Another day in Tokyo, another day of fun.
This morning I was awoken by my lovely brother who had to go to Ginza to take his GRE exam. Its great to wake up at 7AM while on vacation. Not. Anyway, today wasn't as filled as yesterday, but still pretty busy. First we had to visit an American Express office which was in "Tokyo". Actually, the office was in a prefecture outside of Tokyo, so it was interesting to see a part of Tokyo where no one spoke English, and where there were no tourists. Afterwards, we headed to Ginza to find my brother. It was quite an adventure for we told my brother to meet us at the Ginza station. What we didn't realize was that there were about 4 different exits, each one at least 5 blocks away from each other. So, we split up to see who could find him first. In the end, none of us did. Andrew found us on our own just as we were trying to devise a plan to find him (no one had a phone, nor did we have his phone number on us). We then had lunch at some awesome place, in the basement of a building, in some random alley. Had me some tempura, fish balls, miso soup, and noodles. Yum Yum.
We then headed Asakuza Kannon, better known as the Sensoji Temple. Unlike the shrine we saw the day before, this one was much older, more colorful, more crowded, and just awesome. Its also a buddist temple as opposed to a shinto shrine (as my brother informed me). On the way to the temple, there were streets lined with vendors. So many random things were being sold: from trinkets to clothes, food to doggie kimonos, swords to wall scrolls. It was crazy! Everywhere you looked, there was a store. The temple itself wasn't insanely huge, and it looked a bit out of place being surrounded by all the modern buildings, but it was cool either way. The entrance to the temple had this huge red gate that had two giant statues of "guards" which looked more like mythical monsters. On the way into the temple there was a thing that looked like a well filled with incense and a fountain in which you had to wash your hands in before you could go in and pray. One sad things about the temple was that your couldn't see the actual outside structure since it was covered by walls. They are restoring the temple and making it earthquake proof, but the inside was intake. There were beautiful ceilings and statues inside. It was beautiful! Its difficult to describe exactly what it was, so I'll just let my pictures do the talking ;)
Afterwards, my mother and I did some shopping (had to get some gifts for people back in the land of the round eyes, as my mother likes to say). We then hopped back on the subway and headed back to Ginza. My brother convinced Tio Tony and my father to go so Inglourious Bastards with him (even though he had already seen the movie), so that left my mother and I about three free hours to do whatever we wanted. And what did we do? Shop, what else? If you leave to women with blackbelts in shopping in one of the most upscale and famous shopping districts in the world, hell yes we went shopping; well, at least window shopping. We walked through four giant departments stores, and were terrified. Everything looked so expensive that I felt like I had to pay someone something just for looking at things. Plus, there were eager Japanese women standing at every corner of the store, just waiting for the opportunity to assist us in anyway. Either way, it was fun.
After some serious shopping, it was back to exploring Tokyo. We were all starving, and thus headed back to Shinjuku (the area around our hotel) to find a place to eat. Andrew dragged us down an alley lined with places to eat. We finally found one that wasn't packed, but the guy told us that he would kick us out if we didn't order beer, so we left (none of us were in the mood to go drinking....). After about two hours of looking for a place to eat, we finally found a soba place and pigged out! It was one of the best meals ever, probably because I was starving and hadn't eaten in about 9 hours.
Random thoughts: My brother and I like to quote things a bit too much. My back is going crazying and have spasms every few hours. Boo. I love shopping. My family is crazy and doesn't know how to relax properly. I <3 Asian babies, especially when they are little Japanese girls with pigtails that like to wave at you on the subway. I think that Japanese people like to wear those white masks on their face because they think it looks cool, not because they are trying to prevent getting sick, are sick, or think we smell. Japanese men are girly, and Japanese women are pretty. No one likes to wear sneakers, which makes me sad. Everything is really clean, thus I don't mind sitting on the inside of one booths here (unlike at home, where I freak out).
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