Travel Day 4 - Ueno Park

Wednesday, July 21st.

Today we decided to explore Ueno Park, a large public park in Tokyo. The park itself is quite nice, with abundant greenery and shady walkways that are an abrupt change from the surrounding city. It also encloses other attractions, including several museums, shrines, and a zoo. We had previously purchased GRUTT passes, which gave us free or reduced admission to many museums and other attractions around the city, so as the day heated up we availed ourselves of the air conditioning in the National Museum of Nature and Science. There were some fascinating exhibits there, ranging from the very active geology and diverse biology of the Japanese Islands to the rapid modernization of technology in Japan during the late 1800’s. One of our favorite displays mapped out in three dimensions the epicenter of hundreds of earthquakes in Japan. The result mapped out the boundaries of the four geologic plates that are colliding around the islands – very cool.

After several hours in the museum, we ventured back out into the heat to visit the Ueno Zoo – also free with the GRUTT pass. It held a wide array of animals, including some unusual monkeys, some funny penguins, and a very cute red panda bear. One difficult thing about many of tourist attractions, including the zoo and museum, is that they tend to close around 4:30 or 5 pm, so we were still looking for something to do for the rest of our afternoon after the zoo closed. Completely by chance, we stumbled on a neat old Tosho-gu Shrine near the zoo. It was built in 1651 and dedicated to Tokugawa Ieyasu, the founder of the Tokugawa Shogunate. A long pathway flanked by rows of stone lanterns led up to the shrine, and right next to the shrine was an area for visitors to leave wooden placards with prayers written on them. Glancing over them, we were amazed at the number of languages and countries represented. A relatively recent addition to the shrine grounds is a memorial to victims of the atomic bombs. The flame that burns there has been kept going since it was started by one of the bombs, and was moved to the site of the shrine in the 1980’s.

For dinner, we took the subway to Omote-sando to find Hiroba, a Japanese health food restaurant that bento.com and one of our travel guides recommended for vegetarians. This was our first time navigating to someplace that was neither on a main street or had signs pointing to it, so we Googled the address and counted intersections from a train station. After walking through several narrow back alleys, we found it in the basement of a building called Crayon House. Everything but the restaurant was closed, but we had a lovely meal of tempura for Lauren and fish for Dan, before finding our way home for the night.

Travel Day 3

We had breakfast at our hotel again. In addition to bread and rolls, they serve a traditional Japanese breakfast of rice and miso soup. After breakfast, we started out to Asakusa.

It was incredibly hot. Everything we read told us that July/August were the worst months to visit because of how hot an muggy it was - they weren't wrong! The heat index was over 100 before noon.




At Asakusa we wandered through a tented shopping stall district on our was to Senso-ji Shrine. We bought a few souvenirs on our walk.

When we reached the shrine, there was a square billowing scented smoke for purification. You were supposed to wave the smoke over your head for good health.

There was also a fountain with cups for more purification. You hold the cup under the fountain, then pour the water over your hands.
The Shrine was pretty neat, but it was so hot we didn't stay there long. We stopped for ice cream on our way back to the subway.

We decided our next stop should be something indoors, so we went to check out the Kabuki-za theatre. Unfortunately, when we arrived, it appeared to be closed due to construction. We stopped in a park near by for lunch of packed sandwiches and fruit. It was so hot by now that when we tried to sit on the stone steps, it burned our legs through our clothes!

Still thinking that inside was the best option, we stopped at a nearby department store and wandered for a bit. The department stores are so big, this one even had an art gallery! Unfortunately, we arrived slightly after it closed. We went up to the beer garden on the roof for drink, and people watched a bit. The beer gardent had table top grills for meat and veggies.

After the beer garden, we went back to Roppongi Hills area from yesterday and had a wonderful dinner at Moti, an Indian restaurant we found listed at bento.com. We ordered the Alu Gobi and an eggplant curry with Naan. Everything was wonderful and spicy!

