Shana and Chris's sister Liz and me and Joanne and Hiro and Chris and Takeo and Megan and Takeshi after all-we-could-eat sukiyaki and shabu shabu extravaganza (because eggs in Japan are so fresh, you can dip your fried meat into raw egg and you won't get sick and it tastes really good)

That was a super fun month. Thank you so much to everyone who showed us around and helped us find things and make sense of how things worked.

Last random thoughts

People in Japan use the subways and trains way more than even people in Toronto do. Several times when we were hanging out with people they would go to different stations 30-45 minutes apart to go to favourite bars or cafes or areas several times over the course of a day or evening. I liked it – we got to see lots of Tokyo that way. Also, the trains run on time and very frequently, so there isn’t a chance that you will get stuck at a station and have to wait an annoying amount of time to be picked up.

We slept on the floor on futon mattresses about one inch think. It wasn’t as uncomfortable as you might think. The floors are tatami, which means that they are made of woven rice something or other and they are pretty squishy as far as floors go. Not like squishy so you notice much when walking on them, but definitely compared to hard wood or linoleum or rock.

The bathtub in our apartment (and Japanese baths in general) rock. They are very short, so you can’t stretch out, but they are very deep so they go up to your neck and they can be heated to crazy hot temperatures. I could only stay in for a few minutes until I would start to sweat. Hiro took the two of us to an onsen – a Japanese public bath with special water pumped up from way down (100-200 meters). It was fun – you have to wash very thoroughly before you get in the baths and a lady gave me a long lecture about how the cold water bath (there were 4 different baths on the women’s side of the bathhouse) was kimochi (which was the only part of what she said that I had any idea about). We ate eggs that had been boiled very, very slowly in onsen water – the yolk was cooked, but not the white, which I’ve never seen before. You have to kind of crack the top off and slurp out the middle.

So yeah, we had a fantastic time. On to Thailand!