From our honeymoon blog, as told by Andrew:
"A perfect haze settled upon the city around 6 am. I, of course, was still awake from the 17 hour time gap between LA and here. We showered, Marla curled her hair, put
on our walking shoes and were off to find some breakfast. We decided to try one of the hotels restaurants called “The Coffee House”. It looked like just any other buffet place you might see in Las Vegas. We had to wait for a table so we
got in the queue with everyone else which consisted of some chairs along the wall. The host would greet you and take you to your table one party at a time. Therefore, people would scuttle from chair to chair as parties were removed from the line.
This resembles an odd linear form of musical chairs. Everyone getting up and sitting back down as they move up the line. We had a table within minutes and proceeded with a great breakfast of a combination of Western and Eastern meals. The scrambled
eggs were a bit on the scary side but everything else was awesome. There were no giant portions like you might see in the states, but little compact portions about half the size of your fist for everything. They have translations into English on the
labels, so we were pretty confident in our choices. I got pretty risky with a bottle with a Jersey cow on it, turned out to be yogurt. All in all it was pretty enjoyable and the service was excellent with everyone saying,
“O-hayo-go-zai-mas” as you left which means “Good Morning!”. With a small bow were we on our way to the post office.
Breakfast cost: $50 (yep, 50 bucks! cha-ching!)
The post office was a few blocks away in walking distance, just on the edge
of small shopping district. Brightly colored and no lines made this quite different than ours. Also, everyone was extremely helpful with the limited English and Japanese going back and forth. Marla wanted to send our thank you cards via
international, adding a little extra love on them for ya. We paid ($14) for 13 cards, they gave us stamps. There were little stamp application places behind us so we sat down and hand-did each envelope. Due to price and the work involved, we will not be doing
the rest of the thank you cards this way. :) So, whomever gets these special Japan-sent thank you cards, consider yourselves super super monkey special. A-ha!!!
From there it was important for us to retrieve a power converter for
Marla’s Macbook. Luckily, just down the street, was a Tokyo version of “Fry’s” whose looks very deceiving on the outside but turned out to be a massive 5-story store that pretty much had anything we could have needed in the form of
electronics.
Afterwards, we decided to see the Imperial City which was east of our location
and out of walking distance. Our only means of smart travel at that point is the subway. We needed a day ticket ($10 each) and once we had those in hand we could travel anywhere in the city. The craziness of the city was not at her fevered pitch as
of yet, so getting around was fairly simple.
Everything is color coded, much like the UK’s subways, so we just followed the appropriate color in getting from specific line to line. (We were based out of the Shinjuku line). We connected out at the Ichigaya station and then
made it down to our final destination which was the Sakuradamon station, just north of the Imperial Palace.
Once we exited the station there was still much walking to be had as we
entered one of the outer gates to the Palace. Thick wooden gates, wrapped in iron showed off the impressive outer defenses. Lush greenery and carefully manicured lawns and trees framed the outer gravel walkways. Lines of people in tour groups followed
tour leaders that carried a small kite shaped like a golden fish. The ladies carried umbrellas to keep the sun off their faces while gloved hands and masked faces were seen on every other person. Right now, we
can’t tell if women with white gloves on are just a fashion choice or a personal hygiene choice. Everywhere you looked, though, no one really had shorts on. Men wore pants and slacks and women allowed themselves skirts.
The walls to the Palace were these incredible 50 to 80 ft. high walls built with
solid blocks of stone pieced together in right angles surrounded by moats and small walking bridges. All you could see was the inner gardens and some of the smallSamurai guard shacks that watched over the
main gates. Entry into the inner city wasn’t allowed, or possibly we just didn’t look hard enough. Our feet were beginning to feel the day and luckily there were several rest houses inside the grounds where you could do just that. Marla
decided to pick up an ice cream treat that everyone was snacking on. It was this odd self-contained ice cream and cone in one easy to use package. We then walked to the inner gardens where they had small trails and water falls. We
rested for a bit on a park bench where I caught an old man with his caneslowing walking the grounds. I wasn’t very subtle with my picture-taking, but it had to be done. From there we proceeded out of the Palace walls and
to the Kudanshita station where we picked up our Shinjuku line and headed home.
But our day wasn’t over as we decided to check out the food mall in the
Shinjuku station. Little did we know that we entered into a slightly crazed atmosphere of food purchasing people. Every seller was talking to you trying to get you to buy their foods, which all looked so tempting. Earlier, we went to the AM/PM
to pick up some snacks of riceballs and a drink. I had some kind of jellied multi-vitamin drink that had the consistency of snot, but tasted like grapefruit. I didn’t care, I drank the whole thing. But the market was bustling with excitement.
Any kind of food you can imagine. One seller in particular kept giving us samples of these fish patties and bowls of soup. The fish patties were amazing, but he just kept giving us sample after sample. We had to stop him before we exploded. Outside
again, we could feel the city breathing with people. They surged and stopped at every intersection. It didn’t die down until we were at our hotel again. Peace settled over us in our room, as I thought I was going to take a quick nap which turned out to be a night’s sleep. We once again woke very early, so I’m typing this at 4 am.
Marla is reading as we await our day. We plan on walking through Asakusa which is an older part of town."
Complete pictures from the day:
Posted on 03/12/2009 at 11:03 am |
