Tokyo Trip, Part One: A Hotel Bed

We took a four day, three night trip to Tokyo from 01-03 to 01-06. Tessa and I had been to Tokyo a few times already, it's about a 2.5 hour bus ride from where we live, so it's definitely doable as a day trip, but since Tokyo is so huge, we still hadn't seen much of the city. We originally planned on going somewhere else in Japan for our big winter vacation, but high travel costs nixed them. Anyways, we had a great time and will be telling you all about it in 4 parts. This is part one.

We woke up early Sunday morning and caught a bus at 7:40 am, conveniently a two minute walk away from our apartment. To kill time we listened to iPods and did crossword puzzles and the like. About 2.5 hours later we arrived at Tokyo station. Since we couldn't check into our hotel until 2:00 pm, we immediately hopped on the subway and headed to Harajuku to see if we could see some of the famous crazily dressed cosplay partakers. We unfortunately didn't see many, but did get a picture of these two:


The good news though, was that the Meiji Shinto Shrine was also nearby, so we decided to check it out. The place was PACKED, far more people than usual there. We later found out that the number of people was due to a combination of the New Year's holiday, the upcoming Coming of Age Day holiday, and some kind of anniversary of the Shrine. We got to walk amongst the throngs of people, but were not able to go inside the shrine. Still, it was very interesting and beautiful, and we were able to buy a few souvenirs take some pictures:






After we walked around there for a while we decided to go to our hotel and just drop off our bags at the counter so we wouldn't be burdened by them while we explored our next stop. Quick side note, we took the subway everywhere we went. Tokyo is so huge, and their subway system is pretty great, though a bit confusing sometimes. The Tokyo subways are famous for the amount of people that ride it every day, especially during peak times when people are going to or coming from work. It can get so packed that it is not uncommon for women to get groped by a horny Japanese man while they are all packed in there, and the woman can't run or often see who is doing it. To combat this, some subway cars are marked for "women only" in the morning:




Luckily, we never experienced anything like that, had a pleasant time on the subway, and were only packed in like sardines once.

Anyways, when we got to the hotel, they told us that our room was available early (score!) and we could check in immediately. We were thankful for that because we were already a little tired from getting up early and walking around with our bags all morning. Our hotel room was on the tenth floor, and a little on the small side, which was fine because we were not expecting anything huge. What we were really looking forward to was the bed. We sleep on a futon on the floor at home. Now, you can take that mental image of an American futon and throw it out the window, because Japanese futon are quite different. Ours accounts for about 5 inches of padding when we add up all the layers of things covered by our sheets, resting atop the hardwood floor. Traditionally, the Japanese roll them up or fold them after they wake up in the morning. The idea of sleeping on a mattress and box spring up off the floor was something we longed for, and we were not disappointed. A bonus of the room was that it also had a beautiful day and night view of the Imperial palace gardens and the Tokyo skyline:



You can see Tokyo Tower (basically a copy of the Eiffel Tower) lit up on the right side.

After we rested up a bit, we decided to walk around the Imperial Palace (where the emperor and empress live) which was very close to our hotel. The walk around is about the length of walking around Greenlake in Seattle. Honestly, if I had that to walk around on a daily basis, I would probably get a lot more exercise in Japan. The palace (where tourists and the general public are almost never allowed), is surrounded by a moat and some nice gardens:









After that nice long walk, the sun was going down and it started to get cold, so we went back to the hotel where we watched crazy Japanese television programming before going to bed. A long, but adventurous day. And so ends Part One of Chris and Tessa's Big Tokyo Adventure! Stay tuned for Parts Two through Four! If you have any questions just ask us. How, you ask? It's easy. At the bottom of this post you should see something that says "x comments" (x being how many comments that post has). Click that to see what others have said and write your own comment/question. If you have a question, Tessa and I will answer it promptly, and you can check back for our reply. So simple! See you next time for Part Two: The Coldest Bar In Japan.