Winter Break Part 6: Christmas - Church, Kyu Furukawa, and Arcades
Sunday, January 4, 2015
We started out the day by eating breakfast at the hotel. It was our first time eating it at that hotel. We hadn't eaten it the day before because we had actually left before breakfast started. The food was similar to other Toyoko Inns, but they had a few more options maybe. But the breakfast area was huge!
After breakfast Jonathan and I exchanged Christmas gifts. I quickly wrapped his present (a remote control helicopter) in pages from a free magazine in my room. I also gave him some Skittles.
He had decorated my gift very cutely. A lot of stickers!
He gave me a pretty birthstone heart necklace and some pearl earrings. The earrings match a necklace that I have.
Then we went to church and then ate lunch at Starbucks. I had a wrap, cinnamon roll, and a gingerbread latte. It was very delicious, but not relaxing like we wanted. It was very busy and cramped.
As we were eating we couldn't think of anything we wanted to do. Well, nothing we both wanted to do. I would have been ok with going to Shibuya and just looking around in the stores there, but Jonathan didn't want to do that. So we decided to go to Kyu Furukawa, a garden he had been to before but I hadn't.
It's not very big compared to some of the other more famous gardens in Tokyo, but it's still a good size. It was worth the 150 yen admission fee and because I've already seen several other gardens, but if you don't have much time in Tokyo, other gardens such as Rikugien and Hama Rikyu are better to see.
The house there is kind of interesting to see in Tokyo. There's also a rose garden but of course nothing was blooming. I think the whole place would have been much better at other times of the year.
Then we went to Ikebukuro and played in arcades there. I saw some cute octopus stuffed animals in one of the UFO catcher machines. Jonathan put a coin in and kind of randomly tried and actually won one for me!
Sooooo ctue! :)
Then I tried a machine that had Bon Bon Ribbon stuffed animals and won one. It was the three-prong type which I have good luck with. It had a winking face and I liked some other the others better so I tried a second time and got another!
I also played another three-prong machine with Sailor Moon cloths and won! Jonathan tried and failed.
I was excited to see Mokona stuffed animals! So many Mokona! Cuteness overload!!! Photography isns't allowed but it was just tooooooo cute and I had to at least try to take a picture. I also tried to win one of these and a bigger one in another machine and failed. :(
But I saw the Rayearth gachapon machine again. I've tried twice before and gotten my two least favorites. I was having good luck that night though so I put a few coins in and got Mokona! :)
The purikura floor was super crowded. There was a long line for the costumes. The sexy Santa girl outfits seemed popular, lol. There were also lines for several of the machines, but some towards the back (probably older ones) weren't crowded. I was excited that there was a Christmas theme option!
We also played a few games including a skiing one and air hockey.
That was probably my most successful arcade visit ever! So many prizes!
On the way back to the station we stopped in an electronics store to get some batteries for Jonathan's helicopter. I know I've kind of made fun of the pointlessness of cute batteries before, but the price was better than most of the others so why not? Rilakkuma! :)
When we got back to the hotel we got dinner from 7-Eleven and watched a movie in the hotel. We didn't want to stay out late because we had a big day the next day. Jonathan still wouldn't tell me what we were doing. I was very curious!