Chris and Kelly's Okinawa Adventures: Tokyo (November 2011)

Chris and I decided to take advantage of our 4 day weekend over Thanksgiving and head up to mainland Japan. We. Absolutely. Loved it!! We planned the trip on our own and decided that if we were going to cover some serious ground in 4 days, that we'd have to make ourselves pretty mobile! A few of our goals...to see Tokyo and Kyoto, and to take a bullet train. We ended up only bringing backpacks so we could do some sightseeing while moving from hotel to hotel during the day.

We arrived in Tokyo on Thursday, and off we went with the adventure of only street maps and subway maps. One thing we noticed in Tokyo was that it was super quiet!!

Backpacks were great for all of the stairs in the subways...our quads got an amazing workout! :)

We headed to our hotel, the Hanzoman, which was near the Imperial Palace. We knew that we wouldn't be able to get into the Imperial Palace, but there was a 2+ mile path around the palace that was good for running...I thought Chris might appreciate that :)

View from our hotel room

Fast-forward to the next morning... sunrise and some pics from my 'run' around the Imperial Palace. I was able to run just a little bit!!! Yay :) It was a perfect fall morning.

Around the Palace...

Ok. Now we'll back up to the first night out in Tokyo!! We decided to check out Roppongi and Shibuya, both popular areas for sightseeing and some great people watching at night. We hopped on the subway and quickly figured out how to transfer from one line to another...and of course ended up walking around in lots of circles and up and down lots of subway stairs :)

Note to self: If you want to go to the yellow circle subway line, go up the stairs; if you want to go to the pink circle subway line, go around that wall on the right, and then look for the stairs. It took us a few flights of stairs to figure that out! haha. Here are some more fun things about the subway...

Packed at evening rush hour...

Women only cars...

And no cell phones :) It was SO quiet in the trains...it was almost eerie!

In Roppongi (Hills), we wandered upon the Mori Tower, which had a night observation area and a museum. Chris and I really just wanted to check out the view, but you had to go to the museum too...and it actually ended up being pretty cool! The exhibit was on modern architecture. It was fascinating to see some of the concepts that were used...and of course some that were not used. We couldn't take any pics in there... Here's a pic of our cool night view though!

Gotta love the parking garage :)

And the street artwork

After exploring Roppongi, we headed to Shibuya, which has the LARGEST pedestrian crossing in the world!!! Traffic stops in all directions and masses of people cross the street...in any direction they want to go! We sat in a coffee shop and watched the madness for a few. And of course we had fun running across every which way a couple times too :)

View from above

Getting ready to cross the street!

After some coffee and relaxing for a few, we decided to walk around with the intention of eventually landing somewhere to eat. We weren't on any time schedule, so wandering it was :) We were surprised by the number of businesses in multiple story buildings. These signs would be on the buildings to tell you what was on each floor.

Some sweet business names... look closely haha

Eventually we found dinner!!! I know, it's not Japanese food, but we LOVE Thai food, and since we live in Oki, we figured we'd branch out while we were in the big city. This place was delicious!

After dinner we meandered on our way back to the subway... and we happened to stumble upon the 'love' district. Let's just call it that haha. It was pretty comical. We literally walked into a pet store, and when we walked out, we realized that we were on a road with 'adult' signs. There were normal businesses, 'love' hotels, a pet store and obviously much much more! Are you wondering what a 'love hotel' is? Well, it is pretty obvious, but in Japan, you never have to make contact with a front desk...you just pay into a slot based on the hour lol. I think you can even drive in too! At least this is what we've heard... haha. I don't have any pics from our Tokyo trip, but I'll be sure to take a pic of some of the ones here in Okinawa. The road here where those hotels are is actually named the "Love Hotel" road. We don't know the real name of the road...but then again, we don't know the names of ANY roads here in Japan. We navigate by businesses. :)

We were up early the next morning for a run (at least for Chris)... and I ran for the first time in 14 months!!! It was a great feeling...even if it was a half run/half walk. We enjoyed our view and packed up our backpacks as we were moving to another side of town to stay for the night. Oh, but before we left, I had to take a picture of our toilet seat. If you've seen Cars 2, then this should be funny. Shannon, this pic is for you :)

We decided to head to the Tokyo Tower to check out the view of Tokyo during the day. We were hoping that we might be able to see Mt. Fuji as well! We got there pretty early, so we thought we'd have a good chance.

