At the beginning of July my mum and little brother Michael came to visit me. While waiting for their flight to come in I had a long time to wander around Haneda airport so I sat here and drank this strawberry milk float and go to the observation deck

Took them to Asakusa to see Sensouji 

And Nakamise shopping street!

I then took them to the top of Sky Tree, which I had never actually been to yet, I'd only ever been to the top of Tokyo Tower. Sky Tree is the tallest tower in the world apparently.

We were on floor 350

A nice view of the Sumida river

I love this city so much

I found my beloved NTV on their map

Standing on floor 350

I love dark clouds

And then I went to the TV store in Sky Tree and found a Koyama poster and a Matsuko Deluxe poster

I bought a pug key cover! My keys are 2349x cuter now

Then I took them to Meiji Shrine in Harajuku and we made wishes on ema

This is what I wrote: "I wish to meet NEWS' Koyama Keiichiro"

Is anyone really surprised

And here it is hanging

Then went to a cafe and got waffles!

It was raining that day so when we went into the Starbucks in the Shibuya Tsutaya you could just see a sea of umbrellas

Went to even more places and got sweets... here's a mango dragonfruit parfait 

The next day I took them to the Imperial Palace. You can't actually go to the imperial palace so we just walked around the perimeter of the entire thing

I love these flowers, I have no idea what they're called in English

The valley/canal/mote surrounding the imperial palace

Basically the closest you get to the imperial palace

The trees surrounding the area

Then to Tokyo Tower!

I think I posted an explanation for what these are in a past entry and I've already forgotten

Then we went to the Tokyo Tower aquarium

weird looking frogs

I FOUND THE PUFFERFISH

SO MANY PUFFERFISH

AN ENTIRE WALL OF PUFFERFISH

AND MORE PUFFERFISH

EVEN MORE PUFFERFISH!!

IT'S SMILING

Then I found this crazy looking turtle

And this fish that I named Francis

AND ANOTHER BIG TANK OF PUFFERFISH

And these smiling parrotfish

At the end there was a Japanese themed koi area

Here is me in front of a shark tank

And here is us in front of the penguins

And here's the penguin tank

Horseshoe crab! This one was going crazy, I had never seen a horseshoe crab's legs before this, they are super creepy

Terrifying

I FOUND IT, I FOUND THE PUFFERFISH.

AND MY BELOVED ISOPODS!

And a field of garden eels

Kind of scary

They had a special goldfish exhibition going on, here's a cart of goldfish

The penguin parfait

Artsy goldfish

THEY'RE SO CUTE

Tonnes of goldfish

A beautiful lobster

And more penguins

We weren't sure if this penguin was just a gigantic baby penguin or a really old and senile penguin

He was cute though

When we left it was so cloudy we couldn't see the top of Sky Tree

One of my class photos! I started off hating this class more than anything but I actually came to like it a lot.

Me laughing while eating a salad

Salads are funny things aren't they

my beloved NTV has a special summer event going on during the months of July and August and I found this giANT SORAJIRO JUMPING CASTLE. So I got a picture in front of it

It's so beautiful

They had a chalkboard where you could write messages to Nakamaru Yuichi, a member of an idol band KAT-TUN who I like so I wrote a message to him in English in order to stand out

"you are a cute blob" words of love from Meghan

The inside of the NTV lobby!!!

I'm so!!! NTV!!!!

I never thought I'd be able to walk through these barriers but because of the festival going on they're letting people go through!

Cute Sorajiro sign

They have a beer garden/cafe outside NTV for the festival and I got this mango shaved ice

Everything has a very summer-y vacation-y theme

My favourite show, ItteQ's activity

Also got a photo in front of the NTV mascot, the NTV bear!

And there were Arashi goods being sold here too

Followed up by going to Max Brenner's Chocolate place and got this amazing strawberry chocolate crepe *_* So good.

And here I am at Sweets Paradise, an all you can eat buffet of sweets

I took advantage of the buffet and put everything available on my plate. Bliss.

My host mum made me a bento! Japanese mothers have the best cooking

A melon cake at karaoke to celebrate Shige's birthday!

Me and my friend Kailey went to Ueno's museum of natural science. They have this giant whale outside of it.

Ueno Zoo themed bread

Then we went to Ameyoko! A touristy street in Ueno.

Ameyoko reminded me a lot of Hong Kong. It was basically just a big street market

Here's a picture of me and NEWS... This was from Koyama's birthday in Osaka, I am part of the audience hee hee hee

My host mum got me a yukata! Yukatas are a type of kimono that people usually wear in the summer to go to festivals and stuff in

Haruko and Yoshio sleeping on my bed

I bought myself a Japanese Nintendo 3DS! Justification: I can use it to practise Japanese

And because I'm a loser I can play both my Japanese one and my Canadian one AT THE SAME TIME.

