Tokyo Day 2

I am writing this at 1am Saturday Tokyo time (noon home time). Even in Japan, I'm a night owl... Or maybe I should say "night crane"???

After 11 hours of blessed sleep, we decided to have breakfast at the outdoor cafe of our hotel and explore the neighborhood. Then we wanted to see some sites in Eastern/Central Tokyo before we met Junko for an evening of cherry blossom partying.



We began the day with crepes for Dan and me, and had Frankie singing a selection from a Bill Cosby sketch because we allowed him to eat chocolate cheesecake for breakfast..."Dad is great! Give us chocolate cake.". If you don't know it...YouTube it for a good laugh!!

Before setting out for the Yamanote Line train, Frankie and I hit a small grocery store around the corner from the hotel and got some orange juice drink called Qoo and an energy tea. Both made by Coca Cola. We are doing our part to increase the US economy, even from afar ;-)



One thing that I noticed while on the train to sitesee...everyone (adults and kids..men and women) dresses in black suits during the day. And women almost always wear 1-2 inch heels. People were a little more colorful on Friday night while out hitting the clubs (them not us....we may feed him chocolate cake for breakfast but we draw the line at taking Frankie clubbing).


We had heard that the Sony building was a fun place to take kids, so we stopped there first. Frankie was intrigued because they were featuring all kinds of stuff for the latest Final Fantasy video game. I showed my camera where it was made :-) Dan liked trying out the cool headphones. The Sony building is in Ginza which is like 5th Avenue in New York City.

We then realized how close we were to the Imperial Palace and gardens, so we made our way there to enjoy the tranquility. We saw some beautiful cherry blossoms there!

We were too late to enter the inner gardens and didn't have a prearranged pass for Palace entrance, but enjoyed seeing the outer parks and fountains and glimpses of the Palace across the moat and over the stone walls.


We stopped briefly at a video arcade so Frankie could try his luck at a couple crane games (no luck) and play a couple games he is familiar with from home.
We then made our way north to the Mitsukoshi store. It's Tokyo's equivalent to Sak's. It began as Japan's first department store and premiere kimono maker. We saw a beautiful carving they have in their central lobby....and wandered around their basement level where they have tons of food for sale and some to sample.


We then hurried to meet up with Junko. She showed us a hidden level (at least to most tourists) of Tokyo Station called the character stores. Frankie had mentioned that several friends back home loved "Domo" (a japanese cartoon character) so Junko wanted him to see the souvenir store. He ended up buying a Rascal stuffed raccoon character from a show based on the book Rascal by Sterling North. He's such a great son of a librarian!!

Junko guided us to Ueno Park to see the cherry blossoms by the lake at night. There were so many people picnicing/partying under the trees! We ended up eating our takeout dinners on the steps of a shrine in the middle of Ueno Onshi park lake.

We have to get up at 6am to catch the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Hiroshima so we said goodbye to Junko (after making arrangements to see her and meet her family for dinner when we return to Tokyo next Wednesday) and made our way back to the hotel.

I am enjoying a Thailand beer called Phuket while I blog this post. Our hotel has a variety of 60 foreign beers in the cafe, and free wifi access. Can I pick a good hotel or what!

Will be blogging next from Hiroshima in the Southern East coast of Japan.


-- Post From My iPhone