4/4 Edogawa and Return to Matsuyama

Late at night on April 3rd, I arrived back in Japan. My classmate Nathan picked me up again and we went back to his apartment. In the morning on the 4th, we decided to go try Japanese Denny's because it is supposedly different than the American one. It was a nice sunny day, and we went to the building, and up these stairs to the second floor. The restaurant is really bright with all of these windows, but the waitress leads us into a shaded room and seats us next to a father and his daughter. We take a gander at the menu before I decide on the closest thing to a grand slam. Also, we find that in the menu there is a special strawberry parfait being sold... ...but for $16. Our food arrives and my breakfast consists of: french toast, bacon, sausage, ham, scrambled eggs, lettuce & tomato, yogurt, and a small coffee. It was a light breakfast but very good.

Since we still had time, I wanted to go visit the Edogawa City Zoo. We walked the Edogawa backstreets until we got there, and there were tons of people. Not in the zoo, but in the park. It was free, so we just waltzed in. The beginning is this circular area, with exhibits surrounding it and a petting zoo in the middle (nobody was there at that time). There is a little corridor that you can follow filled with aquatic and semi-aquatic animals which leads into another area with more enclosures. That's it.

We walked back out to the park and past a small pond where a half-dozen elderly men were fishing. As we walked along it led to a nice view of a koi pond where many kids were searching for frogs, or crayfish, or anything that moved. All around there were many families sitting down enjoying the weather and having picnics.

We didn't get too much time out there, because I had to get to Haneda Airport to fly to Matsuyama. We spent a while waiting there, and they actually had a Cold Stone Creamery vending machine. I said later and pretty soon I was off. I think I arrived around 4:00 PM and June picked me up. She drove me through many sakura trees saying that it is the same way she takes her family when she picks them up. Like always, she took me to a noodle place within the same area as my dorm. We talked and talked, but eventually I had to go. She dropped me off at my dorm, and I was excited to see how my dorm door had changed (there was a whiteboard attached to it). You can see what was written below. The next day was Saturday, so I did not have to worry about waking up early.

So, a while back one of the American professors made a joke deal with me that if I brought a deep-dish pizza from Zachary's Pizza in Berkeley, he would give me $100. So, my dad and I decided to buy a half-baked pizza and put it into an insulated bag. We bought that the day before my flight, put it into my checked bag, and I flew it into Narita airport. When I got there, I went to customs to declare it and they inspected the pizza. Now, apparently it is illegal to bring meat into Japan, so they confiscated my pizza and handed me a pamphlet. I did not get in trouble and I left the airport no problem. Later I told the professor and he says there is no way that I actually did that and he can't believe that the evil airport staff stole my pizza so they could eat it.