Final Evening in Tokyo...

After spending much of our final day in Tokyo packing, we set off for one last walk around some parts of Roppongi that we’d failed to explore previously. Behind Roppongi Hills we saw this cool piece of art called Chair Disappears in the Rain. Guess it wasn’t raining hard enough to make it fully invisible.

 At least Ashlynn was carrying an appropriate umbrella.

We found this park behind Midtown; we’d brought our Kindles along just in case we found a quiet place to read, so took a reading break on a bench in the lit building.

After much debate, we decided we wanted more Japanese pancakes; rather than return to the same restaurant for a third time, we found a new place.

Our waiter spoke perfect English and was quite a character. Although there was a grill on our table, he brought our food already cooked to the table.

 My seafood pancake was fantastic!

We walked through Roppongi Crossing and down the main street for one last time. We had to leave our apartment at 5:30 a.m. the next morning to catch an airport bus. While we were excited about seeing Jimmy and Veronica, it was sad to be leaving our surreal life and returning to reality. Our time together in Japan was truly special!

Amazing Shaved Ice...

Another item that we saw regularly for sale at Roppongi Hills was a shaved ice dessert called kakigori. The lines were always so ridiculously long that we never tried it. Finally, that afternoon we managed to get into Yelo, a small café dedicated to this unusual dessert.

Since we had a late lunch, we decided to split one mango dessert. It was delicious!

Afterwards, I headed to my final Tokyo Hash and Ashlynn went clubbing with a newly arrived Australian model named Ellie. They thought it was especially funny to take photos with random passed out folks on the street. Only in Roppongi!

Back for Sushi One Last Time...

On Friday, Andrea’s Aunt Michelle arrived from California. The four of us headed to Shibuya for lunch.

 Along the way, we saw these cute schoolgirls.

I was surprised to learn that Michelle had never tried sushi. We went to my favorite place, Uobe, where I was thrilled to have crab sushi again. Michelle reluctantly tried several types of sushi, but didn’t seem too impressed.

After seeing frozen beer offered at Roppongi Hills for much of the summer, I finally got around to trying one. It was very strange! Basically a very cold beer with a firm foamy head.

After lunch we went in search of a Beauty & Youth store, the brand that Ashlynn had worked for earlier in the week. Along our very convoluted path, we went past one of the locations from Ashlynn’s shoot for Spur magazine.

Eventually we found the store and were very impressed, but with its high prices, we didn’t buy anything.

Afterwards, we went to IMAGE Models for our farewell meeting. The good news is that Ashlynn had eight paying jobs that paid a whopping $7,500 with one job paying $1,500 for one day’s work. The bad news is that with a 40% agency fee, plane tickets, apartment and cell phone, there wasn’t any money left over for Ashlynn. Luckily she knew up front that this summer was about gaining experience, not about making money.

Clearly We Missed the Memo....

While it wouldn’t be surprising to see little kids dressed alike at any amusement park in the world...

...it is more surprising to see teens dressed the same. Of course, by this point in our trip, we already knew that teen girls love to dress identically.

What we didn’t know was that couples would also dress alike...

...and groups of mixed friends...

...and so would groups of guys. This was the most surprising of all as Ashlynn can’t imagine any of the guys at her school wearing Disney shirts at all let alone wearing matching princess shirts.

Clearly we missed the memo that we were supposed to dress alike, but a lot of the other guests must have received it as there were coordinated outfits everywhere we looked.

Mermaid Lagoon...

Unlike other Disney parks, DisneySea doesn’t have a lot of rides dedicated to Disney Princesses. Luckily, Ariel, Ashlynn’s favorite princess, had her own land.

We were impressed that employees were stationed in key photo spots who took photos of us on our camera.

Outside, was a fun roller coaster; inside was a whimsical world of fluorescent fish and colorful rides.

There was also a kiddie playground. We were happy to find it empty at the end of the night; we crawled across the ropes to enter Ariel’s Grotto, which was a great reproduction from the movie.

Photos weren’t allowed during the show, but I snuck one anyways. Ariel did some nice stunts from her perch above the audience.

Our favorite ride in the park was definitely the Indiana Jones Adventure (which is clearly not in this photo).

Tokyo DisneySea...

By the last Thursday of our stay Ashlynn was finished with castings and had no further jobs booked, so it was finally time to head to Disney. There were two parks to choose from: Tokyo Disneyland, fashioned after California’s Disneyland, and Tokyo DisneySea, a park with a nautical theme geared towards teens and adults.

The scenery was definitely sophisticated with the Mediterranean Harbor as the entrance.

There was even a volcano that erupted during the evening show that took place in this lagoon.

We had been warned to expect 1.5 to 3 hour lines. Imagine our relief when we approached 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea as our first ride and walked right on. We got really good at playing the FastPass game so that we rarely waited longer than 10 minutes for a ride, although we did wait 30 minutes to see the Little Mermaid show.

The American Waterfront was a cute setting for some photos.

Although the cruise liner would have made an impressive setting for a ride, it housed a restaurant instead. Although we tried several times throughout the day, we never managed to get a FastPass for the Tower of Terror (on the left), so that was the one major ride that we skipped as we refused to stand  in line for over two hours.

We were really lucky with the weather as we managed to stay dry despite a few threats of rain.

Tokyo City View...

We were surprised that there was an affordable café on the 52th floor, where we enjoyed a nice meal with an incredible view. We ended up chatting with the couple next to us and next thing we knew the wife was helping Ashlynn with her math homework while her husband, a retired NFL football player, shared his life story. 

Afterwards, we wandered through the Tokyo City View Observation Deck.

On the way home, we saw a beautiful moon above Tokyo Tower.