Sendai was really nice. Much greener than Tokyo, just what i needed after being trapped in the city for the past 5 months. If was gonna live in Japan permanently I’d much prefer to live in a place like Sendai over Tokyo . I think cities make people go a bit loopy in a bad way.

I went to Nikko on the way back Sendai. It’s really nice. We stayed in nice little tatami lodge thing by a river The next day we had a look around the place. There were centuries old temples and shrine,a monkey temple, mossy rocks, a waterfall tall trees and a whole ancient Japanese thing going on. I recommend it to anyone who’s in the Tokyo area. The only annoyance was how crowded the place was. It’s one of those places that would be alot more enjoyable if you had a bit of piece and quiet while exploring. So I reccomend going on a weekday or something.

I Can’t really think of much to write about, having no money to do anything interesting of late. In order to receive money to continue my wacky adventures I opened a Japanese bank account today. The fun part was picking which of the 32 colours I wanted my card to be. I settled on “Green Tea” , although I was strongly leaning towards going with “Fresh Leaves” as well.

My initial reaction was to go with “Fresh Leaves”,as it’s a more vibrant, limey green  colour, giving off a more exciting aura. Imagine all the wild withdrawals I could of had with a crazy colour like “Fresh Leaves” . “Straw Hat” and “Chocolate Mocha” also entered the equation as I had never seen a brown coloured bank card before and thought that’d be quite interesting as well, although I soon realised that after the novelty of having such unique coloured card wore off, all I’d be left with was a drab piece of plastic. In the end it was the more understated, murkier and classier colour of “Green Tea” that won me over. Though I may always wonder what could of been…

Went to Fuji Q Highland on Sunday. It doesn’t have the minute detail in every square inch of park that Disney Land does to create that famous whimsical atmosphere , but it makes up for with the some of the craziest roller coasters I have ever seen. And being the age I am ,I find the latter more appealing.

The ride I found most amazing was the one called Eejanaika. I noticed when lining up for the ride a framed certificate from the Guinness book of records  boasting this ride to be  something like the most ridiculously evil roller coaster ever built. It not only takes  you down a horrendously steep and sharp turning track, who ever designed the ride also thought  it’d be a good idea to make your seat flip every which way at the same time . The result is you (the passenger)not having the faintest clue whether your climbing, falling or flipping. You wouldn’t know if you had derailed  from the track until  you were sitting there, fuzzy headed in a smoldering heap on the ground. I guess what I’m trying to say is… I recommend it.

On Satuday I went to the Design Festa in Odaiba. There was an unbelievable amount of artists exhibiting their works at that place that after 5 hour of looking around I felt mentally exhausted. Luckily about ten minute before closing this guy who made animals and things out of balloons was selling his stuff for 100 yen each. It was too good an offer to turn down so I got myself  a little ballon guy with a purple hat and his tounge sticking out , I thought that he would be a nice addition to the guest house. On the train ride home my friend and I were trying to think up a name for our new inflated friend, we eventually came up with the name Rubber Johnny,we both felt it was the most appropiate name we could think of.

I let  Rubber Johnny settle in on the couch. He was well recieved amounngst everyone at home, but after a couple of days I noticed was something wrong. Rubber Johnny wasnt looking too well. He was drooping  on the couch and looking really under the weather balloon. I very abruptly had to come to terms with the fact that  Rubber Johnny was on his way out. I would hate to of witnessed Rubber Johnny’s slow and agonising demise so i did the right thing and made sure Rubber Johnny would go out with bang.

I got some fire works in Akabane. That night we all went to a park nearby, set up a firework underneath Rubber Johnny, said our good byes and then watched his head explode. All that remained was the  mangled and melted remainents of what once was. It was how he wanted to go…I think.

After a few drinks on a Friday night at the guesthouse we started to watch some videos on youtube. We came across the old Mentos and Diet Coke clip. Our house manager could  not believe it actually worked and was determined for us to test it out. After an argues search we discovered that Japan seems to no longer sell diet coke, so we settled for coke zero. Then the next hurdle would be to find some Mentos. After a late night search through 3 convienient stores  all we could find was grape mentos at Seven Eleven. I was doubtful it would work having strayed from the original recipe and knowing from watching Mythbusters that the regular fruit flavored mentos does not work due to it’s smoothed out surface.

Every one at the house gathered out  front to watch.  We cracked open the 2 litre bottle of zero, dropped in 4 mentos and …..success!!! It worked a treat (no pun intended) shooting a fountain of coke  about 3 metres up in the air. It turned out that the grape flavoured Mentos had a similar surface as its mint flavored friend. It did leave a decent size puddle of soft drink on the ground, but at least we wouldn’t be drinking grape flavored Coke for the rest of the night.