Taking The Long Way: More from Tokyo

We had a lie on our second day in Tokyo. I didn't wake up until 7:30am! So far on this trip we've been starting our days about 6am (or earlier!) so I think this is a new record for us.
After breakfast we took the subway and train to Tokyo Central Station. From here we walked to the Imperial Palace Gardens. The palace is the residence of the Japanese Imperial family and the site of a former shogun castle. It isn't possible to go very close to the actual palace but we walked all around the gardens.

A Tokyo street - so clean...

...and quiet!

We went back to the area near the station for lunch with the Tokyo businessmen. It's a bit more difficult for us to find places to eat here because all of the menus are only in Japanese (although some places have an English menu if you ask). However, most restaurants also have pictures on the menu and a lot have models of the food displayed in cabinets outside, which is cool, and helpful, if a bit random.

Businessman's Lunch Special

Food 'models'!

Street vending machines - these are everywhere in Tokyo. Very handy for us because we drink so much.

After lunch we walked to the Nijunbashi Bridge and had a rest in the park before taking the train back to Asakusa. Tokyo is very clean, even cleaner than Perth!! Actually today it reminded us both a bit of Perth. The weather is similar - blue skies and sunshine and the areas we were in today were so quiet...where are all the millions of people?!! The only busy place was the station, which was crazy even at 10am. Hopefully we'll never get caught in there at rush hour. Of course the buildings are a lot bigger here, and there's many many more of them. Oh and then there's all the Japanese people and the Japanese everywhere - that's quite different from Perth!

At night time we took the subway again. We've taken quite a few public transport journeys so far with no mishaps. Although we did get lost walking around once because we were having an intellectual discussion about the ozone layer and not paying attention to where we were!

Tokyo Subway

This time we went to Shibuya. This is the shopping and entertainment area with all the neon signs that they show in the films. Here we found some of the millions of people we were looking for earlier. We explored the streets and shops for a while, then we got drinks and cake in the Starbucks overlooking Hachiko Crossing for some people watching and photo taking.

The following day was our last full day in Tokyo. It's time to leave already :-( We took the train and subway to Shinjuku to see the skyscraper district and took the lift to the 45th floor of the Metropolitan Government Building to get some daytime views of the city (free)! On a clear day it is possible to see Mount Fuji from here but it was covered in cloud for us, amazing views of Tokyo though.

Next we walked to the Shinjuku Gyoen gardens and then on to Meiji Jingu shrine. In between we had to stop at McDonalds because I was feeling weak from all that walking in the heat - I had only had 4 rounds of toast and 2 soups for breakfast! McDonalds isn't very Japanese I know but in our defense it's the first time we have fast fooded it in our 4 weeks in Asia, and I needed some grease and sugar! Unsurprisingly McDonalds in Japan tasted exactly the same as everywhere else!

In need of a Big Mac!

Prayer Tree

Rosie goes 'troppo' and makes me wear her hat!

After the shrine we went back to our hostel where we were kept awake by three French girls packing for most of the night....they packed in the evening, they packed again for hours in the middle of the night, then they got up at 6am and packed again for an hour. I could have completely unpacked and repacked all of my 3 backpacks 15 times during this! Pretty annoying because tomorrow night we will be on the plane so we wanted a good night's sleep beforehand - we were both behind our bunk bed curtains getting angry! Only 3 more hostel nights left until we'll be in our van though, then Ros will just have me waking her up 4 times because I felt dehydrated and drank 2 litres of water before I went to bed-haha life on the road!

Rosie behind the bunk bed curtains. I just realised Ros - this is the second picture of you playing with curtains on this trip - bit strange!

Anyway.. we've loved our time in Tokyo, I have added it to my list of places I'd like to live one day. Although, as Rosie pointed out, if I can't manage to learn Italian I've got no hope of learning Japanese!!
Either way, we would both like to come back and travel more in Japan after our little taste of it. I'm just worried about when I'm going to get around to this 'normal life' because 'the long way' just keeps getting longer and longer :-s !