Good Morning everyone - its Saturday morning at home, but its the last minutes of Saturday night here in Tokyo!
We started off a little later today, and decided to go for another walk. Another beautiful day, 19 C this morning, with next to no breeze.
We meandered our way South this time over to Tokyo Tower where we went up the tower for a birds eye view of Tokyo. We could see the tower from our hotel room and it didn't look far. We found it quite quiet on the streets this morning just after 9 a.m. - most shops weren't open yet and offices were likely closed.
By the way, we are surprised not to have seen any "Mr. Donut" Shops yet (we were told they are everywhere). We have seen lots of Starbucks, McDonalds, 7-11s and today, a Wendy's.
At 333 m (1,091 ft), Tokyo Tower is the tallest self-supporting steel structure in the world and the tallest artificial structure in Japan.
The Tokyo Tower is a replica of the Eiffel Tower, and is actually much smaller than the CN Tower (553.33 m [1,815 ft, 5 inches]), which is the World's Tallest Freestanding Structure. We went up to the 2-story Main Observatory, located at 150 meters (492 ft), for a bird's eye view. This was much lower than our view from CN Tower's Sky Pod last October (447 m or 1,465 ft.) Due to the light smog today, we were not able to see Mount Fiji :-(
FootTown, a 4-story building located directly under the tower, houses a roof top amusement park, museums, restaurants and shops; there we went to the Wax Museum, Trick Art Gallery,
Space Wax Museum, and the Guinness World Record Museum Tokyo. The Trick Art Gallery featured art work which is sometimes an optical illusion and interactive. For example, look at the giraffe I am feeding there!
We spent a few hours there and tried a few foods too; warm ham and cheese buns for breakfast, ice cream (which reminded us of sherbet), then a pizza slice for lunch before heading out. There were many, many people at Tokyo Tower today and being Saturday, lots of families and children.
We took the elevator to the Main Observation Deck, but walked the 600 steps to come down!
After leaving the Tokyo Tower, we walked to the Zojo-ji Temple, cutting through Shiba Park
on the way. The Temple is almost right beside Tokyo Tower and it is quite a contrast when you see the two beside each other. Shiba Park was an amazingly serene forest interlude between Tokyo Tower and the Temple.
It was hard to believe hundreds of people were just a few feet away at the base of a large steel structure.
The Zojo-ji Temple is a Buddhist Temple. The Grand Hall was available for viewing. It was a huge hall housing a large Buddha and a few smaller statues and artifacts. The Buddha could be seen with several offerings before it and four very large adornments (looking like multiple hanging chimes in square clusters) hanging from the ceiling. No one was taking pictures, so we didn't either. We also passed through the Sangedatsu Gate, which is said to free us from three passions, greed, hatred and foolishness.
After consulting our map, more walking, this time to the World Trade Center Building. We visited the "Seaside Top", their panoramic observatory.
There where we got a different view of Tokyo. Due to its location, this view was more intimate, especially of the Tokyo Bay area, and even our own hotel
in the distance(with our room circled). From this city photo, you can appreciate how large Tokyo is,
as this view goes off in all directions. Still no Mount Fuji sighting :-(
After this, guess what, no more walking. Though it wasn't that far, we jumped onto the JR Rail Line and took the train one stop back to the Shimbashi Station, right beside our hotel. So at 4pm, time for our 'happy hour', and to rest our feet.
When we ventured out to find supper, we noticed it was a little breezier as soon as we walked out. Our hotel is surrounded by too many restaurants but we decided to explore the options in Ginza. We opted for a street on the edge of Ginza, a small narrow street with a huge variety of restaurants. On one side of the street all the shops were housed under the elevated roadway - a good use of space unlike some big cities. We walked for a block or two trying to choose what type of food we wanted to eat and where we could understand the menu just a bit at least! We decided on the Belgian Beer Cafe Antwerp Six, one of three Belgian Beer Cafes in Tokyo, with 70 locations worldwide (for those of you that know us really intimately - are you really surprised at our choice?) The advertising boasted 40 brands of Belgian beers(like Stella Artois and Hoegaarden) and "stylish slow food", so we thought we'd give it a go. It was a very bustling, busy place.
We laughed when we realized we were in a Belgian Beer Cafe in the middle of Central Tokyo reading a menu which was in Japanese and French with very very limited English to choose from a selection of European foods. I ordered a Hoegaarden, Stella Artois (both with in the appropriate glass with the appropriate coaster!) and a Spicy chicken with grilled vegetables dish and Eve ordered a glass of French white wine and the Shrimp Avacado Risotto dish (she reports both were excellent!) As tipping is not the norm here, we presented our waitress with a Canadian flag pin - she was delighted.
We walked into Ginza a little more and witnessed all its famous neon glory. Many storefronts were just as impressive in evening as they are in the daytime. We stopped in at the grocery store we visited yesterday, for more ginger ale and some muffins for nibbling tomorrow morning (a good money saver we generally use in our travels).
We were hoping to visit the Tsukiji Fish Market (the biggest wholesale fish and seafood market in the world) goes into action about 3 am, but apparently the best time is 5 am to about 7 a.m.(when they have the fish auction), and its closed on Sundays so chances are we will pass! The market handles over 2,000 metric tons of seafood everyday, including more than 400 different types of seafood from tiny sardines to 300kg tuna, from cheap seaweed to the most expensive caviar.
That's it for today's adventures - not bad for not having a plan to start!
Sunday we would like to visit Asakusa, just north of central Tokyo and hopefully Odaiba.
2025-02-09