last day in tokyo

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we started the day taking the subway to the ghibli museum in mitaka which was a small town about 30 minutes away. what i noticed first was how quiet people are here... when you walk through the subway station you're amongst thousands of other people but all you can hear are footsteps. no one was talking. and when we arrived in mitaka, when you closed your eyes you felt like you were in a ghost town since you hardly even heard footsteps, and since it was not nearly as busy as the main part of tokyo. the ghibli museum is one that is focused around the animator miyazaki's films like totoro, spirited away, and princess mononoke. there were no pictures allowed inside but... i snuck a few anyway. whoops. apparently the tickets are hard to get. i thought the museum was ok... it could have been a lot better considering how interesting his movies are. the architecture of the museum was like something out of his films, and i think it was actually based on a building from one of the ones i hadn't seen yet. after that, we went to the sensoji temple in asakusa. it was big, crowded, and super touristy. there was a small street leading up to it filled with stands selling all kinds of cheap trinkets. then, we walked around shinjuku a little bit. today was our last day in tokyo and i'm ready to leave. this city is just too big, too crowded, and too noisy for me. its like a chaotic confusing new york with 10 times the people. we're taking the 10am train to gero, a really small town in the countryside which should be a nice change of pace for a while.

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