From Monkeys to Mice

Howdy from Japan. Denise and I had a super exciting 3 day weekend last weekend that we are still trying to recover from, so we can get ready for this weekend's adventures.

(Saturday, February 14)

We woke up especially early this morning, so that we could get on base prior to our bus leaving at 5 am. We got up at 4 am and left the apartment at 4:30 am. Believe it or not there were some party animals still having a good time in the bars nearby our apartment. We spent 10 hours of our Valentines Day sitting next to each other and holding hands on our bus ride to see the wild snow monkeys and Matsumoto castle. It took about 5 hours to get to see the snow monkeys which were near Nagano (think Winter Olympics). We had our Nintendo DS to keep busy during the long bus ride.

We stopped along the way at a few rest stops to take a break, buy souvenirs, go to the bathroom, and eat. They were pretty cool with a huge parking lot and a long building with sit-down restaurants, fast food restaurants, snack shops, pastry shops, souvenirs, restrooms, traffic conditions, and free hot tea (similar to our coffee). We had plenty of snacks to eat, but we did eat at one of the fast food restaurants on the way home.

We arrived at the snow monkey area around 10:45 am and then we had to walk along a wooded trail to see the snow monkeys. Along the way we went by an old hotel where there was a geyser that was spewing out of a small hole in the ground. We started to see snow monkeys here. They are called snow monkeys because the area usually has a lot of snow and the monkeys use the hot spring to keep warm during the cold winter months. There was not a lot of snow on the ground and the weather was quite warm for the day. We finally got into the park area where there were more monkeys hanging around. We went down to the hot springs and there was one monkey in there due to the warm weather. Before we left another three monkeys got in for a soak. It was fun seeing the monkeys cruise around the valley area, play fight with each other, walk right by tourists, and clean each other. The monkeys got very close to you, but if you stared them in the eyes they got scared and moved away.

After we left the snow monkeys we got back on the bus to head to Matsumoto to see the castle. It was another hour drive to get to Matsumoto and we got to the castle around 4:15 pm. We only had 45 minutes to explore the castle and the castle grounds. The castle was awesome and had a very wide water moat around it. It was five stories high, all wood, and the original castle. It was well preserved over the years and was not destroyed and rebuilt. We had to put on slippers to walk around the inside of the castle. It was very cool inside. The stairs to go to the different floors were in different locations around got steeper and steeper the higher up the castle you went. They had some exhibits inside including an old samurai outfit.

We left Matsumoto around 5 pm and ended up getting back to the apartment at 10:30 pm that night. It was an extremely long day, but both areas were awesome and well worth it to visit.

(Sunday, February 15)

We slept in this morning until 10:30 am or so. I made us our famous breakfast burritos. It was the first time I have made and Denise has had the breakfast burritos since right before I left to come to Japan. They were quite tasty especially with the New Mexico Hatch green chiles from Trader Joes. We left Yokosuka around 2 pm to catch the train up to Tokyo.

We went to Meiji Shrine in Tokyo which is near the Roppongi area. The Meiji Shrine is the largest shinto shrine in Tokyo and was built in the 1920s in honor the previous Emperor and Empress. There were over a 1000 trees imported into the park that surrounds the shrine. It was very peaceful walking through the woods to the shrine. It was a nice relief from the hustle and bustle of the city. We hung out at the shrine for over an hour before it started to get too dark.

We left the shrine and headed south on the train to the next train station on our way to the New Sanno hotel that we were going to stay at. The New Sanno is a 4 star hotel in Tokyo that is for armed forces use only and was reasonably priced at $65 a night for a western style room. At the next train station we headed to the Tokyo subways. This was the first time I have ever taken the subway, but we only had one stop to go before we got to our subway station. We walked for about 15-20 minutes before we got to the hotel.

The New Sanno hotel was awesome with only about 130 rooms, a small Navy exchange, American restaurant, deli, Japanese restaurant, and gift shop. We met up with one of my fellow engineers who was staying with his wife. We talked with them for quite awhile until we went to have dinner at the American restaurant. I have been in Japan for over a month, so I missed our good old American food. I have had some great hamburgers in town and on base, but I wanted something that was not quite fast food. I got an awesome Cajun chicken sandwich and Denise got a good old American burger. After dinner we walked around town and made sure that we did not get lost.

(Monday, February 16)

This was the day Denise was waiting for ever since I told her we were going to Japan. Denise has a dream to visit every Disneyland resort in the world, so this was one of her top things to do while in Japan. We headed to Disneyland for the day. Disneyland was about a 30 minute subway and train ride from the New Sanno hotel, so we got there around 9:45 am. The train station is location right between the two Disney parks. There is also a private Disney train that goes between the two parks and might even go around the park. We just walked 15 minutes to get to the entrance of Disneyland. There is also DisneySea which is similar to California Adventure except it has different rides. We decided to go to the original which was celebrating their 25th Anniversary.

We got our picture taken soon after getting into the park with the castle in the background. After that we started hitting the rides. We went on the Pirates of the Caribbean, Jungle Cruise, Winnie the Pooh, Roger Rabbit, Tom Sawyers Treehouse, Haunted House, Western Train Ride, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, and Small World. The rides were very similar except a majority of the dialog was in Japanese. There were a lot of Japanese youngsters at the park. Most of them had funny mouse hats which we tried on to see what we looked like. We ate some curry popcorn which we had to wait 30 minutes to get, but it was worth it. Splash Mountain was being maintained so we did not get to go on that ride. It got really cold mid afternoon and then were getting tired, so we ended up leaving the park around 8 pm.

Denise did get her lanyard pins after some hard searching. The Japanese are crazy souvenir shoppers, so every store we went into to look for lanyards was jam packed with people buying Disney goodies. The prices were not that cheap, but people still threw down lots of money to buy stuff. I was surprised especially after reading that the Japanese economy is hurting.

We left Disneyland onboard the train headed back into Tokyo. The interesting part was that the train tracks we got to in Tokyo station were located way deep below the station. It took us 15 minutes or so to walk from that train track to the train track that would get us to Yokosuka. We walked three or four floors of stairs and at least two floors of escalators. As we were walking up we passed the signs for the subways prior to getting to the surface trains that we needed to get back to Yokosuka. We got back to our apartment around 9:45 pm and I used the last few days of work to recover from the fun packed weekend.