The train to Tokyo was pleasant and empty so we stretched out a bit.
We arrived in the evening and made our way to the hostel. It was not too hard to find. It was quite spacious for Tokyo and was a traditional Japanese style room.
We were pretty exhausted and had a big day lined up in the morning so we grabbed a quick dinner and stayed in for the night. We watched an interesting show where the contestants had to pick between items in a room and take a bite out of them. Half of the items were made of food and styled to look like real things and the other half were real things. The shoe on the left is chocolate, the shoe on the right is leather. They chose leather. Hilarity ensued.
The next day we headed to the imperial palace. The grounds of the palace are only open two days a year and this happened to be one of them. We showed up early but had no idea how long the line would be. It was long.
It was probably the largest crowd I have ever been in. You could not see where the people ended. That being said the line moved at a fairly brisk pace all things considered. We waited about an hour to make it through the first set of gates.
The inside grounds were pretty nice but we were not allowed to wonder, forced to stay with the cool kids. There were plenty of guards that made sure this was the case.
We got a peak at some of the people still waiting in line. The line goes back all the way to the sky scrapers and beyond.
We eventually made our way to the house where the royal family lives. Its a more modern style building surrounded by traditional Japanese buildings.
We then waited in a huge mass for the emperor to appear. Earlier in line we were handed little Japanese flags. When the emperor emerged from his royal slumber the small flags painted the landscape.
Once the excitement died down the emperor gave a speech. We didn't realize we would get to hear him speak so that was neat. We had a decent view and could at least see him. Having a height advantage definitely helps in this country.
After the speech we were funneled out of the palace grounds just as we entered them. Again the mass of people was ridiculous.
After 45 minutes of fighting our way out we made it back to the subway and headed to Akihabara which is a neighborhood in Tokyo that is a haven for anime, electronics, and video games. We strolled the streets and basked in the glow of the electric city.
Having been on our feet all day we sat down and grabbed some lunch. Ramin was on the menu today.
Having had our fill of nerd culture we headed over to another area of Tokyo called Asakusa. This is what is known as the old area of Tokyo. It use to be one of the cities hotspots for entertainment but the firebombings of WWII destroyed most of the area. Although not as popular in recent years it still features the famous Senso-ji temple which is also a very popular destination during the new years holiday. We entered another blob of people and waited in line again, woo!
The nice thing about this temple was that the entrance is lined with shops and food vendors so we had new things to look at while we were funneled down the street. We grabbed a few snacks.
We finally made it through the last gate and the police took over. We just avoided the cut.
A barrier separated us from the inside of the temple but you could still see the golden throne through the bars.
Tired of waiting in lines we headed back to the hostel for some rest. It was then off to the Shibuya area for our evening festivities. This is a more modern downtown area of Tokyo.
Fairly tired and not feeling too adventurous we decided to just walk around and grab some dinner. Tonight was conveyer belt sushi!
We ate everything from raw octopus to fresh sea urchin.
Full of rice and fish we headed home. With days like this we need all the sleep we can get.
