Japanese school girls at Imperial gardens.

Firstly, sorry this has taken me so long to write but the internet is strangly expensive in this country. Anyways.

Second day.

We woke up at around seven, good and early after all the sleep the night before (about 12 hours or more) and we couldnt get back to sleep so i decided to have a shower and try out the outdoor shared bath. The shower rooms are split male and female but then they are all in a shared room with about 5 low set showers with little plastic stools. After showering you can use the baths (they are for relaxing and soaking in, not for washing!)
After a couple of minutes of me soaking in the tub another guy comes in. At first it is a little strange bathing with another guy but after you get over yourself and just accept it it is really nice just to relax in this huge tub. (these aren`t your average size bathroom baths you get at home, they`re like big deep paddling pools that you can stretch out in and the water comes up to your neck when you sit down so we`re not scrubing each others backs or anything).

After a good soak and another try at the laberinthine Tokyo tube system we turn up at the Imperial Palace Gardens.
This place is great for a relaxing first day. Plus they`re free to get in! Which when you see them is amazing. They`re impecibly maintaned by an army of blue uniformed cleaners, which we got the pleasure of seeing at work while we were there. Below is a picture of them, I know its a little small but all those little blue people is a worker (most of them are up the hill to the right).


As soon as we get past the entrance into the gardens we have our first encounter with a gaggle of Japanese school girls. Seeing Lauren they immediatly start excitedly pointing and saying "Kawaii!" (Cute!) and then to Lauren "You are very pretty!" as an after thought I apparently am a "nice guy" and "Kokoi", which i asked my Japanese friend Ami about and it means "Cool" so not so bad.
Lauren says she wants to take some home.

We walk around the garden for a while taking plenty of pictures and getting a lot of greetings in broken English. Lauren finds an old man and a small child that she also thinks are cute and wants to bring home. At this rate we are going to come back to England with an entire Japanese family!


We leave the Imperial Gardens and stumble on a science museum which looks fun so we go in and pay the couple hundred Yen for entry. As soon as we get inside another gaggle of Japanese school girls starts pointing and "Kawaii"ing at Lauren. Every time this happens she goes bright red and mumbles "Arigato" which just makes the girls Kawaii even more.

So far Lauren is averaging a couple of Kawaii`s a day on this trip and not just from school girls! Loads of old women on the street stop to Kawaii and a few at shop counters. You`d think I`d get some kudos for traveling with a girl who deserves so much Kawaii but they just tend to ignore me! Ah well. anyway.


The Science museum is good for a couple of hours of childish entertainment and there are lots of toys to play with. At one point there are some cool Mecha type full size robot models and one "greeting Bot" which looks really creepily human!