Lively Voice Greeting With Your Big Smile

Whaaaat, I get to turn on my phone again tomorrow!  I hope I get some lively voice greetings with some big smiles.

This is to be the random photo blog entry, encapsulating my entire time in Asia in a couple of weird signs and a monkey.  Here’s the first, which greeted me as I disembarked in Tokyo.  They dropped babies, there, at least enough times to create this:

Here’s the giant “tube sushi the size of a murder weapon” (are quotation marks appropriate when quoting one’s former self?  Who cares.):

Then the wedding.  To be fair, I would not have wanted to marry this guy, either. 

The next one was one of my very favorite “l/r” misunderstandings. 

And for some reason I felt like this train photo was telling:

Okay, so this guy, Paul- on the left- was one of our guides in Japan.  He’s got this awesome, infectious laugh, and likes beer, baseball, and pork cutlets.  The restaurant is Ichiro Suzuki’s favorite place to eat when he comes home; his father still goes there all the time and there are pics all over the interior.  The pork katsu is absolutely unbelievable. 

The sake there was excellent, too.  However:

The kindergartners dancing for us were beyond cute:

and we celebrated the 4th of July in style.  In the hallway.  With American flags taped to chopsticks that third graders made for us.  Here’s Tara with hers:

The porn store was very explicit about what kind of visitors it would allow.  Luckily, I fell into the “foreigner” category.

And afterward, Tara and I found a photo booth complete with a fun box!  Don’t worry- we’d left the fetish superstore at that point.

Dave made friends with my favorite Lego in Odaiba:

And we later hit the giant ferris wheel.  These are my gondola buddies.  Aiden politely asked if he would be allowed to vomit all over me.  You can probably guess which one is Aiden.

Some crazy statues guarded Tokugawa’s tomb in Nikko, including the one with the most frightening belly button I’ve ever seen.  (Katie, skip this one…)

At Edo Wonderland, we saw a ninja play:

Then for our last night out in Tokyo, Tara and I armed ourselves with cameras and a script and pretended we were documentary producers from the BBC.  This guy was one of the very few who would actually talk to us. 

And then I got to see the monkeys!

I already posted most of the pics I took in Thailand, but of course I had to do the one cliched pool shot with feet.  This was my last full day in Asia, not counting today… which will conclude in a Mumbai airport.  I’ll see you guys soon!  Especially you, Irene!  I’m looking very much forward to your lively voice greetings with your big smiles….

XOXOX from my bed in Bangkok,

Carrie