Jimmy was in Tokyo for work the week prior to Easter and Good Friday is a holiday in Singapore so we decided to spend the long weekend in Tokyo. He was going straight from there to Beijing for his next work trip so this was the only way for us to spend a whole weekend together this month since he's been traveling so much. I was a little bit nervous because I had to take a bus from the airport to the train station close to our hotel to meet him but everything went very smoothly. Everything at the airport and on the bus was translated to English so there were no issues. The weather was in the 60s so it was nice to be able to wear jeans and sweatshirts again! Our room was tiny - it was just enough room for a bed and a desk. The bathroom faucet swiveled so that the same one was used for both the sink and the shower. We were barely in the room so that didn't really matter.
We spent Friday night walking around Shinjuku. We saw a temple and lots of shops nearby. The first place we stopped to eat at had a machine where you place the order for your food - we ended up going to several like this which was interesting.
There are also vending machines everywhere in Tokyo. They even have hot drinks in them which I hadn't seen before. There were also cigarette vending machines but not as many as the drink vending machines.
We also went to a small restaurant that served yakitori (meat on a stick) and tried whale meat. It looked and had the consistency of beef but with a seafood flavor. Jimmy thought he was going to be sick - he didn't like it at all. I don't think I'd eat it again. We walked around and saw lots of different bars and arcades. We went to another restaurant and had Udon noodles which were really good. All of that food was just on Friday night - we ate quite a bit over the weekend.
Saturday morning we woke up early and went to Tsukiji Fish Market which is the world's largest fish market and is famous for selling fresh fish and having fresh sushi for breakfast. Some of the restaurant lines were really long but we went to a restaurant with a shorter line. All of the sushi was really good! I don't usually do the raw sushi but I'll probably try it more in the future now. When we were done eating we walked around the market - the workers there were driving around carts moving seafood around - I was pretty sure we were going to get run over by one but we made it out safe.
We did a ton of sight seeing so here are a few highlights...
Tsukiji Hongan-ji temple:
Imperial Palace. We were able to take pictures from a distance but there are gates up so you can't get any closer than we did.
Tokyo Tower:
Zojoji Temple:
Meiji Shrine:
Shibuyu Crossing (large intersection where all the cars will get red lights and pedestrians flood the street from all sides):
We ate okonomiyaki which is a Japanese pancake. It is not like an American pancake - this was full of cabbage, seafood and topped with mayonnaise. The table had a grill on it to keep the food warm which was nice!
We went up Tokyo Sky tree once it was dark and saw all of the city lights. When you are up there you realize how massive the city is. If we had gone up during the day we could have seen Mt Fuji but it was pretty neat seeing the city at night.
For our final meal of the day, we decided to try Kobe beef and it was delicious!! It is ridiculously expensive but we figured we were in Japan, we needed to at least try it!
On Sunday, we went to a Ramen place that was down an alley and had seats for less than 10 people. We had to walk up a really narrow stairwell to get to it and space was quite scrunched but it was good!
From there we walked around and saw the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building. We also walked to Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden. We were both exhausted but really glad we saw as much as we did!
