I've been trying to upload new glitterball pictures, as well as Orbitune office party photos from Pete's camera, but blogger is screwing me over and timing out repeatedly, so I'll blog about today first and then try and go back and update with the additional photos from yesterday.

Pete had an early (well 10am) meeting this am, so I got him to wake me up when he left and then headed to the Tokyo-Edo Museum for bit of culture or history (finally! :) )... It was actually very interesting, and much more detailed than you would first expect when walking in. They pack a lot of info into a fairly open floor plan, and a lot of the signs are in English, so there is lots to take in and learn! The museum is about Tokyo from the Samurai age, when it was called Edo, through to the 1964 Olympics. There were some amazing scale models of areas of the city, remarkable buildings, a kabuki theatre, etc. the models ranged in scale from 1:60, through 1:1. The displays were super detailed, and looked like they would have been really fun to make! There was an amazing amount of detail work in them, and they were as interesting to examine as the actual subject matter!

They also had artifacts from the time, as well as some exhibits which you could touch, climb on, etc. depending on what it was - I took a picture of a pedicab that was a predecessor to good old Kabuki Kabs at home, though ours looked much more comfortable than this one did!

I took a break from the museum (it was re entry all day) to go and get some money out of an ATM, which should have been a simple task, but of course, wasn't. It took three ATMs to find one that had an English button, and then when I finally managed to accomplish that, it didn't support the Plus network. So I checked out in my guidebook how to ask where the bank is, and headed to a hotel to do so. The problem with asking for directions in Japanese, is that people tend to answer in Japanese, which given my current grasp of the language situation can be a bit of an issue! I finally got a map and some directions and went hiking to the local bank, which wasn't able to deal with my bank card either. However, they were able to tell me that the local post office would be able to help me, so several sets of directions later, I found another hotel which housed a post office on the second floor and finally, forty-five minutes into the search, got some money out so I wouldn't starve and be stranded way out by the museum.

It's interesting here how there are lots of offices and shops and other public type things on the 2F and 3F of buildings, as opposed to at home, where all the public stuff is on street level generally, and private offices or empty spaces are above. It's much more efficient, but also means there is a lot more ground to be visually scanning when you are looking for whatever...

Met Pete back at the office and we headed home for a couple of hours of chilling out with Venus and not doing too much, before leaving at about 9:40 to meet Hitomi for dinner. By this point we were both VERY ready for food, so we hiked eagerly up the hill for some Korean BBQ. It was very yummy! I even ate tongue!! A new experience for me (you dip it in lemon juice!) but it was pretty good, and definitely shared some characteristics with Canadian/Back Bacon.

We had a nice dinner and then walked/rolled back down the hill to home, and now I'm just updating this, and will have another go at those pictures as well...

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(btw, shouldn't the blogger spell checker know words like 'blog', 'blogging', and 'blogger'? Just a thought.
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