It really is the happiest place on Earth....Feb 8th, Tokyo

Dan and I are into day 2 out of 5 full days in Japan...and we're tearing through our schedule of things to see a lot faster than I had anticipated (oops..).

You got the goods from yesterday..we tore around Tokyo on the trains and are now claiming to be experts in figuring out the routes we need to take (good thing the stations have English signage else we'd totally be messed up!). Hmm..maybe I shouldn't speak too soon...we got a long couple trips coming up in the next day or 2 and I shouldn't try jinxing myself.

So, where are we to date...let's see. Oh, last night, Dan and I wandered around Akihabara looking for an internet place to use (this is obviously prior to yesterdays BLOG). Everything was shutting down by 8 and 9pm and we had no clue where or even what the internet cafes looked like here...signage for these places has been a little hard for us to find.
We came across a few ladies and I asked in English "Excuse me, do you speak English? Can you tell me if there is an internet cafe around here?". The girls were all chatting and laughing before I approached and then it turned into dead silence as they looked at me like I was some weirdo and one of the girls started to pull the others away...I felt so selfconscious (hmmm...maybe I should shave and try to look less like a stalker, I thought to myself...I probably shouldn't have finished that sentence with me waving my arms wildly in the air and laughing my meniacle laugh...MMMooooohahahahahaha....kidding...). It took a second for what I said to register but one of the girls started beaming a smile and pointed us in the right direction.

Well, we got to where we wanted to be but took a good 30mins to get to a computer. The Japanese are very efficient, we all know that...thats the rep they have, so when we were given cards to sign up to use the net (you HAVE TO become a member of the internet shop), the girls working the counter had no clue what to make of what we entered. Canada what??
The poor girl only spoke Japanese and we only spoke English (in our case bad english...youse gots da internet eh?) and the only thing she could do was point at some membership options and say 'Japanese only'. We clearly misunderstood each other as when I said 'ok' and started to make the motion to leave, she hurriedly called me back. It took a while to clear up what was missing (via shoulder shrugs and nods) and got to our computers.

Today, we hit Disneyland. We went on as many rides as we could (from Star Tours and Space Mountain to Pirates of the Caribean and some train ride around one part of the park), took tonnes of pics (yes, one with Japanese Goofy..), and bought a few knick-knacks for home. Disney is so clean and the people working here just beam with the biggest smiles on their faces. I say this because I visited 3 parks at the Orlando DisneyWorld and what I remember was that people seemed more miserable than anything else to be there. The people working there were all about the 'exude happiness' and looking around all I saw were happy visitors and gleeful children running around. The funniest parts were seeing the baby buggy parking lots around the attractions...I thought of Vik and Geeta right away with little Eshawn (they went to Disneyland California last summer).
Overall a very good day..and warm too..it went up 10 degrees today to about 15/16 degrees and sunshine.

Tomorrow we're planning to head to Atami to visit a few hot spring baths and see the Oyu Geyser which claims to be obne of the 3 largest geysers in the world and off to Yokohama for a day of touring around and seeing whats what.

Harvey