We found a great local place today for gyoza and fried rice. After eating, we visited Yanaka Cemetery. It was really beautiful, and great weather. We wandered around for a while and visited the grave of Yoshinobu Tokugawa, who was a major force in the Meiji Restoration.
Afterward, we went to Tokyo Sky Tree... only to discover that it was swamped with tourists. We got there around 3:30 pm, but would have had to wait four hours just to buy a ticket to go up. Not worth it. We took some pictures from outside, but I think we'll wait for another trip to actually go up it. We'll do TMG or Sunshine City for an observation tower this trip.
On the way home, we picked up lots of gyoza and more fried rice for dinner. Yum!
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
Monday, New Year's Eve
After a quiet day spent inside, we spent Monday all over Tokyo.
We started off in Ginza with a short walk to the Tokyo International Forum... except we got distracted on the way by the Ginza branch of Tokyu Hands, Ginza Hands. After spending an hour or two shopping, we finally made it over to the Tokyo International Forum, which looks like a glass ship "plying the urban waters." ( http://www.zstudioarchitects.com/Int_8.htm ) We had a lovely lunch inside the forum - Christopher tried omuraiso (omelette rice), but wasn't wild about it. I had katsu-don and amazing miso soup.
We then checked out the symphony performance of Final Fantasy that was supposed to happen later that evening and dithered about whether to buy tickets. We eventually decided they were too expensive, so we moved on to...
Yasukuni-jinja. Yasukuni-jinja is a Japanese war shrine, venerating soldiers and others who have died in wars. It has a super notorious reputation. Every time Japan has a new prime minister, people wait to see if he will visit Yasukuni. Visiting it angers Koreans and Chinese. There's some really questionable stuff at Yasukuni, and there's regular demands for it to be torn down. However, when we went it was decked out for the New Year. The path to the shrine was full of stalls selling goldfish and a lot of food. After visiting the shrine, we went home, stopping by a stall to get some yakisoba, takoyaki, and kebab. The yakisoba was really good, Christopher seemed happy with the kebab, and the takoyaki smelled so fishy I couldn't eat it. Christopher had a bite and we threw the rest away. Sorry to the octopus who gave his life for it!
We went back to the hotel and watched some hysterical Japanese tv. I headed out around 9:30 for Meiji-jingu to bring in the New Year. Christopher doesn't like crowds and didn't feel up to it.
Honestly, it was kind of a crummy experience. Crowded, freezing, and I would have had a better view of the ceremony on tv at the hotel. We were down a footpath with a screen at the end of it that I couldn't see (if you weren't in the front group or really tall, it was lost on you). Also, the Japanese people talked through the ceremony - louder during it to talk over it. Again, would have been better on tv. All in all, I stood around waiting for three hours to spend a minute or two doing New Year's stuff at the shrine. Not an effective use of time. This might be a neat experience if you live in Japan and have a group to go with and hang out with during all the waiting, but this was not good for a tourist.
I got done at the shrine and back to the train station at 1:30 in the morning. It took an hour and a half to go back to the hotel, a trip that normally takes 30 minutes - the trains simply weren't running very often.
Oh well, if I hadn't gone, I wouldn't know to skip it in the future!
We started off in Ginza with a short walk to the Tokyo International Forum... except we got distracted on the way by the Ginza branch of Tokyu Hands, Ginza Hands. After spending an hour or two shopping, we finally made it over to the Tokyo International Forum, which looks like a glass ship "plying the urban waters." ( http://www.zstudioarchitects.com/Int_8.htm ) We had a lovely lunch inside the forum - Christopher tried omuraiso (omelette rice), but wasn't wild about it. I had katsu-don and amazing miso soup.
We then checked out the symphony performance of Final Fantasy that was supposed to happen later that evening and dithered about whether to buy tickets. We eventually decided they were too expensive, so we moved on to...
Yasukuni-jinja. Yasukuni-jinja is a Japanese war shrine, venerating soldiers and others who have died in wars. It has a super notorious reputation. Every time Japan has a new prime minister, people wait to see if he will visit Yasukuni. Visiting it angers Koreans and Chinese. There's some really questionable stuff at Yasukuni, and there's regular demands for it to be torn down. However, when we went it was decked out for the New Year. The path to the shrine was full of stalls selling goldfish and a lot of food. After visiting the shrine, we went home, stopping by a stall to get some yakisoba, takoyaki, and kebab. The yakisoba was really good, Christopher seemed happy with the kebab, and the takoyaki smelled so fishy I couldn't eat it. Christopher had a bite and we threw the rest away. Sorry to the octopus who gave his life for it!
We went back to the hotel and watched some hysterical Japanese tv. I headed out around 9:30 for Meiji-jingu to bring in the New Year. Christopher doesn't like crowds and didn't feel up to it.
Honestly, it was kind of a crummy experience. Crowded, freezing, and I would have had a better view of the ceremony on tv at the hotel. We were down a footpath with a screen at the end of it that I couldn't see (if you weren't in the front group or really tall, it was lost on you). Also, the Japanese people talked through the ceremony - louder during it to talk over it. Again, would have been better on tv. All in all, I stood around waiting for three hours to spend a minute or two doing New Year's stuff at the shrine. Not an effective use of time. This might be a neat experience if you live in Japan and have a group to go with and hang out with during all the waiting, but this was not good for a tourist.
I got done at the shrine and back to the train station at 1:30 in the morning. It took an hour and a half to go back to the hotel, a trip that normally takes 30 minutes - the trains simply weren't running very often.
Oh well, if I hadn't gone, I wouldn't know to skip it in the future!
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