March 10th

Tokyo

We are staying at the Park Hotel which is in a newly built business district near the Hamariku Gardens. The hotel itself is on the 25th to 34th floors of the building, and our room is on the 34th floor with a great view over Tokyo and a nearby railway station. We can watch the trains coming and going, what fun! Two things about the hotel – 1. The 34th floor is probably not the best place to be in an earthquake. 2. The toilet has a heated seat, and several shower/bidet options. It was a challenge to find how to flush it.

We started our day taking a train to the Meiji shrine, dedicated to the 19th century emperor who opened Japan up to the west. It is wonderfully serene, and somewhat austere, and a great place to contemplate escape the noise of the surrounding built up area.

After looking around we walked up the nearby streets. The first street was Takeshita Street where teenage girls like to hang out, and it is overwhelmingly pink and Hello Kitty oriented. Kind of creepy. There was a cat café there, where you can cuddle cats as you drink your coffee and surf the internet.

Next we walked up Omotesando, which is the high end shopping street with very unique architecture and designer stores. We didn’t buy anything there, except a small tin with a cherry blossom design, and headed for the Ginza. There we found a department store which has the most incredible food court in the basement, putting Harrod’s to shame. We had a great time wandering around looking at all of the displays, and ended up buying a box of the most delicious chocolates. Feeling very hungry after seeing all of that food, we then stopped at a local restaurant for lunch. It was good to sit down for a while.

We then took the subway to Asakusa and visited the Buddhist Sensoji temple. This was extremely crowded and very noisy, but had a great vibe as it clearly was very meaningful to all of the other visitors.

Next we walked down to the river to take a boat to the Hamarikyu Gardens. The cherry trees there are starting to bloom, and look so beautiful.

After a cup of steaming macha and some strange sweets at the tea house on an island in the gardens, we walked back to the hotel.

The hotel is connected to the neighboring buildings by a series on pedestrian walkways, and on our walk to the station this morning we had passed by a most unusual clock outside one of the TV stations. We headed back there to take some photos, and then walked to a nearby restaurant district. This is where the locals eat, not a foreigner in sight. With Brian’s fish allergy we decided that we should avoid the restaurants that had Japanese only menus, and eventually found a great tapas type restaurant, which despite having many very unusual food stuffs on the menu, also had familiar edibles, so all was well.

We walked back to the hotel, tired, but very happy with our first full day in Japan. This is going to be a great vacation :).