Tour of Tokyo

Saturday was a beautiful day! A little chilly, but not too cold to enjoy Tokyo. We decided to take a tour of Tokyo to hit the highlights. We began by going to Meiji-jingu Shrine. This shrine was built for Emperor Meiji and Empress Shoken. The idea is to say a prayer, which is a sequence of clapping and bowing then tossing money into the alter and asking for something you want or need. Next we drove by the parliament buildings and the old Imperial Palace that is now used as a guest house. We took a stroll through the current Imperial Palace's East Garden. It wasn't much of a garden seeing as how it's winter, but there was a waterfall that Brady enjoyed looking at! We met a man on our tour that is a MLB umpire and a detective in Daytona Beach, FL when he's not at baseball games. He was taking in the scenes during the morning and we saw him behind home plate Saturday night during a World Baseball Classic game. Next was a stop at Senso-ji Temple and Nakamise Street which was very much like Chinatown in NYC. Lots of vendors selling purses and all kinds of trinkets and kimono's. Finally, we were dropped off in Ginza, an expensive shopping district. There was supposed to be the biggest toy store in Tokyo on this street. We were expecting something like F.A.O. Swartz, but although it was 3 stories tall it wasn't what we thought it would be. We decided to stop by Tokyo Tower, which was something else we were told to do, but it wasn't included on our tour. We took the subway, which was spotless by the way. There was a lady even cleaning the handrail on the escalator. When does that happen in the states? Never. We got off at our stop and walked and walked with no Tokyo Tower in sight. We found out we were going the wrong direction! So, we turned around and walked and walked and walked until we finally reached the tower. The line was unbelievably long for tickets and even worse for waiting to get up the tower. So we took a cab back to the hotel. It just wasn't worth waiting so long, we had dinner reservations, and we were very tired. Back in our room we rested for about an hour and were off to dinner at the Japanese restaurant in the hotel. Our meal was very yummy. We have had a hard time putting Brady to bed in our room because we are all in the same space and he wants to be up with us. Even when we lay down he just plays by himself. Finally when he couldn't take it any more he fell asleep and so did we! Oh, I forgot to mention I made the security guard mad at the entrance to the hotel because I didn't bring my passport with me and he didn't want to let me in with Greg's credentials. He finally let me go but let me know he was upset that I didn't have proper identification.