Our house and Hawaiian Party

For the remainder of the month we didn't really leave the area outside our house and our jobs. SO... here's small window into our miniature Japanese world of everything small..... small rooms, small people, small beds, small dogs... everything!!!

Our ever elegant door on the left

Our miniature kitchen

.... and our miniature room! Definitely a down sizing from home sweet Crown st!

Yes. This is our 'living space'.
Dining table, mini couch and the 'kitchen' is to the left out of view

This is our sweet suburb Sakurashinmachi

The origin of a very famous old cartoon, 'Sazae san' (the one on the left) and her family. The creator lived here and based all her characters on the people of Sakurashinmachi. So these little guys are every where! In all the shop windows, on tiles on the street, on banner lining the roads. So wonderfully Japanese. To top it off... the theme music plays on street speakers as you walk down the street! (We will post more photos of this sweet city town!)

Totoro chan! Another photo of Totoro!
A present from Takako.... love him! Rubi's replacement over here!

Some of our Japanese housemates. Ryo and Kau.
Although the girl is now a long lost girlfriend

We did venture out to a sunglasses and watch sale that Sophi had been invited to by a student of hers. It was a private family sale and when we got there we were amazed by the selection, they had Armani, D & G, to name a couple, and all at about 70-80% off. So we went a little nuts and bought 5 watches and 4 pairs of sunglasses to add to our collection of ever growing stuff here in Japan.

Our work organised a summer party for the customers and teachers to get together and have a few drinks. All the office girls were wearing their beautiful Yukatas and looked amazing. We had to work early the next day so we couldn't have a late night so we bailed early and left the crew to do karaoke on their own.

The following Sunday everyone from work went out for the Sunday ritual which hasn't actually happened for a while. We went to a cool little bar in Futako-Tamagawa and the boys ordered a huge 4 Litre beer tower that stood on the end of the table.

So, that is about it for this month, we succeeded to stay true and not do too much this month.......August will be a killer.

From Temples to Cheap Scape Bowling!

We planned for July to be a pretty quiet month, as we had big plans for August. So we basically worked non-stop for the whole month, taking only about 4 days off in total.

A little bit of sightseeing was done and we made our way in the scorching heat to see Meiji Jingu. Yet another shrine, except this one is probably the closest famous one to our house, as it stands just between Shibuya and Harajuku. So as we slugged there in the 35 degree heat, we did one of the quickest sightseeing trips ever, about 10 mins spent at the shrine... or less! The only difference to this one is that it looks a lot newer than some others.... probably due to the restoration in 1958 after the WWII bombings.

Le Grande Entrance

Yet again, more sake barrels at the sacred shrines

A bit of originality... some wine barrels

It's very unusual to see wine at Japanese shrines. The Meiji emperor adopted lots of Western culture and practices, so the French government donated these barrels in memory of him.

The variety with this shrine... the placid colours of white and green roofing

It was gorgeous in a temple kind of way, but not enough to keep us in the heat. So we headed to Harajuku and cooled the hell down in a restaurant!

In the blazing heat, can desperately needed to get some summer gear.. as wearing jeans was finally taking it's toll on Cam.... finally! So we bought about 4 funky pairs of shorts for him!

A window display.... still not sure if it's good or just disturbing

Some usual Harajuku stylin'

All that aside, we still managed to find time to get loose. We met Stefan for a quiet dinner of Okonomiyaki in Shibuya, and felt the urge to go bowling.

We stocked up on cheap Chu-hi's and had a few games. As is expected these days, the game went pear-shaped very quickly with Cam and Stefan getting up to the usual antics of double ball bowling and sliding down the alley.

For some reason that night we didn't feel like settling our bill, so the boys sent Sophi outside so they could plan their escape route. The boys obviously didn't plan it very well because they went running down the stairs instead of using the lift and ended up out on the street getting chased down the street by the staff.

As they ran off down the road Stefan was tackled by the staff so Cam had to run back to help him up and bolt in the other direction.

After we all met up together again, we went for a bite to eat at a family restaurant and ended an expected night much later than we had planned to.