Tokyo day 2
I pretty much just crashed last night about 8 pm. I’ve pretty much given up on figuring what time or day it is anywhere than here. It turns out that it’s pretty unusual to be transferred from narita to Tokyo in a taxi, I knew it was a nice taxi, but $300 dollars worth of nice? Tokyo is one expensive city.
I woke up about 5 am and really don’t feel too jetlagged. The hotel is a weird mixture of nice and kind of old and tired. Breakfast was included this morning, a very strange mix of Japanese and western food. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten Miso soup for breakfast before. Not bad, just different.
The whole day was a Tokyo tour. First we went to the Tokyo tower which is a replica of the Eiffel tower that they built for the Olympics (1964?) Tokyo really is a huge sprawling place. Then we went to a Shinto shrine in a large park in the middle of the city. Apparently it’s a holiday weekend (fall equinox) so it was packed. Saw several weddings, I think I got some good photos. Then we went to the Emperor’s palace. You can only see part of it, most of it is strictly off limits to the common folk. There was quite a bit of traffic around the Diet as the new prime minister was being sworn in today.
We had lunch at a very cool restaurant, 10 different types of food fried (but not really like tempura) on bamboo skewers. Very tasty. Then we went to a Buddist temple. It was very different than the Shinto one as it is surrounded by several shoping arcades. Kind of a strange combination of shops, religion and county fair. It was extremely crowded and I stick out like a sore thumb. Big blonde amazon. The people on the tour are very nice. One has a daughter who lives in McKinney, small world.
Bags have to be out tomorrow by 6:30 am, then we go half way up Mt. Fuji, then take the bullet train to Kyoto. So another pretty full day.
Sorry to post following myself and for the repeated info. :rolleyes:
http://picasaweb.google.com/DrLauriC/Tokyo I can't seem to get my blog to work (it's all in Japanese!!) but the above link will get you to some photos.
