Tokyo day 6: Tuesday, 26th June

Mark, Kami, and I were at the bottom of Tokyo Tower at 9:30 ready for our trip to the top. It was a beautiful morning—the sun was out already, and the sky was pretty clear.

There’s a new tower in Tokyo called the Tokyo Skytree. It’s open already, however, for the first month the tickets were issued on a lottery system. It’s opening to the general public  in mid-July, which is a shame, as it would have been great to go up it. So we went to Tokyo Tower, and although it’s half the size of the Skytree it still provides and excellent full 360` view around the city. It’s visible from all over the city and lights up at night.

   

It cost us $20 to go up to both levels—there are two different observation decks—one at 150 metres and one at 250 metres. As it was only 9:30, we bought our ticket and walked right into the elevator to take us to the 1st level. Mark and I were wondering if the opening of the Skytree would affect the business of this tower and agreed it had to do, since if the Skytree had of been open, we would have gone up that instead!

It didn't take long in the elevator before we were at the 1st level, and we walked straight around to get in the 2nd elevator to take us to the top. The view was simply stunning, and we couldn't have picked a better day to come up. As you can see from the Panorama pictures I posted in the entry below, we were higher than all the existing buildings apart from the new tower. As we looked out Mark noticed that we could actually see the top of Mount Fuji!! It took Kami and I a few seconds to see it as the top was snow capped and actually blended into the clouds. It was huge—I had no idea it was that high!

Top of Mount Fuji in the black square

 

We spent about 30 minutes at the top taking pictures and looking for places we had been through the city—we spotted our hotel, the  museum we had been in two days ago, and the Ferris wheel and the cool looking Fuji TV building across the river on the island. Kami also pointed out the school she attended when she lived out here. There was also a cool building below us that had an amazing roof but I’m not sure what it is exactly, maybe some type of theatre or venue.

Unusual looking building with cool roof!         Fuji TV building out on the island               Kami, her school over her left shoulder.

   

   

There was a glass floor panel on one of the lower floors, so we headed down to take a look at it. The panel was about six feet long by two feet wide and you could see straight through it. It was nothing much in comparison to the glass box that sticks out of the side of the Sears Tower in Chicago which you can entirely stand in, but it was still cool to see as below.

 

As we were about to leave, a group of Japanese people arrived with a little girl, and she was obviously curious when she saw the glass panel on the floor. She stepped right up to the edge of it until one of the party picked her up and tried to put her in the middle of the panel. She totally freaked out kicking her legs and fighting to be put down. I stepped back onto the glass to show her it was safe, then I jumped a few inches, and within seconds she walked out onto the glass and started looking right through it to the street below. She jumped up and down a couple of times on the edge of the glass, too, for good measure.

The three of us headed out of the tower and walked to Kami’s old school. It was really pretty and quiet around the campus. It was cool to see Kami’s small face smile as she walked around and obviously had some fond memories. While walking over to the school we passed some children being taken through the city in the strangest way! Apparently this is the way they take very young school kids out, as its the safest way for them all to travel in groups.They all looked ever so cute and waved as they passed us.

Just been shopping at Babies `R` Us!     Cool street hanging over the river.         Cat taxi logo

 

Mark headed back to the hotel in a taxi after seeing the school, and Kami and I made our way to Shibuya as we were meeting up with one of her friends for lunch at a nearby metro station, but we had 90 minutes of time to kill. We ended up in one of the arcades that has photo booths where you create stickers called Purikura. These are huge in Japan, and there are booths all over Tokyo. We had fun for an hour taking some funny pictures. They were a little odd, though, as the machine actually alters your face! They whiten your skin, and you can even choose to increase the size of your eyes! You then use an electronic pen to decorate them with words and pictures on a separate screen before eventually printing them out and cutting them up into individual stickers!

We met up with Kami’s friend Rob at 1 P.M. and ate lunch at a Hawaiian place near his work. Kami was at college with him when she was at William and Mary. Around 2:30 we headed back to the hotel as Mark had a talk to do at 4 P.M., and Kami was going with him this afternoon. I’ve been chilling out at the hotel for the last few hours and will probably be heading out for dinner somewhere when they get back.

Click the link below to see more pictures from the Tokyo Tower. Thanks to Kurt Gunzinger

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Tokyo day 5

Up and off this morning. While Kami and Mark went to breakfast, I took a shower, and Kami and I were out of the door by 10 A.M. We were off to see Big Buddha this morning, and it’s about a 90 minute train ride out of Tokyo.

Its about a 10 minute walk to the nearest Metro station from our hotel, and you can reach pretty much anywhere in the city from where we are. Although there's not much around us apart from Embassies and offices, the hotel really is faultless and certainly lives up to, if not surpasses, its 5* rating.

Our 5* hotel—amazing service.

