for men only and that to me, says walk away. HaHa. Also, Japanese arcades are nothing like anything I've ever seen before. Take a 6 story building, and fill it with Celebration Stations and Chuck E Cheese's and your close, but about 15 years behind in the technology. These games were amazing, and awesome! Also there are stores that are 8 stories high filled with anime and manga and any and all merchandise involving those anime and manga. I managed to get two Japan only books for one of my series and I am now only one book away from a complete collection!
Then we moved on to Nakano, which is a mall. Once you are in the center of this mall and look down the four surrounding alleyways, all you see is endless mall in either direction. That is a really big mall.We have video of its absolute overwhelming size. Nakano was pretty basic. Each store in Japan does it's own really specific thing. Such as the sock store. They only sell socks. There is a teapot store....well I'm sure you can guess what they sell. As far as people go, this mall was far less crowded than most of the places we've been, so it was kind of a break, then we went home to prepare for the first fireworks festival!
~Sidenote~ the food at all times, has been awesome. I want to mention it every time, but I don't have the words to describe its life-altering yumminess.
Alright now for the finale of the evening! Edogawa fireworks festival from 7PM to 8:30 PM. Yeah. Basically, they shamed every Independence Day America has ever had in the history of Independence Day. We filmed the last half of it while eating Bento, sitting in a stranger's yard, drinking cocktails. There were firework hearts, cats, smileys, and about a thousand other things I never knew you could do with fireworks. It was outstanding, you'll just have to see the video to understand. We are quite happy and still so excited to be here. Write you again soon!

Love
Dacia & Walter

We began our day at a bread shop and had some weird sausage and egg bread roll. We then took an hour train ride to this adorable little town called Kamakura. If you have ever watched any anime involving a small seaside town, this is probably what it was based off of. Today was temple/shrine day so we began here with the Hachiman-gu Shrine. It was beautiful in a much different way than the Meiji shrine yesterday. This shrine for one, was much older. Built in 1063....wow! and it was up higher, but definitely smaller. Then we went shopping in Kamakura and got the cutest umbrella and chopstick set! Yay! Then we ate traditional donburi and went on to the Hase-Dera temple. This temple was my favorite because it had flower gardens and a cave with a thousand Buddha statues as well as one of the best views of my life! We have the best pictures from this temple, not to mention some video and we apparently were supposed to take neither. However it is too late, and I'm sure no one asked Buddha if he was okay with pictures. He probably would have thrown up the Peace sign. Oh by the way, the main statue was of Kannon who is the goddess of mercy and has twelve heads coated in gold. Also she's 30 ft tall...no big deal. Seriously. I thought it was a big deal too until we went to see the Daibutsu. The Daibutsu is a giant Buddha statue that is over 43 ft tall and wide enough for about 50 people to stand in. Literally. I know because you can go inside which is awesome! Wanna know something ever better? It was first built in 1262.....weren't all the Europeans still screwing around about that time? Yeah, we were.

After that we ended our day with a revolving sushi dinner (where the conveyor belt brings it to you), and some R&R in our upgraded room that now has a queen size bed! Woo! Enjoy the rest of your day guys!

Love,
Dacia & Walter

Today was amazing. It completely made up for the first two less awesome days of the honeymoon. We started out with breakfast at 7-11 which sounds completely disgusting but I guarantee you it is nothing like the 7-11 we know. It has approximately 2x the Walgreen's amount of food items, and they are of much higher quality! Then we took the amazingly efficient (why don't we have these in the US?) Japan Rail system to Harajuku where we visited the Meji Shrine and the famous shopping district. At the shrine we joined in the purification ritual, paid our respects, and watched some sort of ninja initiation (I have no idea so I guessed). We then did the bow, bow, clap, clap, bow dance (a prayer) and left our own wishes with the magic sacred prayer tree. SO CUTE! After that we went shopping and tried not to stare at the Ganguro and Lolita girls...and failed. They were just so cute/cool we couldn't help it! At least we didn't take pictures of them without their consent (lie). After purchasing a few knick knacks we headed off to Shibuya to see the Scramble Crossing which was outright horrifying but simultaneously amazing (we filmed it). We also bought Yukata which are summer kimonos (Walter even got one) to wear at the festivals we'll be going to later! I love mine to death, it's probably my favorite thing! After that we returned to the hotel area so we could go to Tokyo Tower! Neither of us knew how huge Tokyo was. The viewing platform is one of the highest points in the city, but no matter which direction you looked all you could see was a sea of skyscrapers. It was so overwhelming, and we have the pictures to prove it. Our day was also filled with some outstanding Japanese cuisine, but that would require an entire new blog, so I'll leave it at that. Tokyo is amazing and we couldn't be happier spending this time together here! Okay maybe if we had one bed instead of two pushed together ones, but that room won't be ready until tomorrow night. Oh yeah, and there is a bidet....but we'll have to talk about that in private.....

Much Love
Dacia & Walter

This is a bit belated, but it will be obvious as to why by the end of this post. So we left LAX on an 11 hour flight to Narita International with every intention of sleeping as much as possible to avoid Jet Lag and to finisp up all that sickness from the day before. Well, we ended up sitting right above the engines, which gave us pletty of leg room but also plenty of roar so needless to say neither of us slept. We did however watch four in flight movies each and managed to not throw up this time. :) We then had an hour and a half of bus ride to our hotel, which was amazing because we drove through some of the most amazing countryside imaginable! However, the pictures did not turn out so great. Why you ask? It is because of what I have dubbed "the FAIL wall". I don't care what it's really called, that is a better title. The FAIL wall is a 20 ft wall that comes out of nowhere on either side of the highway in Japan just to ruin your pictures. "Oh my gosh look at that beautiful Edo period temple on that hillside! I should take a picture. CLICK. Ahhh! FAIL wall! Nooo!" That was our bus ride for 90 minutes. And finally when we arrived to our two twin beds we pushed them together without care, and slept for 13 hours!


Much Love,
Dacia & Walter

Walter and I are so happy to be on our honeymoon! Kind of. Apparently for us, if weddings were a prescription drug, it's side effects would be nausea and vomiting. Not the most romantic way to start off your honeymoon! We were both so sick that we had absolutly the most miserable two plane rides in history. We both felt awful before we left but the confined space and turbulence made keeping anything down impossible. Once we landed we went and begged out hotel for an early check in and laid on the floor in the hallway while a room was being cleaned for us. But about 8pm California time we started feeling better and now after successfully eating two meals we are going to bed early in the hopes of avoiding a relapse and maybe some jet lag. Check back in tomorrow and hopefully we will have actually done something fun to tell you about!

~Dacia & Walter~