Tokyo

After a good sleep in a much-appreciated real bed we were up and ready to have breakfast at 7:45. Fabulous and very extensive buffet consisting of both American, European and Asian foods. Back up to our room with the usual made-up sandwich for lunch, to get ready for our briefing and today’s tour and to finish up our "chores", which brings me to the topic of the Japanese toilets, which will be discussed in our Nov. 7th entry.
Temperature for today getting up to a very pleasant +26C
Following our question and answer meeting on the 2nd floor, we were divided into 11 different bus groups. Guessing that there were at least 25 people per bus and doing the math I’m guessing that the pre-tour people account for at least a half of the total passengers on the ship.
Our guide’s name today was Katie an enthusiastic, but diminutive lady who wore a ridiculous hat that not even the Wicked Witch of The West would wear.
On our way to our first stop, our bus was pulled over by the police, and the driver was given a ticket for some sort of traffic violation. For our first stop, we were to visit the Odaiba Observation deck located in the headquarters of Fuji television.
When the sprawling metropolis of Tokyo ran out of space, the city planners inevitably turned towards the sea. Odaiba is a man-made island created by massive landfill. The island features many hypermodern and strange buildings described by someone as "the result of Pre-schoolers architecture class.”
Unfortunately, the elevators to the Observation tower we’re not working, so instead, we simply had a 45 minute opportunity for a self guided walkabout during which we saw the 1/7th sized Statue of Liberty. It is a replica sculpted from the same mold as the original in France as a reminder of “the French Year in Japan” when the original was brought from Paris and displayed in Odaiba park for a year. We also could see the Rainbow Bridge crossing over the Sumidagawa (Sumida) River.
For our second stop, we visited the Asakusa Senso (also known as Asakusa Kannon), which is an ancient Buddhist temple in Asakusa. It is Tokyo's oldest-established temple, and one of its most significant. It is dedicated to Kannon, the Buddhist Goddess of compassion. Structures in the temple complex include the main hall, a five-story pagoda and large gates. It is the most widely visited religious site in the world with over 30 million visitors annually.
The temple was destroyed during the March 10th. 1945 firebombing air raid on Tokyo during World War II. The main hall was rebuilt in the 1950s.
We entered through a side gate to the Temple. It was very crowded with both locals ands tourists. One of the highlights was a walk down Nakamise – dori known as the street of “inside shops”, which was a very long crowded street lined with vendors selling traditional food, souvenirs, fortune cards, fortune sticks, clothing, and handmade crafts. We came to the main gate decorated with a huge red paper lantern. We lost track of each other, but both turned around and headed back to find our meeting place close to where we had entered.
Another photographic opportunity was the many groups of ladies wearing beautiful and colourful kimonos who were touring about. Our guide said that most of them were probably Asian tourists not people from Tokyo or Japan, who rented the outfits and took pictures of each other.
We returned to the hotel room, had our sandwich lunch, a bit of a rest and then headed out again on the free shuttle that took us from the hotel to the main train station, Shinjuku, which had a major shopping plaza above and below. The Shinjuku train station is the largest in the world with 3.2 million passengers passing through per day. Imagine the city of Toronto passing through one train station each day.
We went on to a lower floor that was a huge grocery store selling enormous quantities of meat, fish, fresh vegetables, and stuff we’ve never seen before. Some of the fruit such as enormous grapes and large apples, was beautifully packaged for traditional gift giving.
We then set out on the street to try to find a restaurant recommended by the concierge. We only knew the name and didn’t know the address. We tried to use our previously downloaded off line, Google map of Tokyo. We walked about 8 blocks and just couldn’t make sense of the map and we finally gave up and took the shuttle back to the hotel. We immediately set out on a 10-minute walk to the government building to enjoy the free elevator ride to the observation deck on the 44th floor with 360° panorama of the city. From there, we walked back to the hotel and wisely hired a taxi to take us to the restaurant we had been looking for, called Mikore- sushi. The taxi pulled to a stop on the corner of a very busy intersection and said the restaurant was across the street. We realized at this point that we had walked in an entirely wrong direction earlier. We still didn’t see it but then realized it was on the 2nd floor. After looking around we finally found a stairway going up and went through a hallway into a very small room 20’ X 15’.
It was a fun and memorable experience because we were the only tourists in the restaurant. We sat at the bar behind which two cooks made all the sushi orders. The waiter, who fortunately spoke a bit of English, yelled our order to the two cooks who responded in an explosive voice their acknowledgement that they heard the order yelling Hi! Hi! We shared a 16-piece sushi selection and a draft beer each and it was delicious. A Japanese lady came in and sat down beside Don. She spoke very good English and she said that she frequented this restaurant on a regular basis as it was her favorite. On our way out the chefs yelled an enthusiastic “Oyasumi” which we found out was goodnight. It was a short taxi ride back to the hotel and we were asleep between 8:30 and 9:00. We didn’t wake up until 6 o’clock the next morningMeer informatie