I think it’s getting close to time to go home. I’m bowing while I’m talking on the phone and when my sister asked me a question I started answering her in Japanese. Yeesh. Or it’s that I stayed up too late watching some Japanese TV show. A lot of them start at 9PM and end at 11:20PM. I’m not sure why, but I wish I had a DVR here. I’m so used to getting up to go to the bathroom whenever I feel like it that this TV live thing is holding me down.

I got up and we had the free breakfast down at the Toyoko Inn lobby which wasn’t that great but it sure wasn’t that bad, either.

We had tickets for the 2PM Shinkansen to Tokyo, so we had time for some more sightseeing. Mondays are a day for a lot of museums to be closed and the only things that were guaranteed to be open were the castle and the Orchid Garden. My mom is a fan of orchids, so my sister suggested the orchid garden. It was a lot smaller than we’d expected. The inside greenhouse was about the size of a basketball court, but the outside greenhouses were tiny.

I broke my rule of not taking plant pictures and I took a picture of these weird plants. They put faces on them because they look like animals.

We weren’t that far from the Osu Kannon Temple so we decided to walk there

The shopping streets on the way were filled with discount shops but as we got closer to the temple the stores got more interesting. “Omurice in a cup” is a lot better than the discount blank DVDs or cheap cosmetics. It didn’t take long to get to the temple, and while impressive it doesn’t take a long time to check it all out.

Right next to the temple is a shop with Japanese dumplings and I think they were better last year. Last year I had to stand in a long line and they were a lot fresher. This year we were there early in the day and there wasn’t anyone else there.

We took a taxi back to the station and I was having a good time talking to the driver and he forgot to start the meter! He told me about the two castles of the area and also that his brother is in San Francisco.

At the station we had another of Nagoya’s famous foods, their chicken! Oyako don all around and I also had some tebasaki chicken wings.

We wandered around the station for a bit longer and got on the train to Tokyo.

We’re in Tokyo now and I have a bunch of errands I may have to run. My sister’s friend has something that she wants from a leather works store. A buddy wants an old jazz CD from a special store. And I’m losing the battle of trying to keep from buying a nice watch. We’ll see what happens.