Japan - Tokyo

We loved the time we spent in downtown Tokyo. We stayed at a hotel that overlooked Shibuya crossing - the busiest pedestrian crossing in the world. If you haven't heard of it, all of the cars stop so all the people can cross in all directions, then the people stop so the cars can go. Hundreds of people cross each time. We crossed it dozens of times during our stay.

We walked or took the public commuter trains to different parts of the city. They are very easy to take - we bought pass cards on our first day and then used those for the rest of the time. The station names are all written in English so they are easy to identify. Of course, we had a great guide - Mike - as he was familiar with the system from when he lived there years ago.

Some of the highlights of our trip included shopping (department stores, specialty kitchen shops, toy stores, 100 Yen stores, COSTCO, import and local grocery stores and other local stores), a visit to a Shinto Shrine and the large city park, a trip to the top of a skyscraper to view the city, lots of good food, and a picture with Hachiko.

The visit to COSTCO was both bliss and torture all at once. Bliss because we had dinner there (yum!) and they had so many familiar foods to buy. But torture because they had so many familiar foods to buy and we couldn't bring it all back with us! We bought food to eat for our days at Disneyland, but didn't want to spend the next 14 days lugging around cases of food, so we didn't buy anything to bring back to China (boo hoo). Next time we'll plan to fly out of Tokyo to come home so we can go just before we leave!

Here are our photos from Tokyo. Our friends were in Tokyo with us, so you'll see them in some of the pictures too!

Japan - Tokyo

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