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| Imperial Palace and Gardens |
Tuesday, June 27: I hadn't really planned in advance what we wanted to see in Tokyo, so I spent a long time last night figuring out the highlights and how we could manage to see as many as possible, while also keeping in mind that Lily and Ennio are only 8 and 6, and can only process so many temples, shrines, museums, etc. per day! We started off the day with a simple breakfast in a coffee shop just outside our hotel in Daiba, and then hopped on the Yurikamome train to Shimbashi. Ennio loves this train, because it has no driver, so when you're in the front car, you can pretend you are the driver (which is what he does 😀) In Shimbashi, we switched to the JR Yamanote Line and took the direction "Tokyo" Station. Our neighbor Ruth, who's from Japan, had recommended we visit the
KITTE Building, because of the dinosaur museum (UMUT Museum) inside. It was indeed a fun and interesting museum to explore. The rest of the building has great shops and restaurants, so we did some shopping and scored some designer items as well as traditional Japanese slippers. Me happy! The
Imperial Palace and Gardens are in this area as well, known as the
Marunouchi District, so we walked over there. There was a long line to visit, so we just took some pictures and decided to go back to the station.
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| Taking the driverless Yurikamome train! |
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| Tokyo Station |
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| Kitte Building |
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| Imperial Gardens |
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| What strikes me, is that Lily looks so incredibly happy on every single picture! |
At Tokyo Station, we took the train to Suidobashi and headed to
Tokyo Dome. This was on Marcus and Ennio's wish list. Tokyo Dome is a large concert hall and there are also some rollercoasters and other rides in the park, so it was a nice "break" for the kids. We also did some grocery shopping and had lunch there.
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| Typical Tokyo supermarket storefront |
After all that rollercoaster fun, I insisted that it was now my turn to satisfy some of my cultural cravings! I really wanted to see the
Senso-ji temple in Asakusa. We took the Yamanote Line to Ueno Station, and transferred there to the Tokyo Metro Ginza Line to Asakusa (5 min). Once we got outside the station, we were surrounded by tourists! This was definitely the most touristy spot of our entire trip. The street leading up to the temple was crowded and you could walk over the heads.
After admiring the temple and the obligatory burning of incense, we decided to walk the streets a bit and let the kids play a bit at a playground. We saw the Tokyo Skytree in the distance (the tallest tower in the world!), but did not visit. We did enjoy the small parks and buddha statues we randomly passed by!
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| Skytree Tower |
In the late afternoon, we took the train to Shinjuku and walked to the Tokyo Metropolitan Building. We rode the elevator to the 45th floor and enjoyed the fabulous view from there (it was a cloudy day, but at least the view was free!)
Time passed by quickly (it was hard to get the kids to leave the toy shop on the same floor!) but we had to go, since we had dinner plans with Roman. We took the train to
Harajuku, and were amazed!!! Right in front of us was
Takeshita Street, probably the most "kawaii" street in Tokyo! I didn't have eyes enough to take it all in! We passed by a "Cat Café" but unfortunately, didn't have time to go in (Lily was so sad, she said she needed some cat cuddling, because she missed Stella so much!). We finally arrived at
Sakura Tei, the restaurant Roman had picked for us, and had the specialty dish: Okonomiyaki. It was absolutely DELICIOUS. I would go back to Japan for the food alone... in a heartbeat!
After dinner we took a cab back to the hotel... and passed the statue of liberty on the way :-) Crazy Japanese!!! It was a busy, but wonderful day!
