Tuesday July 24

Tuesday July 24
Tokyo

This is the last day of our "magical mystery tour." Tomorrow, we take our flight home.

So Ms. Becker and I thought we had a good plan today. We headed to Dean and Deluca in Times Square before our morning tour of Tokyo to get a good and elicit us breakfast. Well "the great laid plans of mice and men." It was closed. We walked about a half hour to get there and now we had to get to our tour. Ugh.

Our tour was only about 3 hours. First, we went to the Tokyo TV Tower which was modeled after France's Eiffel tower. Funny, it is actually 9 meters taller than the Eiffel tower but it looks smaller. The reason is simple, because Tokyo's tower is dwarfed by other high rises. We went up to the observatory to see the panoramic views of the city.















Then we went to what I will call "the palace that cannot be seen", aka the emperor's palace. The tour said we were going to see it. But then the guide informed us that we are not allowed but could only see the walls, mote and tower - all the things meant to keep people like me out. This made Ms. Becker and I laugh. The tour bylines did not mention this. Oh well. This palace was built by the Tokugawa shogunate in 1603 and the shogun lived there until 1867 while the emperor lived in the imperial capital of Kyoto. The capital is always where the emperor lives. The emperor moved into the capital in 1867 and all emperors have lived there since, thus the capital is now in Tokyo.






Our final stop with the tour was at a temple to Buddha built in the 7th century (It was destroyed during air raids of WWII and has since been rebuilt). It is the oldest one in Tokyo.








The tour left us off on the electronic town called Akihabara. Not wanting to distance ourselves to far from our train and mode of transportation home we stayed near the station. This place was filled with tons of Animee stores. I got excited and dragged Ms. Bisconti around in search of memorabilia of the show Sailor Moon. To be honest, other than the title of the show and the fact that the main character has long blond hair, I don't know much about Sailor Moon. I do however have two friends from high school who loved the show, so I was hoping to find a cool gift to bring back from Japan. Mission not accomplished. We walked into a few stores, and lets just say they weren't exactly children based stores and walked out. I kept looking but no luck came my way. Sorry Amy and Kaitlin. I tried.







Then back to our hotel so that Ms. Becker could help me pack and make my bag lighter before we head home. I shopped way too much.

Hehe, we spent about an hour repacking Ms. Bisconti's bag and carry on. Neither one of us wants to have to pay extra in handling charges because our bag is too heavy, so that requires some organized packing on our parts. Let's just say our carry on will help build some arm muscle for both of us...


By the way that picture doesn't show all the stuff that was laying on my bed!



Tonight Ms. Becker and I went to an awesome restaurant! It was called "500 Yen" because that was how much everything cost there. It was all pizza, pasta and salad!! It was sooo good. I had a salad with this avocado and cream cheese that was incredible!



Then, I had spaghetti with tomatoes sauce and mozzarella, and it was awesome!!



The really cool thing is that the place was incredibly small with a super tiny kitchen and they had such great food! Ms. Becker and I wish we discovered it sooner.

That is the tiny kitchen where they make everything right in front of you. Okay and the guy on the right is the Johnny Depp of Japan for all you Johnny Depp fans out there:


We ended our last night in Tokyo wandering around one more time and grabbing some ice cream and macaroons! Tomorrow we begin the long journey home.


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