Visiting the Imperial Palace

Day three in Tokyo was spent at Imperial Palace and Yoyogi Park. But first we stopped at a nearby bakery for some delicious pastries. The bakery is a tiny little shop with lots to offer, but only room for about 4 people to stand inside while placing their order. Eating on the street is practically forbidden, and definitely a no-no. It's not even acceptable to drink while walking around. So we took our breakfast over to Arisugawanomiya Park where we stopped our first day in Japan.

And this is where we encountered our first "squatty potty". I was nervous about how this works exactly, especially with the kids, but it was really very easy and I'll admit that I actually prefer this now over a regular public toilet.

We learned something new on the train today. When exiting the train, if you look for these bright yellow directory signs, they will tell you which subway exit will pop you out closest to your destination. This sign tells us we can use exit C10-C13b and be in the right place to arrive at Imperial Palace. These signs are so valuable considering the train system has a multi-level underground walkway that seems to contain a complete underground city separate from the one above. There are even shopping centers and restaurants in some sections of the underground subway areas. The engineering of the downtown Tokyo area just blows my mind.

We exit the subway and find ourselves right in the center of downtown Tokyo. Across the street is a very odd view. It's the Imperial Palace, the primary residence of the Emperor of Japan, with a moat around it. Our first real-life moat.

Our passes to enter, thick like scrabble tiles.

The doors are unbelievably large, thick and contain another regular-sized door inside them.

The walls inside the palace were constructed with these amazingly large rectangular rocks.

The wine cellar.

The cherry blossoms and other trees were starting to bloom.

This was February. I would love to come back later in the year 

when the grass is green and everything is in full bloom.

This section is lined with plum trees. It would be beautiful to see with the red and white blooms.

The East Garden was our favorite part inside the Imperial Palace grounds.

Once again, on the way out you can't help but be struck by the contrast of being inside the palace grounds, a place that is centuries old, and seeing the city's high-rise buildings towering over it as you leave.  Where two worlds collide.

Back to the subway, now headed to Yoyogi Park. 

Navigating Tokyo's Subway and "sushi go round"

Our second day in Tokyo we woke to cold, rainy weather. We thought it'd be a good day to figure out the subway train system. But first, breakfast. We stopped at the grocery store a couple blocks away and discovered Japan has amazing bakery items. Seriously, I think we ate their bakery items at least once a day.

They also have a very interesting variety of seafood.

Whole crabs, squid, whole fish,...

....and sometimes just the fish's head.

Check out the cool phone booth on the corner.

We'd been warned that with a population as large as Tokyo's, sickness moves quickly, especially when packed into a confined space such as a train. A friend who is from Tokyo suggested that we get masks to wear, which felt weird, but I was more concerned about keeping my kids healthy than how we looked. It helped when we noticed masks were a daily routine for most people in Japan. Probably more than a third of the people that we saw on the streets wore one.

Here's the fare table for the Tokyo Metro line. Each circle or square is a stop. This was a bit confusing considering transfers and all, so we opted to just buy daily passes, which were usually cheaper for us anyway. One adult day pass cost ¥600  ($5.29). Kids under 6 ride free.

You purchase your pass at a kiosk which is like an ATM and fortunately there is a button for English! 

Then you find a sign like this, figure out where you are (which sounds easy, right?) and where you want to get off. Each stop has a name and a corresponding number, so say we're at Roppongi (04) and we want to get off at Tsukiji (10), we'd look above the train tracks for a sign showing that it's going toward the higher numbers and get off at the 6th stop. The train marked with the lower numbers will be going in the opposite direction. 

This also became a fun game and learning experience for the kids as they would ask how many stops we had and then they would count them down until our stop.

While preparing the kids for their first ride on the subway, Asher interrupted me and said, "oh I know about the subway, Curious George did that!" Well thanks, George.

After a couple times, the kids started putting our passes thru the turnstiles themselves. 

Riding the subway was actually very easy and convenient. It was remarkably clean and very quiet even when it was full. No speaking on cell phones allowed, pretty much no speaking period. Everyone is quiet. Most riders are looking at their cell phones, reading comic books or sitting with their eyes closed, especially at the end of the day. 

