Tokyo Surprises

We arrived in Tokyo very late at night on December 26. We began by taking a bus from the airport to downtown Tokyo and, eventually, making our way to the hotel. We did not check in until 11pm. We were all very tired and hungry. We went to a restaurant that looked very “interesting,” but we did not have very many options because it was so late. When we walked we first noticed that the restaurant was full of adults who were all smoking. Amelia and Michael had never seen anyone smoking inside…let alone an entire restaurant full of people. It was shocking.

We were brought to a table and told to take off our shoes. We were sitting in a booth that was sunken into the floor. We ordered “chicken jumble,” pickled cucumbers, friend chicken, and some sort of chicken soup. The “chicken jumble” was not very good. The “jumble” included chicken cartilage and the internal organs with very few pieces of chicken meat that we typically eat in the United States. This was very surprising and not very appetizing. The fried chicken was really, really good! The pickled cucumbers tasted like they were pickled in sea water – not good at all! The chicken soup was okay, but there was not a lot of it. We did not go to bed until after 1 am.

The next morning we took the subway to Shibuya Crossing which is the busiest intersection in the world. There are multiple streets that meet up and pedestrians can cross when all the lights for the streets are red. Pedestrians can cross to any street during this time. There were a lot of people walking around! Around Shibuya Crossing there were a lot of stores and restaurants. You could buy everything from a miniature dog to an iPhone or a Louis Vuitton purse! There was also music playing, constantly, everywhere. It seemed that the sound system only played Into the Unknown from the Frozen 2 soundtrack. Needless to say, we are sick of that song! We also visited a cat cafe while we were there. Amelia and Michael really liked the cafe, Lauren and Heath did not. The cafe had a lot of cats of all different varieties and types. The kids were able to feed and pet the cats, it was definitely an interesting experience. After this we took the very comprehensive subway to the Meji-jingu Shrine. This shrine was built to honor Emperor and Empress Meji. We walked through a large park to get to the Shrine where we washed our hands, as is customary, and prayed. It was very cold out, so after the Shrine we got coffee and headed back to the hotel to warm up and get more layers.

After a short rest we went to Roppongi Hills, which is another neighborhood in Tokyo. We went to the top of one of the tallest buildings and saw some beautiful views of Tokyo at night. The city is humongous! The ticket to see the view also included a train museum and entrance to the Mori Art Museum. We absolutely loved the museum where we saw designs and ideas of futuristic cities in light of global warming. It was very cool. After this we went to dinner, which was luckily very good!

The next morning we did some additional sight seeing then got on a bullet train headed for Nagano, Japan. Mom was a little too anxious and accidentally rushed us onto the wrong train (correct platform, though!). We realized her mistake almost immediately and jumped off at the first stop so that we could properly board our train that, luckily, stopped at the station we were at. After a really nice, and quick, train ride we arrived in Nagano for a week of skiing in Hakuba.