Tokyo, Japan - Day 3

What we did:
⁃ Woke up around 9am! Election evening in the US so we turned on the Japanese coverage and were wildly entertained by their anime graphics of the candidates and snippets of their views of America (the ones we could understand by photos at least). Had American news on the ipad so were at least able to track in english what was happening.
⁃ Showered and headed out to an early lunch of Ramen! Favorite ramen spot yet and the flavors were delicious and some nice music bumping in the background.
⁃ We then headed out to check out another popular neighborhood - Asakusa! The subway took an hour to get there and we were still firmly in the center of Tokyo - baffling the expanse of this place as that same travel would have us in St Charles or Kildeer from our place in the city.
⁃ We walked around the Asakusa neighborhood, enjoying the crowded markets before checking out another shrine - Senso-Ji. While still cool, it was much smaller than most of the others we’ve seen so didn’t keep our attention long.
⁃ From there we walked to the Sky Tree, the third tallest man made structure in the world! We took the elevator up to the 450th floor - not a typo folks! The Sears/Willis tower is only 108 floors! Mind-blowing views that again really show how expansive Tokyo is.
⁃ A couple more neighborhoods checked off we headed back to Shibuya for dinner! The food continues to absolutely wow us. Such a delicious dinner and fun experience. Chicago is one of the pre-eminent food cities in the US and we take that for granted, but we would love to have the Japanese food scene vibe here. Stacks of hole in the wall, cheap and delicious food spots everywhere you go.
⁃ Finished the night with some cheesecake and headed to bed! Another great day - sad were two sleeps away from heading home. Going to be really hard to leave here…

What we ate:
- About Life Coffee Brewers - the second day this little coffee stand has started our day off right! A couple of coffees while we searched for some breakfast…
- Usagi - late start to the day means ramen for brunch! Known for classic Szechuan ramen (originating from China), as well as their special truffle ramen and the famous Nujabes rapper whose music is constantly playing due to his brother being the head ramen chef - this place was amazing!! Definitely some of the best ramen we’ve had! Steph got the truffle ramen and trent got the spicy ramen. Sufficiently stuffed!
- Kushiyaki Bistro Fukumimi - one of the last traditional Japanese dishes we hadn’t had yet was yakitori (meat skewers in open flame). This place was awesome!! Bumping pop music, getting the whole place to cheers to you when you get your drinks, unlimited cheese and crackers as an app. We got garlic beef skewers, chicken skewers, a fried rice ball, chicken with green onion, and yakitori rice bowl. And of course to finish it all off, we had a few whiskey ginger highballs!! Everything was incredible! If we had a few more days here we definitely would have returned.
- Coffee Shop Top - Steph read that cheesecake was big thing in Japan so we went on a journey to find a dessert spot. After about 1 block we found a place we thought would do the job. Steph got cheesecake and trent got an apple pie type dish. Nice to end the night with something sweet.

Fun Facts:
- Tokyo Sky Tree ranks as the third-tallest freestanding structure globally, behind the Merdeka 118 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (678.9 m) and the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, UAE (829.8 m).
- Tokyo, Japan, is the largest city on Earth, with a population of 37.4 million people, which is over four times the population of New York City, USA.Read more