October 17

I just wanted to thank everyone for all the birthday wishes. I know this post is a little late but I just wanted to show my appreciation :)

For my birthday, Roberta and Nicky took me to Kaiten Sushi (Conveyor Belt Sushi) in Ikebukuro for dinner. It was very good, apparently Nicky's friend told her that place was on television as one of the best kaiten places. Afterwards, I thought we were going to go home but they told me to buy a ticket on the JR line (which is not the line we use for going home). Something was not right but what clenched it was when Roberta started talking to some "random" business man who spoke to her really in quickly in Japanese (she doesn't understand) and asked "Doko iku yo?"... Fast man-style Japanese "Where are you going?"... it was sketch but it turned out to be staff from her branch and she said "I can't tell you!! It's a SECRET" which I thought was super funny. The confused look on his face was so great which mirrored the confused look on her face when he was speaking to her really quickly. We then got our tickets and went to the subway... we ended up at Tokyo Tower!! but this time it was at night and the sky was SUPER clear, so we went up :) The view was amazing! but my pictures from the top didn't turn out very well because there is a glass window...

When you look out, you can see red lights flashing at the tops of the building, I guess to stop planes from crashing into them. Apparently on a nice day from the highest observation deck at Tokyo Tower, you can see Mount Fuji, but since it was night, we didn't see it. We did see the world's third largest ferris wheel/world's largest digital clock which is in Yokohama from the Tokyo Tower. We also got a chance to see the Rainbow bridge, which is pretty neat.

The night view of Tokyo Tower. It ooks quite nice and is actually alot brighter orange than my camera could pick up. The night view of it is alot nicer than the daytime view. It looks alot more impressive this way :) Apparently the lights will change colour depending on which season it is. White or blue for the winter.. I don't really know though. A strange angle shot of Tokyo Tower. Its quite interesting, the only parts you can be on are the bottom, the elevator and the observation decks. Its actually a giant antenna for TV and radio station signals.A billboard picture that we saw of Tokyo tower and decided to start pretending to climb. The strange thing about this is that we saw these two people taking a picture near it that were Asian looking. Roberta and I knew that they weren't speaking in English but at the same time we could perfectly understand everything they were saying. This didn't make sense as neither of use perfectly understand Japanese and it did take us quite a while until we pointed and looked at each other w/ an OHHH expression. They were speaking cantonese! hahaha... so we asked them to take a picture for us. Nicky didn't understand how Roberta and I could fluently converse w/ these Asian people as she thought they were Japanese :P

All in all, Tokyo Tower was a great birthday experience that I don't think I'll forget. It was quite memorably to see Tokyo at night from such a high place :D

This has nothing to do w/ Tokyo Tower but on our way home, it floored me to see how they laid out lights and pilons for people in a path to walk in while they were doing construction on the road. I mean, that's so considerate!! and someone stands at the end of the path and bows too. It was really cool. Usually when there's construction on the road in Canada, i never know which way I should walk so this amazed me!