This is at the Osaka Airport. They are little cubicle rooms you rent by the hour. Included in the price was also showers, Internet, and a huge collection of comic books. It was fine for our 11-hour layover but I definitely wouldn't want to stay in one for an extended period of time.
This is Shibuya Crossing. It's like the Time Square of Tokyo.
And this is the crossing at night.
This is the Asakusa District where our hostel was located. It's supposed to be closer to "old Tokyo." The building with the gold thing is the Asahi Beer building and the unfinished tower in the back will be the Tokyo Sky Tree. It's Tokyo's new communications tower.
Sushi-Go-Round. They had these conveyor belt sushi places all over. They were nice, with each plate being color coded and the waitress just adds up your bill according to the plates. The sushi was pretty good too. But we didn't know how to ask for specific items so we just had to have whatever the chef prepared.
This is in the Akihabara District which is like the video gamers' heaven. Derek loved this area of course! These people are actually waiting in line for the release of a new game.
These are the best pictures I got of the mountain. When we arrived at the bus station in front of Fuji we had an amazing cloudless view. But we wanted to see it from the lake. So we walked (pretty far) and by the time we got a view of the lake and Mt. Fuji there was one cloud in front of it, that grew into a big cloud and wouldn't let me get a good picture. Eventually we gave up waiting and walked back to the station to catch our bus. When of course, the clouds cleared and again, we had a perfect view of the mountain. I was bummed I didn't get a good picture, but when we were leaving Japan we flew right over Mt. Fuji and were able to look down into the volcano which was cool and made up for the fact that I didn't get a good picture.
This is a statue in front of the Sumo Hall which is where we spent most of Thursday. We were lucky enough to be in Tokyo during the tournament season which I only think happens twice a year.
The sumo tournament lasts all day with the junior sumos wrestling in the morning and the pros wrestling in the afternoon. It rained all day so it was a nice way to still get to see the culture but avoid the nasty weather (which we later learned was a category 1 Typhoon).
This was at the Sony Building and you could view and test their new products that just came out or are about to. This camera recognizes smiles and you don't have to press the shutter to take a picture, as soon as one person smiles it takes it. We also so the new 3-D televisions and camera, and some really cool stuff for your home that we would never be able to afford.
This is the view from the Mori Tower, which I think is the tallest building in the city (at least until that Sky Tree Tower is built). I just walked around the observatory and took pictures to get a 360 degree view of the city. This is just a couple of them.
They love their vending machines in Tokyo. I don't think I would like to buy books out of a vending machine, Derek and I love going to book stores and spending hours browsing the books. What's the fun of standing in front of a machine and pressing B1? We also saw beer vending machines, which is weird too, because how do you regulate underage drinking?
This is the Sensoji Temple in Asakusa. It was beautiful and had a wonderful market around it. And as you can see, it was a beautiful day which was nice since it rained for two days straight.
This is the Tsukiji Fish Market. We tried to get up at 4:30 to catch the auction but when we walked out the Typhoon we talked about was in full force. So we slept a couple more hours and made our way to the market after lunch. There wasn't as much seafood by that point, but we had the freshest sushi we'll probably ever have, and we got to sleep in more, so it was worth it.
These pictures are from the Imperial Palace East Gardens. It was beautiful and had a nice entrance that was so different from the city that surrounded it. As you can see in the pictures it's right in the middle of the city. And it's so strange to walk from the quiet palace gardens back into the buildings and noise of the city.
Tokyo Tower, Tokyo's blatant plagarism of the Eiffel Tower. All the brochures and everything at the tower tried to promote how much better Tokyo Tower is compared to the Eiffel Tower. Strange though, I never heard of the Tokyo Tower before we came here...
Sunset from the top for the tower. In the second picture we should be able to see Mt. Fuji, but again clouds were in the way.
Tokyo at night. Again, I took 360 degree pictures around the observatory but these were the two best. The tower was nice, and we had some chocolate cake and watched the sunset over the city. It was a nice way to spend our last night in Tokyo.We got up early the next morning to catch the first subway to the airport. Luckily we had an early flight so we arrived back at our place in Korea by one in the afternoon. Again it was hard going back to school after a nice holiday and seeing another city. But Derek and I both agreed that, although we liked visiting Tokyo we would not like to live there. It wasn't too much more expensive than a big city back home, but at about $2 dollars a pop to ride the subway it was too rich for our blood. But we had a great trip and a nice Chuseok (Korean Thanksgiving) holiday. Now it's back to school and the dreaded demo lesson tomorrow. Wish me luck!