It was November, so Christmas decorations were everywhere! There were some pretty funny looking stuffed animals hanging from that sign too...

View from the top (4 directions)

Fujiyama（山=yama=mountain) in the distance!!!

Towards the mountains

Towards Shinjuku (gov't buildings)

Towards the ocean and Rainbow Bridge

More city and towards the Imperial Palace grounds

While were were on one of the observation desks, we had all of these kids bombard us with sheets of paper that said something like 'Hi! I'm learning English. Will you ask me some questions?" It was SO cute. And the kids were WAY more obsessed with Chris! Chris' kids did pretty well...I had really shy girl, so I got to practice my Japanese to help her with her English. Good times :)

We left the Tokyo Tower and started heading towards our next hotel, which was in Tsukiji. So you're probably wondering, why the heck would you change hotels if you were in the same city? Well, like I said, this was a very 'packed' trip, and we wanted to get up to see the Tsukiji Fish Market in the morning...early morning...like 5:30am, so we wanted to stay somewhere nearby since the subways don't run that early. More on the fish market later. So anywho, we stopped for some lunch and saw a cool building along the way to the hotel. We also really noticed all of the 'suits' this day. It seemed like every Japanese man was wearing a black suit. I would say 85% of the subway was dressed up in black suits with a black briefcase...and we usually still saw them late at night too...they were just drunk in their black suits lol.

The suits...

Read VERY closely :)

The mexican food was really good!! Again, on a mission to eat some non-Japanese food. What better way than a Mexican food street cart??

After dropping our bags at the hotel, we headed up to Akihabara, the "Electric Town". Chris was very excited :) We found some really interesting stores in Akihabara...one in particular had some Anime vending machines that were crazy! 500yen would buy you a very interesting female Anime figure lol...and the pictures on the outside of the vending machines did not hold back! This sign was right next to the vending machines... I can't put the picture of the vending machine on here.

WTF? Right? haha

On one of the floors of this building, there was a hobby shop where Chris found tons of model cars. He was in Heaven! Lots of VW stuff :) We walked for a couple of hours around Akihabara...just checking out all of the different electronics.

Paul, this one's for you...we thought you'd enjoy some of these funky lighting stores :)

And these cool circles on the ground turn your car around in the direction you want it to go!!! Totally awesome for tight spaces and the parking challenged :)

After leaving Akihabara, we hopped on the train and went a couple train stops to Ryogoku, sumo town!! We were hoping to just see a few sumo people, but instead, we saw one kid that could be a future sumo and froze our butts off walking around! We did manage to find one sign of sumo town though...

...and apparently a lot of them ride bikes and they have limited bike parking space...

We also saw a cool pagoda building.

After leaving Ryogoku, we headed back to the hotel to warm up and grab some more layers before heading out to find some dinner. We ended up walking a couple miles...all the way to Ginza! The shopping was crazy! I felt like we walked into a high-class neighborhood...after we ate dinner at the 'Denny's of Japan'. It wasn't called that, but that's what we decided it was haha. The streets of Ginza were decorated for Christmas as well. For those of you from Ohio, we felt like we were walking around Easton! We also decided to buy some winter coats...pretty exciting!

Random photo alert... check out our shower/sink system in the hotel. The faucet functioned for both!! Yes, it was a very small bathroom...just like the room!

The next morning, we were up at 5:30am to head out to the Tsukiji Fish Market...just a 10 min walk down the road. The market was fascinating and mass insanity!! These carts with styrafoam coolers were filled with fish, and they were zooming around like crazy. I almost got ran over a few times. We later found out that 'tourists' were not allowed in the market this early. Oops!! We got to see some pretty cool stuff though...I just didn't pull out the camera much b/c I didn't want to be in the way.

Check out the size of these Tuna!!

Door-to-door fish salesman :)

After checking out the market, Chris headed out for a run and I went for a walk. Tokyo is SO clean! Found a cute kids park and a nice riverwalk.

An Elephant Slide!!!!!!!!!

How to massage your feet?!?!

After hangin' in the park, it was time to say goodbye to Tokyo. We got some breakfast from the little bakery next door and walked to the train station for our next adventure...bullet train to Kyoto!!!