Day 2: Kawagoe District

     Most of us had a pretty early morning, waking up from around 5-6 am.  We all met up for breakfast at 8.  The breakfast was a mix of American food with a Japanese twist such as eggs with bacon. We group and departed for the Kawagoe District after we finished. After a long hour and a half of a chaotic and wet couple of train rides, we arrived at the Kawagoe district ready to explore. Harper and Miles gave us an incredibly detailed and beautiful breakdown of what our plans were for the day. Once we got out of the train station, we were met with pouring rain. Quickly, we walked to the Hachimangu Shrine where looked at the beautiful hydrangeas and broke clay peaches for good luck. After, we walked to the Kitain shrine and explored a beautiful garden and a collections of 500 Buddha statues. During our exploration, we visited the remaining portions of the Shogun’s residency. With the rain dumping even harder, we started our trek to find lunch in the center of Kawagoe District.  Harper, Miles, Lucas, and Nick got lunch at a hole in the wall restaurant, while the others explored other options.  After lunch, we gathered and walked to the candy street where they still make candy using traditional ways.  A local elementary school field trip filled the candy street as we found little treats. Coming back together we met in front of the Toki no Kane bell tower and got sweet potato ice cream which was a surprising delight. At the same time, Dr Stogdill was busy  carving a custom chopstick out of wood. We walked back to the train station and took another long ride back to the Ramen Museum. On this ride the group started to feel the fatigue and dozed off. At the Ramen museum, the first floor was a traditional museum but the bottom two floors were filled with different famous ramen restaurants which were replicated by the museum. Everyone split off into small groups and tried the different restaurants for dinner. After another short train ride and a walk in the misty night we were back at our hotel. All exhausted, we debriefed our day and went off to prepare for bed.

-Harper J and Miles P