Walking through the metro station was different today. In fact, we were shocked—couldn't believe our eyes—when we sawvsomething we had never seen before in our lives in Tokyo! –An empty plastic bottle right in the middle of the hallway in the metro station! This was unheard of! I joked with Kami that there must be litter fairies in Tokyo—as clean as it is, you never actually see anyone cleaning up! I would have loved to have found a place and just watched to see how long it was before it got cleaned up!

We took the metro to Shibuya and then a train out to Yokahama. This route took us right past the apartment that Kami lived in when she was out here going to school. It was a good half hour out of the city. We changed trains at Yokahama and took the train out to Kamakura, the location of the Big Buddha.

As we changed trains, I noticed workmen digging at the side of the platform. There were two men actually doing the work digging the hole, 3 men watching them, and then three more men watching for trains coming! Safety is HUGE in Japan—I’ve never seen as many signs and safety people anywhere else in the world. If you go past any road construction, at every entrance there's a guy that stands there in a blue boiler suite and a hard hard with an illuminated red wand in his hand and sporting a flashing red LED waistcoat. these guys are everywhere and even stand next to the construction at night when no one’s working!

No rush!                Workmen watching me and safety men!                         Strange cell phone tower outside the station

 

As we pulled into Kamakura station there was a really cute hotel that backed onto the train lines. You’d think they would re-paint their advertising sign, though! I think this was the first “scruffy” thing I’d seen in Tokyo. As I said above, everything is spotlessly clean—you don't even seen a dirty car on the roads out here—EVERY single car is clean! So the sign below kind of surprised me.

  

The town of Kamakura itself looked like a small seaside town like ones you’d see in the UK. A few of the streets had banners and flags (hung on everyone's doors). There were tourist shops selling souvenirs, and you could tell there were lots of people just here for the day, as there were tourist coaches everywhere.

We took the city bus to the area where the Big Buddha was. It wasn't far—probably two miles at the most—but the traffic was chaos due to the volume of tourists.You could tell that the businesses around had seen a great opportunity to make money from everyone visiting the village as there were ice cream stores, crepe stalls, and ever more souvenir shops.

 

They weren't lying when they said it was “Big” Buddha. It was so large you were able to go inside and look around! It was made of cast stone and had in the nearer past been reinforced with a plastic compound about the neck and some steel supports at the base.

    

There was another temple about 10 minutes down the street—temples are everywhere here, and the grounds are always well manicured and nice to see along with the structures. Unfortunately, they don't always allow pictures to be taken inside. We wandered down through the little street, waiting for the local train to move by before going over the rail crossing.

The temple grounds were great, but it was ever so busy. Kami has been here four times previously and said she had never seen it as busy! Kami did the fortune telling with the piece of paper again (Omikuji) but got “Excellent fortune” this time :)

 

The town of Kamakura is, in fact, a “seaside” town. It was right on the coast, and for the first time ever, I saw the West coast of the Pacific Ocean!

After looking around the temple and the grounds for half and hour, we headed down to the beach and walked back to the town itself instead of taking the local bus. Not only have the people in the village realised the potential of how much money can be made in the village, but it also looks like some of the beach areas have been split up into plots and sold for development since there were at least seven or eight huge bar/restaurants being built directly on the beach.

 

Earlier, while up in the temple gardens, we saw these huge eagle-type birds swooping around. There were a couple of food vendors in the temple grounds and an outdoor patio area. The birds turned out to be Kites! There were signs all over warning of the danger!

Warning!                                                                           Rhubarb!              Ravens were everywhere too

     

We stopped by a local chain restaurant called Saizeriya that Kami has eaten at before and had a bite to eat for lunch before carrying on and taking our time wandering up one of the main shopping streets in the town, which eventually led to yet another really nice temple. I'd seen some chains hanging down off some buildings since I’d been in Tokyo, and I saw one again today, only this time, I was able to figure out what it was. The chain-like thing hung down from one of the gutters of a store, and as we got right up to it, I was able to see that the chain was, in fact, a line of small metal cups hanging down in a line, each connected to the other one, and it was, in fact, a drainpipe for the water to flow down! It moved though, and each cup had a hole in the bottom for the water to run down through to a grate in the floor!

Unusual but cool drainpipes with little funnel cups!                           Police delivery bike!

     

We took a look around the other temple before heading back to the train station, again down a crowded tourist street that had food, drink, and souvenirs.

The street to the temple we walked up       

    

We took the train back to the hotel and arrived back around seven. My feet were killing me from the last few days’ walking. We must have walked a good seven or eight miles today alone! We both had a great day, though. Mark was working tonight giving one of his talks and called us around 7:30 as he was on his way back to the hotel. Mark was shattered, so Kami decided to head back out to Shibuya on the metro and had the most amazing all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ—unlimited amounts of meet, corn, sweet potatoes and soft drinks—and everything was brought to our table raw for us to cook on the grill in front of us.

    

Full album of pictures from today at the link below:

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