We did two things Natsuko had never done before: went up to the top of Tokyo Sky Tree, the world's tallest free-standing tower. (I didn't realize until we got there and saw all of the 4th anniversary signs ((and merchandise)) that it had only been open for four years. We went up to both the 350m (1,148ft) and 450m (1,476ft) observation decks, after encountering a stunning site when we got out of the train station and Tokyo Sky Tree Town, and absolutely no lines.
We couldn't make out Mt. Fuji, but we did see Tokyo Tower, the attraction that looks like the Eiffel Tower, Super Dry Hall, the Asahi Beer headquarters (Taka works at another location) with its golden kidney bean out front (according to Lonely Planet, Asahi says it's beer foam) and our next stop, Sensō-ji, Tokyo's oldest temple, and one Mom had visited when she was here in 1974.
There was also a spot where you could look through glass all the way to the ground.
From here, we walked to another train station, and took a train across the water, where we got a better view of the Super Dry Hall and Tokyo Sky Tree.
We then walked to Sensō-ji. It took us a bit of time to find it as the famous gate with the Kaminari-mon (Thunder Gate) being covered up, seemingly for construction.
While taking a picture of the wide lantern in the middle, a school girl asked, first, something I couldn't understand? Urina? And then another girl asked, "Can you take our picture?" They were delighted when I asked answered yes, and then asked, "What is your favorite Japanese food?" to which I answered, tempura. I think asked if we could take her picture.
From here, we walked through Nakamise-dori, the temple's shopping street. My highlight of this temple was getting a good fortune from the silver canister (thanks, Natsuko!), which included "good travel." (Natusko said I could have gotten a "great" fortune, but a "good" fortune is better than a "bad one" -- we saw tied off bad fortunes throughout sites we visited.)
We then walked to the Tokyo Cruise Asakusa Pier. We had been commenting that we had taken just about every type of transportation during our trip except for a boat, shown here at the end of our journey.
On the way to Asakusa Pier we stopped to take pictures with a Lucky Cat (we've seen these fortune beckoning cats in all of the stores) ...
... and a Sumo Lego (since it was not in Sumo season, we didn't get to see any real Sumo wrestlers!)
We really enjoyed our ride on the Sumida River, particularly when we got into Tokyo Bay and got to go up on top.
From here, we got a better look at Tokyo Tower.
At the end of the ride, we walked to the Statue of Liberty, which we learned was a gift from France in 1999. I was surprised it was so much smaller than the original! (11m; 36ft)
Here I met some tourists from Nepal, who asked me if I knew the significance of what was on her books. We later figured out it contained the dates of both U.S. independence, and French independence.
We took the monorail (the driverless Yurikamone train) to a train to Yokohama Station, where we enjoyed a delicious meal of shrimp, scallions, and what reminded me of Spanish rice, smothered in cheese (it's the one in the top row, far right, in the picture below), before taking the train, and then a bus to Natsuko's house.
-- POSTED BY COLEEN
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