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So, being on the plane was boring. The degree of boring that corresponds with being on a plane for 14 hours is boring enough to make you want to rip your own brain out of your skull and slam it against the wall to get the blood circulating in it again.

Thankfully, DAY TWO made up for all that.

We ate breakfast at the Grand Prince Hotel. For some reason, every hotel I went to on my trip had pineapple for breakfast. Not as the main dish, but as a side thing. I cannot for the life of me figure out why, other than because pineapple is good for you (and also tastes good heart ).

Anyhow, our first destination was the Edo Castle. Because the royal family live there, we can't go inside, but the view from outside is very beautiful. I took lots of pictures. I should probably mention that I had two cameras for this trip, one mainly for videos and one mainly for photos. However, the latter broke (I still can't figure out how or why) and so I ended up using the other one, which thankfully takes pictures as well as videos.

Afterwards, we moved to Meiji Shinto Shrine. It was built to honor Emperor Meiji, the ruler during the Meiji Restoration period of Japan's history. So, there are a lot of trees around it, as well as a souvenir store (which is considerably far away from the shrine). I was amazed by the huge shrine gate that we walked through to get to the temple.

So, after walking a bit, we finally reached the temple. After purifying our hands (there's a specific process for this, I don't feel like explaining it. Later maybe), we walked inside the temple. And two things happened while we were there, which were:

-There were about 20 bonsai on display.
-I got to witness a Shinto wedding ceremony. Sort of.

OK, so I only got to witness the couple walking into the ceremonial room, but it was still freaking cool.

So we left the shrine. Then it started pouring. Thankfully, the Grand Prince Hotel was kind enough to provide us with umbrellas before we left.

I was still soaked afterwards >.O

Anyway, after we left the temple we had to walk through Harajuku District (yeah, you read it) to get to the lunch restaurant. It poured basically the whole time. I think I poked at least 3 people with my umbrella. After lunch (Japanese style Italian food, which is really something), we wondered about how long we were going to be able to walk around Harajuku District. Then Maiko came back and told us.

Four hours.

(Didn't I tell you she was awesome?)

Anyway, that was probably the best shopping trip I have ever gone on. I bought lots of stuff. Near the end of the 4 hours, I got dragged to the bridge (which was coincidentally quite near the Meiji Shinto Shrine. Now, this is a very unique bridge on Sunday. The reason for this is that Sunday is the day that cosplayers gather on the bridge and my group was there to take pictures.

Um, I don't have much to say about that. sweatdrop

Anyway, after that, we traveled to a restaurant called Tofuro ( in the Shinagawa Station) by taking a train to the Shinagawa station. It basically served traditional Japanese food. It was pretty good.

That's about it for DAY TWO.