Chiba and Rollers!

The first weekend after I got to Japan, you will remember, Jordan took me to a park at the end of our peninsula. This weekend was all about capitalizing on that day's adventures.

The first part of that park vist, we went up a lighthouse where we could see almost all of Tokyo Bay. Well, while we were gazing out, directly across the bay from us was a white rectangular thing. We both assumed it was another lighthouse but after gazing through my binoculars we thought it looked like a statue. If it was a statue it would have had to be huge... Later that week I google earthed this white rectangle thing and discovered that it was indeed a statue, and it was settled that we must go check it out when we got a chance.

The opportunity came Saturday and we found it, and it is indeed very tall...over 180ft! More than 20 stories!

<-- Jordan

She is the Buddhist goddess of mercy and was constructed in 1957 at the mouth of Tokyo bay as a symbol of peace. For a small fee you may go inside of the statue and walk up all 20 stories to various view points along the way. At each floor, there is a small shrine to a different god of happiness, and at the top there is a final shrine to this goddess.

The entire inside was sort of like a maze with various steps and ladders and passageways leading outside to view points that then reconnected on different levels. It was the most fun I'll ever have inside of a statue on a giant staircase. I especially enjoyed this Alice in Wonderland moment:

One of the lookouts was through her nose, hehe

This was our view from the tipy top looking east over the Chiba peninsula and then looking north west toward Tokyo. Of course you could also see Fuji over our peninsula.

We ended up spending a bit more time than we anticipated at the statue, so we were able to catch the sunset at the ferry dock

The second part of this original park adventure, and really the whole purpose why we had gone there, was to find the roller slides. We had thought we found the "big" one, but upon discussion at work afterwords I was informed there was an even bigger slide and once again with the help of google earth I was guided to it's exact location. The time to find this mega roller slide had come and boy was it awesome (If  you can see a slide from google earth and it takes up more than a few pixles you know it's gotta be good). We had a blast! It may not look like it but you can really get going quick on this guy! So much so Jordan was worried that he'd fly out around the corners because he couldn't quite crouch into the slide enough. I, of course, fit perfectly and only attempted to go as fast as possible :D I am sure that we will be back.

*that noise is all of the metal rollers spinning as you go over them