DAY 9: HANAMI PARTIES AND TRAVELING TO KOBE!

hanami in japanese means, "flower viewing" and there is TONS of it during cherry blossom season! 

today was our last day in tokyo until our very last day of our honeymoon, and we saved it specifically for going to the chidorigafuchi garden and ueno park to see all the cherry trees in bloom (as much as they could be for tokyo while we were there, because by the time we get back on the 14th they will be gone, or almost gone!)

starting out at the very pretty chidorigafuchi garden

beautiful all along the river which is perfect because we wanted to rent a rowboat today too!

GORGEOUS. loved it so much!!!

hehehe :)

so romantic <3

having the best time EVER!!! hahaha

okay, normal smile too ;)

rowing too close to the sakura, babe!

he loves being so close to them hahaha

love this shot of erik. he rowed us carefully under the weeping sakura and it was perfect!

smoooooch!

after boating, we headed back to the subway station to go to ueno park and we saw this on our walk! thought it was cool :)

the start of ueno park! it's VERY well known as the hanami hot-spot to go

people come here during the EAAARLY hours of the morning to reserve their perfect hanami spot and wait for their friends so they can eat, drink and have a great picnic all day under all the beautiful sakura. oh, and did i mention there's no public intoxication laws? haha...that, plus train rides everywhere so you dont have to drive anywhere is sort of the perfect combination for them hahaha

SO pretty!!!

what a GREAT day for our last day of our week in tokyo! now onto the bullet train to head to the other side of the country :)

heading to shin-kobe station! our hotel is connected to it, which will be super nice for heading out to places, and we got ADORABLE bento boxes for the bullet train too :)

mine! see the cute soy sauce bottle in there! oh my goodness everything is just so cute haha

erik's!

and we bought some yummy banana cracker things with cream in the middle for dessert

they were very banana-y!

a shot i took on the way to kobe while on the bullet train (looking out the dirty windows haha)

195 minutes later, we are now in KOBE!

and we are in LOVE with our AMAZING HOTEL!!! it's the crown plaza kobe, and it looks so nice, AND they even upgraded our room from a standard to a deluxe so it's a bigger room for FREE! check this place out!

the view of it outside from the train station we came in on

the walk to the hotel

our HUGE room right when you open the door

we love it!!!

and we can't forget to show you the view from our room on the 25th floor!

you can see the ocean from our room too! it's just more to the right in this photo. we'll be able to see it better in the morning :) 

now, not only are we connected to a big train station, but we are above a MALL! and there are tons of cool restaurants/shops!

nothing was open when we walked around, but you can still walk through everything

(and obviously there are vending machines haha...)

and here is the lobby to our hotel :) now, remember, this hotel is not $400/night like how it looks! it's just over $100! it's amazing the quality of hotel you can get here for the price. still, we are only staying here for 4 nights to save on some money, but it's such a pretty place!

that's it for today! erik now has the sniffles too, so hopefully he's not getting sick!!! aie!

DAY 8: "LOST IN TRANSLATION" DAY WITH A SIDE OF YOKOHAMA

today it was very sunny and clear! so we decided to run around (walked over 10 miles again today, easily) finding key spots from Lost in Translation as well as a trip to yokohama (about 30 minutes away on a train) to go to cosmo world!

first, we headed to the post office to exchange our postal money order for more yen, then went to an awesome arcade which was by stop #1 for Lost in Translation (LiT) scenes where erik won me this ADORABLE CAT PRIZE on only his 3rd try!!!

but i liked the one with the other colors more, so the ticket guy exchanged it for me :)

 here it is!

HOW CUTE! america needs to have more "compete for cutest thing ever" contests haha

anyway! here is stop #1 for LiT scenes! the final scene! it was cool to see it in person

(my pictures: one facing up the alley, one facing down) this alley is actually not well-known. like...it's just an alley. not a main street or anything, so it was cool we were able to find it!

(actual scene from the movie, facing up the alley)

since we were so close to the tokyo metropolitan building and it was a super clear day today (unlike last time when it was raining) we headed to the top to see if we could see mt. fuji this time

WE COULD! it was PERFECT conditions today :) so awesome to see it from this far!

you can see it in the distance as well as our hotel all the way on the left (for our last night in japan, the park hyatt tokyo)

us with a barely visible mt. fuji between us! haha

this is the meiji jingu garden from above. the one we always walk though, and where we saw the wedding happen :)

back down on the ground, we stopped by the park hyatt to take a quick pic. see you again on our last day!!!

okay, back on track with finding LiT scenes. this one was HARD to find, and we walked FOREVER to find it haha...it's where bob and charlotte had sushi. super tiny hole-in-the-wall place:

(scene from the movie) and we saw that guy they are talking to!!! he is the actual owner! so that was cool :)

NEXT!

the arcade where charlotte wanders around:

(scene from the movie)

NEXT!

where bob and charlotte have their awful lunch:

another super hard place to find!

(scene from the movie) it was VERY expensive!!!!

NEXT! AND LAST!

where they go karaoke!

(scene from the movie)

so that was pretty cool to see a lot of the places they went to in the film, in person :) after all that walking, we needed FOOD!

this place is awesome. we have eaten here twice already haha...i know we're in japan, but sometimes you just want good ol' delicious italian haha...and they do a GREAT job. this pasta is soooo good. and that cupcake looking thing was also absolutely amazing.

after lunch, it was time for THIS:

erik's worst nightmare. he's afraid of heights haha...poor guy. but he was the best guy ever and went on with me!

this whole place is called cosmo world, in yokohama, and it was pretty cool. all i really cared to go on was the cosmo clock (the giant ferris wheel), but it was cool to see the other options too.

fun games

rollercoaster thing WHILE spinning

log ride

rollercoaster that "disappears" under the water ;)

ice world, which was -22º inside!!!

a two-story carousel!

and various other rides to make you throw up haha

we also got a delicious crepe!

they love to show the plastic food options everywhere ;)

here was ours! it had bananas, and cream, and chocolate syrup. oh my, was it good

but back to the cosmo clock!!!

we got on, and up we went! it was 15 minutes to go around the whole thing

erik was...doing okay hahaha

and then he got better :)

we were super high up though...

we could even see a putt-putt course on top of another building!

heading back down...

and back on the ground again :)

it was getting darker, and also colder, but luckily, we are in japan and that can be cured by a hot coffee in a vending machine!!!

PERFECT!!!!

we waited for it to get completely dark so we could get a few cool night shots:

whee!

then we ran into the cosmo world arcade to warm up a bit more before heading all the way back to shinjuku

so many toys!

these are also very popular in japan. girls get SUPER dressed up and put on their perfect makeup to take some fun pics in photobooths :)

oh, and of course we played some games haha

another LONG day, but very fun!