Tokyo: Day 2

Christy woke up about 4:30 am, which meant that I couldn't really sleep anymore either. Christy sat in the dark on the computer for a while, and I stayed in bed. We got ready to go downstairs to breakfast (included in our room rate) and called home to talk to Paige. They weren't at home, so we decided to call back after breakfast.

Our breakfast consisted of salad, some sort of pasta salad with tons of mayo, soup (kind of tasted like French onion soup), different breads (we just had a raisin roll which was very good), hard boiled eggs (which neither of us had), and coffee. This was a different kind of breakfast, but it was decent. The coffee was actually really good. :-)

After breakfast we went back to the room and called Paige. We then got started with our sight-seeing for the day. Off to the metro station, but we passed it and had to backtrack.

First, we headed to Asakusa which has a lot of shrines and a pagoda. It also has a long row of shops where we bought quite a few souvenirs. The shrines were amazing! There is so much detail that went into building them. Most of them aren't even the originals, either. Many of them were either destroyed in earthquakes or during WWII.


At one of the temples, the Senso-ji, we met a group of girls from Taiwan who helped us with a fortune-telling "device". Basically you shake a box and pull out a stick. The stick has a number on it which refers to a numbered drawer. You then open the drawer and get your fortune on a piece of paper from the drawer. The girls wanted to get their picture with us after they helped us!


Also at Senso-ji, and most of the temples, there is a place to "wash" your hands and your mouth (I guess) before you enter the temple. You have to dip a ladle into the water, rinse off your left hand (both sides) then your right hand (also both sides). Then you pour a little water into your left hand and drink it. Then you have to let the water run back on the handle of the ladle. The water was really cold!!! (It actually reminded me of the story in the gospels where the Pharisees scolded Jesus for letting his disciples eat without washing their hands. But Jesus' response was that their "washing" of the hands really didn't wash their hands at all, so it didn't matter. Thanks to Wes Hamilton for demonstrating this!)


We then hopped on the Metro again and went to Ueno. This is really a big park area with a zoo, some museums and some common areas. We first went to the Shitamachi Museum where a really nice Japanese man showed us around the museum. We are so thankful that he was there or we would not have known what things were. They had replicas of Edo period houses which also had a shop out front. They also had another one of the fortune-telling "devices" which we got to try as well.


We also went to the Benzaiten Temple and the Kiyomizu Kannon-do (another temple). After that was the Toshogu Shrine. This one was undergoing some renovation, so we didn't get to enter. But there was a long walk that lead up to it which had something called the Flame of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This is a flame that was originally ignited by the nuclear bombs that the U.S. dropped on those cities and has been cared for since then. It is now set in a monument with a silver dove (symbolizing peace).


We then went to the Tokyo National Museum, where we had lunch before seeing the exhibits. Some of the exhibits were really interesting, like the Noh and Kabuki costumes, samurai armor and swords, and painted screens.


After this we went to the National Museum of Western Art. This museum houses a few replicas of Rodin's work that Christy and I saw in Paris at the Rodin museum. It also has a few works of Monet, including one of the Water Lillies paintings. I was scolded for taking pictures (even without a flash), but I had been sure that I could take pictures without a flash. (We always get yelled at for taking pictures.)


We hopped on the metro again and went to Akihabara. This is really just a big electronics store area. We went into one store that had 6 floors of electronics, toys and games. It was like Fry's, only bigger and louder.


We then did the one thing that you're never supposed to do while on vacation in another country - we ate dinner at McDonald's! I know - bad tourists! We just needed to have some comfort food.

Then we headed back to the hotel for showers and bed. We're both really tired, but we had a great day today.

February 6, 2009