Saturday-Sunday

Saturday

This morning we went to the nearby Nezu Shrine, a mere 2-3 minute walk away










The above pictures are from the entrance, and the ones below are part of the extensive interior


















It had a bunch of smaller shrines, in addition to the larger building in the pictures, surrounded by rolling foliage as in the last picture. We had a large enough group where we didn't go into the main shrine, as it would probably be a bit to ask of the caretakers, but we walked around the rest of the park set aside for it. Unsurprisingly, our group eventually deteriorated into calling the park animals by Pokemon names, after which we decided it was probably time to go.

We went to get a late lunch from a nearby restaurant which turned out to be excellent, in contrast with the proficiency of my chopstick handling skills. It was a delicious chicken +
cashew combination, with a side of rice. Our waiter knew a refreshing amount of English, which rounded the experience out to a very pleasurable one. He was also the first and only waiter to accept a tip from us so far, so interpret that however you will.

The rest of the night was fairly uneventful for everyone except for Alrae, who had the honor of being the first person to miss the midnight subway.

Sunday

Sunday was a festival day (of some sort, we weren't really able to pick up the details), which provides us an excuse to go out and wander the city. Which we did. We went to a "Brazil Day" festival area, with some Capoeira performers, food, and most importantly, extremely effective handheld fans which they handed out for free (it's HOT!). After a while, though, Joe, Michael, and I got tired of aimless walking and separated from the group in our quest for food. This turned out to be our best decision of the trip thus far.

We made our way to "Shakey's Pizza", a pseudo-American pizza place with bizzare pizza flavors, ranging from calamari to marshmallow to banana. The icing on the cake however (or pizza) was that from our (air conditioned) window seat we had a great view of the passing shrines. Apparently the street we were overlooking was the main street for this part
of the festival.





















The overhead street pictures are from a pedestrian bridge








The evening was a little uneventful, largely filled with playing cards: we had to get up early to go apply for our Alien cards so that we don't have to lug our passports around with us everywhere. I have to leave for class now though, so I'll finish catching up another day.