2nd Day in Tokyo

We headed off to the Tsukiji Fish Markets, Imperial Palace, Ginza and the Sensoji Temple yesterday (yes, I'm one day behind in blogging, but what can you do? I was pretty dead yesterday evening...).

Tsukiji was pretty interesting because of the manic pace that everything went at. And the stupidly large array of seadfood lying around - yum!! However, we did get rorted whilst trying to find some good super fatty tuna - it was like 735 yen for 1 tuna sushi piece (over 10 aus bucks - faint...). All we could do was to resign ourselves to the fact that it was pretty good tuna.

Before we got to the Imperial Palace, everyone was so dead that we stopped in the park across the road and rested for about 1/2 hr before we summoned up the strength to go on. The stupid thing about the Imperial Palace is that you can't really see much of it; there's a few gates and a few monuments, but we couldn't find the place where you can actually see the palace grounds. I suppose that's for security reasons, but it was still pretty disappointing.

We ate McDonalds for lunch... feeling the pinch after the sushi.

Ginza was cool. No, seriously cool. The Sony Building is a must see if you ever go to Tokyo; it's got so much gadgetry, any serious geek would be in heaven! Plus, I scored a free shirt :). We also went to several department stores, and took heaps of snaps of pretty cakes (seriously, the Japanese really know how to do pretty) and snaps of weird and wonderful gadgets. And Ginza at nightfall, with all the lights and Christmas decorations... wah!!!!!! I can definitely understand why consumerism would be a problem in Japan, even for a Christian - it's just so loaded with tempting stuff!!!

We ate Yoshinoya for dinner... again, pinch...

Sensoji Temple in Asakusa was spectacular at night. There were very little people about, so whilst it was a bit spooky around some of the Buddhist statues, the whole place was lighted up so that it made for really excellent photo opportunites. Plus, it was only less than 5 minutes walk from where we were staying. We also found out that Asakusa has heaps of cheap eats... man, why didn't we look around where we were staying first??

My stomach just growled. I'd better go.

Signing out,

Lawrence