Monday - Tokyo Tour Day

Wow, Monday was a long day full of adventure and walking. We started our morning meeting in the dining area at 8:30a. Our first destination was the corner 7-Eleven to grab some breakfast. (This is becoming a habit) We took a ride to Shinjuku Station again to get our tickets for the Sunday bus ride to Shioda and for our bullet train ride tomorrow. It was significantly more crowded today than yesterday. 

After getting the tickets, we went to see where we needed to get on the bus Sunday morning. While that was being confirmed, a few of us went and grabbed some snacks/souvenirs. Once we were all set, we navigated to Meiji Jingu, a shrine dedicated in 1920’s for the spirits of Emperor Meiji. Emperor Meiji was credited with doing a great job navigating the opening of Japan to the rest of the world and bringing Japan up to speed as an industrialized nation. 

We also visited a museum on the site. (Ayla, you probably would have loved the architecture as much as I did!) It is one of my favorite styles of building.

After spending quite some time going through the museum’s exhibits, we headed for some food. Rebekah found a pancake place to try. On the way there, I saw some cool buildings (Ayla, you need to come check them out).

The line was out the door and we had to wait for about 20 minutes or so to get a seat, but it was so worth it.

And yes, they are as cloudy and fluffy as they look. After the fantastic meal, we went to the busiest pedestrian intersection in the world — Shibuya Crossing. 

It’s basically just a normal intersection at a place that gets an enormous of traffic. There’s a train station exit at one corner that really helps increase the numbers. While it was chaotic, it still flowed very nicely and quickly. We crossed it multiple times before deciding to break into a few smaller groups and tour around the area. There were lots of shops and restaurants etc. to check out. It ended up being myself, Thad, Jalen, Derek, and Wendell who went around together. We went looking for Street food Vendors, but first got lured into a shop that used a robot to make soups. 

Next, we ran into a place that sold takoyaki so we stopped and tried some! (It contains octopus) Thadd was so brave to try it.

Finally we checked out another place for food before giving up and meeting the other group of brothers at a bookstore. 

We browsed a while before finally headed back to meet Ezra and Rebekah to discuss food. We decided to separate to get food again and meet back together to go to the Tokyo Tower. For dinner I had teriyaki chicken Fillet-O from McDonald’s 

We made it to the Tokyo Tower and spent the next hour and a half going up to the upper floor and getting pics of the never-ending sea of city lights. 

What a sight to behold — all those lights. There was even a large glass plate you could stand on and look straight down. We finally finished up and ventured back to the AirBnB slowly, as we were all pretty wiped out. We shared some of our snacks from the day before going to bed.