Short Weekend Trip, Shimizu, Shizuoka

Last last weekend hubby and took a short trip out to see my sister in Shizuoka, when more purikura ensued. I packed super light and was able to travel with only a tote bag ^.^

After all this time, my sister and I finally convinced hubby to come with us to karaoke. He's totally averse to it but we dragged him there kicking and screaming.

But he was a pretty good sport the entire time, sitting there and put up with our screaming ^.^

On the second day we encountered this rather peculiar display inside the Dream Plaza in Shimizu. It was of Mount Fuji being covered in sushi, surrounded by international figureheads at its base. Shizuoka is famous for sushi, but other than that, the whole thing is just plain weird ^.^

Of course I have to take a picture with it!

This entire restaurant area serves only sushi! I had to wonder how each restaurant here draw customers if they all serve the same thing. How do they differentiate themselves, especially when it's all raw fish and there's really not that much variation in how the sushi is prepared and served. One of the restaurants did offer a few rolls though, like those rolls you can get in the US. This is actually quite rare since interesting rolls are more of an American thing and sushi restaurants here generally serve nigirizushi.

Too bad none of us were in the mood for raw fish, so we went somewhere else and had Italian :P That Margherita pizza was surprisingly good, which renewed my hopes of finding decent pizzas outside of delivery chains. Actually, the Caesar salad was good, and that crabmeat pasta in cream sauce was especially tasty! It disappeared in a flash xD Oh, and they even had stuffed rice ball, which was decent!

Afterwards we went to see the final Harry Potter install in 3D, which cost us an arm and a leg. If you think a movie ticket is expensive in the US, you will never want to go the theater in Japan. Where I am a movie ticket costs anywhere between 1,800-2,200yen ($22.50-27.50), depends on whether it's a new release (imagine spending $50+ on 2 movie tickets T.T). Movies in 3D add another 500yen per person, so about 2,700yen ($33.75) each. And these are just your average sized theater screen. Bigger or IMAX screens probably cost even more! Ouch.

Anyway, at the this particular theater had Dippin' Dots, which was a small consolation for being bled dry for everything else.

Oh yes, and they had these ridiculously huge 3D glasses that shrunk our heads and made us look like dorks.

The Dream Plaza is right next to the shore line, we were able to enjoy the beautiful clear blue sky that afternoon!

Of course it was hot in Shizuoka, though somewhat cooler than Yokohama. Either way, I got tired of my long hair and decided it was time to chop chop. My sister took us to her favorite hair guy and off my long hair went.

Dinner was at this traditional soba house. It looked so cool from the outside so I had to take a picture with it ^.^

And guess which incredible feat I was able to pull off during this trip - I got hubby to go to karaoke twice on 2 consecutive nights!!! woot!!!

And no, he was not really singing. At all. He was just posing.

Yep, me and my sister were totally goofing off ^.^