Nagoya to TOKYO

This is Jodie, Well we haven't updated in a while so these are a few pictures from the past few days. We stayed a total of 3 nights in Nagoya at the Hilton! OMG was it amazing.. we had a great view and got upgraded to a suite! Now were in Tokyo for 3 nights and then we leave for LA on thursday night. We're staying in Hotel Seiyo Ginza and wow is there tight security here. They check everyone who comes in and out of the hotel and it's like the top of the top people here.. maybe even some Russian Mofia people haha.. anyways.. here's what we did in the past few days..

Well on one of the days when we were going to visit the Giant Buddha, Victor stopped by McDonald's and got his MEGA MUFFIN... he really enjoyed that! After getting his fill at McDonald's we headed out to the Giant Buddha/temple. The temple the buddha was in was amazing, it was really a place that people should go and see. Victor even got to see one of his streetfighter characters or something.. Akuma? haha.. After having a really good day sightseeing we went back to the hotel and got some rest. The next day, we went to some China factory (for my mom) and went to their museum that was filled with all there fine china... not something Victor and I were really interested in. Our next stop was the Toyoto Museum, they had all the history of where the brand came from. We learned that the brand actually started out from a weaving factory business that ended turning into a car brand. At the end of our visit at the museum, we went into their wind tunnel there, it was a pretty cool experience to be in there. After all that culture for one day, we went back to the hotel to relax and get ourselves ready for the next day. Our last day in Nagoya, we had a day full of shopping, walking around the city, and finally a Japanese baseball game. We went shopping at these department stores that were 7-8 floors high, but everything there was really expensive. After shopping, we started to get hungry so Victor stopped by McDonald's to try there Ebi Sandwich (shrimp), there were actually shrimps in there patty. It was pretty cool.. nothing like McDonald's back home. Later in the night we headed to watch the Chinishi Dragons baseball game. It was a really different experience from baseball games back home. The fans really get into their teams, they have huge flags, drums, and trumpets. The fans are die hard for their baseball teams!! We had a great time at the game and the next morning we headed to Gifu. In Gifu they are famous for some bird that catches fish. We went early and ate some Grade 5 Hida beef. It was melt in your mouth beef, too bad they didn't give you alot of meat. Victor was a little disappointed because he loves meat and didn't get a full stomach worth. After finishing our meal, we walked a couple of miles and then decided to take a cab the rest of the way to the dock. Too bad for us, because it started raining pretty hard while we were on the boat trip. The experience wasn't that pleasant for us, we barely got to see the birds catching the fish, but Victor and my dad got pretty buzzed off of some Plum Liquor. Oh yeah, our entire stay at Nagoya we saw a total of 5 Ferraris (3 of them in one day), 1 Bently, and a ton of Lexus LS 460. We saw more nice cars in 3 days than we have back home in a month.

Today, was ROUND TWO of Tokyo!! We arrived around 1 and went to the hotel, it is pretty nice, that each floor has it's own butler! hahah!! Since it was raining pretty hard, we decided to get some ramen. OMG, we stumbled upon this hole in the wall shop, and it was the best ramen we have tasted so far. After having some food coma I decided to catch up on some sleep while Victor searched the internet for all his favorite shops. After mapping them out, we headed out for Harujuku! We finally got there and off we went shopping, Victor was in heaven! Literally all his shops were down one street, and he loved it. He got some stuff from Carhartt, that is only exclusive to Japan and the UK, that was his highlight of the day! Well were pretty tired from today's adventures, so we'll talk to you soon. More shopping on the schedule for tomorrow!!

Remember that McDonalds breakfast sandwhich...WELL I GOT IT!!! ITS BOMB!!! and packed with Calories!

This is Akuma from Street Fighter

$5 get's you a lot here :)

Our view from our hotel in Nagoya

Some Fancy Salad

"Hida Beef" Class 5 Beef!!!!

Plum Liqueur

Japan's Version of Dog Sled racing

McDonald's Fillet O' SHRIMP!!!!!!!!!

Baseball game in Nagoya

Night Life

The Kitchen to.....

THE BEST RAMEN SO FAR!!!

Harajuku

Those are all guys waiting to get inside Forever 21

The Entrance to Billionaire Boys Club

Bikes parked outside SUPREME

Ginza Area

Finally I did some shopping for myself.

Flowing Somen Noodles

Hey everyone, this is Jodie...our day started off by taking a few trains up to Kyoto's countryside. It took about us a little over an hour to get up to the mountains. We took the local train up to Kibune, where there was a special place that served somen that "shot down from a bamboo pipe." We finally made our trip up there after getting off the local train and the bus, we had about a 10-15 minute walk to find this place. As we were walking up the one way road there were tons of restaurants that were situated on top of the stream with beautiful scenery. Each place we walked by there were these little old ladies telling us to come inside.. they were a little pushy! haha. After walking, we finally found the place.. we walked in and they already knew that we were there for the somen.. we read their English menu on what to do and how there system works. After that we walked down the stairs to the somen shooting pipes where our food was soon to be shooting out. We sat down and looked at the waterfall that was right in front of us. It was a really beautiful and peaceful place to have a nice lunch. After giving us our dipping sauce and a egg like thing, we waited till our somen noodles started to shoot out the pipe.. if we weren't quick enough then it was "too bad" for us! So we had a system, the last person who was sitting at the end was the quickest chopstick user.. so just in case we weren't fast enough to catch it they could! The noodle came shooting out of the pipes and we started taking pictures and having a really great time! We had a lot of noodles and finally our pink colored noodles (Ume) came down and that signaled us that our meal was over! (Look at the video below). We had a really great lunch and started back down the streets of Kibune back to our bus and then to the local train station. After we got back, we decided to go to the Golden Pavilion! The Pavilion is made out of pure gold... We were going to see the Silver one, but decided not to because it was the same thing.. just silver! haha! After walking the whole day, about 9 miles (we had a step counter) we came back to the hotel to get some rest... later on at night we went to a little hole in the wall cafe place.. and excepted to have a full on meal.. not knowing it was a bar type restaurant. We were still hungry and decided to go to the train station to get a light meal to satisfy our stomach. We are finally back at our hotel, resting for tomorrow's adventures at the Big Buddha!!

WE DON'T GOT THIS BACK AT HOME!!!!!!!

Another restaurant around the area

This was in front of us when we were eating.

Our dipping sauce

Noodles shooting down

You gotta be fast to catch the noodles

Pink Color noodles mean your meal is done. noodles were flavored with Ume.

This is the temples version of carnival games, you win absolutely nothing.

Kids like this ride the bus by themselves

I wish they had this vending machine outside my work.

And Lastly my light dinner for the night.

in KYOTO!!

It's Victor again, so before we arrived in Kyoto, we stopped by Naruto to view the whirlpool. It was a bad day to view it because it didn't look very whirlpoolistic to me. After Naruto we went to Kyoto, and man Kyoto is pretty cool, its like a smaller Tokyo. We didn't do much in Kyoto except for eat and eat, tomorrow we're gonna tour around the city so i'll keep this post short.

The Bridge we went on to get a closer view of the whirlpool

That is what its suppose to look like haha

In Kyoto

11 Flights of stairs

Check out this cake store

4 Different sizes of beer

We went to this converyor belt sushi resturaunt 137 YEN each..which is about 1.37$!!!

Me vs. Sushi Round 2