Ah yes, the Spheniscus demersus, commonly known as the Jackass Penguin, yes

Me and a giant emu statue

Well there goes my plans of handstanding my way to the net

Giant anteater

Ugly grandfather pig

The weirdest looking fox wolf thing with giant legs

This zookeeper was a tortoise whisperer, she called the tortoise over and just petted its neck for awhile

Then zookeeper left and so it just stared at me

Iguana guy

A giant hippo

Cute little armadillo guy

Spooky

Red pandas!!!

And of course, the famous Ueno pandas

Me and the pandas

To you this may just be a simple Odakyuu train line advert fan, but to me it is very special. Koyama's mother has a restaurant in Kanagawa and I had been a couple years ago to give her a souvenir from Canada and eat her food, and this time was my first time going back and seeing her. This time I wrote out a postcard thanking her for everything her son has done for me and how happy he's made me in my times of depression and all that and I gave her another souvenir from Canada. After giving her that and on my way out of the restaurant she was like "it's so hot out, do you want to take this fan with you?" and that is the story of how my #1 favourite person Koyama's mother gave me a fan. I will treasure it forever

Me touching the sharks again

Back at the dolphin tunnel!

They have a baby dolphin now!!

LOOK AT IT

Me and the dolphin baby!!!

ItteQ section again!

Me and the ItteQ aquarium

My new glasses case I bought there! IT'S TOO CUTE.

and of course the dramatic huge fish tank

Me in front of the giant tank and creeping on a couple

Me in front of the giant Japanese spider crabs

Us in front of the walrus guy

"Booze Cafe - Family Restaurant" Is it, is it really

Hello Canadian brother!!!

and a giGANTIC GOLDFISH

I FOUND THEM, I FOUND THE PUFFERFISH

I FOUND EVEN MORE PUFFERFISH

DO YOU SEE THAT, IT'S ANOTHER PUFFERFISH

And I saw my pal the whale shark again

Me and the whale shark

such a gigantic tail

Hakkeijima has a fireworks show every night so we watched that

Us at the fireworks

So they've stopped selling my beloved banana milk twice now but now they've brought up this, banana milk tea. Not as good, but still good.

Went to a space themed cafe and got this parfait! om nom nom nom

So I travelled all the way to Fukuoka on the 6th of August to go to Hey Say JUMP's concert... I again painted my nails in my favourite member's colours while watching a concert DVD of theirs

Because I was literally just in Fukuoka for the concert I didn't do any sightseeing and this was the only photo I got.  I took it when I came outside the concert venue after the concert. 

I actually had a really lovely time in Fukuoka despite how hot it was and I was all alone and I had gotten no sleep. Because my flight to Fukuoka left Narita airport at 6:30AM I had to spend the night in Ginza at a Family Restaurant to catch a bus at 4:00AM to get there on time for it (Tokyo trains shut down around 12AM and start up again at 5AM so I wouldn't be able to get to the airport on time if I went home to sleep). So I walked through creepy drunk businessmen trying to hit on me and made it to the 24hour family restaurant and ordered a chocolate banana parfait and the drink bar and proceeded to sit there until 3:30AM when I finally went out onto the streets to catch my bus to the airport. I then flew to Fukuoka, checked into my hotel, waited around all day, then made my way to the venue to buy concert goods and then attend the concert. The concert was AMAZING, one of the best concerts I have seen, I'm really glad I went. Then after I headed back to my hotel. I was a bit worried because the only thing available when I booked it was a dorm style room so I would be staying with other people who I didn't know. But to my pleasant surprise, when the first girl walked in she noticed my shirt which was Hey Say JUMP themed and it turns out she was also here for the concert! So we started talking a lot about our beloved idols. Then the next girl came in and she was a really nice English teacher from America who lives in Kyoto, and after her another really nice teacher from Ireland came in and we all ended up talking until 12AM. It was really nice and I'm proud of myself for not shutting myself in and being shy and actually managing to make friends with my fellow dormmates. Overall it was just a really good experience.

these were the concert goods I bought... I have a problem.

And now I'm caught up!

My time in Japan is almost over :(

Right now I'm planning to go back to Vancouver around the 25th of August. Until then I'll soak up all the idols I can and experience all the things I've yet to do!

It is now 5:19AM and I don't know how to end this entry so I leave you with this