A day of birthday fun

Last month was G-man’s birthday and what was great about it was I actually got to celebrate it with him. This is rare, as we’re usually apart. I never know what to do or what to get him for his birthday, and I know I’m not alone on the “what to get a man” for x,y,z, but I wanted it to be special without going crazy. He’s not a “go crazy” kind of guy, so balance was essential.

After making him breakfast, giving him a card and taking it easy, we jumped on the train and went off to explore. A few days earlier as we were coming back from Mt. Fuji, we had stopped at a train station and I watched this old man stand up, turn to the door facing a hill, and begin crossing his hands over his head and face clearly worshipping something. I craned my neck to see if I could see whatever it was he was seeing and there was this enormous white face at the top of this hill. It was massive and imposing. I didn’t know what it was so G looked it up when we got back to the apartment, and it turned out to be the Kannon Temple; a statue of a goddess, in Ofuna. Once we found out this site had relics from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings, we decided we wanted to see it.

Not too many tourists know about this temple so beyond a couple Japanese people, we had it virtually to ourselves. The flame inside the stones is an actual flame from the Hiroshima atomic bomb. They took it from one of the many fires and have kept it going to this day. You can just barely see it in the circle window.

The cherry blossoms were near the end but we still got to enjoy what was left of them as we explored the grounds.

G-man took this so I had to share. He’s been using my camera more and more and it’s nice seeing him want to use it since I’ve been the “photo taker” these days.
The temple itself is so imposing as you can see. It was created to symbolize peace and the statue is hollow and in the back you can go inside it. G-man wasn’t feeling that too much, so I peeked inside and it had a bunch of buddha statues and candles in the room which I read is where people go to pray.

Run! Run! kidding
Afterward, we decided to continue on to Yokohama to see the Cup Noodle Museum. Can we talk about how it isn’t Cup O’ Noodle?? Simply “Cup Noodle”?! This is mind blowing, but any way, we decided we wanted to make our own noodles and bought the tickets. We were told we had to hurry as it was going to start in three minutes, so we raced up the stairs and got in line. As we’re getting our cups from the vending machine, we see through glass this class going on making noodles. We remark how fun that looked and talk about if we’re going in there next as we get ushered to our table to begin drawing on our cups. We’re a little confused but watch others and see we’re supposed to draw whatever we want to make our cups our own.

We’re lost at this point. Neither of us are crafty or creative for that matter and we have no idea what to draw. After lots of thought, I drew a sakura tree with blossoms flying in the wind and G-man drew a plane from America to Japan. Once we were done, we got in line to have our ingredients put in, and again we looked through the window and watched the group making their own noodles and again remarked on how fun it looked. As we got closer to the front of the line, we watched children excitedly turning the nob which puts their noodles into their cup and it was hands down the cutest thing. Naturally we had to join in on the fun, and document our turn.
     
Once our cups were sealed, we began to make our way out and that was when G-man commented that he thought we got in the wrong line. We realized then, that we should have been inside that room making those noodles with the class. We even paid for the tickets and didn’t even realize it. I think its funny we talked about it the entire time never thinking we should have been inside. I felt bad, but we decided we would just come back another time to do it. The museum is definitely geared toward children but adults can have just as much fun and we were glad we went. It was a nice way to spend his birthday.

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