First Travels in Japan

I am not very good at navigating, so when the opportunity arose to get out into Japan with our friends Shannon, Ben, and Savannah, I took it. Since David isn't here to teach me how the train system works, it was nice to go with someone who knows and is willing to take the time to teach me. I haven't taking the AOB (area orientation brief) classes they offer here because they are a week long and I am still working on getting Ashlyn to take a bottle consistantly.

We traveled to Machida, which is between Yokohama and Tokyo towards the west. It was about 45 minutes of train rides, with only one change over. Our destination - THE FIVE STORY 100 YEN STORE! We were all very excited since we had heard about it and even the small 100 yen store in town was pretty neat. Shannon and I were particularly interested in the 5th floor, which was rumored to be mostly craft stuff. WOOO!

When we arrived in Machida, our first order of business was to eat. We went into this tower that was a mall inside and discovered there was a floor that was nothing but restaurants. The menus are plastic food in the window. It's really cool for those that are visual people.

 I chose a dish that looked good, and it was! It was a meat patty on a bed of rice, with cheese, and a teriyaki/BBQ sauce. It was so good that I ate all of it, even though I was full. I hope to go back and try another dish or two in the future.

After we ate, we wanted to go right to the 100 yen store. It was not the easiest to find, but we eventually found it. As we walked around, I loved looking down the busy walkways that were as wide as streets. It was a beautiful day to be out and about, and many people were.

 After asking a few people where the store was, we found it! It was so very overwhelming because there was SO much to see, and it is nothing like our American dollar stores. This stuff is quality! The  photo below is the section I was most interested - crafts! Are you surprised?!

 Shannon found these awesome utensils for Ashlyn! I know how hard it can be for young children to grip them when they first start feeding themselves, so I thought these were neat. I won't divulge how much I spent, but it was far more than I expected because there was so much good stuff! I plan on going back for sure.

 Ashlyn is such a happy traveler. Even though she didn't nap and wanted to take in all the sights, she did so well, and I'm very proud of her. She napped for maybe 30 minutes for the 6-7 hours we were gone, but she was smiles all around. I just wish David had been there to experience it with us. Hopefully he will be home soon and I can show him this shopping paradise.