Today was going to be another day of sightseeing in Tokyo. After we left the hotel we had breakfast at the Shinagawa Starbucks. At the table next to us were sitting a couple of Japanese people we were – I presume – having a meeting about ladies underwear. I think it’s very unusual to have meetings like that in public places like Starbucks but in Japan it is very common.

We had our breakfast and took the JR Yamanote Line to Kanda Station and there we transferred to the Tokyo Subway Ginza Line which took us to Asakusa Station. From here it was only a couple of minutes walking to our first goal of today, the Sensoji Temple, also know as Asakusa Kannon Temple. This Buddhist temple is one of Tokyo’s most colorful and popular temples.

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.