::Tokyo:: the sites

I should preface this post by letting you know our overall travel philosophy. Tokyo is obviously a huge city and this is quite possibly the only time we will ever travel there in our lives. That might lead you to believe that it's necessary to rush from site to site in order to capture everything in one short week. Well our philosophy on travel is the exact opposite. There aren't any elaborate itineraries planned way in advance. There are no pre booked tours or private tour guides and such. We have an idea of what we'd like to see (I read up on each city pretty extensively prior to our trips) and once we get there we go with the flow, depending on how we feel and what the weather's doing. We want for our daughter to grow up with an appreciation for and fascination with the great big world around her, hence we treat each new place that we visit as an adventure. No alarm clocks and no tight schedules, we basically get up and go, wherever the wind, our feet and/or public transportation takes us. We'll pop into fun stores that we don't have at home, stroll through parks and play on the playground, bypassing long museum and 'tourist site' lines each and every time.

That being said, we saw lots of great sites in Tokyo but we didn't come close to even scratching the surface. We did, however, feel that by taking things slowly we were able to absorb the culture by watching the people and soaking up our surroundings.

Tokyo Tower

Built in 1958 it is really just a big antenna which is painted bright white and orange to comply with air safety regulations. Tokyo Tower is 33 meters taller than the eiffel tower , but 3,300 tons lighter! There are two observation decks but we opted NOT to visit. Something about the 3,300 tons lighter than the eiffel AND in a city prone to many small earthquakes per day made our vote to enjoy her from the ground unanimous.

Can you see us in the bottom of the above picture? Hubby was lying on the pavement to get this pic and we were standing up on a big concrete bench just across the street from the tower.

Senso-ji

The oldest temple in Japan, originally built in 645, but damaged during WWII and rebuilt.  

Senso ji came into being after two fisherman came across a statue of Bodhisattva Kannon in the water (see image below). The statue was brought back to Asakusa and this temple was built around it.

Interesting info about Kannon, Bodhisattva of Compassion

Amongst the many Buddhas, Bodhisattva Kannon is known as the most compassionate, relieving beings of their suffering and responding to prayers with great benevolence.



This Bodhisattva Kannon, the principle image of Senso-ji, has been an unparalleled source of benefits and miracles, saving and protecting countless people over the course of the 1,400 years since its appearance in the world.


The way of devotion to Bodhisattva Kannon can be described as emulating the compassionate mind of this bodhisattva in our day to day lives, treating everyone we encounter with kindness.

You can see the smoke billowing away from the large cauldron of incense just in front of the main temple.  People believe that to let the smoke from the incense permeate your clothes and body that you will have good luck for the next year.

 

In this image you have a corner of the oldest temple in Japan, along with the newest and tallest structure in the distance ~ Sky Tree.  Sky Tree is the tallest tower in the world and it just opened to the public 2 weeks before our arrival in Tokyo.

The temple detail with the pagoda just behind.

A large woven buddha sandal with us standing below to show you the scale.

The shops leading up to/away from the temple.

My favorite part of the Asakusa area was this little strip of shops and restaurants. I loved the storefronts and signage in this area.

Hibuya Park

Just across the street from our hotel sits this lovely park. Right on the perimeter of the palace grounds. We took a leisurely stroll through the gardens here one morning. Such serenity in the midst of a bustling metropolis!

The entrance to the Meiji Temple, which we didn't visit.

Yoyogi Park

We spent Sunday morning strolling through the Yoyogi Park, just near Harajuku. Apparently Sunday afternoons here are filled with live music and fashionists performing.  It was a hot one that day so we didn't wait around for the festivities to begin.

Cute Japanese park signs.

Trains and subways

 

One of many, many train and subway rides. Tokyo's public transportation system is amazing! We were worried that we wouldn't be able to figure it out but it was pretty easy and most things were written in English.

The above ground train that ran near our hotel. In my food post I explained that many casual but great restaurants are located underneath these trains in the Ginza district.

Harajuku

Packed with people but great people watching and fun little shops.


Odaiba Island

The man-made beach directly across from the city.  We walked over to the island along rainbow bridge (more pics here).

