Woke up at 9 am, showered, had a delicious breakfast of toast, and headed out for the day with CKE. We walked around our neighborhood (Asakusabashi) for a bit wondering where all the people and sites where then decided to take the subway to the 'Tokyo" stop. We headed to the Imperial Palace first. We knew you could not get onto the palace grounds except 2 days a year, but we were not aware that the entire place is closed on Fridays... Oh well, we walked around the grounds. Bridges, buildings, a moat and huge stone block retaining wall. We also saw a huge number of men all dressed in black pants and short sleeve white button up shirts...this added to the fact that all asians look the same (I am not adding to stereotypes, but for all intensive purposes they all have black hair and from a distance this makes you the same) gave a creepy effect the whole group.
Then we walked through the Hibiyakoen Park. We bought a delicious sports drink and sat. There are a lot of runners in Tokyo.
Then we went to 7-11 and McDonalds for lunch - it was the nicest McD's I have ever seen. Our meals cost 390 and 590 yen - 4 and 6 USD.
After lunch we headed to the Tokyo Tower - a replica of the Eiffel Tower painted bright orange. On our way we stopped at some temple not listed in our book. It had the steepedt stairs we have ever seen so of course we had to climb them and see what was at the top...it was a temple, we came back down.
By the time we finally reached Tokyo Tower it was raining. We were thinking of skipping the observation deck, but it cleared up so we headed up. It was neat, with 360 degree views and glass panels in the floor so you could look straight down and fear for your life at the same time.
CKE's foot.
Then - I need to come up with some new transition words...Then we headed to Zojo-Ji, another temple, where we searched for some old door, but then realized they probably meant the entry gate that everyone else was taking pictures of. Besides that is was just another temple, a cemetery and creepy child statues called Jizo:
Then we went to the Hama-Rikyo Onshi Teinen, which is a 17th century garden. Some of it was beautiful with a pond and little islands with a tea house in the middle, but the rest of it was pretty lame. It would have been nice if we were there in spring or fall, but everything was just green. Of course I would never tell CKE I thought this since I had to pay for him just to get him to come with me, but since he doesn't ever read this blog he will never know (yes, this is a test).
Next (OOO, variety), we found a train station to get to Odaiba - an island with the largest ferris wheel in the world. We stopped for Subway, delicious. Also met two guys who sold us their day train passes for the price of our tickets. Once at Odaiba we saw the statue of liberty (seriously I have seen more of that lady here than ever in the US), then headed to the Fuji building hoping to get to the observation deck - but it was closed. We hung around there for a while waiting for the sun to go down so we could see the lights on the ferris wheel in the distance. (The sun goes down here around 7). It never happened.
Then we actually went to the Ferris wheel where there was also a futuristic car show. We bought tickets to take an all class thingy up the 380' wheel. I don't know what I was thinking. I thought, "oh, it is all glass, no big deal." We got in that thing and I froze, it was terrifying, glass floor and all. CKE says "but the floor was dirty so it wasn't scary," I am sorry, but I am not sure a layer of grime add to the structural integrity of a ferris wheel compartment.
16 minutes of my life later we headed into an arcade that seemed more like a casino. We found some tokens to throw into a machine, but mostly just watched in awe how these games worked. They were awesome.
We decided to head back to the hostel hoping to walk over the Rainbow Bridge. We got to the gate at 8:40 and wouldn't you know it they close the bridge to pedestrians at 8:30. We had been looking forward to it all day so we were pretty disappointed, but oh well. We walked along the artificial beach for a bit and had a 350 yen can of beer at a bar. On the train ride back to the hostel we got to ride in the very front, which was solid glass, so that was pretty cool.
All in all a great day. Tomorrow morning we have high hopes of getting up at 4:15 to check out the fish market.
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