Graduation

some taster photos... more to follow :)

Osaka [大阪]

After spending most of the morning in the shinkansen, we got to Osaka in the early afternoon and after dropping our bags at the hotel we popped off the Osaka castle. Sadly like most Japanese castles the original castle was destroyed quite a while ago but this replica was built in its place, from the inside it basically functions as a very large themed museum to the castle (personally I thought Himeji was a nicer place to visit, mainly on account that it has original castle left to walk around in - giving it a more authentic feel)

Osaka Castle


Moinet's


The Osaka speciality of things on sticks covered in breadcrumbs and deep fried - along with the grimicing mascot.

The famous Glico illumiated advert by the river...

Yanaka [谷中]

A very large cemetry in Tokyo, North of Ueno park [上野公園]. A beautiful sunny day, and whilst Greg took his dad to Harajuku and Meji-jingu shrine my parents and I spent the morning cycling around Tokyo, first going to Koishikawa Korakuen gardens [小石川後楽園] just to the west of Tokyo Dome...

Asakusa [浅草]

I spent the morning with my parents cycling down to Bunkyo-ku civic center where we went up to the veiwing platform to have a look about town. We then went to meet Greg and his dad then headed to Asakusa...

There happened to be a cosplay convention just outside the Asakusa temple...

Return Ticket!

Went to Shinjuku to pick up the return ticket today; paid a paltry 2040yen for the taxes...but according to the ticket the government paid 494000yen. Craziness!

The Japanese government were very nice and granted me my first choice for days to return! yippee!

Fat Fish = Stuck Fish

King Kong got himself into a bit of a pickle the other day... he'd managed to swim into the little stone tunnel tank ornament and got himself stuck. So there he was frantically swimming to free himself when Greg happened to notice that we were one fish down and then finally saw his little head poking out the back end of the tunnel along with one front fin sticking out and waving about. On inspection, he'd managed to get his head out one end of the tunnel along with one fin which he was waggling about, but the rest of him was wider than the tunnel exit and he had swum so hard to try and push through the tunnel he had wedged himself in the narrow end. Godzilla seemed rather concerned and actually swam up to end of the tunnel where King Kongs head was to watch helplessly (i like to think he was trying to console him). Anyway after trying to unsucessfully free him without directly touching him failed, Greg resorted to pushing him out backwards using his thumb to push on King Kongs head.

So he's free now, and seems ok. We did rearrange the tunnel thing so that they can't get stuck in it anymore by turning it on its end and stuffing stones in it, so it shouldn't happen again.

The whole incident does show that the fishes are still growing :)