Shibuya

The crosswalk here in Shibuya (Shibuya Crossing) is said to be one of the busiest crosswalks in the entire world. It was a rainy day hence the army of umbrellas awaiting to cross these infamous cross-directional streets. 

Hachiko

The memorial wall to the beloved pooch Hachiko. Back in the 1930s, Hachiko greeted his owner here at the busy Shibuya station each evening to walk home together. Until one day his owner died suddenly while at work and never returned home via the station where Hachiko was eagerly waiting.  Every day for the next nine years Hackiko waited at the station for his owner to return. Passersby fed him and gave him plenty of love until he too passed away and finally joined his owner up in heaven. There is a Hachiko sculpture near the station but we weren't able to find it, but seeing this memorial wall made me happy.  

Rice fields as seen from the train heading to/from Narita airport.

Next up, the Tokyo zoo!

 

Happy Friday all.

xoxo~
Tricia

::Tokyo:: the food

Whew~ time is just whipping on by and I can't wrap my arms around all of my planned posts from our Tokyo trip, sorry it's taking me so dang long!! The food was something we were very excited yet somewhat nervous about so let's start there.

This was our 'pre-breakfast' meal for the majority of our week in Tokyo.
Never fully adjusting to the time change (14 hours ahead of Houston time), we were wide awake at 530am every day and since it was totally light outside at that time we ventured down to the fish market.

Fresh salmon and tuna sashimi on a bed of rice with an egg type piece on top and ginger and wasabi. I can't tell you how scrumptuous this was, just makes my mouth water seeing this image.

There are tons of these little stalls lining the road near the fish market in Tokyo. The bright yellow booth on the back left was where we had our early riser sashimi.  Our little one was such a good sport about eating while we were there. The sashimi bowl pictured above was actually her breakfast and she devoured it!

The Tsukiji Fish Market area ~ the food stalls were inside this building and about a block down to the right is where the auction takes place at 5am each day.

Lots of images of the food inside the market stalls on auction day:

Colorful and unusual Japanese market food.

I was enthralled with the mountain of styrofoam containers being scooped up on auction day, but then these carts with HUGE tuna started whizzing by and I was in awe. Just look at those tuna, some were as big as a small human!

School children having tempura noodle soup early in the morning..

My daughter and I shared this noodle bowl one morning and it was delicious! We stood on opposite sides of the bowl, chopsticks fighting to get the noodles to our mouths, I felt like lady and the tramp. ☺

Strange delicacies.

Fish, fish and more fish!

Japanese sweets.

The plastic food out front of restaurants always made me giggle.

Plastic sushi in the food area of a higher end Japanese department store. Large Japanese department stores were everywhere and the basements were filled with the most amazing food counters. I wish I'd have taken pictures for you but it was always pretty crowded and hectic down there. Locals would stop in these basement food areas to pick up lunch or dinner. Everything was fresh and the display was something else!

We did 'cheat' a little and ventured outside of the Japanese food realm a few times. Indian for lunch one day (the mango lassi photo below) and yummy burgers right across from our hotel at Freshness Burger, a Japanese chain.  We watched the bakery chefs in action on the lower floor of our hotel.

A great Italian dinner at Pizzeria Matteo in Ginza one night.

Japanese sprite was always on little one's radar.

Tempura and noodle houses in the Asakusa area- this was one of my favorite meals! Talk about carb loading.

Japanese barbeque in Shinjuku- another yummy meal.

The dinner/drink scene near our hotel on a Friday night.

A strange lunch. It tasted about it weird as it looked, not one of my favorites.

Saved the best for last, our best meal was dinner on our last night in Tokyo. A fun filled evening with great new Japanese friends, I'll tell you all about it in my 'people' post.

A view of the restaurants lining the street underneath the train in Ginza.  This was just across from our hotel so luckily we always had lots of options.  With talk of Tokyo being one of the most expensive cities in the world we actually didn't spend that much on our meals.  We kept it casual which helped.  

While we loved the majority of what we ate in Tokyo I missed good ole Tex-Mex the most. It was black beans, corn tortillas and hot salsa for me right when we got home.

xoxo~
Tricia