Tokyo, New Years Day

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New Years Day. We woke up late after being up late, did some laundry and then headed out about 2pm to find Soba noodles for lunch. It is a tradition to have Soba noodles on New Years Day in Japan. We ended up at a small sidewalk cafe underneath the trains. The noodles were tasty and we had some tempura to go with them. While we were eating we felt an earthquake! We found out later is was a 6.8 quake but it only lasted about 30 seconds or so and the epicenter was out in the ocean so it wasn't much but enough to make us wonder if we would have to take cover.

After lunch we headed to Shibuya, an area known for fashion and shopping. Beth wanted to visit Forever 21 and we were Forever in that store! Greg was a bit bored but Beth found a few nice things reasonably priced. After the Forever store we went to our favorite store here Don Quixote, it's a cross between World Market, Spencers, and Walgreens if you can imagine that. We like all the funky food and snack items. We've been making breakfast in the room out of what we find there and in the convienience stores. Not bad, they have hard boiled eggs, string cheese, yummy bread, noodles, all kinds of different juices, fruit, etc....

For dinner we headed back to Ueno where our hotel is. We had conveyor belt sushi. We couldn't believe how cheap it was! It wasn't quite the quality of what we ate at the Fish Market but it was 1/3 the price! We weren't totally happy with the selection at the first place we stopped so we went conveyor belt sushi hopping and went on down the street to another one. It was good so we filled up there after a few more plates. Each plate is about $1.30 and comes with two pieces. What I like is they serve the macha tea for free with the sushi!

We went back to our TINY room and unfortuanately our toilet became very clogged, we won't mention who did it but fortunately that caused us to be offered the room next door to use at no extra charge (because after lots of plunging it still didn't unclog) It was really nice in the morning to have another room to get ready in!

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