7/19 - Travel Day 2 - Roppongi Hills

Our hotel has a complementary breakfast buffet, including fresh rolls. After this surprisingly good free meal, we went and explored our immediate area – in particular, we checked out the Roppongi Hills development.

We explored for a bit in the shops and restaurants, and then had lunch at an Italian restaurant in the basement. That took quite a while – the wait staff here all seem to expect that we’ll order more courses and take longer to eat than we actually do, and so they don’t come around very often.


We then went to the observation lounge on the 53rd floor, which offered stunning views of the city, and we enjoyed a rather strange but tasty drink while we were there.
The drink was a strawberry banana slushy, with lime gel on the bottom and chocolate chips throughout.


Unfortunately, the Mori Art Museum on the next floor was closed, so we explored slightly further afield, finding a small grocery store where we picked up sandwich makings and snacks for a quick dinner, and enough for lunch in coming days. In the evening, we followed the advice of one of our guide books and went to the Shinjuku district, but other than the maze of neon lights, we weren’t really sure what we should be looking for. We ended up wandering the "Shinjuku Subnade", an underground shopping center attached to the subway station, and then we called it a night.

7/17 - Travel Day 1 - a night without sunset

Getting ready to go was a little hectic. We finally finished packing and were ready for bed about 1:30am on Friday 7/16. Our taxi was picking us up at 5am, so the alarm came early at 3:45am. We made it to Lansing airport with plenty of time to spare! We probably didn't need to be there quite so early.

After about an hour of waiting we were finally able to board our plane for Detroit. We never reached a cruising altitude. After a "whopping 22 minutes" according to the flight attendant - we were landing in Detroit.

Our next flight was very full and we hadn't managed to get seats next to each other, but luckily the attendant at the gate managed to switch our seats. I think we both dozed a bit on the way to Seattle, but we were both trying to stay awake enough that we could sleep at the end of the day - still 20 hour away. In Seattle, we met up with our friend Susan in the airport for lunch. It was great to see her for a couple of hours. Plus, she gave us wonderful muffins. :)

Our final flight in our hop, skip, and jump to Japan took us from Seattle to Narita Airport, outside of Tokyo. It took us something like nine hours, many of which it felt like we should be sleeping, but it was sunny outside the plane the entire time! The food was actually reasonable, which is always unexpected on a plane. Lauren requested the vegetarian option ahead of time, which worked well for dinner, but for breakfast she was given just a small bowl of cereal while the rest of us had more substantial options, most of which were still vegetarian. The flight attendant wouldn't give her one because all of her meals were on a special plan.

When we landed in Tokyo, it was 4pm on 7/18 - where did Sunday go? We made our way through the airports and got on one of the fast skyliner to Ueno. We meant to take the limited express, but we were tired. So tired in fact that it was probably good we took the faster train, otherwise we may have just fallen over! In Ueno we bought a Pasmo card for the subway - basically a prepaid card that will automatically deduct money as you travel, so you don't have to figure out how to buy the right fare. Genius!

We made it to Roppongi where we are staying for the beginning and end of our trip and checked in to our hotel - Villa Fontaine Roppongi. Our hotel room is awesome. So much bigger than we expected (though smaller than what you would expect in the states.)

We needed dinner even though all we wanted to do was sleep. We passed an Italian restaurant on the way up from the subway, so we thought we'd try that, hoping they'd have something vegetarian. At first when we asked, the waiter seemed a little flustered. All of the pasta dishes did include meat in the description, including one that was spaghetti with "offal" - strange. But once we pointed at the pizza, he nodded, looking relieved. So for our first meal in Japan - we had pizza! Lauren ordered the pizza Martguerita, your traditional pizza with mozzarella and basil, which was yummy, and Dan ordered the Genovese which had a pesto sauce - also really good!

After that we came back to the room and crashed before 8:30, and slept until 7am. A much needed sleep.