We tried to avoid rush hour, or as Asher called it, "squish time", but there were definitely times when the trains were more full than others and required us to stand for the entire ride. 

We went to the electronic center, which is a mind-blowing six floors of cell/computer/camera gadgets and electronics of all kinds, if you can plug it in, they sell it. Just one section of the first floor holds about 20 15ft rows of just cell phone cases! Sheesh! We bought a data SIM card for my phone so I could access the internet. 1GB for 7 days cost $16, and get this, it included unlimited data use for the Facebook App, interesting.

We don't see rain too often, so they were pretty excited to use an umbrella.

If you don't already know, we LOVE sushi. We had heard about "sushi go arounds" and were excited to try one. Upon arrival, we were instructed to remove our shoes and place them in a locking cabinet and hang our coats on the wall behind us.

We sat on the floor which has a portion that drops down below the table for our legs.

The sushi goes around on a conveyor belt that runs right in front of us. When you see a plate that you want, you just grab it as it goes by. Asher LOVED this idea and grabbed about 4 different plates and thought they were all delicious.

You can order from the menu as well, they even had an English menu for us. Asher wanted to try Salmon Roe (eggs) so we ordered this one special for him. He loved it.

Sushi restaurants in the US serve a mochi dessert, which is a small ball of raw dough with ice cream inside. Mochi in Japan is this gelatinous dessert, which we didn't really care for.

The color of the plate signifies the price. At the end of our dinner, the waiter holds a scanner next to our stack of plates and it calculates our price. As soon as Asher's belly was full, he closed his eyes and fell right to sleep at the table! Time to catch the train home.

Our International Travels Begin- in JAPAN!

We arrived at Yokota Air Force Base in Tokyo at 7am. We spoke with customs and then were driven to the Immigration office where we received a stamp in our passports allowing us 90 days in Japan. From there we took a shuttle bus to the New Sanno Hotel, in downtown Tokyo, about an hour ride. I was just glad we weren't doing the driving, look at this sign!

We brought lots of warm clothes and heavy coats to prepare for Japan's cold weather, so we were pretty shocked to arrive on a sunny, 70 degree day. It also happened to be the warmest day of our stay. The next day brought the weather we expected.

There is a 19 hour time difference from Hawaii, where we had just come from. Fortunately we slept most of the flight so our early arrival into Japan, pretty much adjusted us right from the start. We dropped our bags at the hotel and headed off to see the city. It was a pleasant surprise to find many of the signs are in English. The city map showed lots of parks nearby, so we set off to find a few.
Sadly, the "children's parks" downtown look like this. This is the entire "park"- 2 wobbly horses. As my friend pointed out, "good thing I only have two kids!"

Then we found Arisugawanomiya Park. This was a typical Japanese park with a lake and bridges and trails, and it was lovely!

This park was just a few blocks from our hotel, so we came here a few different times.

We found two quite large green snakes on this tree. 

A few things that we noticed right away, of course they drive on the opposite side of the street in Japan, but many people use bikes to get around. You'll actually see thousands of bikes parked, unlocked, along the streets.

Children barely older than my own kids were walking to school alone or in small groups. Some use the subway completely by themselves. I love seeing them in their uniforms, though they must be cold. I thought it was cute that a couple of them were checking out Asher as they passed each other.

You'll also notice those yellow lines on every single sidewalk and subway station. Under the yellow paint are long bars that aid the blind in getting around town. I'm impressed by their consideration for that segment of their population.

Cemeteries in the downtown area are tucked between a residential area and a wall along a main street.

We ended our first night with dinner at a sushi restaurant near the hotel. We quickly realized that American sushi and real Japanese sushi are really quite different. Japanese sushi is simple, fresh and it's frowned upon to use soy sauce. American sushi has crazy combinations of items, lots of different sauces and my favorite, deep fried rolls. Sadly Asher fell asleep before we were even served, so he missed out on our first sushi dinner. He was also a heavy load to carry back to the hotel.