Eating Japanese…
When we woke up it had already started to rain, and it would continue to do so till the evening. We decided to visit the fish market today and wanted to be there in the morning.
We started at Shinagawa staton with the JR Keihin -Tohoku Line towards Yurakucho Station. From there we walked towards the Hibiya station wo catch the Tokyo Metro Hibiya Line to Tsukiji Station from which it was just a couple of minutes walking towards the seafood wholesale market of the world largest fish market. We’ve never seen so much dead fish in one place. Lot’s of fresh tuna, most probably for sushi…
It was quite funny to walk around there and the most important thing is not to disturb the business which is going on, some people didn’t like tourist taking pictures so we only walked through the area once.
After leaving we took the Toei Subway Oedo Line at the Tsukijishijo Station towards Daimon where we transferred to the Toei Subway Asakusa Line to leave the metro at Shimbashi. In Shimbasi we took a late breakfast/early lunch at the Mr. Donut.
After sitting for a while the rain got worse and we both felt tired which made us decided to go back to the hotel to get some rest. In the late afternoon we went back to Shinagawa Station to make the seat reservations for the Narita Express back to the airport on Saturday. We did this on one of the ticket machines available at the JR East office which went easier as expected. e put in the 2 tickets we got on the day of arrival in Tokyo and we got them back combined with 2 seat reservation tickets.
In the evening we had an appointment together with one of Sanders Japanese colleagues which took us to a typical Japanese restaurant, a place where we would have never entered by ourself. But here we ate a lot of different delicious thing like Codfish eggs (Roe) in baked chicken egg, rice with egg, something with beef and most important THE INSIDE OF CHICKEN WITH TOFU!!! It sounds really interesting but it tasted better!
And with every good meal you need a good drink. Danielle had a Sake with plume wine and a Matscha Sake Cocktail (Green Tea Sake cocktail). Sander went with cold sake, hot sake and something specific for Japan! Everything tasted great and soon it was 2 hours later and time to leave the restaurant. We had a pleasant time!
Tomorrow will be the last day from this amazing trip..and we still have things we’d like to see. Tomorrow we’ll try to visit the zoo and watch Panda’s and Elephants.
Crisscross through Tokyo…
The legend says that in the year 628 two brothers fished a statue of Kannon, the goddess of mercy, out of the Sumida River. And even though they put the statue back in the river, it always returned to them. Consequently Sensoji was built nearby for the goddess of Kannon. The temple was completed in 645, making it Tokyo’s oldest temple.
As we approached the temple, the first thing we saw was the Kaminarimon (also Thunder Gate), the outer gate of the Sensoji temple.
After walking through this gate a 200 meter shopping street follows. The street is called Nakamise and it contains a lot of shops with Japanese souvenirs. At the end of this street we walked through the temple’s second gate, the Hozomon, and ten we saw the temple’s main hall and a five-story pagoda.
We both spent ¥100 at Omikuji, which a written fortune. You wish for something and you shake with a metal box a couple of time and one wooden stick comes out of it. This wooden stick contains a number in the form of  Japanese signs which is equal to the signs on a specific drawer in the wall. From this drawer you take your written fortune and after reading it you can take it home with you or tie is on a rack with other written fortunes.
After taking pictures and searching (and finding) geocaches we walked in the direction of Ueno park.
During this 2 kilometer walk we walked from geocache to geocache, unfortunately we did not find al the caches.But Sander found something to eat in one of the small streets we walked through and with hand and feet her was able to order 3 skewers with chicken.
Ueno Park is a large public park in central Tokyo. We walked around in this big park with an ice-cream and discovered a lot of cherry blossoms, but still not all blossoms are out yet. As we left the park it was time for a late lunch or early dinner.
We searched for a local place and found a little restaurant (from which I do not know the name). We ordered our food at a machine (thank god a waitress helped us because everything was in Japanese and nothing in English). We both ordered fried rice (with some strange pink things in it) and Sander also had rice with pork and on top of that a raw egg, which is very common to eat in Japan. And before some one has doubts it tasted great!!!
Next stop this afternoon was Ginza (where we got with the Tokyo Subway Ginza Line). The Ginza area can be compared with Fifth Avenue in New York. All the big names in designer clothing, jewelery stores and electronic stores have a shop there. We walked around and looked at all the windows and visited the Apple Store, Abercrombie & Fitch (which has 8 stories).
Because we were both very tired we decided to get some donuts and a drink a Krispy Kreme donuts and went back to the hotel.
Tomorrow we are planning to visit the famous fish market in Tokyo.