Japan Day 3 ...

Our day started today with a trip to visit a local shrine. Little did I know just how wonderful this day was going to turn out. Upon arriving, we first visited the local information center with Yamamoto-sensei. Needless to say the first stop at the shrine is the gate. The gate is called the lightning gate. I has statues on both sides of the gate(you can't really see them in this picture). The statues are supposed to be the guardians of the gate, and there are a total of four of them per gate, two on the front and two on the back. The shrine was actually a very interesting visit for sever reasons. The first reason being the massive amount of culture that could be experienced here.

Secondly, there was a huge market here. Also, you just don't see these types of things anywhere in the states. While at the shrine there was a huge market with almost every kind of souvenir imaginable. A little farther in there was an area for fortune telling called "Mikuji." I decided to have mine done, and as it turns out my fortune is good.

After visiting the shrine, we went with Yamamoto-sensei to see the empirial palace. The Emperial palace was really pretty, at least what we could see of it. We weren't allowed to get very close to it. I did get some really nice pictures of it though.

After a very brief stay at the emperial palace, we then had a quick lunch and then returned to Gakushuin. We were meeting the students from Gakushuin for a class followed by going out to see the areas around Tokyo in groups. As it turns out, our class together was the Japanese students helping us write our name in Kanji. Each of us was paired with two students to write our names.

Later after we learned to write our names in kanji, we broke up into groups and traveled out in the areas in and arounf Tokyo. I went to Akehibara. Needless to say, this area was right up my alley with all the electronics and nerdy things that could be found here. The girls who took us out, took us to a maid cafe, serveral elctronics stores, several anime/manga stores, and finally out to eat.

Special Thanks to Akane, Natsumi, Miyuki, Maya, and Sami for the wonderful night out.