Our string of stinky weather has continued (which is no surprise given it's February) but yesterday was so freakishly warm that we walked around in just jeans and a t-shirt. Thank you carbon pollution! We didn't get the best sleep on our traditional tatami bed, which can best be described as a piece of plywood with sheets, but we still lazed around our tiny room until the last possible second. The train station was just a minute's walk away, and then we'd hit the rails back to Tokyo. We had our bags and were ready to go, but the sun actually came out and it suddenly felt wrong to leave Osaka without even attempting to visit the very famous Osaka Castle, which was a five minute walk from the station. I was already in "let's get out of here" mode so it took some time for the not-stupid part of me to convince the much more powerful stupid part that we should throw our bags in some lockers and check out the castle before leaving. I wised up with Brittany's assistance and I'm so glad we went! The Osaka Castle grounds are much larger than anything we've seen, and the whole place crawled with people. There were gift shops (our bag of **** just got heavier), food trucks, and lots of grill stalls. We walked through beautiful gardens and slurped down noodles while watching adorable local children play under the shadow of the towering castle. Sure, we probably should have gone INSIDE the castle to the see the museum within, but the not-stupid part of me can only do so much. Four hours on the bullet train and we were back in Tokyo, just further north than before. I don't know about you but when I think of Japan I imagine a very tech-forward, cutting edge kind of place. While it probably is exactly that, I've gotta admit I'm a little thrown by all the CD/DVD stores and flip phones. Seriously, who do you know (besides your grandma) that uses a flip phone? I'm starting to wonder if the RAZR just came out here :) But what Japan apparently lacks in technological advances it has more than made up for in the realm of KitKat! It seems like we are constantly discovering some new and delectable flavor of a candy that's been inexplicably banished to Boringville back home. Burnt tea, green tea, Kobe pudding and (our favorite) sake KitKat line the shelves at every 7-11, Circle K, and souvenir shop. I think my backpack officially contains more sake KitKat than clothes, and I'm only mildly stretching the truth. After the train ride we checked in to our ryokan-style hostel. Ryokans are very traditional Japanese guest houses. This place is more of a Ryokan wannabe though, which explains why it was way cheaper than getting an apartment again. It's very nice in most respects but it still feels like a bit of a downgrade since it's the first time we haven't had a private bathroom on this trip. I had to make room in the budget for that Kobe beef somehow, and I stand by my decision! We leave our shoes at the building entrance and wear slippers everywhere, even donning long traditional robes for the walk to the showers. It's kind of weird but also fun. If we ever get back to Japan I would want to stay in a real-deal Ryokan; I'm told that it's a remarkable experience. The hostel is in a lively downtown area with tons of shops and restaurants, but we had a surprisingly hard time finding a place to eat last night. We walked and walked but we couldn't find a single Japanese-style restaurant that seemed to cater to tourists. It had been too long of a day to work through ordering with nothing but hand gestures so we dejectedly went back to a Japanese version of AppleBees called Kirin-City, ate some mostly-decent food and finally got to bed. You may remember that I said we were going to spend our last days in Tokyo at Bethel and a whisky distillery called Yamazaki. Well...while this will come as no surprise to many of you, I am a moron. After reading many articles about the distillery and looking at every page of its website, I somehow failed to realize that it is not located in Tokyo, but OSAKA, right where we had been the day before. D'oh!!! Soooooo, no distillery tour for me and no whisky souvenir for Dad. But we still had Bethel to look forward to, and we made our visit today's mission. While the address may say it's in Tokyo, that's like saying that Pluto is in our Solar System; technically true, but just barely. It took us a full two hours of train hopping and walking to get to the branch, and nasty looking clouds threatened us all the way. By the time we got close all the Bethelites were at lunch so we walked to the nearest restaurant (yet another twenty minutes away) and killed some time. Incidentally this is where I learned that "fried shrimp" and "tempura shrimp" are NOT the same, as I ordered something fried and was instantly and gruesomely punished for assuming that there was no difference. Fried=Long John Silvers grease in a bag while tempura=golden deliciousness fit for a king. Lesson learned. The first thing we noticed while walking up to the branch office was how unexpectedly huge it is. The last one we visited outside of the states was London, and I think we were both expecting it to be similar. This was more in line with touring Walkill. No sooner had we stepped through the door than we discovered that the brothers there have just as hard a time with English as everybody else in the country. We were somewhat coherently told to sit on the couches and wait, which we were all too happy to do as groups of Japanese friends filtered in and out. Finally, a brother approached us and began speaking a completely new and different language. Our befuddled faces weren't enough to stop him from asking question after question (to which we could give no better answer than, "ummmmmmm") but we were rescued when another brother pointed him to a different group. Oops! Many bows and apologies later, Simon, our guide, asked us to join his tour. Simon was leading two Russian sisters and a Japanese sister that could translate for them. Unfortunately it meant that we missed an introduction video and a couple of information boards in the beginning, but we had an absolute blast. He tried very hard with the language and was a fantastic guide. He was downright shocked that we considered Japan to be "beautiful" and he was even more amazed that we were enjoying the food. I guess we never really appreciate where we grow up, huh? One of my favorite parts of the tour was a section about major court cases won by Witnesses, one of which is now required learning in schools. Simon also helped explain the special new translation of the book of Matthew in Japanese with vertical text (remember seeing it on jw.org?) and why it was needed. I have lots of great pictures from the tour that I will share when I get home. Afterwards when we were saying our goodbyes, we attempted to give him a little something to put gas in his car. We really should have known better (this is Japan, even giving a tip in a restaurant can be considered disrespectful) because he looked at the money like it was radioactive. I feel terrible but he was all smiles and low bows so I'm sure he understands our motive. He did offer to get us in for lunch the next time we're in Japan...we'll have to take him up on that! It took so long to get back to Tokyo that we didn't really have much time to do anything but eat. Instead of going straight to the hostel we stopped back at Shibuya (the place with the massive street crossing) and had one last feast of tempura. This was the good stuff! Unfortunately, no matter how good it is, deep fried is still deep fried and my gut is punishing me now. Ergh. We love the energy at Shibuya. I really had no idea just how big it was until tonight, when we walked down some of the many side streets and discovered that it just keeps bustling on and on at every corner. And it SNOWED! This was especially odd because it was only cold enough for a light jacket, but watching snowflakes gently fall past huge glittering signs felt oddly romantic. It only lasted about a minute but that was more than we ever expected to see and added a bit of magic to the night. With a whole day left to blow in Tokyo, we considered a long list of options for tomorrow. There are so many more interesting things to see and do! But as hard as we've been running over the past two weeks, we think we've seen enough shrines and Buddhas to last a while. Tomorrow we'll be going full-on tourist and heading to Tokyo DisneySea, which I didn't even know existed until today. Tokyo Disney is apparently just a clone of Disneyland, while DisneySea is completely different and unique from all the other parks. It's supposed to be geared mainly for adults (even more so than Epcot) with lots of interesting restaurants and bigger and badder rides. I'm a little worried about the crowds and lines but it's a lot less expensive than WDW in Orlando; even if we don't make it on any rides I think we'll have a good time just walking around with a beer in hand. Anybody know how to sing It's a Small World in Japanese?