Kawagoe

Saturday was a real adventure. I, Chappie, Melanie, Yuki and Julian met up at the tube staion Takada no Baba at eleven to take the train to Kawagoe. There were temples and stuff and Chappie and Melanie had decided that they wanted to go there. Chappie had shown a pamphlet and it all seemed kind of nice. The first temple we got to didn't strike me as any different than the ones in Ueno and Asakusa. But I still think they are beautiful. What I noticed as very funny was that there were snow there xD A lot of it considering it's been around 14 degrees for several days now.
After walking around to different temples for a while we got to the city centre. The majority of the shops there were selling Japanese sweets. And it was cosy walking along the streets paying a 100yen here or there and try out different sweets (or less than that or just trying a free sample). Japanese ice creams are very funny. They have all the colours we have. But the tastes are totally different:
Pink - Sakura (Strawberry in Europe)
Green - Green tea (Pear in Europe)
Purple - Satsuma/sweet potato (Blueberry in Europe)
Yellow - Potato (Banana in Europe)
White - Milk (Vanilla in Europe)
The only taste that's the same as ours is the brown one, chocolate :) The best sweet however I found at my treasured drinking machines. A strawberry milk kind of thingy. Yuki recommended it and it was really nice. According to him the banana one is better - I find that hard to believe.
We found this wonderful shop that made everyone wish they were rich. A shop that sold miniature versions of samurai bogu. They were all so amazing, but unfortunately the smallest and cheapest one cost 50000yen ^^; We kept on walking until we found us a river. I thought it was the same river used in the dorama Gokusen, but maybe that's just because I've only seen one river in Japan so far. However we took a break at the river before continuing. Then we found an old tube train carriage. It was all rusty and spooky but somehow I liked it. Its number was 444 so no wonder it wasn't in use. 4 is the unlucky number in Japan, because the number four sounds the same as the word for death. We also went to a museum of the special Kawagoe festival that's held in October every year. I liked the museum a lot but unfortunately I couldn't get any good pictures since the whole place was kind of dark and the use of flash was prohibited :/

That day ended in a chai latte at Starbucks and later at a tonkatsu restaurant with Yuki and Melanie. When I got home I was so tired and my legs ached from doing nothing but walking all day.