what about bob?

This is one of the first picures I took after I arrived in Osaka. I am on the train, heading towards Kyoto and I started to see cherry blossom trees! There is one right in the middle of this picture (its very hard to see but I was so excited to be here and to see the trees in real life). They only bloom for about two weeks so that was perfect timing, too.


This is some yucky fish food they tried to feed me on the plane!! I figured I wasn't in Japan yet so I didn't have to try anything I didn't want to!! The guy beside me on the flight seemed to really like it though... he ate his bowl plus his friends. I almost offered him mine, but I didn't know if that was nice or creepy so I didn't say anything. Maybe he wanted to ask for it but was scared!! Ha!



This is me on the train to Kyoto. At this point I have been traveling for about 22 hours and I was really tired. I almost feel asleep but I knew I couldn't because then I would miss my stop and where would I be??
I had some trouble buying a ticket. Its so hard when you don't even recognize the characters of the language. I got to the machine and started pressing buttons but none of them made any sense to me!! So I had to wait in a line where I could actually talk to someone. That was challenging too, but we made it through.
Have you ever seen a Serta Sheep? Karis thinks my eyes look remarkably similar to a Serta! :)




We went to this beef bowl restaurant when I arrived in Nagoya. This is a chicken bowl and my first official meal in Japan. Neither of us are actually sure of what the brownish stuff at the bottom of the picture is, we think maybe it was a ground meat of some kind? What did I think of it? Well.. um... it was cheap so that was really good! (The train getting here was SO expensive!!)

So I finally found Karis! I made it to Nagoya. I was about 45 minutes later than we had planned but that's all good! We found each other! We went to walk around Nagoya for a little because I needed fresh air! Unknowingly, I had stepped onto a smoking car on the bullet train so I sat with a chain smoker for 37 minutes! It was gross! I could have gotten up and gone to the next car, but I had a huge backpack and two other bags so I didn't feel like moving. Nagoya is a city of about 3 million people, so it was pretty cool with big flashy billboards and stuff. It was still another hour to get to Karis' place in Toyota.