Location | Tokyo

Today I woke up incredibly sore. My ankles are really sore from all the walking that we’ve been doing. I’m glad that I’m forcing myself to walk, but now I have blisters on my feet and my knee is starting to give out. This is the sign of aging!!!

Anyway, I woke up around 6:30am because Suma had to go to the doctor to get her stitches removed. She came back because the ER was… closed… weirdly enough. So we had breakfast ~ and I had the best… THREE … croissants ever! There was other really good food too (like the fish and rice!)

At 9:30, we met up in the lobby and left to go to Ueno Park. At Ueno we walked in and it was just such a beautiful place. Some of the trees had blooming sakura blossoms. Apparently they were a differend breed than the ones that normally bloom in late March. At the park there were tons of people and their little dogs. There was one guy with a stroller and three dachshunds sitting in the stroller… There was also 3 dachshunds dressed up and barking… They had a cart to sit in as well. Anyway, we went up to the Museum of Western Art and then all went back to go into the Tokyo National Museum to enter into the Horyuji Homotsukan. Unfortunately the exhibit was closed, but we saw the building and it was really nice and soothing.

After that we went into the Honkan and looked at all the old Japanese art. It was really interesting to look at all the art, but I was so sore that it was tough to enjoy it. I really liked the Ukiyo-E though. My favorite is definitely the famous tsunami wave.

After the museum we met up with some other people (we had split off) and went to Ameyoko Street. There I got distracted by the UFO claw game. So then 5 of us got split up and we ended up at another ramen shop. We ordered ramen and then went on a walk through Ueno again. At Ueno, Heidi wanted to play with these stray cats that this old man had. The old man kept trying to give us the cat…. After that we went to a Shinto shrine and I got a cool charm for good health. After that we went to meet up with everyone again.

We then went to Asakusa to see Senso-ji. The street in front of Senso-ji was amazing~! There was tons of food to eat include monjyu and kibi-dango! Soo yummy We went up to the temple and got fortunes as well. I got a “half” fortune! That is not good and not bad -____-“. I left it at the temple tied to the fortune bar (whatever it’s called, I’ll look it up later).

Afterwards we walked down the street to senso-ji again and I got kibi-dango and a manekineko (beckoning cat). Then we took a ferry from the Asakusa docks and went down the Sumida River to Odaiba.

Odaiba is an awful place. Ok, I guess it was kind of cool to see, but it was really depressing. Basically it’s a bunch of gigantic buildings that they thought would be popular, but turned out to just suck in general. There was a sort of nice nature-y part and good views of Tokyo from across the bay. There was also a mini version of the Statue of Liberty. We went to the Fuji-TV Building and rode up to the round sphere observatory. There wasn’t much up there except the view of the city and some cardboard cut-outs of different Fuji-TV stars.

Afterwards we rode the shuttle/train back to Shiodome and changed trains to get back to Akasaka, where our hotel is. Unfortunately we lost Ariela and Dragana in the shuffle and they never showed up to ride the train back with us.

Later we went to Shibuya and ate at Kyomaru restuarant. We had yakitori, Korean pancakes, gyoza, and some other random stuff. After dinner we went to wait for Ariela and Dragona, but they didn’t show up again! So we left again and went to Karaoke at Big Echo. There Bryan showed us all up on his mad karaoke skills. Then we went to a bar that was a hole in the wall — called Shot Place (or something like that). Of course EVERYONE had to buy a drink, so there was me in the corner drinking a 400 yen coke.

Afterwards we were going to go to another bar, but we were exhausted, so we got into taxis and came back to the hotel. More updates and pictures to come!!!

[This entry was taken from my old blog, Building Tokyo. Formatting may have changed when moved to Explore!]