Final Night in Tokyo

All good things must come to an end.  Today marked the end to an amazing vacation, assuming tomorrow's trip to the airport doesn't end up giving me some more material for this blog.  We woke up, ate our buffet breakfast and headed over to the Tokyo Dome to do the local Amusement park with my second cousin Chie and her husband Shohe (I'm off the hook on the spelling of their names since I got it from mom).  With all the good luck we are having, I fully expected to bump into Ichiro Suzuki and the Seattle Mariners (my favorite team) somehow as they are in town to play exhibition games against Japanese teams.

We spent the day going on rides and enjoyed some noodles at lunch.  While the kids were in the log flume ride, my mom and I snuck over to the creperie and scarfed down a dessert crepe and a bubble tea.  I lovvvvve crepes and my love affair with bubble tea is well documented.

They have a really impressive roller coaster at the Tokyo Dome that tears through an enormous Ferris Wheel and in and out of their amusement park, however, the ride is closed apparently due to the earthquake.

We also hit the 3D ride they have there and a big floating umbrella thing which drops you 20 stories or so.

Mattie doing his Ichiro impression

We played a game where you hit a tennis ball that is suspended in the air and got some good pictures of that.

After the rides were over, we headed to the 100 yen store to pickup some souvenirs.  The kids and I cleaned out their candy section.  The last thing I need right now is more sweets since I'm doing a good job of impersonating a sumo wrestler at the time of writing this post!  However, I can't come back empty handed and without the amazing candy from Japan.  Besides, we looked for 8 days for a candy place that had all this stuff.  We weren't able to find the candy that I labeled as the most perfect piece of candy ever made but found some stuff that is similar.

We grabbed dinner and then split up.  Chie and her husband wanted to take me out to a place and get drinks.  As it turned out, this also meant getting more food!  So I took one for the team and ate more :)  I can't turn down good food and especially can't turn down new food that I've never had before.  Here are some photos and descriptions:

This is Umeshu (plum wine) sweetened and kicked with sake.  It was unbelievably good.

Shohe's favorite.  This is Shochu which is sweet potato liquor.
It reminded me of sojoo but a little less floral. 

Okonomiyaki - A Japanese pizza with flour/egg, cabbage and a brown sauce.
Very tasty.  Good drunk comfort food, as well.

I wasn't excited about this dish at first because I thought I heard them say it was fish cakes.  However, it is  Monja, an Osaka dish.  It consists of plum, fish egg, cabbage and Mochi!  More comfort food.  Can't wait to come back and get this again. 

Love foods you get to cook yourself :)

Monja, the finished product

This is how they serve salt and pepper.  Notice that's red pepper and not black!

After saying goodbye, I cabbed it back to the hotel and sat down to blog it out before bed.  Just one more post before I pack up the macbook and call it a night.