and these people aren't really sleeping on the subway in mid day...they're just faking it for my benefit...
(i have that 500-yen umbrella!)
besides them, there were other parts of tokyo that were just as pretty in a relaxing sort of way
these are the famous cherry blossoms, or sakura, all over japan...suck it, d.c.
even the ground is pretty in this city...
of course, there are always a couple of d-bags who have to ruin it for everyone else...
but wait, this girl isn't a d-bag at all...she's clearly asian, however...can you tell how i know?
other pretty things in tokyo include the signage and ads for girls in english...
and here's something else we found inside a store where my little friend rosie shops...can someone explain what's implied by this very helpful(?) drawing of the durex condom?
getting back to subways, though, look at how mike cleared out this car after eating too much sushi...
so this is the part where i show you pictures of what tokyo looks like. lots of tokyo looked just how you would imagine it to if you had any imagination at all...
busy streets, tall buildings, lots of lights, guys giving peace signs to random tourist photographers...
at one point during our walks, i saw some girls that would put my students to shame...
first of all, their uniforms are actually uniform...and second, they wear them! all the time!
of course, some girls wear other costumes instead...
some even wear them on the street to lure men into maid cafes that are rampant in the akihabara area of tokyo...
sorry for the blurriness, but as soon as she realized i was snapping shots of her, she ran away with her little stuffed pal and hid behind a phone booth 'til i was gone.
this wasn't the only interesting thing we saw in akihabara, though. here's a guy playing a game where, if he's good enough, he can win a pervy little body pillow cover with a prepubescent girl on it made for hugging all night long...how sweet...
poor guy...maybe he needed one of these...
in a different part of town we saw a group of nerd girls on the street that were somehow different from the ones we saw in school uniforms. they were also quite different from the body pillow girls. these so-called nerds walk around in packs mostly in the area known as harajuku, and they're so common they have a name. the japanese call them otaku...
that girl in the middle looks like someone i know...
the best part about female otaku is that they like to read super-hot boy-on-boy manga, and we found one of their favourite hangouts...mainly because of the hundreds of comic books like these...
i know at least one person who would've enjoyed a book or two...
...because they exist in ecuador, too! but in quito, they're called empanadas de viento (or just empanadas de queso if they're the regular small ones) and people put sugar on them sometimes...but the cheese doesn't taste as good, which really makes them not as awesome as the ones in the amaaaazing imperial valley (see my el centro blog ~ september 2009)...even so, we ate one or eight, because we're fatty...
more importantly, we were in quito during carnival…so every time I walked outside, i got sprayed with some funny funny soap that came out of a can…
especially when i entered the area of old town called la ronda...
until, finally, i looked like i'd gone through a car wash...
mike only got a little...
i think people were intimidated by his tall whiteness. he kind of looked like the man...but we weren't the only ones who got shampooed...here are some sudsy ecuadorians in la ronda...
on a calmer note, we took a day trip to some thermal baths in a mountain village called papallacta. it hurts my heart to say what i’m about to say, but i have to admit…the baths there were better than the ones in budapest [chest pains…i’m sorry]. but there were more than twenty pools! and they were in the mountains!
and now i'm just going to insert some quito pictures here, because i'm tired and lazy and tired...this is the plaza grande, the main square...
and here's a busy street in the old town...
next is plaza san francisco where we bought our first ice cream from those two under the umbrella...(quito produces goood ice cream)...and where i first tasted chocolate con queso at a cafe on the distant right...
and this is where we bought juice on the street from the most adoraffle girl ever...
here is a shot of the hill called el panecillo (the little bread loaf) with the famous winged virgin of quito...
we took a bootleg taxi to the top of el panecillo where i got this shot of the city...
and then we finished off our trip in la ronda just before heading to el aeropuerto...but this time without all the suds..carnival was over...
i didn't know our destination until the security guard at jfk ruined it. "where are you going?" he asked, as we were looking for the right entry into delta's awful terminal. "trinidad? you going to trinidad?" and mike had to admit that that was where we were headed.
i fell asleep on the plane before it ever took off, and when i woke up, we were there. it seemed like the greenest country ever...
we drove through the green until we got to the water, and that was just stupid...
we had the beaches almost entirely to ourselves a lot of the time, but sometimes we found religious people praying...
and other times, dogs tried to befriend us...
dogs are dumb.
the water was a little choppy at the beaches, so the locals preferred the rivers running through the green...but even those were pretty lonely most of the time...
driving around the northern coastline, we found some more stupid things...
and posed tourist-style in front of them to prove we were really there...
but in the end, we couldn't ignore the cities, so we stopped to admire some bananas in the local markets...
and found something called bodi for sale on the streets...
mike will give you the real foody details on his own blog, so visit his for more...
lots of them! yesterday, mike and i went to philadelphia to see the galileo exhibit at the franklin institute, and when we stepped out of the museum, what did we see? balls! lots and lots of balls! and boobies and wieners and girls' hoo-hoos! not everyone was naked or even half-naked...some people were painted, some were in undies, many were wearing backpacks and helmets, and some were covered in human fur. unfortunately, they were riding by so fast, i couldn't get the best pictures with my cheap camera. we decided to jump in the car and follow them for more pictures, because we're...ummm...creepy? no, but...well, wouldn't you? we also witnessed a mild hit-and-run during the event, as a car tried to force its way through the crowd of bikes. we don't think anyone was hurt, but it was amusing to watch a naked guy talk to the police in all seriousness... since i couldn't take the best pictures, i attempted to record these nudists. that didn't come out so well either, but you'll get the idea...
if you're wondering, as i was, why people were doing this, here are the list of reasons i found:
We ride to PROMOTE CYCLING ADVOCACY.
We ride to RAISE AWARENESS about FUEL CONSUMPTION and the environmental impact of car culture.
We ride to PROMOTE POSITIVE BODY IMAGE.
We ride to PROMOTE ECONOMIC SUSTAINABILITY as a way of life and a corporate responsibility.
