Japan {Homeworks}.

Nate and I took a quick bike ride down to Ebisu station 恵比寿駅 to get our bullet train tickets for our trip to Kyoto.

In Nate and Lauren's building there is an entire 'bike' room for bike parking and storage. 

Most of the bikes have a little motor on them you can turn on low or high when you go up a hill or have your kids and all your groceries with you - it is sweet!!!  This is Lauren's bike that she let me borrow.

Special bike elevator in the apartment complex.

I know there is nothing amazing about this photo, I was trying to show how beautiful the city is.  It is so clean and the trees are beautiful.

I did this time-laps video of us biking through the streets.  It was the most beautiful time of night.

Tonight for dinner Nate and Lauren took us to a local hamburger joint called "Homeworks".  The name of the restaurant is a perfect example of a typical Asian translation gone wrong {not bad, just wrong}.  It is suppose to be "Homemade".  It's funny how many translations are wrong between Japanese and English - you would think they would get someone to double check the translation.  I remember some of the funny things one of my Japanese mission companions had that were translated wrong.

Here is the front of the menu explaining the restaurants mission statement which makes no sense! 

"As the name 'homework's' suggests, it is our mission to provide warmhearted service and quality homemade food to our customers." 

Homework has nothing to do with warmhearted service or quality food!  Either way the homemade hamburger and fries were really good and according to Lauren and Gregg the $5 root beers were worth it too!!

The streets are beautiful and calm and clean.  I couldn't get over it.

{there is Tokyo tower in the distance all lit up}.

On our walk home after dinner we saw this cool looking restaurant.  I like the Japanese writing with the pendant lights hanging down and the opaque paneling on one side and mirrors on the other.

Another cute street side restaurant with a barber shop on top.

One last stop on our walk home was to check out some local real estate.  We were curious about prices in Japan and we needed a reason to write the trip off as a business trip!! :)