Japan, Day 3: Cherry blossoms and turtles

I woke up early/was already up when Bobby had to get up early and go to a couple of morning classes. I'm pretty sure breakfast again consisted of something from the convenience store. I wandered around the shopping district some more, stopped in at Mr. Donut again, and found some really cheap strawberries that were delicious. I also came across a pet shop that made me want to cry. It was tiny and down some back alley and they had turtles maybe ten to a tank (if you can call the little plastic box they were in a tank) with maybe an inch of water in the bottom. They were all piled on top of each other trying to bask to stay warm from the sun, and it looked like almost all of them had some kind of shell issue going on. These were the juvenile turtles, about the size of one's palm or one's hand. Then they had two other tanks of hatchlings, twenty or more each, in the same inch or two of water. They were selling them dirt cheap, too. The whole operation was probably illegal. I didn't have my camera with me at the time, so no tragic turtle pictures as of yet. I may find my way back there later in the week, though.

At any rate, I spent the rest of my day mostly in the hotel doing homework or sleeping, waiting for Bobby to get back from class. When he did, we hopped a train into Tokyo to go see the cherry blossoms, or sakura. We were going to visit the imperial palace, but discovered that they closed pretty early. We did, however, walk around one of the parks in Tokyo, visit a shrine that held an ancient warrior's decapitated head in a box, got baked sweet potato and ice cream from street vendors (they have sakura flavored ice cream!), and took many pictures of the sakura petals. Below are some of the better ones, though we took many, many more.  **Don't forget: You can click on any picture for a larger version.**

People leaving water for the spirit at the shrine

Giant koi in the moat around the imperial palace

Sakura close-up

Bobby and me with sweet potato

Sakura overlooking the river and highway

Japanese modern art (just as perplexing as American modern art)

That would be a rose TREE, not a rose bush

Sakura over the water

Ground cracked by earthquake (Don't worry, it's roped off and we didn't tread on it)

Bobby and me under the sakura trees (Awwwwwww!)

Weird freaking tree

Some flowers along the walking path

We're growling along with the lion statue

Entrance to the main sakura walk

Look at all the petals in the water

Bobby trying to steal the lion's ball

Some of the trees had crutches so they wouldn't bend too far or break

There were so many sakura trees

Blossoms in the dark

Boats you could row down the moat in (we didn't get there early enough to do that this time)

More blossoms at night

I think this was the night where there weren't any tremors, until I woke up to pee at about 6 in the morning, and as I'm going back to bed, thinking, “Huh, no aftershocks tonight...” the room starts to rumble and shake. At this point, I've given up on having an earthquake-free night's sleep, and I've stopped counting them, because they apparently don't want to stop anytime soon. Still no damage to where we are, thankfully, and they've been relatively mild so far. Just kind of annoying/unsettling.